Origo gothica e Scandinavia nel dibattito goticista della Spagna asburgica

Abstract

A spirit of nationalistic exaltation marked the height of Sweden at the time of the Thirty Years’ War, when great importance was attached to the myth of the Goths and their presumed Scandinavian origin. Celebrated since the sixth century in Jordanes’ Getica, that myth was the subject of an ideological dispute between the supporters of a Scandinavian origin and the followers of a continental one. The prominence of a Gothic descent had arisen in a bitter controversy that broke out at the Basel Council (1431-45) between the Spanish and Swedish delegations, to reemerge a century later in the works of the Swedish prelates Johannes and Olaus Magnus. Odd as it may seem, the strength of Gothic fascination could also be detected in Spain through the glorification of a Visigothic Golden Age as a basis for the anti-Arab nationalistic Restoration. However, unlike Sweden, where the myth of the Goths underpinned anti-Roman and anti-Catholic feelings, Spain rewrote the epos of the Scandinavian Goths in order to make them the champions of Catholicism.
This essay aims to investigate the interest in medieval Scandinavia cultivated in the Iberian Peninsula in a more mature diachronic perspective, following some traces in the Siglo de oro (ca. 1550-1650).