Dialogo de Mercurio y Caron.

Alfonso de Valdes's Dialogue of Mercury and Charon is, in historical and artistic terms, an uncommon account of several political and spiritual crises afflicting European Christendom in the first three decades of the sixteenth century. It is also a biased document, emblematic of its Spanish-born author and of the controversial period he surveys. As Joseph V. Ricapito indicates in the excellent introduction to his thorough and well-annotated edition of the dialogue, it was a time of Spanish "national schizophrenia," an era when social, political and spiritual idealism confronted intransigent forces obsessed with the consequences of Imperial expansion and Lutheran reform. The humanistically trained Valdes was well acquainted with the social turmoil of the times from personal experience. As a son of Spanish Jewish converts to Catholicism who saw his family persecuted by the Inquisition, Valdes found particularly appealing the version of Christianity espoused by his friend and mentor Erasmus of Rotterdam. The Dialogue of Mercury and Charon is representative of Valde's best defense of unified Christian reform in Renaissance Europe. It is, nevertheless, a crusade piece, narrating historical events in order to defend Charles V's policies, even to the point of justifying the 1527 Sack of Rome.

Revealing the influence of Lucian, Jovianus Pontanus, Gil Vicente, traditional Dances of the Dead and, above all, of Erasmus, the Mercury is surprisingly lively and engaging. Structurally the dialogue maintains reader interest by alternating Mercury's and Charon's comments on recent historical events with their conversations among recently deceased souls awaiting passage to the other world. In spiritual terms, Valdes appeals to the reader's conscience, pointing out the essence of true Christian virtues and opposing it to the degraded value system of the unreformed Church. In his narration of political and military events, Valdes distinguishes clearly between a model of princely goodness, Charles V, and his nemesis Francis I. The same is true in the encounters of Charon and Mercury with the soul of the departed French king and that of an ideal Christian prince reminiscent of Charles. The former is depicted as a self-serving and somewhat Machiavellian figure and the latter is an Erasmian ideal ruler - compassionate, just, and virtuous.

Similarly, the friars, priests, bishops, cardinals and laymen who approach Charon's boat can be roughly divided into those who have truly lived the primitive Christian ideal and those who, at best, have superficially played the role of the good Christian, buying indulgences, guarding relics rather than their souls, and manipulating the laws of the institutional Church to their own advantage. Seemingly insignificant is a female soul, the last figure Mercury and Charon meet as Valdes ends the dialogue. Although colored by the misogynist biases of the times, Valdes nevertheless demonstrates with this final encounter how the least esteemed of Creation can live a life of virtue, inspire good in others, and earn eternal reward. It is one example in the Mercury that specifically represents how Christian ideals might function in the ordinary and mundane world in which most of Valde's readers lived.

CATHERINE CONNOR University of Wisconsin, Madison