Messianic and Utopian Influences on Imperial Spain

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Messianic and Utopian Influences on Imperial Spain provides a daring approach to the study of the projects of conquest in the Spanish Pacific by connecting the works of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Tomasso Campanella. Roure interrogates both authors' influence on the Spanish Crown's expansion overseas, offering a convincing insight into the plans to conquer the Great South Land as the ultimate location for establishing the Spanish Universal Monarchy."

Noemi Martin Santo, PhD, Assistant Professor of Spanish, Central Connecticut State University, USA

"This is an insightful study of the influence of messianic thought in the Habsburg court of Spain. In contrast to the prevailing view that even millennial ideas had limited impact, Messianic and Utopian Influences demonstrates that there was abiding interest in messianic thought, notably in the hands of Tommaso Campanella and Pedro Fernandez de Quiros. Such ideas could be, and were, taken as heretical, but not by everyone. A messianic outlook, nonetheless, inspired the Habsburg monarchs as they contemplated what to do with Spain's oceanic holdings. A must read for anyone interested in early modern political thought."

Thomas J. Kuehn, Professor, Clemson University, USA

"The Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queiros has often been seen as a lonely dreamer with idiosyncratic ideas about the millenarian significance of the discovery of the Terra Australis Incognita. This detailed, comparative study strongly suggests otherwise. By tracing the close resemblance between Queiros's millenarian ideas and those of the Italian monk Thomasso Campanella, George Roure suggests that members of the Spanish court, perhaps even Philip III himself, had absorbed Campanella's ideas about the destiny of the Spanish Monarchy to become the redemptive Fifth Empire of the prophetic tradition, and had charged Queiros with the task of triggering the millenium through exploration. Roure provides a glimpse into a fascinating moment of Spanish history, when the harbingers of impending decline were being interpreted as signs of a new Golden Age."

Ricardo Padron, Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia, USA