ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the importance of Cordova’s cultural heritage in texts produced or connected with the Roman curia from 1490 to 1530. In particular, it surveys works linked to the Roman Academy and the Borgias, to agents of the Spanish Monarchy, and to Cordovan authors who lived in Rome, such as Paolo Pompilio, Bernardino de Carvajal, Hernán Pérez de Oliva and Francisco Delicado. Cordova played a key role as a site of shared pasts and multiconfessional history for migrants in exile as well as curial officers in Rome. Its multi-ethnic make-up enabled a reconstruction of its Hispanic past from different cultural traditions; a past in which Christians, conversos, and moriscos could find a way to articulate and build their common narratives. Authors who migrated to Rome fleeing from harsh policies and with the prospect of a better life reflected on Cordova’s past, as much as humanists of Castilian, Catalan, and Roman origin did. Discourses praising Cordova’s primacy, its Roman legacy and the dominant role of its nobility in the political and economic life of Castile coexisted with others illustrating its Muslim and Jewish heritage, and the life of converso families and individuals that inhabited both Rome and Andalusia.
