The American Question in the Anti-Spanish Polemics of the Early 17th-Century Italy (1612-1626)

Abstract

In 1626, the printer Marco Ginammi published the first Italian edition of the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias in Venice. The translator of the famous work by Las Casas, hidden behind the pseudonym of Francesco Bersabita, was no other than Giacomo Castellani, one of the most active pamphleteers during the anti-Spanish polemics that shook Italy in the early 17th-century. Some years earlier, Castellani had published a violent Avviso di Parnaso against the Spanish Monarchy, which he accompanied with a Castigo esemplare de’ calunniatori and an Allegatione about the life of Bartolomé de las Casas. This contribution aims to analyze the use of the famous bishop of Chiapas's work as an effective instrument of struggle against Spaniards within the context of the tensions generated by the War of the Montferrat Succession and the Valtellina crisis, in which the Indies became an example to achieve and maintain the ultimate freedom of Italy.