Montalbán's Vida y purgatorio de San Patricio: its Early Textual History

Victor Dixon

Trinity College, Dublin

We shall never see, presumably, Montalbán's original version of his novela a lo divino. So far as we know at present no manuscript survives, and no copy of the princeps -which we may call *P. We can confidently state, however, that it was printed in Madrid and sold by Alonso Pérez soon after 4 March 1627, the date of the tassa which reappeared in the edition of Madrid 1628, M. But the text of M is a revised one; its title page states: En esta quinta impression emendado, y añadido por el mismo Autor.

So much we knew before the appearance of Dr. Profeti's edition (reviewed elsewhere in this volume). But she has established there that the edition of Barcelona 1628, B, has preserved a text much nearer to the unrevised original -as near to it, in fact, as we shall get, unless an earlier version should come to light. Her discovery, however, has prompted me to further investigation; and this reveals that we can reconstruct a process of revision rather more complex than (*P=)B→M.

In the first place, Dr. Profeti was unaware of an edition of which Cambridge University Library has a perhaps unique copy, printed at Zaragoza by Pedro Verges in 1632, Z. Like «Zaragoza 1692», this contains a privilegio for the kingdom of Aragon issued at Zaragoza by the Governor, Don Juan Fernández de Heredia, on 25 January 1628 -which strongly suggests that it derives from a lost Zaragoza edition of that date. In the second place, she mistakenly believed that an edition of which the British Museum has an apparently unique copy, printed at Lisbon by Antonio Álvarez in 1646, L, contains a text identical with that of B. If in fact we examine the 100-odd points at which she noted that B differs from M, we find that L agrees at just half with one, at half with the other. The text of Z, moreover, proves to be almost -but not completely- identical with L. L and Z, we conclude, must have had a common source, presumably a printed edition, intermediate between *P and M, which we may call *X. (We can only guess where this common source was printed; it may have been the lost «Zaragoza 1628», an early Lisbon edition, or a Madrid edition later than the princeps).

The 50-odd differences between B and *X (i.e. the variants from B common to Z and L) presumably stem from a first revision of *P by Montalbán -although about a third may well represent misprints unique to B. The remainder, affecting especially chapter I and chapters 7 to 9, are all minor but probably deliberate alterations in the interests of sense or style. Interestingly, they include the five phrases in which Dr. Profeti found «il tipico processo enfatico di Montalbán ridotto ed annullato in M» (e.g. blanquissima→blanca; el asco, y hediondez del açufre→el asco del açufre). Rather than deliberate changes, she suggested, these were all printing errors which went unnoticed; but such a series of accidents seems unlikely, and Montalbán, we are discovering, had more than one opportunity to notice and «correct» such «errors».

Occasionally, however, Z and L differ from each other, or rather from their common source *X. On the one hand, B relates, at the beginning of chapter 6, that the parents of Ludovico Enio set out in haste from Ireland «hasta llegar a Perpiñan, Ciudad del Rey de Francia, de cuyo amparo se valieron en aquella ocasión». This sentence reappears in L, so that it must have been left unchanged in *X (although it was to cause trouble later, as we shall see); but someone must have found it objectionable, for in Z the parenthesis is clumsily omitted. On the other hand, two readings of B which also were undoubtedly left unchanged in *X must have been changed in a text intermediate between this and both L and M -a text which we may call *Y. Later in the same chapter B reads: «Desconfiado pues Ludovico más de sí mismo que de la misericordia de Dios, se fue a Roma... y estando en el templo de San Pablo, que está en la calle Hostiense como un quarto de legua de Roma, oyendo a un Religioso de la Compañia de Iesus... [el cual había] heredado con el hábito lo afectuoso de su Padre S. Frācisco Xauier...». In Z the words quoted reappear unchanged; but between *X and *Y Montalbán must have realized - or have been told- that for a character based on a figure of twelfth-century legend, or even on one of fourteenth-century history, to have listened to a Jesuit was somewhat anachronistic; for L tells us that in *Y the preacher became -as he was to remain in M- «un religioso de la Orden de predicadores», who had inherited «lo afectuoso de su Padre Santo Domingo». Similarly, when Enio encounters the same preacher in Purgatory (chapter 8), in B and Z (i.e. *X) he is «el padre de la Compañía de Jesús», but in L (i.e. *Y) he has become «el Padre de Sāto Domingo». This last reading, however, perhaps because of its ambiguity, was to be changed again between *Y and M to «el religioso de Santo Domingo».

Parenthetically, we may note a curious variant found only in L, in the list of authorities Montalbán gave in chapter 4. After the reference to Fray Dimas Serpi we find: «de eod. Purg. mentionē facit D. Antonin. 2 par. Histor. tit. II c. 18. §2». Now this is an accurate reference to a mention of St. Patrick's Purgatory in the Chronica of Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence; but since it is not found in M it probably did not appear in *Y and was inserted by someone other than Montalbán.

Between *Y and M, however, the work was extensively revised once more «por el mismo Autor». Until now, the first chapter had stated that St. Patrick's parents, childless before his birth, «en viéndose con tan florido y dulce fruto, se determinaron, haziendo voto de castidad, a vivir una vida de ángeles»; but later it had mentioned three sisters of the Saint. In M the contradiction is resolved: «en, viéndose con Patricio y tres hermosas hijas que le sucedieron, se determinaron...» The Saint had been said to have died, as Jocelyn recorded, in 493; but Montalbán had listed among the monarchs reigning at that date: «de Hibernia Forcheno, Carlos Octauo de Francia; y de los demás de España don Fernando, que fue el Quinto Rey de Aragón». In M these gross errors are corrected: «de Hibernia Forqueno, Clodoveo de Francia, y de los Godos Alarico, que fue el primero que en España dio leyes escritas». At the beginning of chapter 6, as mentioned above, the parents of Ludovico Enio had been said to have gone from Ireland to Perpignan; but in M the passage quoted becomes: «hasta llegar a la ciudad de Tolosa, juridición del Rey de Francia de cuyo amparo se valieron en aquella ocasión», and in one of two later passages -in the other it was apparently overlooked- Perpignan is again changed to Toulouse. Before M, Enio had been said to have enlisted to «servir a Estefano, que entonces era Rey de Francia»; now this becomes merely «servir al Rey de Francia»; and «la calle Hostiense» in Rome, presumably for greater accuracy's sake, «la estrada Ostiense». And in the description in chapter 9 of «la gloria de los bienaventurados», certain «tiestos de pintada talauera (que tal vez excede lo precioso de la plata)» become for the first time «tiestos de plata labrada, costosamente guarnecidos de varias piedras». These are the major changes, but by no means the only ones. M has some 40 other readings found in none of the texts we have considered. Eight are evident misprints, but the remainder represent further attempts by Montalbán to polish his phraseology by dint of minor emendations throughout the book.

In the mere year or so between *P and M, it seems clear, Montalbán made not one but three revisions of his work. We may represent its early textual history by the following diagram:

A complicated stemma, certainly, but one which is consistent with M's claim to be the «quinta impression» and seems necessary to explain the variants we have seen. Montalbán's first revision, *P→*X, concerned a large number of small matters of expression; his second, *X→*Y, a single matter of fact -the Jesuit became a Dominican. His third, *Y→M, involved both many matters of form and several of content. It is evident that he had not realized until this stage that the latter were advisable; and by a happy chance we can be fairly sure how that realization came about.

The request to review Dr. Profeti's edition persuaded me to follow up a reference kindly sent me by Henry Ettinghausen, to a manuscript at the Bodleian (Arch. Seld. A. Subt. 17/22). This small item in a large folio volume of miscellaneous seventeenth-century Spanish pieces -mostly printed- proved to be a six-page censura of the Vida y purgatorio addressed to its author by a Doctor Ortuño de Chavarría of Toledo and dated 8 September 1627. A curious epistle, it would seem to have been a spontaneous outburst rather than an official report like those by Fray Juan de San Agustín and Fray Gabriel López on Montalbán's exemplary novel La mayor confusión, and a private communication rather than a satire for circulation like Quevedo's Perinola against Para todos. Certainly its longwinded, pedantic author, who solemnly and exhaustively proves his every point, usually with an extended Latin quotation, can rarely match Quevedo's wit and concision; but he is for the most part as savage, and occasionally almost as entertaining. (In the quotations which follow, capitalization and punctuation are mine.)

Shocked that a Doctor and a pupil of Lope de Vega should have published such a work, which is certainly more novela than historia, he proposes to point out «algunos de los grandes hierros de qe abunda el tal libro para que si no está acabada la segunda impressión trate de correjirlos». He attacks first «el estilo tan novelero y poético y por ambas cosas ageno de la gravedad de vna historia sagrada», making fun of Montalbán's description of «la gloria de los bienauenturados» and especially to the reference there to «tiestos de pintada talabera»:

He next points out Montalbán's error concerning St. Patrick's sisters. It could have been avoided, he suggests, by saying that they were born before him but that their parents had been eager to have male offspring before taking their vow of chastity, «si no quiere v.m. decir que después del voto las tuvieron, que sería notable absurdo». His next objection however, is the most amusing:

And he proceeds to quote Polydor Virgil and Antonio de Yepes to show that the rosary was not invented until long after St. Patrick's death: «Señor Doctor, obligación tenía v.m. a no ignorar, pues escriue historia, que pa los años de 1097 Pedro Hermitaño, a cuya piedad y celo se debió la restauración de Hierusalém, dio principio a que se rezase el rosario de N.ra S.ª». On the list of monarchs Montalbán had said were reigning at the time of the Saint's death, he comments (and we can only agree): «Aquí juntó v.m. grande tropel de desatinos en la chronología, y tan pueriles que es compasión». He is of course able to prove that Charles VIII of France reigned from 1483 to 1498, and that from 489 to 509 the King of Spain was «Alarico único de este nombre y octauo en el número de sus reyes godos o vándalos». But he also adds for good measure, and at some length, that in any case scholars other than Jocelyn differed about when St. Patrick had died.

He goes on to complain of Montalbán's gross distortion of the story of «Oeno (y no Ennio, como dize)». Montalbán has fabricated «la novela de Theodosia, monja en Perpiñán, a quien sacó»; he has declared Perpignan to belong to the King of France, when it has only done so, if ever, very briefly, «y en tiempo de los padres de la Compañía de Jesús ni algún centenar de años antes no fue Perpiñán de los Reyes de Francia». He has in any case committed a «desatino cruel» in having Oeno, when in Rome (which Oeno never visited) hear the preaching of a Jesuit, for the foundation of the Company of Jesus was approved in 1540 and confirmed in 1543; and he has made a soldier who served King Stephen of England serve a King of France of that name (who never existed). Dr. Ortuño recapitulates:

Finally he returns to the point about Perpignan. It is in the county of Roussillon, and so part of Catalonia and thus of Spain; and even if it had ever been French, «en el tiempo que dize pasó este suceso, era Perpiñán tan España como Madrid y Toledo, como queda bastantíssimamente probado». And so to his slightly more conciliatory peroration:

Doctor Ortuño de Chauarría [rubric]

We cannot be sure whether Montalbán ever received this epistle, let alone whether he accepted the invitation to reply. But almost all the matters of fact it raised -and very few others- were dealt with in the revision which occurred between *Y and M. As we have seen, the «tiestos de pintada talauera» in chapter IX became «tiestos de plata labrada». St. Patrick's parents were stated, in chapter I, to have produced three daughters after he was born, but before taking their vow. The hermit stubbornly held on to his rosary, but the Kings of France and Spain in 493 were identified as Clodoveo and Alarico. Montalbán of course stuck to his free version in chapter VI of the story of Owein (and Perelhos); but «Perpiñan» was changed to «Tolosa». The Jesuit had already been turned into a Dominican; but the King of France whom Enio served became safely anonymous.

Montalbán's Vida y purgatorio de San Patricio offers a curious analogy, in respect of the emendations we have examined, with his novel La mayor confusión of 1624 and his Para todos of 1632. As I have shown elsewhere (Hispanófila, 3 [1958], and Hispanic Review, XXXII [1964]), he made repeated corrections in subsequent editions of each, partly in response to the attacks of critics. It was of course unusually easy for him to do so; quien tiene el padre librero... In conjunction with these cases the present instance not only shows that he was capable of the crassest mistakes, but also suggests, amusingly, that he was slow to learn from them. In La mayor confusión he had made his hero turn for advice to «un religioso de la Compañía de Jesús, y de los mas graues y doctos que auía en ella, que todos lo son». Undoubtedly this was meant as a sincere tribute; but the opinion given, in Montalbán's version, was so preposterous that as one censor commented in 1626: «tiene parte de injuriosa, en cuanto se atribuye a Religiosos de la Compañía». Another, in 1629, was to be more emphatic: «... éste es el texto; y todo él está lleno de proposiciones más que falsas, absurdas, temerarias, malsonantes, escandalossas, offensivas a las orejas pías, injuriosas a la religión de la Compañía de Jesús y hombres doctos della...» But meanwhile, in Vida y purgatorio, Montalbán made a Jesuit the key figure in the conversion of another hero -no doubt with the same good intentions. Alas, the tribute backfired again; the Jesuit was an anachronism and had to go.

In Para todos, by contrast, he was to make a disparaging reference to boticarios; as mere auxiliaries to the medical profession, their art (though necessary and honourable) was mechanical, not noble. Perhaps, as Quevedo alleged, Montalbán was girding here at Jerónimo de Villaizán, the son of a chemist. But if so, he should surely have been more certain of his ground; and did he not recall the chemist's son from Toledo who had taken him to task in 1627? We might well conjecture, even, that Dr. Ortuño was stung to a new attack; at all events, Montalbán found himself obliged progressively to remove the offending portions of the passage.

On the other hand, and although some of his changes were no doubt more or less forced on him, these cases in conjunction suggest also in our author a sensitivity, a readiness to respond to criticism of his printed work and a concern to improve its effectiveness and accuracy which are surely unusual for his time -a high, degree of what Dr. Profeti, echoing Montalbán himself, would describe as diligencia.¹