La felice victoria

La felice victoria: Bartolomé de Flores’s A Newly Composed Work, Which Recounts the Happy Victory That God, in His Infinite Goodness and Mercy, Was Pleased to Give to the Illustrious Señor Pedro Menéndez (1571)

Translated by E. Thomson Shields Jr. and Thomas Hallock

In spring 1562 the French explorer Jean Ribault cruised the north-flowing St. Johns River, what he called the “River of May,” below present-day Jacksonville, Florida. Two years later, the Calvinist Huguenot explorer René Goulaine de Laudonnière established a fort nearby, challenging shipping lanes off the Atlantic coast. The French Protestant threat caught the attention of Roman Catholic King Philip II, who sent the formidable Asturian Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to eradicate the fort and establish a Spanish fort there. Acting as Adelantado, an entrepreneurial governor who invested his own money in the enterprise, Menéndez answered his charge with military and religious zeal. He demolished the French fort, slaughtered most of the Huguenots, and established St. Augustine—a city that now bills itself as the nation’s oldest continuously occupied city. The year 2015 marks the 450th anniversary of these events, and with the commemoration of St. Augustine’s founding, it serves to recognize that the European contest for la Florida held literary as well as historical importance.

An outsized body of writing emerged from the struggle for this obscure corner of empire, one work being Bartolomé de Flores’s 1571 La felice victoria que Dios por su infinita bondad y misericordia, fue seruido de dar, al Illustre señor Pedro Melendez (The Happy Victory that God, in His Infinite Goodness and Mercy, Was Pleased to Give to the Illustrious Señor Pedro Menéndez). Flores’s poem, published in eight quarto (20 cm x 15 cm) pages and translated here for the first time, has three parts. The first part includes a brief invocation, followed by a description of Menéndez’s charge against the Huguenot settlers, which Flores freely sets against the range of Spanish conquests in the Americas. The second part celebrates the beauty, natural resources, and people of la Florida—again, situating the wonders of one colony against broader imperial claims. A villancico, or carol, finally, sings of a joust, offering Menéndez’s victory as a martial conquest for the Christian realm. The parts may appear disjoined, but in its loose associations, La felice victoria provides a valuable window into Spanish perceptions of empire.

Flores’s verse tribute adds to the substantial—if undervalued—literature about St. Augustine’s founding, a body of work that cuts across several languages and rhetorical positions. Before the Spanish attacked the French Huguenot colonial efforts, Jean Ribault, in England because of the religious wars in France, penned The Whole & True Discouerye of Terra Florida (1563), a book-length promotional account of the St. Johns expedition that mixed pastoral jubilation with topographic detail. At least two early English poems described the far-off territory. Robert Seall’s 1563 broadside, A Commendation of the Adventerus Viage of the Wurthy Captain M. Thomas Stutely Esquyer and others Towards the Land Called Terra Florida, paid tribute to Thomas Stucley (or Stuckley), who vied to set up a colony there. And a slightly better-known 1564 ballad would ask, “Have you not h[e]ard of floryda,” where natives “Fynd glysterynge gold / And yt for tryfels sell?” The swift Spanish victory and dubious Huguenot defense in 1565 sparked a considerable body of writing, much of it legal or procedural, and often with a rhetorical agenda. Multiple biographies of Menéndez chronicle the battle for la Florida, and French survivors penned two accounts. Laudonnière’s L’histoire notable de la Floride (1586) was published posthumously and translated in part by Richard Hakluyt, while Nicolas Le Challeux offered his own version in Discours de l’histoire de la Floride, contenant la trahison des Espangnols, contre les subjects du Roy (1566). The most famous record of this imperial struggle, finally, came from Jacques le Moyne de Morgue, whose 1591 Brevis narratio eorum quæ in Florida Americæ provincia Gallis acciderunt … (Brief Narration of Those Things Which Befell the French in the Province of Florida in America …) included Theodore de Bry’s engravings of native Timucuans, spurious images of Florida’s “first people” that circulate widely to this day.

Many of these sources are known to historians and critics, although La felice victoria has escaped attention. Scholarship on this and other scenes of imperial struggle has remained fixed on the accounts of participant-observers; quasi-literary works have found their way into undergraduate textbooks and appear ripe for commentary, even by scholars who do not read Spanish. But a poem, especially one by a non-participant, does not carry the same historical weight, leading to its neglect. Yet La felice victoria illustrates how empire was understood in Spain, how victories were celebrated, and how the little-regarded territory of la Florida fit alongside more significant triumphs.

What little we know about Bartolomé de Flores comes from his work. Between 1570 and 1572, he apparently experienced a burst of energy, resulting in five verse pamphlets. According to La felice victoria, Flores was “natural de Malaga y vezino de Cordoua,” a Malagueño living in Córdoba. Internal evidence highlights Flores’ being Malagueño, especially the presence of seseo, the Andalucían pronunciation of z and s both pronounced like the letter s in English. Another pamphlet poem identifies Flores as a “colchero,” or quilter, suggesting he was a middle-class tradesman. These verse pamphlets reflect everyday attitudes of the times about Spain’s engagement with the world. Some are laudatory, praising victories in the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula or celebrating the marriage of Princess Anna, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. Others tell of the 1570 earthquake in Hungary, floods in Flanders, and losses by the Muslim armada of Turkey. The range of subjects indicates that Bartolomé de Flores wrote from reports, not experience. As such, La felice victoria is a valuable record of popular attitudes and beliefs—a source of insight into middle-class Spanish attitudes toward imperial rivalries, perceptions of native peoples and resources in places like la Florida, and for the suggestion of how victories like the one by Menéndez were celebrated.

This translation continues the effort of early Americanists to recover forgotten traditions for twenty-first-century readers. The documentary transcription of the original is included because, although there was an edition of the poem published in 1898, it contains errors and takes a few liberties with the text without marking them. Regarding form, the bulk of La felice victoria is in copla real (with exceptions), i.e., stanzas of ten rhymed octosyllabic lines, with the closing villancico in mainly stanzas of eight octosyllabic lines. Our translation does not attempt the impossible task of replicating the rhythm or rhyme scheme, and because Flores often sequenced his thoughts around end-rhymes, we take some liberty in reordering the lines for fluidity. The goal has been to render a poem in English, not a literal rendering of the Spanish. Those who want to compare the translation with the Spanish are encouraged to use the side-by-side transcription and translation or to consult the page images.

The editors initially worked separately and unbeknownst to one another. E. Thomson Shields Jr. prepared the transcription from a copy at the John Carter Brown Library, and we later consulted scans generously provided by the JCB. The following translation was developed by comparing the two versions, combing through each line for meaning, continuity, and fluidity. Our goal is to present a work that, we feel, helps alter the shape of the early American canon, that argues further for the multilingual roots of what would later become part of the United States, and that documents the difficult attempts to understand events in a new world that cut across imperial boundaries, religious and linguistic differences, and, of course, an ocean. 

Notes

[i] señor: Less a general title like mister and more an honorific implying master or gentleman.

[ii] The terms viuiendas (viviendas) and fayciones (faiciones) illustrate the variable and changing language of the sixteenth century found throughout the poem. They are noted here as typical examples. Viviendas generally means “dwellings” but has a now obsolete meaning of “modo de vivir” or “manner of living.” And a review of dictionaries from the sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries available online through the Real Academia Española’s Nuevo tesoro lexicográfico de la lengua española shows no standard way of writing or printing the word, not only the exchange of u’s for medial v’s, but also the exchange of b’s for initial v’s—vivienda, viuienda, bivienda, and biuienda all being found as main entries. Similarly, faiciones comes in several variant spellings (fayciones, faciones, settling in modern Spanish as facciones) and with several possible definitions, from factions to facial features to manners or customs (Nuevo tesoro lexicográfico de la lengua española). There is even an interesting 1604 Spanish-French dictionary entry by Jean Pallet that brings together vivienda and facción, “biuienda, Vie, façon de viure” or “vivienda, See, manner of living [i.e., the now obsolete meaning of facción].”

[iii] estrena: A handsel or gift given for good luck at the start of a new year or new endeavor; according to Covarrubias, the gift recognizes the relationship between vassal and señor, between client and patron, etc.

[iv] A puzzling reference. Hernán Cortés, credited as the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, had two sons named Martín (one legitimate, the other illegitimate); neither participated in the conquest of Peru.

[v] Santa Elena: Most likely Punta Santa Elena in modern-day Ecuador. The other locations in this stanza are locations in South America, mainly in modern-day Colombia.

[vi] Here and elsewhere, Flores has the dates for events in la Florida wrong. Menendez landed and proclaimed the founding of San Augustín on September 8, 1565.

[vii] Juani: Juani appears to refer to Jean François, a mutineer from Fort Caroline (San Mateo), who figures largely in Solís de Merás biography of Menéndez, the Memorial. In Hakluyt’s English translation of Laudonnière, the same man is called Francis Jean and is described as “a traitor to his nation,” being “one of the mariners which stoale away my barkes, & had guided & conducted [the] Spaniards thither.”

[viii] larga mina / de tierraplene: A mina, or mine, is a tunnel dug under a fortification to destroy it with explosives; in this context, however, mina may be a mistake, with a moat, or foso, being meant.

[ix] There was a custom in medieval and early modern European warfare up to the mid-seventeenth century to ask for ransoms in exchange for high value captives taken in battle.

[x] Vandalianos: Natives of Andalucía, a region sometimes known poetically as Vandalia because the Vandals once ruled there.

[xi] campo de Matanças: Literally, field of slaughter, but also where the French were killed, near today’s Matanzas River or Inlet.

[xii] a la conclusión de sexta: The sixth, or noon, hour of prayer; the origin of the word siesta, or nap.

[xiii] Francelini Canabe: Unidentified; possibly an aside to a specific reader.

[xiv] los dos cuernos . . . montañas de acayo: May 16 falls within the astrological sign of Taurus, the Bull, thus the sun “breaking with two horns,” with acayo being the mountain of Achaea, Greece. Flores misdates Ribao’s surrender, which occurred on October 11, 1565.

[xv] memento mei: Remember me. A reference to Luke 23:42: “[A]nd he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom” (KJV).

[xvi] cinco maneras de gentes: Literally, five manners or kinds of people.

[xvii] oyllas: Translated as oir las.

[xviii] nueve codos por medidad: A codo, or cubit, is the length from one’s elbow to the end of one’s finger, making these people of western Florida about thirteen feet tall in Flores’s description.

[xix] Here and below, a misspelling of Saturiba, a sixteenth-century Timucuan; without the letter u, neither line is octosyllabic.

[xx] Alimacani (also Limacani): A Timucuan village on Fort George Island, near present-day Jacksonville.

[xxi] Mocosa el Bacu: The Mocoso were a tribe on the east coast of Tampa Bay and Mocoso was the name of the tribe’s leader; el Bacu is an unclear reference or modifier for Mocoso/a.

[xxii] Sus cabellos denegridos / en forma de caballera: Their hair styled like a caballera most likely means a shock of hair in back, a ponytail, or a wig, the latter which was just coming into vogue by the late sixteenth century but would not be popular until the seventeenth century.

[xxiii] sus carnes todas de fuera: Covarrubias defines “estar en carnes” as going naked, suggesting a pun on food, carne meaning flesh, both as meat and nudity.

[xxiv] Menjuy and Estoraque: Menjuy is also called benjuí, meaning Benjamin or gum benzoin. Estoraque is storax, also called styrax. Both are fragrant gums or resins coming from Asian trees of the genus styrax, used in medicines and perfume and often mentioned alongside other aromatic gums such as frankincense.

[xxv] Tacamahaca and Caraña: Tacahamaca is a Nahuatl word; caraña comes from an unidentified Central American native language. Both are aromatic resins coming from trees native to Mexico and Central America and which were believed to have medicinal qualities.