How could, then, an army of poor men, largely formed of peasants, artisans, fugitives, and unemployed youth, provide shelter for a republic of letters?8 How could these men read and write, let alone compose complex war narratives in verse and prose? Soldiers, after all, have traditionally been counted among “those who live on the margins of literacy,”9 which explains why historians Marie-Christine Rodríguez and Bartolomé Bennassar, in one of the most comprehensive studies of literacy rates in early modern Spain, included soldiers under the same rubric as vagabonds, beggars, sailors, and actors.10
Some evidence exists, if scant, that allows us to suggest that the skills of reading and writing must have been more widespread among rank-and-file soldiers, whatever their social extraction, than among their civilian peers. In the late sixteenth century, one in three soldiers who made a will before dying at Santiago de Compostela’s Hospital Real could sign his name.11 One among them seemed to have prepared himself carefully for death, as in 1581 he owned a book of hours and a Contemptus mundi, two kinds of books that circulated widely among the popular classes as well as among the soldierly commons.12 By the middle of the following century, these rates seem to have increased: seven out of nine soldiers could sign their will with their name in Madrid in 1650.13 When set against these data, Cervantes’s story about a veteran lieutenant who writes the Dialogue of the Dogs in Valladolid’s Hospital de la Resurrección while convalescing from syphilis would not seem to “exceed all imagination.”14
In contrast with these intriguing but insufficient glimpses into literacy rates among Spain’s soldiers, surveys of conquistadores in the New World are strikingly systematic and reliable. It is well-known that the social status of almost all conquistadores, even the most eminent, was hardly distinguished. The vast majority of them were commoners of different trades, although some of the leaders belonged to the lineages of the destitute gentry or marginal hidalguía. Only about 120 of the 2,200 men who participated in the campaigns conducting the conquest of Tenochtitlán in 1519–21 were hidalgos, and yet “most of these conquistadors, hidalgo or not, could read and write.”15 Of the 318 of Cortés’s men whose signatures can still be read in the company’s petition sent from the newly founded Veracruz on June 20, 1519, up to 75 percent must have been literate, even though only 4–8 percent were of noble origin.16 Strikingly similar figures have been estimated in the case of Tierra Firme, Chile, and New Granada, where 70–80 percent of the soldiers seem to have been at least partially literate.17 In the case of the conquest of Peru, the leader Francisco Pizarro was illegitimately born—as were most of his brothers—to a humble peasant’s daughter and remained illiterate all his life.18 Of the 168 conquerors of the Inca empire under his command, however, a total of 108 could sign their name, which amounts to around 77 percent of Lockhart’s “men of Cajamarca.”19 Of these 108, 51 were “definitely literate,” while for the remaining 57 who could sign their name, we cannot fully ascertain the extent of their skills—although, as Lockhart points out, signing one’s name in the sixteenth century meant some formal instruction, however basic, in reading and writing. Among the literate conquistadores of Peru were Pedro Cieza de León and Francisco de Xerez, both chroniclers of their uneducated captain’s military exploits and soldiers themselves. Cieza was the son of a shopkeeper from the small town of Llerena, while Xerez was a poor commoner, “low, vile, and of little account.”20 Among the seemingly boorish conquistadores there appear to have been many who could read and write, even among those of humble extraction.
Scholarship on popular literacies, the history of the book, and popular culture has long shown that literacy was much more widespread among the laboring classes of early modern Europe and Spain than it was once thought.21 To be sure, literacy and cultural capital were unequally distributed, which structured and hierarchized the social world in various ways. It is misleading, however, to assume that this distribution flawlessly overlapped with class distinctions and socioprofessional status.22 At least two historical processes with wide-ranging consequences, namely the printing and educational revolutions, helped alter the social distribution of cultural capital and of written matter beginning in the early sixteenth century, resulting in a substantial increase in literacy rates across class boundaries.23 Both historical processes converged to offer the lower classes of early modern Spain a path, however tortuous, to social promotion and public relevance; and in this regard, as far as my argument is concerned, they go hand in hand with the massive incorporation of the popular classes into the army as a result of the military revolution.
The expansion of literacy and the partial democratization of written culture have indeed a lot to do with the transformations brought about by movable type.24 The new abundance of printed matter and its agile circulation made all layers of society more familiar with the written word, even those who did not know how to read or write. The rise of cheap print in Renaissance Europe, moreover, made it possible for large numbers of people to purchase its products. It is certainly true that some books remained an expensive luxury for common soldiers with their paltry salaries, even when printed in affordable and unpretentious formats. The price of the first edition of Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana (Madrid: Pierres Cossin, 1569), for example, amounted to eighty-four maravedíes (twenty-eight sheets or pliegos at three maravedíes per sheet), which equaled more than two days of pay, and close to 9 percent of a pikeman’s monthly salary. The percentage would be significantly lower for an experienced arquebusier with some ventajas (wage supplements paid to good soldiers) and even lower for a respectable, experienced officer. Despite its apparently high cost, La Araucana circulated widely among the common soldiers of the Spanish armies, as I will show. Yet by comparison, the products of popular print, particularly one-sheet pliegos de cordel, were produced cheaply and massively and were thus much more accessible for the pockets of common soldiers. According to the notes of Renaissance collector Hernando Colón in the 1500s–1530s, most single-sheet pliegos would sell for as little as one or two maravedíes or quatrines, a remarkably low price that would allow soldiers to purchase between 1,000 and 1,200 one-sheet pliegos with one month’s pay. In 1540, for instance, a one-sheet pliego seems to have been cheaper than a loaf of bread or a half-dozen eggs.25 The printed word was by then affordable for almost anyone.
The circulation of printed matter among the soldiers, as in other social groups, enhanced awareness of the written word in general and of the technologies and practices of writing itself, which fostered rather than inhibited the production and distribution of manuscript texts.26 The death inventory of Diego García de Paredes (1533), one of the most famous soldiers of Renaissance Europe, included four printed items: a book of prayers, a book of hours (like that of the anonymous soldier at Santiago’s hospital), a Bible, and Caesar’s Commentarii.27 The paucity of Paredes’s printed library, which resembles that of many early modern soldiers, contrasts with the abundance of his manuscript papers. Up to eight items in his inventory refer vaguely to loose sheets, unbound quires, and notebooks containing different kinds of writings “by his own hand” (de su propia mano). The mention of the portable writing desk (escribanía) and the note-taking device, perhaps erasable, known as libro de memorias confirms that writing was an everyday activity for soldiers like him.28 Indeed, it was among these autograph papers that his Breve suma de la vida y hechos de Diego García de Paredes, one of the first autobiographies written by a soldier in Renaissance Europe and arguably one of the first nonfiction memoirs of any kind written in Spanish, was found.29
The spread of the printing press and its products also contributed to make literacy a desirable goal among larger social sectors. While the costs of learning basic reading and writing skills remained high throughout the period for the Spanish poor, there were abundant alternatives that allowed