Literary History, Censorship, and Lazarillo de Tormes castigado

Hispanic Research Journal
Iberian and Latin American Studies
ISSN: 1468-2737 (Print) 1745-820X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yhrj20
Literary History, Censorship, and Lazarillo de
Tormes castigado (1573)
Felipe E. Ruan
To cite this article: Felipe E. Ruan (2016) Literary History, Censorship, and Lazarillo
de Tormes castigado (1573), Hispanic Research Journal, 17:4, 269-287, DOI:
10.1080/14682737.2016.1200852
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682737.2016.1200852
Published online: 18 Aug 2016.
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Date: 18 August 2016, At: 05:53
HISPANIC RESEARCH JOURNAL, Vol.
17 No. 4, August 2016, 269–287
Literary History, Censorship, and
Lazarillo de Tormes castigado (1573)
Felipe E. Ruan
Brock University, Canada
By focusing on the interrelated topics of literary history, book censorship, and
book history, the article examines the relative neglect of Lazarillo de Tormes
castigado (1573) in literary studies. It argues that the expurgated Lazarillo is
an important ‘missing’ part of the history of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), and
sets out to unearth the silences, gaps, and omissions that prevail around the
censored text in the study and history of this canonical work. Acknowledging
and understanding the relative ‘silencing’ of Lazarillo castigado (1573) in Lazarillo
studies redresses a significant lacuna in the editorial, reception, and cultural
history of the work. It also offers and establishes for readers a fruitful reciprocity
for reinterpreting the 1554 Lazarillo and for reading the Lazarillo castigado.
KEYWORDS Lazarillo de Tormes, censorship, inquisition, literary history.
Although literary history has opted for a near disremembering of the Lazarillo castigado
(1573), in what follows I propose that the expurgated work is in fact a constituting
‘missing’ part of the history of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554).1 I make this claim because
despite its ‘absences’ in literary history, Lazarillo castigado has left indelible traces in
the form of several extant editions. With the 1559 inquisitorial ban on the 1554 Lazarillo
de Tormes still in place, the 1573 expurgated edition became the most readily available
version of the narrative in Spain until the abolition of the Inquisition in 1834.2 In the time
of Cervantes and of Mateo Alemán, the Lazarillo castigado was the version of Lazarillo
de Tormes that was ‘rediscovered’ and re-launched in 1599 as a result of the editorial
success of Part I of Guzmán de Alfarache (1599). From that point onward, the Lazarillo
castigado enjoyed considerable editorial success, with at least nine printings between
1599 and 1607, and no fewer than twelve subsequent seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
editions. The editorial traces of the Lazarillo castigado can be examined in the various
1 The title of Coll-Tellechea’s recent study underscores such disremembering: Lazarillo castigado: historia de un
olvido: muerte y resurrección de Lázaro (1559-1573-1884) (2010a). The Lazarillo castigado was published in a single
volume with Bartolomé de Torres Naharro’s Propaladia, by the printer Pieres Cosin in Madrid, 1573.
2 Extant editions of the 1554 Lazarillo include: Medina del Campo, Burgos, Alcalá de Henares, and Antwerp (by
Martín Nucio), and a 1555 Antwerp edition by Guillermo Simón (Ruffinatto, 2000: 19–26).
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
DOI 10.1080/14682737.2016.1200852
270 FELIPE E. Ruan
libraries where the extant editions are housed. The reasons for the misremembering of
Lazarillo castigado in the literary history of Lazarillo de Tormes are analysed in the
ensuing pages.
In what follows I identify and address some of the ‘silences’, ‘gaps’ and ‘erasures’
of Lazarillo castigado in the literary history of the Lazarillo de Tormes. I argue that
the limited critical attention the Lazarillo castigado has received can be gleaned and
understood by focusing on three interrelated topics: literary history, censorship, and
book history. Recognizing and understanding the relative neglect of Lazarillo castigado
accomplishes at least three important objectives: It redresses a significant lacuna in the
editorial, reception, and cultural history of Lazarillo de Tormes; it addresses the role of
censorship in early modern literary production; and it establishes for readers a noteworthy
reciprocity for reinterpreting the 1554 Lazarillo and for reading the Lazarillo castigado.
Literary history
The story of the relative disregard for Lazarillo castigado in literary history starts,
perhaps not surprisingly, with the abolition of the Inquisition in 1834. From that point
forward there begins a shift to restore the work’s full text and ostensibly to erase the
pre-eminence that the Castigado had held for over three centuries in Spain since 1573.
The 1554 Lazarillo was published in Barcelona in 1834 but with the first chapter of the
Second Part (Antwerp, 1555) grafted onto the end. This addition is likely an indication
that the 1834 Lazarillo reproduced an edition published outside of Spain (probably in
France) where the work commonly included the first chapter of the Second Part (CollTellechea, 2010a: 58).3 Yet the editorial predominance of the Castigado was still felt
ten years after the Inquisition’s abolition. In what is considered the first literary history
produced in Spain, the Resumen histórico de la literatura española (1844), Antonio Gil
de Zárate refers to the 1573 Lazarillo castigado and underscores that the edition was still
the most readily available in Spain (‘que es como generalmente corre’; Gil de Zárate, 1854:
588). While in a 1844 Madrid edition which first brought together the 1554 Lazarillo,
the 1555 Segunda Parte, and Juan de Luna’s 1620 version, Benito Maestre echoes Gil
de Zárate by noting that the editions made outside of the Peninsula were uncensored,
unlike ‘todas las que se imprimieron en España desde el 1573’ (Maestre, 1847: I, 2). But
perhaps most significant is that the waning of the Castigado and the ‘restoration’ of the
1554 Lazarillo coincides with an important and influential socio-historical process. The
emergence in nineteenth-century Spain of modern literary history and criticism, with
their concomitant ambitions of shaping a canon of national literature and of crafting
editions of those canonical works according to particular criteria.
As it pertains to the Lazarillo, a guiding principle of late nineteenth-century literary
scholarship underscored the urgency of restoring an authoritative 1554 text. That urgency
was motivated as much by the pre-eminence in Spain of the 1573 Lazarillo castigado
as by the ideology of the ‘authoritative text’, which by the late nineteenth century was
already a grounding principle of modern textual criticism (Spadaccini & Talens, 1992: x).
Alfred Morel-Fatio was an early proponent of this ideology, urging scholars in his
3 The 1560 French translation already included the first chapter of the Second Part. Rumeau notes that the full-text
Lazarillo printed in Barcelona in 1834 was based on a ‘defective’ French edition (1964: 61). The 1834 Lazarillo is
available in digital format at http://books.google.com/books/
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 271
‘Recherches sur Lazarille de Tórmes’ (1888) to produce a correctly restored text based
on the extant 1554 editions, while consulting also the 1573 Lazarillo castigado and even
Luna’s 1620 version (Morel-Fatio, 1888: 140). Morel-Fatio’s more open approach to the
early reconstruction and study of the 1554 Lazarillo contrasts with that of Raymond
Foulché-Delbosc, whose 1900 edition expressly aimed to reconstruct an editio princeps
(Foulché-Delbosc, 1900).4 The early scholarship and ‘restoration’ of a 1554 text was
largely shaped by the methodology current at the time. As Nicholas Spadaccini and Jenaro
Talens note in the Politics of Editing, that approach was heavily influenced by the classical
scholarship of the early nineteenth century, when textual criticism ‘began to rationalize
editorial procedures in what became known as the Lachmann method’ (Spadaccini &
Talens, 1992: x). Attributed to the German classical scholar Karl Lachmann and later
formulated by Paul Maas (Maas, 1958 [1927]),5 this method uses common errors in a
number of manuscripts to determine if they are or are not related, thus establishing a
genealogy of manuscripts that is represented by a family tree or stemma, which in turn
illustrates that all extant manuscripts derive from a single archetype (Bordalejo, 2006:
40–41; Kristeller 1981:13–14). The overarching idea is that through a critical revision
(recensio) of extant texts one can produce an emended text (emendatio) that represents
the archetype.
Recent scholarship that accounts for the production of the early modern book,
however, has shown that stemmatology is an ineffective means of determining the familial
relationship among extant editions of a particular work (Rico, 2008 [2004] & 2005). The
outcome of a different historical process than the manuscript medium, the early printed
book is the result of the active participation of various intermediary actors and media:
the author and the original manuscript; the professional scribe who produces the printer’s
copy (original de imprenta); the compositor and the first proof; the corrector and the
subsequent proofs; and finally, the printed text to be sold in unbound sheets or bound
(at an additional cost) (Rico, 2008 [2004]: 21; Dadson, 2008: 229).6 Given the various
participants involved in the production of the printed book, errors are the norm rather
than an anomaly (Rico, 2008 [2004]: 24), and therefore unreliable in establishing familial
ties among extant editions, as ‘Lachmannian’ stemma attempted to do. Paradoxically, by
ignoring the historically anchored conditions of early modern book production, most
textual criticism on Lazarillo de Tormes has continued to rely on ‘Lachmannian’ stemma,
a method that has not yielded the desired ‘restoration’ of a 1554 text.7 The failure fully to
acknowledge print culture’s historicity, that is, the medium of transmission and diffusion
of Lazarillo de Tormes — and of Lazarillo castigado — has resulted in the current state of
affairs: guided in the main by authorial intention, textual criticism has looked for an ideal
4 For a useful overview of early twentieth-century editions, see Ruffinatto (2000: 45–48).
5 See McGaan (1983) for a critique of modern textual criticism.
6 In ‘Capítulo I. Cómo se hacía un libro en el Siglo de Oro’ Rico (2005: 53–93) offers key details. In the case of the
1554 Lazarillo it is unclear if the work would have gone through the hands of a ‘corrector’. Books were generally sold
unbound and subsequent binding represented an additional cost.
7 A notable exception that shifts away from stemmatology is the work of Moll (1998), which combines textual
bibliography and analysis of the conditions of early modern book production. Moll has set forth the hypothesis that
the Medina del Campo (1554) text is ‘[el] más fiel al de la primera edición del Lazarillo’ (Moll, 1998: vol. 2, 1055).
Rico’s 2011 edition is a recent attempt to offer an ‘ideal text’ of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). This edition, however,
has not escaped pointed criticism form Baena (2012: 991–92) and Rodríguez López-Vázquez (2012: 1–4).
272 FELIPE E. Ruan
text backward, ‘upstream against the lines of descent in textual transmission’ (Gabler,
2005: 903), thus relegating the Lazarillo castigado to the sidelines of Lazarillo studies.8
The emphasis on ‘origins’, ‘authorial intentions’, and an ‘authoritative text’, has by and
large prevailed down to the twenty-first century. The critical apparatus of Francisco Rico’s
2011 Real Academia edition of Lazarillo de Tormes, for example, oscillates between
the expressed desire to reconstruct a non-existent editio princeps (‘las conservadas con
fecha de 1554 nos permiten entreverla y casi palparla como si la tuviéramos entre las
manos’), and the admission that ‘la prínceps del Lazarillo, por no hablar del manuscrito
del anónimo, se nos escapa en su plenitud’ (Rico, 2011: 95 and 205, respectively).9 Yet
other critical assessments, like that of Reyes Coll-Tellechea, thoughtfully remind us that
as it pertains to the Lazarillo ‘no existe un texto original’ (2010a: 18). The text that we
read (and that we teach) does not even correspond to any of the extant 1554 editions
(Antwerp, Alcalá de Henares, Medina del Campo, and Burgos),10 but rather is a text
established by literary critics and editors. This perspective does not aim to dismiss the
important scholarship on the 1554 Lazarillo but instead proposes a shift from text and
‘origins’ to context and transmission. That is to say, it encourages investigations that
account for the re-contextualization, circulation, and reception of Lazarillo de Tormes
in the early modern period, among which is the wide appeal and readership the Lazarillo
castigado enjoyed from 1573 onward.11 This view may be understood as part of a larger
trend in literary studies that in the late 1980s saw the emergence of new historicism and
the concomitant ‘pendulum swing toward context and away from text, the predominant
view during the previous twenty or thirty years’ (Ochoa, 2007: 298).12
But even prior to Anglo-American new historicist perspectives the practice of textual
editing in Spain, and the question of returning a text to a pristine state in particular,
coexisted with the drive to understand the text historically (Spadaccini & Talens, 1992:
xi). In terms of textual editing, that historical emphasis has meant that some critics
have acknowledged Lazarillo castigado’s imprint on the history of Lazarillo de Tormes,
albeit generally to use the Castigado to build a more elaborate stemma, in efforts to
reconstruct a pristine original text. A notable example is Aldo Ruffinatto’s Castalia (2000)
edition where, building on the textual criticism of Caso González (1967), Rodriguéz
López-Vázquez (1989) and Carrasco (1997), Ruffinatto sets forth the hypothesis that the
insightful textual corrections made by the Castigado’s censor link the expurgated text
to a primitive archetype (Ruffinatto, 2000: 135–36 and 125–34).13 Although it can also
be argued that the corrections are simply those of the censor (Juan López de Velasco),
who was doubtless a sharp contemporary reader, Ruffinatto’s careful textual comparison
8 Gabler (2005) offers a cogent overview of modern textual criticism. For the Spanish context, see Rico (2005: 9–14).
9 Accounting for the conditions of production of the four extant 1554 editions, Rico, echoing Moll (1998), writes that
‘la posibilidad más altamente verosímil’ is that Medina del Campo ‘constituye sin duda el testimonio materialmente
más cercano al primer Lazarillo que salió al mercado’ (2011: 100).
10
The Lazarillo was also published in Antwerp in 1555 by Guillermo Simon, along with the ‘Segunda Parte’. Ruffinatto
(2000: 20) notes that the extant copies of the 1554 Antwerp edition by Martín Nucio include the ‘Segunda Parte’, with
its own title page and a date of 1555. See Ruffinatto (2000: 19–26) for details on the 1554-1555 editions.
11
An outstanding work on Lazarillo’s reception is Martino (1999).
12
Ochoa notes that Anglo-American new historicism ‘inherited the mantle of French Annalistes and infused it with
Birmingham-school dialectical materialism, [and] a Foucauldian eye for networks of “social energies” [or power]’
(2007: 298).
13
Ruffinatto elaborates his hypothesis further in ‘Algo más sobre el Lazarillo castigado de López de Velasco’ (2005-2006).
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 273
of the Castigado to the four extant 1554 editions nonetheless represents an important
acknowledgement of the significance and usefulness of the 1573 text to current Lazarillo
studies.
The moderate shift toward acknowledging the Castigado’s potential role in the textual
history of Lazarillo de Tormes dates to the 1980s, with important earlier antecedents
in the form of Caso González’s 1967 edition. It is perhaps that trend which led Gonzalo
Santonja to publish Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes castigado o Lazarillo de la Inquisición
(2000). Regrettably for the fate of the 1573 Lazarillo, Santonja’s work perplexingly
reproduces an 1829 edition of the Castigado, which is no doubt useful for the textual
history of the expurgated Lazarillo, but does not redress effectively the exclusion of the
1573 text from the modern editorial history of Lazarillo de Tormes. Santonja’s edition,
moreover, suffers from a number of discrepancies vis-à-vis the 1573 text.14 Not least of
which is a glaring and unexplained textual divergence in the stone bull episode of the
first tratado, where Lázaro’s reaction reads ‘que me cumple avivar el oído y avisar’ rather
than ‘que me cumple abiuar el ojo, y auisar’, as in the 1573 Castigado and in the 1554
editions (Santonja, 2000: 34 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 378v).15 Santonja’s wanting edition of
the Castigado underscores for the modern reader (and critic) the continued silences, gaps,
and erasures that still afflict the study of 1573 Lazarillo, well over a century since the
emergence of modern scholarship on Lazarillo de Tormes. Those silences and omissions
are further appreciated and understood by focusing on the question of censorship, a
topic to which I now turn.
Censorship
The history of Lazarillo de Tormes and the 1573 Lazarillo castigado in particular is
intimately tied to the question of sixteenth-century book censorship. Literary history on
the Lazarillo, however, has struggled to incorporate effectively the censorship the fictional
autobiographical narrative suffered at the hands of the Inquisition. That censorship
can be divided into two phases. The first, from 1559 to 1573, transformed the narrative
into a prohibited text as it was placed on Inquisitor Fernando de Valdés’s 1559 Index
of Prohibited Books. Valdés’s 1559 Index does not offer a reason or explanation for
the ban, but as Augustin Redondo has noted, the combination of irreverent satire and
pointed anticlericalism not only linked the Lazarillo to the writings of Erasmus, but
also gave it ‘una resonancia más o menos “luterana”’(1999: 137–38). Under the tenure
of Inquisitor General Valdés (1547 to 1566), a climate of increased religious vigilance
fostered conditions that predisposed inquisitorial officials and others to read the Lazarillo
with such associations in mind, and which ultimately justified its prohibition.16 For
fourteen years the anonymous narrative suffered an absolute ban in Spain (and in Spanish
territories beyond the Peninsula), until that interdiction was modified to allow for the
14
In the first 9 pages of Santonja’s text (2000: 29-37) I have identified about 20 textual discrepancies in relation to
the text of the 1573 Lazarillo.
15
Extant copies of the 1573 Lazarillo castigado are found at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid and at the
Hispanic Society of America in New York.
16
Homza explains that Inquisitor General Valdés’s tenure ‘inaugurated a new age in inquisition history through the
infractions his inquisitors pursued, the cultural measures he sponsored, and the reforms his tribunals implemented’
(2006: xxx).
274 FELIPE E. Ruan
printing and circulation of the expurgated edition in 1573.17 That year altered again the
status and identity of the work from prohibited to expurgated text and marked the start
of a second phase (from 1573 to 1834), in which the narrative was printed in Spain with
the title of Lazarillo de Tormes castigado.
Literary history and criticism has wavered in its assessment of the censorship the
Lazarillo suffered at the hands of its censor, Juan López de Velasco. Carrasco (1997:
xcvi) and Redondo (1999: 145) concur that Velasco’s censorship was relatively benign.
Their views seem to coincide with Gillet’s valuation of the Propaladia’s censorship, the
work Velasco also expurgated and with which Lazarillo castigado was printed in a single
volume in 1573. About the Propaladia Gillet writes: ‘[i]t might be said that altogether
the Inquisitor’s attitude has been characterized by a general good-natured indifference,
occasional moments of interest and a sustained dogmatic concern’ (1943–1951: I, 71).
These views contrast with those of Harry Sieber, who rightly notes about the Lazarillo
castigado that ‘by the end of the sixteenth century the Lazarillo would have been for
its original author a different book’ (1995: 152). Velasco’s censorship excised the fourth
and fifth tratados (the ‘fraile de La Merced’ and ‘buldero’ episodes) and also altered the
narrative’s structure, preserving the Prologue but dividing the narrative into five episodes:
four ‘asientos’ (‘Asiento de Lázaro con...’), plus a first section entitled ‘Cuenta Lázaro
su linaje y nacimiento’. It also shifted the narrative’s focus by making the ‘escudero’
episode into an important centrepiece of the tale (Sieber, 1995: 152), thereby highlighting
to a greater degree the topic of medro, and of courtly self-advancement or privanza in
particular.18
Reyes Coll-Tellechea also sees Velasco’s censorship as significant in altering not only
the structure but also the satirical and critical tone and purpose of the narrative. As
she explains, Velasco suppressed certain passages to underscore that the reprehensible
conduct of the narrative’s characters was the result of ‘comportamientos individuales’,
rather than behaviour attributable to specific social groups. Regarding the narrative’s
protagonist, Coll-Tellechea notes that the suppressions aimed to curtail Lázaro’s
judgements concerning the blameworthy conduct of others (2010a: 32). All in all, CollTellechea views the suppressions as transforming Lázaro from ‘acusador’ of social ills
into ‘Lázaro como acusado’, and Velasco’s censorship operating as an extension of
‘la ideología dominante controlada por la Iglesia y el Estado’ (2010a: 31). Although
Coll-Tellechea’s research on Lazarillo castigado is doubtless the most insightful and
comprehensive to date, I wish to suggest that in censoring the Lazarillo de Tormes Velasco
was acting less as a direct and overt operative of church and state ideology, and more so
in relative conformity to the demands and exigencies of his courtly environment. That is
to say, Velasco’s expurgation of the Lazarillo de Tormes is best understood by focusing
on the censor’s political and cultural world at the royal court in Madrid. In that regard,
17
Exempting the 1573 expurgated edition, the 1583 Quiroga Index reiterates the ban on the 1554 Lazarillo: ‘Lazarillo
de Tormes, primera, y segunda parte no siendo de los corregidos, e impressos del año de 1573 a esta parte’ (Martínez
de Bujanda, 1993: 948).
18
In preparing the 1573 expurgated Lazarillo Velasco worked with the 1554 Antwerp edition which included the
Segunda Parte (1555). In ‘Al Lector’ of Lazarillo castigado Velasco writes that the narrative, ‘se emendo […], y se le
quito toda la segunda parte, que por no ser del autor de la primera, era muy impertinente y desgraciada’ (Lazarillo,
1573: f. 374). Coll-Tellechea argues that the Segunda Parte in particular attracted the Inquisition’s attention in 1559
(2010b: 78–80).
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 275
Coll-Tellechea’s ongoing research on the 1573 Lazarillo castigado continues to make
significant contributions, and my own reflections here aim to add to the existing work
on the history of the expurgated Lazarillo.19
Juan López de Velasco (c. 1530–1598) is perhaps best described as a Spanish royal
court insider, a consummate royal bureaucrat with humanist inclinations and courtly
aspirations. He lived in the monarchy’s capital and was deeply immersed in Madrid’s
relatively small court world since the early 1560s, and during most of Philip II’s rule
(1556–1598). He came in direct or indirect contact with influential political figures such
as the Council of the Indies’ President, Juan de Ovando, Inquisitor Generals Diego de
Espinosa and Gaspar de Quiroga, and prominent cultural figures like the Bible scholar
Benito Arias Montano, to name but a few linked in some way to the Lazarillo castigado.20
Velasco’s role as censor of Lazarillo most likely came about because of his work under
the supervision of Juan de Ovando at the Council of Indies in the late 1560s (Ruan, 2011:
191). In 1567 Philip II had appointed Ovando to carry out a visita or exhaustive review
of the Council of the Indies, where Velasco served preparing legal summaries from about
1563 (Poole, 2004: 116; Portuondo, 2009: 142). Ovando had close ties with Espinosa who
succeeded Valdés as Inquisitor General, and it was during Espinosa’s tenure (1566–1572)
that a decision was likely made to reissue the Lazarillo in expurgated form.
Benito Arias Montano probably had some involvement in that decision. Montano was
in Antwerp (from 1568 to1575) overseeing the preparation of the polyglot Biblia Regia,
and also directing there the compilation of two Indices of prohibited books for the Low
Countries (the 1569 Index and the 1570 Index) (Poole, 2004: 47; Dávila Pérez, 2002: I, xliii).
Montano was also behind the conception of an expurgatory index for the Low Countries
(published in 1571) (Kamen, 1997: 113), and may have intervened in the decision to produce
expurgated editions of previously banned Spanish literary works, like the Lazarillo de
Tormes and Torres Naharro’s Propaladia. In fact, the Lazarillo and the Propaladia were
dropped from the 1570 Antwerp Index of Prohibited Books, which Montano compiled
and which otherwise reproduced the list of prohibited books in Castilian that was part
of the 1559 Valdés Index.21 It is rather likely, then, that during the preparation of the 1570
Antwerp Index the Lazarillo, along with Torres Naharro’s Propaladia, had been selected
to be expurgated. We know that Montano had close ties with Ovando and corresponded
with the then president of the Council of the Indies (1571–1575).22 We also know that it
was Ovando’s trusted official, López de Velasco, who was given the task of expurgating
the Lazarillo and the Propaladia (and also the poetic Obras of Cristóbal de Castillejo).
19
See Coll-Tellechea (2012: III, 24–31) for details on the political and cultural context of Juan López de Velasco.
After the death of Juan de Ovando in 1575, Velasco sought the patronage of Mateo Vázquez de Leca, who had
been a protégé of Ovando. Through Ovando, Vázquez became personal secretary to Cardinal Diego de Espinosa,
and in time was appointed secretary of the Cámara de Castilla, ostensibly becoming ‘the principal dispenser of royal
patronage’ in the court of Philip II (Portuondo, 2009: 146). Portuondo offers the most comprehensive overview of
Velasco’s career (2009: 141–71).
21
Gillet notes that ‘[i]n the Antwerp Index of 1570 the Propaladia has already been dropped from the list, pending
the appearance of an expurgated version, which, no doubt, was being prepared’ (1943–1951: I, 65). For details on
the Propaladia and the Lazarillo de Tormes in each respective Index, see Martínez de Bujanda (1984 and 1988). In
the 1559 Index the Lazarillo de Tormes is listed between ‘Las lamentaciones de Pedro’ and ‘Lengua de Erasmo, en
romance y en latin, y en qualquier lengua vulgar’ (Martínez de Bujanda, 1984: 674). The work is dropped from the
1570 Antwerp Index (Martínez de Bujanda 1988: 700).
22
Bécares Botas describes Juan de Ovando as ‘[p]aisano y amigo íntimo de Arias Montano’ (1999: 293). See also
Jiménez de la Espada (1891).
20
276 FELIPE E. Ruan
Velasco’s rise in the bureaucracy and administration of the Council of the Indies
happened under Ovando’s protection and tenure as president. Ovando appointed Velasco
to the important office of principal cosmographer-chronicler of the Council of the Indies
in October 1571 (Portuondo, 2009: 144). The letter of appointment survives, and, as
María Portuondo notes, the undated document is likely addressed ‘to Cardinal Diego de
Espinosa, then president of the royal council and Philip II’s chief minister’ (2009: 144).
Portuondo explains that although in the letter Ovando mentions that Velasco had been
collecting cosmographical material for some time prior to his appointment, he did not
possess cosmographical expertise, nor did he ‘practice the discipline with any degree of
specialization’ (2009: 144). By all indications Ovando selected Velasco for the important
office not exclusively because of his ability or aptitude for the post. Rather he was
selected because over the course of his civil service career at an important political and
administrative governing body of the Spanish monarchy — the Council of the Indies —,
he had interiorized a courtly-bureaucratic ethos characterized by dependability, diligence,
discretion, and, above all, trustworthiness. A significant part of that ethos was shaped by
being in close contact and association with those at court in positions of influence and
power, like his patron Juan de Ovando. Velasco had proven himself to be a trusted and
dependable functionary; in a phrase, un hombre de confianza at court and in government
circles.
Velasco’s appointment and rise at the Council of the Indies likely happened around
and about the time he was given the charge of expurgating the Lazarillo de Tormes. Here
one cannot help but wonder how Velasco read Lázaro’s reflection on his own upward
mobility after briefly serving the ‘alguacil’: ‘Y con favor que tuve de amigos y señores,
todos mis trabajos y fatigas hasta entonces pasados fueron pagados con alcanzar lo
que procuré, que fue un oficio real’. A large part of the answer is found in what Velasco
suppressed from the continuation of that same passage: ‘…viendo que no hay nadie que
medre, sino los que le tienen’ (Rico, 1996: 128 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 415v). That is to say,
Velasco eliminated the overt reference to ‘medro’ or personal advancement and its link
to obtaining a royal office, probably thinking of the contemporary concept of courtly
privanza and its related currency of favours, and how the Madrid readers of his 1573
Lazarillo castigado may have disapproved of such a pointed critical jab.
As Portuondo has keenly observed, Velasco knew how to handle the currency of
favours in the courtly and bureaucratic circles of the monarchy’s government (2009:
147). In the early 1570s Velasco was becoming an important intermediary at court for
individuals in the Indies (and in Spain), such as Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, ‘who
from Mexico was trying to gain a position in the recently established Mexican Holy
Office’ (Portuondo, 2009: 146).23 Catalina de Sotomayor, Salazar’s sister in Madrid, had
contacted Velasco and others at the Council of the Indies on several occasions about her
brother’s aspirations in Mexico. In a February 1572 letter, Catalina related to her brother
Francisco the business she had undertaken on his behalf at court, noting her appeals
to Juan de Ovando at the Council of the Indies and underscoring that, ‘para esto me a
ayudado mucho el amistad de Juan López de Velasco, ques grandíssimo privado suyo
[de Ovando], y ya tengo escripto a Vm. que le an hecho cosmógrafo de Su Magestad y
23
As Coll-Tellechea notes, Velasco also interceded at court in Madrid on behalf of Teresa de Ávila and Jerónimo
Gracián Dantisco (2010a: 30).
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 277
coronista mayor de las Indias’ (Millares Carlo, 1946: 79). Catalina’s candid and marked
reference to Velasco’s privanza with Juan de Ovando and his rise in an important Council
of the monarchy’s government, no doubt recall the escudero’s own self-advancement
aspirations in Lazarillo de Tormes. In fact, representations of courtly privanza are a clear
target of Velasco’s censorship in the passage where the escudero describes for Lázaro
how one becomes the favourite (privado) of a ‘señor de título’:
si con él topase, muy gran su privado pienso que fuese, […] porque yo sabría mentille tan bien
como otro y agradalle a las mil maravillas; reílle ya mucho sus donaires y costumbres, aunque
no fuesen las mejores de el mundo; nunca decirle cosa con que le pesase, aunque mucho le
cumpliese; ser muy diligente en su persona en dicho y hecho; [...] pesquisar y procurar de
saber vidas ajenas para contárselas, y otras muchas galas de esta calidad que hoy día se usan
en palacio y a los señores dél parecen bien, y no quieren ver en sus casas hombres virtuosos,
antes los aborrecen y tienen en poco y llaman necios y que no son personas de negocios ni
con quien el señor se pueda descuidar. Y con estos los astutos usan, como digo, el día de hoy
de lo que yo usaría… (Rico, 1996: 104–06 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 412r–12v)
Velasco censored the lines that tend to make the blameworthy conduct of those in
courtly service, and, more importantly, of their masters, into a general rule. In doing
so, he therefore sidestepped a cutting remark potentially offensive to those ‘señores’
such as his patron Juan de Ovando, his close associate Cardinal Espinosa and their
cohort. But Velasco would also have felt the escudero’s candid and satirical barb. As a
seasoned government functionary who knew well the ins-and-out of privanza, Velasco
would have been especially sensitive to satirical views that disparaged his own existence
and subsistence in the courtly world of Madrid, where patron-client associations were
essential. Velasco was not only well-versed in the critical significance of the patronclient relationship, he was also keenly aware of how the spheres (and bureaucracies) of
church and state formed interlocking assemblages. Velasco’s other textual suppressions
therefore excised satirical passages that would have offended the religious, especially
those in powerful positions, like Inquisitor General Espinosa and his successor Gaspar
de Quiroga.
The first example I provide recounts Zaide’s thefts, and cleverly relates his transgression
to the corrupt behaviour of some clergy, who also steal in order to keep their own mistresses.
Velasco’s suppression aims to eliminate the biting anticlerical satire emphasizing the
perversion of the concept of Christian love into profane love of the flesh. Zaide steals to
help his concubine (Lázaro’s mother) raise their ‘love’ child (Lázaro’s ‘hermanico’). But
as Lázaro notes, Zaide’s behaviour should come as no surprise (‘No nos maravillemos’),
for the priest steals from the poor and the friar from the convent in order to support their
own mistresses. All are motivated (animar) by ‘love’:
Quiso nuestra fortuna que la conversación del Zaide […] llegó a los oídos del mayordomo,
y, hecha pesquisa, hallóse que la mitad por medio de la cebada […] hurtaba, y salvados,
leña…, mandiles, y las mantas y sábanas de los caballos hacía perdidas; […] y con todo ello
acudía a mi madre para criar a mi hermanico. No nos maravillemos de un clérigo ni fraile
porque el uno hurta de los pobres y el otro de casa para sus devotas y para ayuda de otro
tanto, cuando a un pobre esclavo el amor le animaba a esto. (Rico, 1996: 18–19 vs. Lazarillo,
1573: f. 377r–77v)
278 FELIPE E. Ruan
The second example is from the opening paragraphs of the clérigo episode. Velasco
excised the lines in which Lázaro makes the clérigo’s extreme avarice into a salient
characteristic of all clerics — not an entirely uncommon contemporary view:
Escapé del trueno y di en el relámpago, porque era el ciego para con éste un Alejandre Magno,
con ser la mesma avaricia, como he contado. No digo más, sino que toda la laceria del mundo
estaba encerrada en éste: no sé si de su cosecha era o lo había anejado con el hábito de clerecía.
(Rico, 1996: 47 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 388r)
The text suppressed in this passage and the other three examples I have given, share in
common a tendency to make individual behaviour into the general rule of a targeted
social group. In the first two examples, Velasco excised passages that took aim at those
directly associated with the royal court and government, while in the last two he censored
lines that may have troubled those religious in positions of influence and power in the
monarchy’s capital. It bears noting that not counting the wholesale suppression of the
fourth and fifth tratados of the 1554 text, the examples I have offered represent the most
extensive suppressions Velasco made when preparing the 1573 Lazarillo castigado.24
The foregoing examples of Velasco’s censorship targeted topics and matters
pertaining to the conduct of individuals and groups belonging to the related spheres
of church and state. But the foregoing illustrations also aim to fill some of the gaps
and omissions regarding the Lazarillo castigado, by offering significant contextual
details and analysis about its expurgation in the early 1570s. In my view, those details
are useful for interpreting the 1554 Lazarillo, on topics such as the escudero’s privanza
aspirations, and, more generally, on Lázaro’s own ambitions of upward mobility and
the particular emphasis on the significance of obtaining ‘un oficio real’. They are also
pertinent in identifying and understanding specific instances of the narrative’s anticlerical
satire, and, of course, in emphasizing aspects of the text left uncensored — like the
suspect relationship of Lázaro’s wife and his patron the archpriest. At the same time,
a consideration of the total suppression of the fourth and fifth tratados in the 1573
Lazarillo castigado can direct readings of those tratados in the 1554 text. The brief fourth
tratado clearly expands upon the reprehensible behaviour of the clergy, targeting one
of the religious orders (the Mercedarians), and underscoring in that conduct topics of
venality and sexuality. The more extensive buldero episode, on the other hand, satirised
the shameless monetisation, peddling, and falsity around papal indulgences, a topic with
pointed Lutheran associations, which Velasco, and other contemporary readers, would
have readily identified as dissenting and inflammatory.
Velasco is doubtless an important early modern reader of the Lazarillo, not only because
of his immediacy to the contemporary text but also for his proximity to the existing rich
and complex interlocking political and cultural worlds of the Spanish monarchy’s church
and state. Velasco’s role as censor may be interpreted as that of an ‘editor-author’, whose
being and ethos were inextricably enmeshed in the monarchy’s bureaucratic apparatus
and political world of the court. In transforming the 1554 text into the 1573 Lazarillo
castigado, Velasco accommodated the work to the cultural and political demands of
the day, and in so doing gave contemporary readers a reshaped and re-contextualized
24
Other censorship includes the excising of lines such as ‘Juraré yo a Dios que has tú comido la uvas tres a tres’
(Rico, 1996: [Tratado I] 37 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 383v); ‘alumbrado por el Spíritu Sancto’, which Velasco corrected
as ‘alumbrado no sê por quien’ (Rico, 1996: [Tratado II] 55 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 391r); and ‘Que yo juraré sobre la
hostia consagrada que […]’ (Rico, 1996: [Tratado VII] 134 vs. Lazarillo, 1573: f. 417v).
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 279
narrative. For the modern reader, Velasco’s censorious reading and re-writing of the work
can help establish a rich and fruitful dialogue between the 1573 Lazarillo castigado and
the 1554 text. The effectiveness of that interplay depends, however, on an account of
the prominent contemporary role of Velasco’s Lazarillo castigado in the late-sixteenth
and early-seventeenth century. For a contextualized description of that role I now turn
to book history as it pertains to the 1573 expurgated Lazarillo.
Book History
As Coll-Tellechea has aptly underscored, citing Roger Chartier (2007: viii), the history
of Lazarillo de Tormes can greatly benefit from bringing together ‘what Western
tradition has long kept apart: on the one side interpretation and commentary on works
of literature, and on the other, analysis of the technical and social conditions of their
publication, circulation, and appropriation’ (Coll-Tellechea, 2010b: 75). Book history,
with its concern for ‘the conditions and restraints of writing and publishing as well as
their relationships in the production and circulation of meaning’ (Reeser & Spalding,
2002: 660), can be especially useful for understanding the editorial and cultural history
of Lazarillo castigado. From the last quarter of the sixteenth century to the first of the
seventeenth, two stages can be identified in the early modern editorial history of Lazarillo
castigado. The first involves its initial publication with the Propaladia in 1573, and the
second the subsequent readership favour it enjoyed as a result of the unprecedented
success of Guzmán de Alfarache, Part I, in 1599.
As already noted, the Lazarillo castigado appeared in a single volume with the
Propaladia, an anthology of Torres Naharro’s dramatic works. As expected, the title page
of the volume includes the title of both works (PROPALADIA / DE BARTOLOME / de
Torres Naharro, / Y / LAZARILLO / de Tormes), followed by the phrase in italics, ‘Todo
corregido y emendado, por mandado / del consejo de la santa y general, Inquisicion’.
The volume has continuous pagination and on folio 373 the narrative’s own title page
is found (‘LAZARILLO / DE TORMES / Castigado’). In the volume’s requisite front
matter there are two privilegios or royal licenses to print the book; one for the crown of
Castile and one for that of Aragón. The royal license for Castile explicitly notes that the
Council of the Inquisition lifted the prohibition on ‘la Propaladia de Bartolome de Torres
Naharro, y la Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, y las obras de Cristobal de Castillejo’, and
granted ‘licencia y privilegio a Juan Lopez de Velasco, para que por tiempo de ocho años,
el solo, pueda imprimir, […] los dichos libros’. Both the royal license for Castile and the
ten-year privilege for Aragón are exclusive to Velasco. The royal privilege was commonly
requested by the book’s author or by the librero-editor, who generally invested in the
production of the work (Moll, 2003: 78–81). In the case of the 1573 volume containing
the Propaladia and the Lazarillo, Velasco fulfills the role in the royal license of ‘editorauthor’. As such, Velasco was very likely the beneficiary of the profits from the volume’s
sales, and that arrangement was in all likelihood a form of remuneration for his role as
official crown censor. Velasco likely assumed the expense of producing and printing the
volume, and selected for the task a Madrid printer — Pierres Cosin — with close ties to
the royal court (Agulló y Cobo, 2004).
But the royal license for Castile offers another significant detail which underscores
that the volume Velasco censored and edited was a commercial good to be sold in the
280 FELIPE E. Ruan
marketplace: ‘tassaron el dicho libro […], en ciento y cincuenta maravedis […] y a este
precio y no mas dieron licencia para que se pueda vender’. Converting maravedís to
reales, the volume, then, sold for less than 4½ reales. More than the price for the popular
Celestina (about 2 to 3 reales) or Joan Boscán’s translation of El Cortesano (about 4
reales), but less than larger format books that required more sheets of paper in each
copy, like specialised books of history, which could range from 8 to 14 reales, or multilanguage dictionaries which cost about 30 reales.25 As the editor-author of the volume, it
is possible that Velasco had some say in the book’s format, a matter related to marketing
and profits. The volume was printed in octavo format (like most of the 1554 Lazarillos),
a reduced size that decreased the book’s price and also made it into a readily portable
leisure item.26 Velasco appears to have anticipated that his edition of the Propaladia and
the Lazarillo would enjoy favourable market reception, and in the narrative’s front matter
engages in some promotional marketing of his own. Velasco writes (in ‘Al Lector’), that
the Lazarillo ‘fue siempre a todos muy acepto, de cuya causa aunque estaua prohibido
en estos reynos, se leya, y imprimia de ordinario fuera dellos’ (Lazarillo, 1573: f. 374r).
There is no material evidence to support the claim that the narrative was commonly
printed abroad during the ban in Spain, nor the suggestion that the Lazarillo continued
to be read widely in Spain during the ban from 1559 to 1573.27 Rather, Velasco seems
to be capitalizing on the fact that the works he has edited and now offers readers were
previously banned. That market awareness is further evidenced in Velasco’s request for
a royal license to sell his volume in the Indies.
Cognizant of the growing book market in America, and likely relying on his influence
at the Council of the Indies, Velasco formally petitioned that government Council for a
license in August 1573 (Friede, 1959: 47).28 That he received a positive answer is verified
in a document pertaining to a book shipment to Mexico City in 1576, where we find
recorded ‘6 propaladias y Lazarillo de Tormes, papelones a 7 reales’ (Leonard, 1949: 31).29
In fact, the modest success Velasco’s volume enjoyed from 1573 to 1599 is best appreciated
25
I have used Bennassar’s formula of 1 real = 34 maravedís (Bennassar, 1982: 108). Additional details are from Ruan
(2010: 935). The amount of paper used was what determined the price of books and not their subject matter.
26
Rico notes that of the four extant 1554 Lazarillos all were printed in octavo format, except for the Antwerp edition,
printed in ‘dozavo’ (Rico, 2011: 92). Moll (1979: 106) offers pertinent details on the format or size of early modern
editions.
27
The Medina del Campo (1554) edition, found hidden in the wall of a house in Barcarrota, Badajoz, in 1992, may
be the exception in terms of the availability of the 1554 Lazarillo during the ban. While one cannot discount entirely
the existence of the 1554 text in private (or hidden) libraries, there is little doubt that the interdiction in Spain did
severely truncate its free and open circulation. For details on the Medina del Campo edition see Cañas Murillo (1997).
For details on the effectiveness of the prohibition of the 1554 text from 1559 to 1573 and beyond, see Martino (1999:
I, 136–38), Redondo (1999: 139), and Chevalier (1976: 194).
28
Although Friede does not provide the complete details of the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) source document, and also
gives the incorrect date of ‘1673’ instead of the correct 1573, I have located the archival document Friede consulted originally.
Velasco’s petition is dated 26 August 1573, and there he writes that ‘los dichos libros [Propaladia and Lazarillo] son excelentes,
en la propiedad y elegancia de nuestra lengua / y estando enmendadas [las obras] como están son de entretenimiento
[h]onesto y sin inconveniente ni perjuycio ninguno’ (AGI, Indiferente 1084, L.1, f. 476v). Available electronically at
http://pares.mcu.es.
29
‘Papelones’ likely refers to the type of cover, which could be of animal skin (‘pergamino’) or ‘papelón’, a type of
cardboard made up of paper glued together. The price of Velasco’s volume is similar to the Spanish translation of
Ariosto’s ‘Horlando el furioso’, listed at ‘8 reales’ (Leonard, 1949: 28).
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 281
in the relative frequency with which it was shipped to be sold in Spanish America.30 But
the true commercial success of Velasco’s 1573 Lazarillo castigado (in Spain and in the
Indies) would not come until 1599, the year Guzmán de Alfarache appeared in Madrid
(Guillén, 1971: 142–46).
The year 1599 marks the start of a second important stage in the early modern book
history of Lazarillo de Tormes castigado. Twenty-six years after Velasco’s expurgated
narrative first appeared in Madrid in 1573, the work was ‘rediscovered’ and re-launched in
anticipation of a book which became a veritable best-seller at the dawn of the seventeenthcentury, the Guzmán de Alfarache. The reissue and repackaging of Lazarillo castigado
in 1599 was the work of the Madrid book merchant and financier Juan Berrillo (Moll,
1979: 99–100). Foreseeing the success of the Guzmán de Alfarache — which appeared in
Madrid around the start of March 1599 — Berrillo had in preparation his own edition
of the Lazarillo castigado.31 As Jaime Moll explains, the ecclesiastical approval of that
edition is dated 30 March 1599, while the Council of Castile’s license to print the book
is dated 15 April 1599 (2008: 33). That edition, however, involved a clever repackaging
and marketing of Lazarillo castigado, a variation on the previous pairing of the narrative
with the Propaladia in 1573. The work was appended to a volume that included also
the conduct treatise Galateo español and a work entitled Destierro de ignorancia. But
with the success of Guzmán de Alfarache Berrillo saw further market opportunities for
Lazarillo castigado. He financed and published around mid-1599 in Madrid at least three
subsequent editions of the narrative: two made the work available in a single volume, and
one paired it again with the Galateo español and the Destierro de ignorancia.32
But Berrillo was not the only book merchant to see the market opportunities for the
Lazarillo castigado in association with Guzmán de Alfarache. Outside of Castile book
publishers also issued editions of Lazarillo castigado in Barcelona and Zaragoza, in
30
Martino (1999: I, 172–73) chronicles the following book shipments to the Indies between 1573 to 1599: ‘6 propaladias
y Lazarillo de Tormes, papelones a 7 reales’ to Mexico City in 1576; ’12 propaladias y lazarillo en pergamino’ to Lima
in 1583; an unspecified number of Lazarillos to Tierra Firme in 1589; 34 lazarillos to the port city of Nombre de Dios
in 1592; unspecified number of ‘la propaladia [y lazarillo]’ to an unnamed city in 1594. Between 1573 and 1597 there
are six documented editions of Lazarillo de Tormes. Three were printed in Spain: Madrid (Pierres Cosin) 1573 and two
non-extant editions, Tarragona (Juan Felipe Mey?) 1586, and Valencia (M. Borrás) 1587. Printed abroad are: Milan
(Antonio de Antoni) 1587, Leiden (Oficina Plantiniana) 1595, and Bergamo (Antonio de Antoni) 1597 (Martino, 1999:
I, 136). The Bergamo edition is a reprint of Milan. All three editions printed abroad offer an unexpurgated text but
were likely intended for readers in Italy and the Low Countries, and not for circulation in Spain or Spanish America,
given the ongoing ban there on the full 1554 text. For additional descriptive details on these ‘foreign’ editions, see
Ruffinatto (2000: 28–31).
31
Berrillo’s 1599 Lazarillo castigado was printed by Luis Sánchez in Madrid, and it appears that Berrillo effected
additional censorship on the narrative: ‘[…] achacaron a mi padre ciertas sangrias mal hechas en los costales de los
que alli a moler venian. Por lo qual fue preso y confessô, y no nego, y padecio persecucion por justicia. Espero en Dios,
que está en la gloria pues el evangelio los llama buenaventurados’ (Lazarillo [Tratado I], 1573: f. 376v vs. Lazarillo,
1599: f. 7r); ‘Andando assi discurriendo de puerta en puerta con harto poco remedio (porque ya la caridad se subio
al cielo) topóme Dios con un escudero […] (Lazarillo [Tratado III], 1573: f. 398v vs. Lazarillo, 1599: f. 42); ‘[…] que
aunque en este pueblo no habia caridad, ni el año fuesse muy abundante’ (Lazarillo [Tratado III], 1573: f. 405r vs.
Lazarillo, 1599: f. 51r–51v). I have compared Velasco’s 1573 text to the edition of Lazarillo castigado printed on its
own, by Berrillo in 1599, a copy of which is housed at the Hispanic Society of America in New York.
32
Extant copies of the Berrillo editions that brought together the Lazarillo and the Galateo español are at the
Bibliothèque Municipale (fonds Morel-Fatio), Versailles (Moll, 2008: 33, n. 8), and at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in
Paris (Martino, 1999: I, 80).
282 FELIPE E. Ruan
1599.33 And in the years between the launch of Part I of Guzmán de Alfarache in 1599
and the publication of Part II of Don Quijote in 1615, the Lazarillo castigado was printed
again at least four times with the Galateo español (Valladolid 1603, Medina del Campo
1603, Alcalá 1605 and 1607).34 Velasco’s 1573 Lazarillo castigado, then, circulated and
was read avidly in a book and readership market alongside ‘libros de entretenimiento’
like Guzmán de Alfarache (1599, 1604), Juan Martí’s spurious continuation of Guzmán
de Alfarache (1602), Lope’s El peregrino en su patria (1604), López de Úbeda’s La Pícara
Justina (1605), and Don Quijote (1605, 1615), among others. Given its success from 1599
and into the first decade of the seventeenth century, and its proximity to other wellreceived works, we would need to re-contextualize Ginés de Pasamonte’s self-serving
opinion in Don Quijote (1605) that his own narrative, La vida de Ginés de Pasamonte,
would surpass the favourable reception Lazarillo de Tormes enjoyed. Speaking through
the pícaro-like Ginés de Pasamonte, Cervantes was likely referring to the contemporary
success of the Lazarilo castigado from 1599 onward rather than to the by then distant
and modest reception of the Lazarillo when it first appeared in 1554.35
Yet the success of the Lazarilo castigado from 1599 onward is perhaps best appreciated
by the frequency with which it appears in lists of books shipped to Spanish America.
Rueda Ramírez notes that the Lazarillo is repeatedly found in catalogues of books sent to
America, generally in the edition that paired it with the Galateo español. Between 1602
and 1646, Rueda Ramírez tallies 198 copies of the Galateo y Laçarillo, which generally
sold in the Indies for 3 reales (2005: 228–29). As in Madrid and Barcelona, the Lazarillo
castigado was available and was read in Mexico City and in Lima, alongside the popular
Guzmán de Alfarache (1599, 1604) — judging by the 490 copies of the work Mateo
Alemán’s relative (Juan Bautista del Roso) shipped to Peru from Seville in 1605 (González
Sánchez, 2000: 74 and 77, n. 24).36 Among the editions of the Galateo y Laçarillo sent to
America would have been those in the elongated ‘dozavo’ format Juan Berrillo financed,
in 1599 (Moll, 2008: 33). This was the common size in which the Lazarillo castigado (with
or without the Galateo español) generally appeared from 1599 onward; an affordable
and portable format that made it a veritable pocket-size book or libro de faltriquera.37 A
book that early modern readers on both sides of the Atlantic purchased (or borrowed),
read, and enjoyed in moments of leisure.
33
Juan Pérez de Valdivieso printed the Lazarillo castigado in Zaragoza (1599), and Sebastián de Cormellas in Barcelona
(1599). An extant copy of the Zaragoza edition is found at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, while a copy of the
Barcelona edition is at the Hispanic Society of America (HSA) in New York.
34
Extant copies of Valladolid 1603 are found at the HSA and at the Biblioteca Nacional de España (BNE) in Madrid.
Medina del Campo 1603 is found at the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Alcalá 1605 and 1607 are found at
the BNE in Madrid.
35
Cervantes has Ginés de Pasamonte say that the publication of his own La vida de Ginés de Pasamonte will result in
‘mal año para Lazarillo de Tormes y para todos cuantos de aquel género se han escrito o escribieren’ (Riquer, 2000:
Pt. 1, XXII, 208). The reference is of course also to the well-received Guzmán de Alfarache.
36
Part I of Guzmán de Alfarache (1599) made it to America as early as 1600 (Leonard, 1953: 215).
37
In addition to the ones I have already noted, single editions of the Lazarillo castigado are: Lérida (Luis Menescal)
1612; Barcelona (Sebastián Cormellas) 1620; Zaragoza (Pedro Destar) 1620; Barcelona (Jerónimo de Margarit) 1621;
Zaragoza (Pedro Destar) 1652; Zaragoza (Juan de Ibar) 1660; Lisboa (Domingo Carnero) 1660. Editions with Galateo
español include: Madrid (Viuda de Alonso Martín) 1632; Madrid (Andrés García de la Iglesia) 1664 (Martino, 1999: I,
77 and 83, respectively). In the eighteenth century the Lazarillo castigado and the Galateo español appeared together
at least nine times (Morreale, 1968: 84–90).
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 283
The ineffaceable editorial imprint of the 1573 Lazarillo castigado that I have been
describing, underscores the significance and importance of the work for the early modern
textual and cultural history of Lazarillo de Tormes. But highlighting that material history
also brings into relief how those details in the literary history of Lazarillo have remained
largely unused until recently. Their frequency of retrieval has been low and partial, and
their empirical elaboration lacking in comparison with the information already available
about the 1554 Lazarillo. In effect, those ‘facts’ about the 1573 Lazarillo castigado have
generally remained, if not silent, at least barely audible in the literary history and study
of Lazarillo de Tormes. The emphasis on book history as it pertains to the 1573 Lazarillo
castigado refocuses attention on the circulation and reception of the work, during a key
moment in the early modern history of Lazarillo de Tormes.
Conclusions
In the foregoing pages I have sought to transform the established ‘history’ of Lazarillo de
Tormes by unearthing the silences and omissions around the 1573 Lazarillo castigado,
and by underscoring their significance for Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). First among
those omissions is that the Lazarillo castigado, and, more generally, literary censorship,
was a factor in early approaches to the modern study of Lazarillo de Tormes. The
predominance of the Lazarillo castigado in Spain from 1573 to 1834 influenced the drive
to ‘restore’ the 1554 text at the dawn of the twentieth century. But censorship also played
a key role in the circulation and reception of Lazarillo de Tormes in the early modern
period. Book censorship first made the narrative into a prohibited text in 1559, and later
transformed it into an expurgated work in 1573. The expurgation of the Lazarillo was
the work of Juan López de Velasco, an experienced bureaucrat and seasoned courtier,
whose patrons and contacts were well-positioned within the interlocking political and
cultural worlds of church and state. Operating in a space where state bureaucracy and
cultural production intersected, Velasco became an important intermediary and decisive
actor in the history of Lazarillo de Tormes. Another important mediating agent who
transformed the narrative and its reception further was the Madrid book merchant Juan
Berrillo. Berrillo re-launched and repackaged Velasco’s Lazarillo castigado to be read at
the dawn of the seventeenth century alongside Guzmán de Alfarache and the conduct
treatise Galaeo español.
The unearthing of the silences around Lazarillo castigado in the history of Lazarillo
de Tormes has required extra labour not so much in the production of new facts based on
newly discovered primary sources, but rather in the transformation and reconfiguration
of existing evidence into a new narrative. To shape that new narrative I have focused on
three interrelated areas: literary history, censorship, and book history. In doing so, I have
emphasised the retrospective significance of up to now neglected aspects and details about
Lazarillo castigado, relevant, of course, to the history and study of Lazarillo de Tormes.
The focus on book censorship and book history as they pertain to Lazarillo castigado,
brings into relief the significance and benefit of situating the object of study squarely in
its historical context. It helps to see the history of Lazarillo castigado (and of Lazarillo
de Tormes) as a narrative that unfolds at particular moments in historical time, rather
than fitting the study of the work into pre-existing models of literary or cultural inquiry
— such as those that favour the 1554 text primarily. It also helps to address and redress
the discrepancies that José María Díez Borque identifies between the canon literary
284 FELIPE E. Ruan
history constructs and the actual historical context of the works that make up that canon
(2007: 181). In this regard, there is a manifest incongruity between the canonical role
that literary history bestows on the 1554 text and the reception, valuation and actual
weight of the 1573 Lazarillo castigado in the contemporary literary field.38 One way
to begin to correct that inconsistency is to make available the 1573 Lazarillo castigado
in a modern edition.39 Although one suspects that the making of such an edition will
encounter obstacles similar to those that have relegated the expurgated text to the margins
of Lazarillo studies, the task is a worthy enterprise for a work where ‘fuerza y maña’
are basic tenets for arriving at the port of one’s desires. The fortunes and adversities of
Lazarillo castigado are significant components of the history of Lazarillo de Tormes,
and their inclusion into the ‘archive’ of Lazarillo studies gainful and profitable.40
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40
The research for this article was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Institutional
Grant at Brock University (2011). My work on Lazarillo castigado has benefited especially from the fine research of
Reyes Coll-Tellechea. For the conception of this article in its present form, I am grateful for the thoughtful student
questions and comments in the course Early Modern Spanish Literature and Culture (Fall 2013). Finally, I thank the
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Enfocándose en la interrelación entre la historia literaria, la censura del libro
y la historia del libro, el artículo examina la relativa inatención que ha sufrido
el Lazarillo de Tormes castigado (1573) en los estudios literarios. Se plantea
que el Lazarillo expurgado representa un aspecto ‘ausente’ de la historia de
Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) y se traza como objetivo desenterrar los silencios,
lagunas y omisiones que prevalecen en torno al texto censurado en el estudio e
historia de esta obra canónica. El reconocer y entender el relativo ‘silenciar’ del
Lazarillo castigado (1573) en los estudios del Lazarillo rectifica una falta notable
en la historia editorial, cultural, y de recepción de la obra. Asimismo, ofrece y
establece para el lector una reciprocidad fructuosa para la reinterpretación del
Lazarillo de 1554 y para la lectura del Lazarillo castigado.
PALABRAS CLAVE Lazarillo de Tormes, censura, inquisición, historia literaria
Lazarillo De Tormes Castigado (1573) 287
Notes on contributor
Felipe E. Ruan is Associate Professor of Hispanic and Latin American Studies in the
Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Brock University, Canada.
He is the author of Pícaro and Cortesano: Identity and the Forms of Capital in Early
Modern Spanish Picaresque Narrative and Courtesy Literature (Bucknell University
Press, 2011). His current research centres on the knowledge and culture projects of the
cosmographer-chronicler of the Indies, Juan López de Velasco (c. 1530-1598), at the
royal court of Philip II.
Correspondence to: Professor Felipe E. Ruan, Department of Modern Languages,
Literatures and Cultures, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON, L2S 3A1, Canada.
Email: [email protected]