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Field Notes
Field Notes
The Making of Middle East Studies
in the United States

Zachary Lockman

Stanford University Press


Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of
Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


Lockman, Zachary, author.
Field notes : the making of Middle East studies in the United States /
Zachary Lockman.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-9805-1 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-8047-9906-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Middle East—Study and teaching—United States—History—20th century.
2. Area studies—United States—History—20th century. I. Title
ds61.9.u6l63 2016
956.0072—dc23 2015034990
Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14.5 Minion
isbn 978-0-8047-9958-4 (Electronic)
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Preface ix

1 “We Shall Have to Understand It” 1

2 “The Regional Knowledge Now Required” 20

3 Launching a New Field 49

4 Princeton, the ACLS and Postwar Near Eastern Studies 72

5 A Committee for the Near and Middle East 92

6 Field-Building in Boom Times 131

7 “A Need for More Regular Contact” 160

8 “The Lower Parts of Max Weber” 205

Epilogue 249

Notes 267
Bibliography 331
Index 345
Acknowledgments

T I have written based on archives in the


hi s i s t he fir s t b o o k
United States, rather than in the Middle East and Europe. So I
will begin by thanking the staff of the Rockefeller Archive Center, an im-
pressively efficient and congenial institution, as well as the librarians and
archivists who assisted me at the Library of Congress, Columbia, Princeton
and New York University. The Middle East Studies Association allowed me
to rampage through its files; for that, and for their hospitality, I thank Amy
Newhall and Sara Palmer in particular. Irene Gendzier shared with me some
of her personal papers as well as her memories, for which I am grateful.
The two people who reviewed my manuscript on behalf of Stanford Uni-
versity Press revealed themselves to me immediately after doing so, and I
thank them profusely for their close reading and insightful comments. I’ve
long thought of Robert Vitalis as my most fearsome reader and he lived up
to that image in this case as well, no doubt fortified by the fact that he him-
self had recently completed a critical (and revisionist) history of an American
academic field. This book is much better for his criticisms and suggestions.
Edmund Burke III (better known as Terry) brought to bear on my manuscript
both his deep scholarly understanding of how academic fields are constructed
(and fought over), and his extensive experience with the study of the Middle
East (and North Africa!) in the United States. I am very grateful to him as well.
A number of friends, colleagues and family members were kind enough to

vii
viii Acknowledgments

read and comment on part or all of the manuscript of this book. They include
Joel Beinin, Benoit Challand, Melinda Fine, Irene Gendzier, Arang Keshavar-
zian, Talya Lockman-Fine, Timothy Mitchell, Amy Newhall and Sara Pursley;
my thanks to all of them for their willingness to read my work and for provid-
ing their very helpful takes on it. It is entirely my responsibility if I foolishly
failed to take their advice.
My thanks, too, to Kate Wahl, Nora Spiegel, John Feneron and their col-
leagues at Stanford University Press for dealing with my manuscript so ex-
peditiously and efficiently, and for their editorial skills which no doubt have
improved it significantly.
I presented parts of what eventually became this book in my keynote ad-
dress at the May 2013 Middle East History and Theory conference, organized
by graduate students at the University of Chicago, and as the Wadie Jwaideh
Memorial Lecture that I delivered at Indiana University in October 2013; my
thanks to the organizers of MEHAT and to Professor Asma Afsaruddin, re-
spectively, for hosting me so graciously. I also presented some of what has
ended up in this book in talks at the University of California, Los Angeles and
Berkeley, in April 2015; I am grateful to Emily Gottreich and Jim Gelvin, and
the staffs of the two centers involved, for arranging my talks and treating me
so well, and the attendees for listening so carefully and for asking me ques-
tions that made me think, and think again.
I discussed the research project that culminated in this book at New York
University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies in February
2015, to kick off a new series titled “Research Off the Record.” Anyone who
was there can confirm that the account of my talk that promptly appeared
on the Jihad Watch website (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/03/nyu-prof-
admits-mesas-anti-israel-stance-rails-against-israel-lobby#comments) bore
very little relation to reality, though it does nicely illustrate the kind of crazi-
ness to which scholars in Middle East studies are routinely subjected.
A fellowship at New York University’s Humanities Initiative (and the re-
duced teaching load that came with it) enabled me to complete a first draft
of this book, and it also provided both a stimulating intellectual environment
and some very good company. I am grateful for all of these.
I dedicate this book to my mother, the last survivor of her generation in
our family, from whom I have learned so much and who has been both a
model and an inspiration to my daughters.
Preface

I n t h e s u m m er o f 19 63the School of Advanced International


Studies (SAIS) moved into its newly completed building on Mas-
sachusetts Avenue in Washington DC. SAIS had been founded twenty
years earlier, as the Second World War was raging. “Washington was
coming alive with the prospects of new power,” as a history of SAIS puts
it, and a group of government officials, businessmen and academics de-
cided that the capital needed a new institution to provide the kind of
graduate training in world affairs that would serve the country’s status as
an emerging global superpower.1 Seven years after its founding SAIS be-
came part of the Johns Hopkins University. Now, thanks to funding from
several of the country’s richest foundations, including the Ford Founda-
tion, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Rockefeller Founda-
tion, it finally had a brand new home of its own, right in the heart of the
nation’s capital.
To celebrate both its twentieth anniversary and the dedication of its new
building, SAIS invited a number of distinguished practitioners and scholars
of international affairs to deliver lectures over the course of the 1963–1964
academic year. The highest-ranking government official to accept the school’s
invitation to participate in this lecture series was McGeorge Bundy (1919–
1996), who held the post of Assistant to the President for National Security
Affairs—more commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor. As a
central figure in the executive branch’s apparatus for formulating and coor-
ix
x Preface

dinating military and foreign policy, Bundy was at the time a key architect of
deepening U.S. military intervention in Vietnam.2
In his address at SAIS, titled “The Battlefields of Power and the Search-
lights of the Academy,” Bundy discussed the relationship between what he
termed the “world of power” and the “world of learning.” Hailing “the neces-
sary and constantly expanding process of connection between the university
and the government,” Bundy cited as examples the role of science in public
affairs and of economists in policymaking, and then went on to declare area
studies a “third special area of powerful professional connection between the
higher learning and government.” He continued: “It is a curious fact of aca-
demic history that the first great center of area studies in the United States
was not located in any university, but in Washington, during the Second
World War, in the Office of Strategic Services. In very large measure the area
study programs developed in American universities in the years after the war
were manned, directed, or stimulated by graduates of the OSS—a remarkable
institution, half cops-and-robbers and half faculty meeting.”3
Bundy was not wrong to highlight the importance of the OSS, the coun-
try’s first civilian intelligence agency, in helping to spawn area studies as a
distinctive component of the postwar academic scene in the United States.
Established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, the OSS recruited
heavily among scholars with expertise on parts of the world in which the
United States was, or would soon be, deeply engaged. But as this study shows,
area studies had important prewar roots as well, and other visions, institu-
tional sites and factors contributed to its emergence and development. And
while there is certainly some basis in fact for Bundy’s assertion in this same
speech that “it is still true today, and I hope it will always be, that there is a
high measure of interpenetration between universities with area programs
and the information-gathering agencies of the government of the United
States,” I argue in this book that it is nonetheless simplistic to depict area
studies in the United States as in essence a product or servant of the national
security state built during the Cold War.4
At SAIS Bundy went on to call for “a much wider and stronger connection
between universities and governments than we yet have. . . . What there is
not enough of yet, and what I come to praise, is the kind of academic work
which proceeds from the same center of concern as that of the man who is
himself committed to an active part in government. That center of concern is
Preface xi

the taking and use of power itself.”5 Bundy’s appeal to scholars to more fully
engage with, and more effectively serve, state power may well have resonated
positively for many when he issued it. But within a few years his own career
in government service would come to an ignominious end, undermined by
the increasingly obvious failure of the American war in Vietnam that he had
helped initiate and direct. At the same time, growing numbers of academics,
in area studies and elsewhere, were coming to recognize the potential costs
and consequences—moral, political and intellectual—of the kind of state
service to which Bundy had exhorted them. This development would con-
tribute significantly to the transformations that area studies fields underwent
from the late 1960s onward, even as Bundy himself, as president of the Ford
Foundation from 1966 to 1979, exercised the power that position gave him in
ways that helped to shape these fields, along with many other dimensions of
American life.
Bundy’s reference to university-based area studies as a key domain in
which the “world of learning” intersected with the “world of power” mani-
fests its presence by the 1960s as a well-established and apparently durable
feature of the landscape of the American research university and of American
academic life. As this study shows, the early visionaries and funders of area
studies promoted it as an intellectually innovative and naturally interdisci-
plinary new mode of producing and disseminating knowledge. Alongside the
disciplines, each of which was (at least nominally) organized around some
body (or competing bodies) of theory specifying that discipline’s distinctive
object of inquiry (and thus its boundaries), along with a set of methods en-
abling investigation of that object, each of the area studies fields would in
principle focus on a distinct geographic region and draw on multiple disci-
plines to produce a new kind of knowledge that would advance the world of
scholarship but also be of benefit to government and to the American people.
That vision was never fully realized; nonetheless, over time, as the various
area studies fields developed, they became increasingly bound up with new
kinds of scholarly institutions and networks, and were firmly established
within the university setting and on the national academic scene.
In this book I explore key dimensions of how that came to pass, espe-
cially for Middle East studies in the United States.6 In so doing I take a very
different approach, and draw on entirely different sources, than I did in my
earlier book Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of
xii Preface

Orientalism. In that study I offered a broad survey of Western engagement


with, and popular and scholarly representations of, the Middle East, Islam
and Muslims. A good part of that book addressed the linkages between the
power which since the Second World War the United States has exercised in
the Middle East and the Muslim world, on the one hand, and on the other
the knowledge produced about those regions in this country. It was in that
context that I discussed the emergence and evolution of Middle East studies
in the United States from the end of the Second World War to the near pres-
ent, with the aim of delineating what I termed that field’s “politics of knowl-
edge,” along with the transformations which it underwent over that period.
While that overview included some discussion of the origins of area studies
in general, its main concern was the intellectual trajectory of U.S. Middle
East studies, especially its engagements with Orientalism and modernization
theory in the 1950s and 1960s, and the critiques of these two paradigms that
made themselves increasingly felt within the field from the 1970s onward.
Moreover, the account of the history of Middle East studies that I offered
there was based largely on secondary sources and on analyses of specific
texts which I argued could be taken as emblematic of certain features of, and
trends in, scholarly writing on the Middle East and the Muslim world at par-
ticular points in time.
I continue to stand by the big picture that I drew in Contending Visions,
though I have never claimed that it is the last word on the subject. Indeed,
after its publication I became increasingly aware of how little we actually
knew about many dimensions of the history of this field or the contexts that
gave birth to it and helped shaped it. That realization impelled me to head
for the archives and ultimately to write this book, which is quite different
in purpose, focus and scope than Contending Visions. Drawing mainly on
material found in the archives of foundations, academic organizations and
universities, this book seeks to reconstruct the origins and development of
area studies, initially envisioned as a distinct way of achieving and imparting
knowledge about the world and eventually embodied in a new set of institu-
tions and practices within American higher education. Within that broader
context, this study focuses on the history of Middle East studies, including
the elaboration of what I term the field’s infrastructure: the establishment of
new academic institutions, including centers, departments and/or programs
focused on a specific geographic or cultural space; the provision of funding
Preface xiii

for new modes of research and training; the development of language-train-


ing methods, materials and programs as well as of library and bibliographic
resources; and the launching of new academic organizations and networks,
scholarly journals, and models of graduate education and undergraduate
pedagogy. To put it somewhat differently: this book narrates the construc-
tion and trajectory of Middle East studies as an academic field while seeking
to situate that history in relation to the rise of area studies as a whole, to some
of the transformations that American higher education underwent after the
Second World War, and to developments in American society and politics,
including of course the rise of the American national security state.
Much, perhaps most, of the scholarly work on area studies in the United
States has foregrounded that last dimension, on the premise (implicit or ex-
plicit) that area studies was basically a byproduct of the Cold War, launched
primarily to produce knowledge and trained personnel of use to the gov-
ernment. There is thus a sizable literature that explores the ways in which,
during that era, American scholars (especially political scientists) involved
with one or another area studies field and sometimes funded directly or in-
directly by government contracts and/or by the big foundations strove to
elucidate issues of concern to policymakers and intelligence agencies, and
thereby to produce “policy-relevant” knowledge.7 The questions on which
this literature focuses are clearly important, and there have recently been
several valuable studies of the linkages between American power in the
Middle East and American expertise on that region.8 However, in my view
this framing needs to be supplemented, and enriched and complicated, by
serious attention to what actually went into imagining and building the new
kind of academic field that area studies (and, for my purposes, Middle East
studies in particular) purported to be, and how they evolved over time. The
Cold War context (and, more broadly and perhaps more usefully, visions
and exigencies of the United States as a global power in the age of decolo-
nization) played their parts, to be sure, but as this study shows so did devel-
opments in philanthropy, higher education, the humanities and the social
sciences in the United States before, during and after the Second World War,
as well as factors specific to each regional field. So I do not in this book as-
sume that what area studies produced can be understood as only, or even
mainly, a Cold War form of knowledge. A range of factors contributed to
the conceptualization, launching and specific historical trajectories of the
xiv Preface

various regionally focused academic fields which were also, each of them in
its own way, internally complex and diverse, shaped by distinctive legacies
and cultures, and experiencing significant change over time. The Cold War
context and these fields’ linkages with the national security state therefore
do not tell us all we need to know in order to make sense of the history of
any one of them.9
In the course of exploring how U.S. Middle East studies took shape as a
distinct academic field, I do not devote a great deal of time to discussing the
intellectual content of the books, articles and conference papers that indi-
vidual scholars produced, or the theoretical paradigms and methodological
presuppositions, explicit or implicit, that informed their work, or how schol-
arly expertise on the Middle East related to policymaking. I made this choice
for several reasons. For one, I have already discussed dimensions of the field’s
intellectual history at some length in Contending Visions, which might profit-
ably be read alongside this study, and see no reason to repeat myself. It also
does not seem to me that scholars in this field actually had much of an im-
pact on policymaking. But perhaps most simply, my priorities in this book
lie elsewhere: I seek here to elucidate the broader visions, rationales and de-
cision-making processes which underpinned the development of area studies
as a mode of understanding the world and of pursuing research, graduate
training and undergraduate education, while delving most deeply into the
agendas, contention, anxieties, mechanics and logistics that informed field-
building in U.S. Middle East studies.
To reconstruct and narrate this complex story, I focus largely on insti-
tutions and networks of various kinds, and the people involved with them.
Emily Hauptmann has noted that “when externally funded research becomes
crucial to universities and individual academics, asking whether and how
the entities that supply it influence academic disciplines become important
questions. To answer them . . . one must identify the channels through which
external funds flow into and then reconfigure the terrain of academic dis-
ciplines.”10 This understanding has encouraged scholars to investigate the
perspectives, motivations and decision-making processes of the institutions,
networks and individuals whose patronage, initiatives and leadership helped
shape key developments in twentieth-century American intellectual and aca-
demic life—not just in the social sciences but in the humanities as well, and
not just during the Cold War but before and after it too. In keeping with this
Preface xv

approach, this study begins by discussing the growing engagement after the
First World War of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Rock-
efeller Foundation with the social sciences and the humanities at America’s
universities, and proceeds to explore the efforts of the foundation-funded
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), from the late 1920s to the
outbreak of the Second World War, to induce scholars and disciplines in
the humanities to pay greater attention to what was thought of as the non-
Western world and to develop more effective methods of language training.
I argue that these initiatives fostered new networks and institutions that can
be seen as forerunners of (and sometimes models for) the area studies fields
that would emerge after the war.
This book goes on to explore how, during the Second World War, an
emerging vision of a new kind of regionally focused knowledge about the
wider world crystallized at a range of sites, including the Office of Strategic
Services but also other government, academic and university-based entities
and programs. Key foundation and academic leaders (many of the latter as-
sociated with the Social Science Research Council, SSRC) embraced that vi-
sion early on, and soon after the war ended Carnegie and Rockefeller, joined
in the early 1950s by the even wealthier Ford Foundation, allocated a great
deal of money to translate it into reality. In fact, these three foundations play
key roles in this story: long before the federal government began supporting
area studies, it was behind-the-scenes decision-making at the foundations,
and of course the large-scale funding they provided, which from the mid-
1940s onward enabled the establishment at universities across the country of
new area studies centers, departments and programs, as well as the launching
of other vehicles through which to sustain and advance the new regionally
focused academic fields, including Middle East studies.
Among those vehicles were the committees set up for each regional field to
oversee and promote its intellectual and infrastructural development. Since
my focus here is on Middle East studies, I devote a great deal of attention in
this book to the work of the various committees appointed (with founda-
tion funding and oversight) from the late 1930s onward by the ACLS, by the
SSRC, or jointly by both, to build this field, institutionally but also intellectu-
ally. In particular, I reconstruct in some detail the history of the Committee
on the Near and Middle East established in 1951 by the SSRC and from 1959
sponsored jointly with the ACLS. Long before the founding of the Middle
xvi Preface

East Studies Association in 1966, it was this committee which was deemed re-
sponsible for providing intellectual leadership for Middle East studies in the
United States, for coordinating among the field’s centers and programs, and
for developing its infrastructure. Even after MESA was established, this com-
mittee continued to regard the formulation and implementation of a coher-
ent research program that would propel the field forward as one of its main
missions. My research shows that this committee’s conception and execution
of its field-building mission was deeply ambiguous and that, despite notable
achievements in the later 1950s and the 1960s in putting in place key compo-
nents of the field’s infrastructure, it never quite accomplished other elements
of its mission as originally envisioned.
This book narrates a good part of the history of Middle East studies in
the United States through the lens of this committee’s history. Some readers
may feel that I have paid inordinate (and excessively detailed) attention to its
doings and exaggerated its significance. But I believe that a close look at what
this committee tried to do, how it tried to do it, and what its shifting roster
of members (most of them leading scholars in the field) thought they were
doing and why, can contribute to a deeper and fuller understanding of how
this field was built; it enables us to see how the sausage was actually made,
so to speak. I must hope that my fellow scholars who know how academic
life works, who may, for example, have had to sit through seemingly endless
hours of committee meetings, often deadly tedious but sometimes surpris-
ingly productive, will understand my choice and why it may offer a poten-
tially interesting and valuable perspective. This is often where important aca-
demic decisions get made, or not made, with real consequences.
But there is another reason why I devote so much effort to reconstructing
what this committee in its various incarnations was up to, one which high-
lights a key theme of this study. From 1991 to 1995, relatively early in my own
academic career, I served on this same SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee on the
Near and Middle East toward what turned out to be the very end of its life­
span, though of course we did not know that at the time. We did a good job,
I think, of awarding research fellowships to smart graduate students, which
in its own way helped advance the field, and we had many excellent meals
in interesting places. But I also have vivid memories of witnessing, from my
perch at the bottom of the committee’s social hierarchy, the angst that beset
the senior scholars who led the committee as they sought to fulfill their man-
4 “We Shall Have to Understand It”

Economic Association, the American Political Science Association, the Amer-


ican Antiquarian Society, the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the
American Sociological Society (which in 1959 renamed itself the American
Sociological Association, thereby escaping an unfortunate acronym), among
others. Many of these professional associations were the product of the re-
organization along disciplinary lines of teaching, research and professional
life in American higher education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, a process which also yielded distinct disciplinary departments at
colleges and universities.7
The founders and early leaders of the ACLS shared the intellectual and po-
litical vision of the Progressive movement: as such they were part of what Al-
fred De calls “an emerging network of modernizing and forward-looking ac-
ademics that connected humanists to the goal of improving society through
rational knowledge and democratic action.”8 Beyond serving the ACLS’
constituent learned societies, they hoped not merely to promote but also to
reshape the humanities in the United States, by supporting the upgrading
of professional standards and the adoption of scientific research methods.
While it was still getting itself up and running, the ACLS was joined on the
American academic scene by another organization with which it would often
collaborate but was sometimes in competition. This was the Social Science
Research Council, established in 1924 to do for the social sciences more or
less what the ACLS hoped to do for the humanities: protect and extend the
interests of the social science disciplines and promote social science research,
especially on contemporary social problems—again, very much in keeping
with the Progressive vision of developing and deploying scientific expertise
to address social problems. The SSRC brought together a set of academic
organizations that included the American Anthropological Association, the
American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association,
the American Psychological Association, the American Statistical Association,
the American Economic Association and the American Sociological Society;
some of its members belonged to the ACLS as well.
It was only in 1926 that the ACLS secured a reliable source of support,
from the General Education Board, established in 1902 as one of several phi-
lanthropies created by John D. Rockefeller Sr. and his family and associates.9
The ACLS would thereafter receive the great bulk of its funding, for its pro-
grams as well as for its operating expenses, from Rockefeller philanthropies;
Another random document with
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administraçion y gouierno deste
mundo inferior para el
cumplimiento de su neçesidad.
Estos no tienen composiçion ni
admistion en sí, ni ay materia que
se rebuelua con ellos estando en
su perfeçion; y ansi te hago saber
que los elementos simples y
puros no los podeis los honbres
vsar, tratar, ni comunicar sino os
los dan con alguna admistion. El
agua sinple y pura no la
podriades beber sino os la
mezclasse naturaleza con otro
elemento para que la podais
palpar y gustar; y ansi se ha de
entender del fuego, ayre y tierra;
que si no estuuiessen mezclados
entre si no los podriamos
comunicar. Pues ansi como el
puro elemento no tiene materia ni
conposiçion en sí, menos la
tienen los çielos, estrellas,
planetas, luna y sol. Tubo
neçesidad el mundo de luz en el
dia, y para esto formó Dios el sol.
Tubo neçesidad de luz en la
noche, y para esto formó luna y
estrellas. Tubo neçesidad de
ayuda para la comun naçençia y
generaçion de las cosas y
conseruaçion y para esto dio Dios
a los planetas, luna y sol y otras
estrellas y çielos virtud que en lo
inferior puedan influir para esta
neçesidad. Y passando por la
region de Eolo, rey de los vientos,
vimos vna gran multitud de almas
colgadas por los cabellos en el
ayre, y atadas las manos atras, y
muchos cueruos, grajos y milanos
que uibas las comian los
coraçones; y entre todas estaua
con muy notable dolor vna que
con gran furia y crueldad la
comian el coraçon y entrañas dos
muy poderosos y hanbrientos
buytres, y pregunté a mi genio
qué gente era aquella. El qual me
respondio que eran los ingratos
que auian cunplido con sus
amigos con el viento de palabras,
pagandoles con engaño y muerte
al tienpo de la neçesidad; y yo le
inportuné me dixesse quién
fuesse aquella desdichada de
alma que con tanto afan padeçia
entre todas las otras, y él me
respondio que era Andronico, hijo
del Rey de Vngria, el qual entre
todos los honbres del mundo fue
más ingrato a la belleza de
Drusila, hija del Rey de
Maçedonia; y yo rogandole
mucho que me dixesse en que
espeçie de ingratitud ofendio, se
sentó por me complazer y ansi
començó. Tu sabras que el Rey
de Albania y Morea hizo gran
exerçito contra el Rey de Lydia
por çierta differençia que entre
ellos auia sobre vnas yslas que
auian juntos conquistado en el
mar Egeo, y por tener el Rey de
Vngria antigua liga y deuida
amistad con el Rey de Albania le
enbió su hijo Andronico con algun
exerçito que le faboreçiesse, que
tenia ya su real asentado en la
Lydia, y vn dia, casi al puesto del
sol, saliendo Andronico del puerto
de Maçedonia en vna galera
ligera para hazer su xornada,
porque ya adelante auia enbiado
al Rey su gente, yendo ya a salir
del puerto casi a mar alta vio que
andaua por el mar vn vergantin
ricamente entoldado con la
cubierta de vn requemado
sembrado[710] de mucha pedreria
que daua gran resplandor a los
que andauan por el mar; y como
Andronico fue auisado del
vergantin mandó a los que yuan
al remo que se açercassen a él, y
yendose más açercando
reconoçieron más su riqueza y yr
damas de alta guisa alli; y asi
Andronico como al vergantin
llegó, por gozar de la presa
mandó afferrar, y luego saltó en él
y con muy gallardo y cortés
semblante se representó ante las
damas, y quando entre ellas vio a
la linda Drusila que en el mundo
no tenia par, que por fama tenia
ya notiçia della, y supo que se era
salida por alli a solazar con sus
damas sin caballero alguno, se le
humilló con gran reuerençia
ofreçiendosele por su prisionero;
y como él era mançebo y gentil
honbre y supo ser hijo del Rey de
Vngria, que por las armas era
cauallero de gran nonbradia, ella
se le rindio[711] quedando
conçertados ambos que acabada
aquella batalla donde yua bolueria
a su seruiçio, y se trataria con su
padre el matrimonio que agora
por palabras y muestra de
voluntad delante de aquellas
damas otorgaron entre sí;
confiando la donzella que su
padre holgaria de lo que ella
huuiese hecho, porque en el
estremo la deseaua conplazer; y
ansi dandose paz con algun
sentimiento de sus coraçones se
apartaron, y siguiendo Andronico
su xornada, ella se boluio a su
ciudad. Luego el dia siguiente
vinieron á Macedonia los mas
valerosos y prinçipales del reyno
de Traçia, enbiados por su Rey,
que estauan en vn confin y
comarcanos, los quales venian a
demandar al Rey de Macedonia
su hija Drusila por muger para el
hijo de su rey y señor; y lo que
suçedió, porque ya creo que
estás cansado de me oyr, y es
venido el dia, en el canto que se
sigue te lo diré. Por agora abre la
tienda y comiença a vender.

Fin de dozeno[712] canto del gallo


de Luçiano.
NOTAS:
[682] G., contarme.
[683] G., que.
[684] Falta en el ms. R. este titulo.
[685] G., duodeçimo canto.
[686] G. (Tachado): Siguesse el dozeno canto del Gallo de
Luçiano, orador griego, contrahecho en el castellano por el
mesmo autor. (Antes se leia) interprete.
[687] G., incumbrada.
[688] G., enbiado.
[689] G., de vn habito.
[690] Al margen de este parrafo hay en el ms. G., una nota en
letra del siglo xvi, que dice: todo esto es lutheranismo.
[691] R. (Tachado), de azeyte.
[692] R. (Tachado), traeria.
[693] G., quieren.
[694] G., que.
[695] G., humedad.
[696] G., fortissimas.
[697] G., graçiosos.
[698] G., animales.
[699] G., intençion.
[700] G., trapazos de.
[701] G., pareçia.
[702] G., mi amor.
[703] G., a hazer su vaylia.
[704] G., vistieron.
[705] R., que.
[706] G., las que más se fatigan.
[707] G., traen.
[708] G., passemos.
[709] G., desuariar.
ARGUMENTO
DEL
DEÇIMOTERÇIO
CANTO DEL
GALLO[713]

En el decimoterçio canto que se


sigue el auctor prosiguiendo la
subida del çielo descriue la
pena que se da a los
ingratos[714].

Gallo.—¡O malaventurados
ingratos, aborreçidos de Dios que
es suma gratitud!: ved el pago
que Dios y el mundo os da. Pues
ayer te dezia, Miçilo, cómo Drusila
no auia acabado de dar su fe y
palabra de matrimonio á
Andronico, quando la demandó
Raymundo, hijo del rey de Traçia,
por muger. Pues agora sabras
que ni cobdiçia de más señorio y
reynos, ni de más riquezas, ni de
más poder, la peruertio a que
negasse lo prometido a su
amante. Mas antes de cada dia
penaua más por él y le parecia
auer mucho más herrado y ser
digna de gran pena por auerle
dexado yr; y con esta firmeza y
intinçion respondio á su padre
descubriendole el matrimonio
hecho, al qual no podia faltar, y
como el padre la amaua tanto
despidió los enbajadores diziendo
que al presente no auia
oportunidad para el effecto de su
petiçion; y como el soberuio rey
de Traçia se vio ansi
menospreçiado, por ser el mas
poderoso rey que auia en toda la
Europa y por ser su hijo
Raymundo muy agraçiado
prinçipe y vnico heredero, y de
todas las prinçesas deseado por
marido. Pero por la gran ventaja y
valor de la hermosura de Drusila
la demandó á su padre por
muger, y quanto más se la
negaron más él se afiçionó a ella,
y ansi propuso con gran yra de la
conquistar por armas, de tal
suerte que quando ella no
pudiesse ser vençida a lo menos
perdiesse el reyno y neçesitarla
hazerlo por fuerça, avnque no con
intinçion de afrontar ni injuriar su
valerosa persona; y ansi luego se
lançó en el reyno de Maçedonia
con grande exerçito quemando,
talando y destruyendo todo el
estado; y la desdichada Drusila
quando vió á su padre y
hermanos con tanta afliçion,
llorando maldezia su triste hado
que á tal estado la auia traydo, y
no sabia con qué más cunplir con
ellos que con rogarles la
quitassen la vida, pues ella era la
ocasion y causa de aquella
tenpestad, y por muchas vezes se
determinó a se la quitar ella a sí
mesma, sino que temia el estado
miserable de la desesperaçion, y
hazer pessar a su querido y
amado Andronico, porque creya
çierto[715] dél que la amaua; y
ansi suçedió que en vna batalla
campal que les dio Raymundo,
por la gran pujança de esfuerço y
exerçito los vençió y mató al rey
de Maçedonia y dos hijos suyos.
De lo qual la desdichada Drusila
se sintió muy afligida y le fue
forçado huyr del enemigo y su
furia y recogerse en vn castillo
que era en el fin de su reyno en
los confines de Albania, que no
tenia ya más que perder; y alli
muy cubierta de luto y miseria
esperaua lo que della Raymundo
quisiesse hazer, teniendo por
mejor y más façil perder su vida,
pues ya la estimaua por muerte,
antes que perder al su Andronico
la fe; y estando ansi
desconsolada, huerfana y sola sin
algun socorro, vino nueua al
reyno de Albania cómo[716] el rey
de Lydia hauia vençido en batalla
a su rey y tenía preso a
Andronico, hijo del rey de Vngria;
y como Drusila tenia toda su
esperança en el fin de aquella
batalla, pensando que como della
saliesse vitorioso el rey de
Albania vernia con Andronico en
su fabor y que anbos bastarian
para la restituir en su reyno, como
ya se vió la misera sin alguna
esperança de remedio no hazia
sino llorar congojandose[717]
amargamente, maldiziendo su
suerte desdichada, no sabiendo a
quién se acorrer. No tuvo la
cuytada otra cosa de qué asir
para el entretenimiento de su
consolaçion sino considerar la
causa tan bastante que tenia
porque llorar, que le seria ocasion
de morir, y ansi de acabar su
dolor; y como Raymundo la
importunaba acortandola de cada
dia mas los terminos de su
determinaçion, ya como muger
aborrida, teniendo por çierto que
ningun suçeso podria venir que
peor fuesse que venir en manos
de Raymundo siendo vibo su
Andronico, determinó yr por el
mundo a vuscar alguna manera
como le libertar o morir en prision
con él; y ansi se vistio de los
vestidos de vno de sus hermanos,
y cortandose los cabellos
redondos al uso de los varones
de la tierra se armó del arnes y
sobre veste de su hermano sin
ser sentida, ni comunicandolo con
alguna persona, y un dia antes
que amaneçiesse se salió del
castillo sin ser sentida de las
guardas de fuera, porque a las de
dentro ella las ocupó aquella
noche como no la pudiessen
sentir; y ansi con la mayor furia
que pudo caminó para el puerto,
donde halló vna galera ligera que
estaua de partida para la Lydia,
en la qual se fletó pagando el
conueniente salario al piloto, y
con mucha bonança y buen
tenporal hizo su viaje hasta llegar
al puerto de su deseado fin.
Consolauasse la desdichada en
hollar la tierra que tenia en prision
todo su bien, y quando llegó a la
gran çiudad donde residia el rey
teniasse por muy contenta
quando via aquellas torres altas
en que pensaua estar secrestado
su amor, y ansi a la más alta y
más fuerte le dezia: ¡O la más
bienauenturada estançia que en
la tierra ay! ¿Quién te hizo tan
dichosa que mereciesses ser
caxa y buxeta en que estuuiesse
guardado el precioso joyel que
adorna y conserua mi coraçon?
¿Quién te hizo bote en que
ençerrasse conserua tan cordial?
¡O si los hados me conuertiessen
agora en piedra de tan feliz
edefiçio, porque a mi contento
gozasse de mi desseado bien! Y
diziendo estas y semejantes
lastimas, llorando de sus ojos se
entró en la çiudad y fuesse
derecha al palaçio y casa del rey,
y apeada de su cauallo se entró al
retraimiento[718] real, y puesta de
rodillas ante el rey le habló ansi.
Muy alto y muy poderoso señor, a
la vuestra alteza plega saber
cómo yo soy hijo del rey de
Polonia; y deseo de exerçitarme
en las armas para mereçer ser
colocado en la nonbradia de
cauallero me ha hecho salir de mi
tierra, y teniendo notiçia que tan
auentajadamente se platican las
armas en vuestra corte soy
venido a os seruir. De manera
que si mis obras fueren de
cauallero, ofreçida la oportunidad
terneme por dichoso tomar la
orden de caualleria de tan
valeloso principe como vos; y si
en vuestro seruiçio me reçebis me
hareis, señor, muy gran merçed.
Estauan delante la reyna y su hija
Sophrosina que era dama de gran
veldad, y el hijo del rey; y como
vieron a Drusila tan hermoso y
apuesto donzel á todos contentó
en estremo, y les plazió su
ofrecimiento, y a Sophronisa (sic)
mucho más; y despues que el rey
su padre le agradeçió su venida y
buena voluntad, le ofreçió todo
aquel aprouechamiento que en su
casa y reyno se le pudiesse dar.
Sophrosina le demandó a su
padre por su donzel y cauallero, y
su padre se le dió: y Drusila le fue
a bessar las manos por tan gran
merced: Sophrosina estaua muy
hufana de tener en su seruiçio vn
tan apuesto y hermoso donzel,
porque çiertamente ansi como en
su habito natural de muger era la
mas hermosa donzella que auia
en el mundo, y con su veldad no
auia cauallero que la viesse que
no la deseasse. Ansi por la
mesma manera en el habito de
varon tenia aquella ventaja que
toda lengua puede encareçer, en
tanta manera que no auia dueña
ni donzella que no deseasse
gozar de su amor; y ansi
Sophrosina dezia muchas veces
entre sí que si fuesse a ella çierto
que el su donzel era hijo del rey
de Polonia, como él lo auia dicho,
que se ternia por muy contenta
casar con él: tan contenta estaua
de su postura y veldad; y ansi en
ninguna cosa podia Sophrosina
agradar á Drusila que no lo
hiziesse de coraçon. Y un día
hablando delante de algunos
caualleros y reyna su madre, de
la batalla y de la muerte del rey
de Albania, vinieron á hablar de la
prision de Andronico hijo del rey
de Vngria, y la reyna dixo que
çiertamente seria justiçiado muy
presto, porque mató en la batalla
vn sobrino suyo hijo de su
hermana, y que su madre no se
podia consolar por la muerte de
su hijo sino con auer Andronico
de morir, y que para esto tenia ya
la palabra del rey; y como Drusila
esto oyó pensó perder la vida de
pessar, y con mucha disimulaçion
se puso a pensar cómo podria
libertar a su amante avnque ella
muriesse por él; y ansi como
Sophrosina se recogió a su
aposento pusosse Drusila de
rodillas ante ella suplicando la
hiziese vna merçed, haziendole
saber en cómo ella auia
conçebido gran piedad de
Andronico, por çertificarle la reyna
su señora que auia de morir. Que
le suplicaua le diesse liçencia
para le visitar y consolar porque
en ninguna manera se podria
sufrir a estar presente en la
çiudad a le ver morir. Sophrosina
como entendió esto haria a
Drusila gran plazer le dió luego vn
anillo muy preçiado que ella traya
en su dedo y le dixo que se
fuesse con él al alcayde del
castillo y le dixesse que se le
dexasse ver y hablar. No te puedo
encareçer el goço que Drusila con
el anillo lleuó, y como llego al
castillo y le mostró al alcayde y
reconoçió el anillo muy preçiado
de su señora Sophrosina: y por lo
que conoçia de los fabores que
daua al su donzel, luego le hizo
franco el castillo y le dió las
llaues, y sin mas conpañia ni
guarda le dixo que entrasse en la
torre de la prision. Como
Andronico sintió abrir las puertas
temiose si era llegada la hora en
que le auian de justiçiar, porque le
pareçió desusada aquella visita, y
estaua confusso pensando qué
podia ser; y avnque no tenia mas
prisiones que la fuerça de aquella
torre afligiale mucho la soledad y
el pensar la hora en que auia de
morir; y como Drusila entró en la
prision y reconoçío al su amado
Andronico, avnque flaco y
demudado todo, se le fue a
abrazar y bessar en la boca, que
no se podia contener; y como
Andronico se sintio ansi acariçiar
de vn mançebo en vn estado tan
miserable como aquel, estaba
confusso y turbado, sospechoso
que le llorauan el punto de su
muerte; y cuando ya su Drusila se
le dió á conoçer y boluió en sí no
ay lengua que pueda contar el
plazer que tuuieron anbos a[719]
dos. Luego le contó por estenso
cómo auia venido alli, y cómo
perdió sus padres, hermanos y
reyno, y el estado en que estaua
en el fabor de su señora
Sophrosina, y la confiança y
credito que se le daua en todo el
reyno[720], y cómo sabia
çiertamente que auia de morir y
muy breue, sin poderlo ella
remediar por ser muger; y que por
tanto conuenia que luego
tomando los habitos que ella
traya, que se los dio Sophrosina,
la dexasse con los que él tenia
vestidos en la prision, y que él se
fuesse a vuscar cómo la libertar.
En fin, pareçiendo bien a anbos
aquel consejo y siendo auisado
por Drusila de muchas cosas que
conuenia hazer antes que
saliesse de la çiudad: cómo se
auia de despedir de Sophrosina, y
cómo auia de auer su arnes,
vestiendose las ropas que ella
lleuaua, y tomando el anillo, y
çerrando las puertas de la torre se
salió, y dadas las llaues al
alcayde con mucha disimulaçion
se fue al palaçio sin que alguno le
echasse de ver por ser ya casi a
la noche, y entrando a la gran
sala halló a Sophrosina con sus
padres y corte de caualleros en
gran conuersaçion; y puesto de
rodillas ante ella le dio el anillo; y
por no dar Sophrosina cuenta al
rey ni reyna de ninguna cosa no
le habló en ello mas, pensando
que estando solos sabria lo que
con Andronico passó; y Andronico
sin mas detenimiento se fue al
aposento de Drusila conforme al
auiso que le dio, y vestido su
arnes y subiendo en su cauallo se
salio la puerta de la çiudad.
Esperó Sophrosina aquella noche
si pareçia ante ella el su donzel, y
como no le vio, venida la mañana
le enbió a vuscar, y como le
dixeron que la noche antes se
auia ausentado de la çiudad
penso auerlo hecho por piedad
que tubo de Andronico por no le
ver morir; y ansi trabajaua
Sophrosina porque se executasse
la muerte en Andronico
esperando[721] que luego bolueria
su donzel sabiendo[722] auerse
hecho justicia dél; y ansi se sufrió,
y respondia al rey y reyna quando
preguntauan por el, diziendo que
ella le enbió vna xornada de alli
con vn recado. Andronico con la
mayor priesa que pudo
caminando toda la noche se fue
para el rey de[723] Armenia,
porque supo que tenia gran
enemistad con el rey de Lydia, y
le dixo ser vn cauallero de Traçia,
que auia recebido vn gran agrauio
del rey de Lydia: que le suplicaua
le diesse su exerçito, y que él le
queria hacer su capitan general;
que él le prometia darle
façilmente el reyno de Lydia en su
poder, y que solo queria en pago
le hiziesse merced del[724]
despojo del palacio real y
prisioneros del castillo; y ansi
conçertados caminó Andronico
para Lydia con el rey de Armenia
y su exerçito, y salido el rey de
Lydia al campo con su exerçito le
mató Andronico en la[725] batalla
y le desuarató y[726] entró la
ciudad, y tomó en su guarda el
palaçio del rey, y se fue al castillo
y abierta la prision sacó de alli a
su Drusila con gran alegria y
plazer de anbos y gran gozo de
bessos y abrazos; y descubriendo
su estado y ventura a quantos lo
querian saber[727], vistio a Drusila
de habitos de dama, que
admiraua a todos su hermosura y
velleza; y poniendo en poder del
rey de Armenia á la reyna[728] y
todo el reyno de Lydia, y diziendo
que queria á Sophrosina para
darsela por muger a vn hermano
suyo la enbarcó juntamente con
todo el tesoro del rey. No huuieron
salido dos leguas del puerto
quando se les leuanta el mar con
tempestad muy furiosa; que[729]
despues de dos dias aportaron a
vna ysla sola y desierta y sin
habitaçion que estaua en los
confines de Rodas[730]; yua
Sophrosina muy miserable y
cuytada llena de luto, y Andronico
se la yua consolando, y como era
donzella y linda que no auia
cunplido catorce años bastó entre
aquellos regalos y lagrimas mouer
el coraçon de Andronico con su
hermosura y belleza; y ansi como
enhastiado de la su Drusila passó
todo su amor en Sophrosina: que
ya si a Drusila hablaua
comunicaua era con simulaçion,
pero no por voluntad; y ansi
fingiendo regalar á Sophrosina de
piedad, disimulaua su maliçia
encubierta, porque so color de
que la lleuaua para su hermano la
acariçiaua para si, pareçiendole
no ser aquella joya para
desechar, y ansi ardiendo su
coraçon con la llama que
Sophrosina le causaua, sospiraua
y lloraua disimulando su pena.
Pues llegados al puerto de la ysla,
como Drusila llegó cansada de las
malas noches y dias
passados[731] saltó luego en tierra
ya casi a la noche, y auiendo
çenado no queriendo Sophrosina
salir del nauio por su desgracia,
sacaron[732] al prado verde vn
rico pauellon con vna cama:
el[733] qual reçibió aquella noche
los desiguales coraçones[734] de
Andronico y Drusila en vno; y
como la engañada Drusila con el
cansancio se adormió, y el infiel
de Andronico la sintio dormida,
poco a poco sin que le sintiesse
se leuantó de la cama[735] junto á
la media noche y tomandola todos
sus vestidos la dexó sola y
desnuda en el lecho y se lançó en
el nauio; y ansi mandó a su gente
y marineros[736] que sin más
detenimiento leuantassen vela y
partiessen de alli, y con tienpo de
bonança y prospero viento
vinieron en breue a tomar puerto
en el reyno de Maçedonia,
algunas villas que avn estauan
por Drusila, porque Raymundo
era ydo a conquistar a Siçilia. La
desdichada de Drusila como de
su sueño despertó començó a
vuscar por la cama su amante,
estendiendo por la vna parte las
piernas, y por la otra echaua[737]
los brazos; y como no le halló,
como furiosa y fuera de seso saltó
del lecho desnuda en carnes y sin
sosiego alguno se fue a la ribera
adonde estaua[738] el nauio, y
como no le vio, presumiendo avn
dormir y ser sueño aquello que
via[739] se començó cruelmente a
herir por despertar; y ansi
arañando[740] su hermoso rostro
que el sol obscureçía con su
resplandor y mesando sus
dorados cabellos corria a vna
parte y a otra por la ribera como
adiuinando su mala fortuna. Daua
grandes bozes llamando su
Andronico; pero no ay quien la

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