Clio and the Crown

"Kagan gives shape to an adversarial process among Spanish historians, royal advisers, and rulers to establish some measure of objective truth, ever so elusive, in official, commissioned histories of Spain's kings between the late Middle Ages and the reign of Charles II . . . This work provides fascinating, welcomed research on writing official history behind the scenes. Highly recommended."—Choice

"Researched and written with characteristic skill and grace, Clio and the Crown offers a much-needed survey of the social and intellectual milieus in which scholars from Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada in the thirteenth century to Juan Bautista Muñoz in the eighteenth labored to create a national historiography suitable to the needs of the Spanish court."—Renaissance Quarterly

"Deeply researched and well-written work . . . Both the book and its extensive bibliographies of primary and secondary sources will therefore remain indispensable to future researchers for years to come."—American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain Newsletter

"Clio and the Crown is a considerable achievement for the understanding of history in the Renaissance and its aftermath."—John M. Headley, Journal of Modern History

"An indispensable tool for understanding the evolution of official histories commissioned by Spanish monarchs, their idiosyncrasies regarding what kind of history needed to be written, and the uses of history to defend Spain's imperium in the New World."—The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies

"Kagan's exhaustively researched survey, along with its fifteen-page bibliography of primary sources, will prove to be an invaluable resource."—Alison Weber, Sixteenth Century Journal

"Kagan's study is fascinating in terms of its subject matter and impressive in its scope. An excellent book."—Lynn Williams, Bulletin of Spanish Studies

"Richard Kagan's Clio and the Crown offers an insightful approach to the study of Spanish historiography by analyzing the social and political history of the official historiographers who worked for the kings of Spain from the Middles Ages to the Enlightenment. . . Thanks to Kagan's work, we know more about the interactions of a significant number of these historiographers with the other scholars involved in the social circulation of the past during the early modern period."—Fabien Montcher, Renaissance and Reformation