Katrina Olds | University of San Francisco (original) (raw)

Books by Katrina Olds

Research paper thumbnail of "Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain," Yale University Press, 2015

“Forging the Past is truly excellent. For a case study, it’s quite a case, full of twists and tur... more “Forging the Past is truly excellent. For a case study, it’s quite a case, full of twists and turns, shifting scenery, the mix of low chicanery and spiritual highmindedness, and a fair amount of what any historian would regard as sheer intellectual perversity.”—James Amelang, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid *****

“Olds achieves the impossible: From the thicket of alleged Spanish medieval credulity, she pulls out the raucous presence of modern epistemological criticism. Only scholars like Olds, with the erudition and exquisite sensibility to recover lost worlds, can unravel today the tangle of extraordinary philological expertise, antiquarian networks, and communities of active critical readers that went into the invention and consumption of the new Catholic apocryphal traditions.”— Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas at Austin ****

“Forging the Past offers a comprehensive and wholly original account of one of the most important but often forgotten chapters in Spain’s sacred history. Meticulously researched and a pleasure to read, this gem of a study represents scholarship at its very best.”—Richard Kagan, Johns Hopkins University ****

“In her elegant and thoughtful book, Olds insightfully unveils the overlapping of myth and history in Higuera's 'false chronicles' and how the use of reliable historical sources to construct a forged past shaped the Spanish and European early modern historical landscape. A terrific and wonderful book!"—Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles ****

"In this elegant and erudite book, Katrina Olds explains why the Jesuit Jerónimo Roman de la Higuera devised a complex imaginary history for the early Spanish church. Her work brilliantly illuminates both Counter-Reformation Catholicism and early modern historiography."—Anthony Grafton, Princeton University ****

Spain’s infamous “false chronicles” were alleged to have been unearthed in 1595 in a monastic library deep in the heart of the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire by the Jesuit priest Jerónimo Román de la Higuera. Though rife with anachronisms and chronological inaccuracies, these four volumes of invented “truths” about Spanish sacred history radically transformed the religious landscape in Counter-Reformation Spain and were not definitively exposed as forgeries until centuries later, after nearly two hundred years of scholarly debate.

In this fascinating study, Katrina B. Olds explores the history, the author, and the legacy of one of the world’s most compelling and consequential frauds. The book examines how a relatively obscure Jesuit priest so successfully fabricated a set of supposedly historical documents that they were accepted as authentic for generation after generation. In fact, the chronicles exerted such a powerful influence that they continued to shape scholarly discourse, religious practice, and local heritage throughout Spain well into the twentieth century, despite having been debunked as forgeries in the eighteenth. Olds’s fascinating analysis brings together intellectual, cultural, religious, and political history while reinvigorating an ongoing debate on the uses and abuses of history and the nature of historical and religious truth.

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters by Katrina Olds

Research paper thumbnail of "The Material of Memory in the Seventeenth-Century Andes: The Cross of Carabuco and Local History," in Remembering the Reformation, Routledge, 2020

Remembering the Reformation, 2020

After the Reformation, Spanish scholars sought evidence of the antiquity of Catholicism in Iberia... more After the Reformation, Spanish scholars sought evidence of the antiquity of Catholicism in Iberian territories. Yet if proof of early Christian history was sparse in Spain, it was entirely lacking in the Americas. This changed as clerical historians and indigenous communities uncovered relics and memories of a New World apostolate. One such discovery was documented c.1600 by Jesuit missionaries in the Andean indigenous community of Carabuco, where an apostle’s cross was unearthed near Lake Titicaca. This chapter suggests that the Cross of Carabuco, like other objects and narratives of early Christianity, was both shaped and inspired by local memory cultures as well as by the concerns of clerical historians. It contends that since Spanish-American chroniclers of sacred history, like their counterparts in Spain, were hard-pressed to find textual or material evidence of primeval Catholicism in their localities, they turned to a third class of evidence which included oral traditions, natural wonders, miracles, and other prodigious phenomena. As relics about early Christianity emerged from the ground, they buttressed local memories of religious continuity, many of which have since survived five successive centuries of political, religious, and epidemiological upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic.

Research paper thumbnail of “Local Antiquaries and the Expansive Sense of the Past: A Case Study from Counter-Reformation Spain” in Local Antiquities, Local Identities: Art, Literature, and Antiquarianism in Early Modern Europe, Kathleen Christian and Bianca Divitiis, eds. (Manchester University Press, 2019)

In the seventeenth century, Spanish antiquarians collected inscriptions, coins, and other evidenc... more In the seventeenth century, Spanish antiquarians collected inscriptions, coins, and other evidence of their community’s illustrious Christian origins, conflictive medieval past, and glorious present. Efforts to compile a suitable local history were particularly determined and prolific in the Andalusian diocese of Jaén, where two local enthusiasts of the past – Francisco de Rus Puerta and Martín Ximena Jurado – generated a voluminous body of manuscripts and printed books under the sponsorship of Jaén’s bishop. Like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, Jaén’s antiquaries documented the past in both text and image, as the authors sketched coins, ruins in situ, and ongoing excavations for antiquities and saints’ relics.

In these efforts, Greco-Roman antiquity played the handmaiden to the early Christian era, for it was of intense concern for Andalusian Catholics to prove that the Islamic invasion had not disrupted the region’s deep and essential Christian identity. In this way, ‘antiquity’ was a rather motley-colored creature, encompassing not only the remains of Roman Hispania, but also including pre-Roman antiquities from Spain’s early Greek, Phoenician, and Celtiberian peoples, as well as Visigothic and some Islamic artifacts. This promiscuous sense of antiquity is evident in the historical texts and images – including sketches, woodcuts, and other visual representations of coins, inscriptions, and ruins – compiled and produced by these local antiquarians. This distinctive vision of the past is only aberrant when viewed from the perspective of Renaissance Italy; as modern scholarship on the shape of local antiquarianisms continues to evolve, it has become evident that, both in their methods, preoccupations, and distinctly broad sense of ‘antiquity,’ the Jaén scholars were far from unique in the intellectual and social environment of early modern Europe.

Research paper thumbnail of “Neo-Latin Forgeries,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Neo-Latin World Online, eds. Philip Ford, Jan Bloemendal, and Charles Fantazzi

Research paper thumbnail of "The 'False Chronicles,' Cardinal Baronio, and Sacred History in Counter-Reformation Spain," Catholic Historical Review (2014)

Catholic Historical Review, v. 100, n. 1, pp. 1-26, Jan 2014

The forged histories known as the “false chronicles” touched upon many controversial matters in e... more The forged histories known as the “false chronicles” touched upon many controversial matters in early-modern Spain. Less familiar to scholars is that the forger, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, was also reacting to the Roman reforms spearheaded by Cardinal Cesare Baronio. Higuera’s 1589 letter to Baronio reveals his principal preoccupations, as well as the maneuvers that he would later employ in the false chronicles. These included direct interventions by Higuera on behalf of communities such as Sigüenza, which were attempting to protect local historical and hagiographic traditions that they believed were jeopardized by Baronio’s revisions of the Church’s liturgical texts.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Ambiguities of the Holy: Authenticating Relics in Seventeenth-Century Spain," Renaissance Quarterly (2012)

Renaissance Quarterly, 2012

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Book Chapters by Katrina Olds

Research paper thumbnail of "Visions of the Holy in Counter-Reformation Spain: The Discovery and Creation of Relics in Arjona, c.1628," in The 'Vision Thing': Studying Divine Intervention, William A. Christian Jr. and Gábor Klaniczay (eds), 2009

In The 'Vision Thing': Studying Divine Intervention, edited by William A. Christian Jr. and Gábor Klaniczay, 135-156. Budapest: Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, 2009., 2009

At the end of the scorching Andalusian summer in 1628, residents of Arjona, a town of 3000 inhabi... more At the end of the scorching Andalusian summer in 1628, residents of Arjona, a town of 3000 inhabitants in southern Spain, began staying up until the wee hours of the morning to gather around the crumbling citadel on the hilltop at the western end of town. In the last weeks of August and into September, news had spread that many arjoneros -sometimes individually, but more often in the company of neighbors, friends, and relatives -had experienced otherworldly visions, smells, and sounds in and around the castle, which was believed to be Arjona's oldest structure. Townspeople reported ghostly apparitions of priests or Roman soldiers floating around the castle; glowing orbs or flashing lights around its towers; the tolling of celestial bells, and occasionally sweet and heavenly odors. Soon virtually the entire town -including members of the clergy and lay men and women of all ages -regularly gathered around the castle in the late night hoping to witness these extraordinary sights, sounds, and smells.

Research paper thumbnail of "How to Be a Counter-Reformation Bishop: Cardinal Baltasar de Moscoso y Sandoval in the Diocese of Jaén, 1618-1646," in Entre el cielo y la tierra. Las élites eclesiásticas en la Europa Moderna (2009)

Sierra Mágina: Revista universitaria 12, no. Ejemplar dedicado a "Entre el cielo y la tierra. Las élites eclesiásticas en la Europa Moderna" (2009): 197-213., 2009

Book Reviews by Katrina Olds

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Lynn & Rowe, eds., "The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches" for Bulletin of Comediantes

The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches ed. by Kimberly L... more The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and
Interdisciplinary Approaches ed. by Kimberly Lynn and Erin Kathleen Rowe (review)
by Katrina B. Olds
Bulletin of the Comediantes, Volume 69, Number 2, 2017, pp. 179-183 (Review)

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Elizabeth Drayson, "The Lead Books of Granada," (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) for Bulletin of Spanish Studies

Research paper thumbnail of Review of "Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation," Evonne Anita Levy and Kenneth Mills, eds., (University of Texas, 2013) for Renaissance Quarterly

Research paper thumbnail of Review of Alcira Duenas, "Indians and Mestizos in the 'Lettered City': Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru" for Sixteenth Century Journal

Sixteenth Century Journal, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Review of "The History of the Book in the West, volume 2," Ian Gadd, ed., (Ashgate, 2010), for Sixteenth Century Journal

Sixteenth Century Journal, 2012

Talks by Katrina Olds

Research paper thumbnail of “Exceptions that Prove the Rule? Troublesome Jesuits in Early Modern Spain,” UC Berkeley, 2016

As part of a conversation on "What Was Jesuit About the Jesuits?" at UC Berkeley, sponsored by De... more As part of a conversation on "What Was Jesuit About the Jesuits?" at UC Berkeley, sponsored by Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Research paper thumbnail of "Focus on Renaissance Book Culture" Thacher Gallery roundtable for exhibit "Reformations, Durer, and the New Age of Print" at the University of San Francisco

Dürer & the New Age of Print Events: Tuesday, Jan. 27: An insider’s introduction and roundtable ... more Dürer & the New Age of Print Events:

Tuesday, Jan. 27: An insider’s introduction and roundtable will take place from 1:30-3 p.m. in USF’s McLaren Conference Center 250, followed by an opening reception from 3-4 p.m. in Thacher Gallery and the Donohue Rare Book Room. The roundtable will feature Susan B. Dackerman (Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), Elizabeth A. Honig (Professor of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley), Katrina B. Olds (Associate Professor of History, University of San Francisco), two Museum Studies student curators, Sabrina Oliveras and Melissa Zabel, and will be moderated by Kate Lusheck (Assistant Professor, Art History & Museum Studies, University of San Francisco).

Doctoral Dissertation by Katrina Olds

Research paper thumbnail of "The ‘False Chronicles’ in Early Modern Spain: Forgery, Tradition, and the Invention of Texts and Relics, 1595-c.1670," PhD Thesis, Department of History, Princeton University (2009)

Research paper thumbnail of "Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain," Yale University Press, 2015

“Forging the Past is truly excellent. For a case study, it’s quite a case, full of twists and tur... more “Forging the Past is truly excellent. For a case study, it’s quite a case, full of twists and turns, shifting scenery, the mix of low chicanery and spiritual highmindedness, and a fair amount of what any historian would regard as sheer intellectual perversity.”—James Amelang, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid *****

“Olds achieves the impossible: From the thicket of alleged Spanish medieval credulity, she pulls out the raucous presence of modern epistemological criticism. Only scholars like Olds, with the erudition and exquisite sensibility to recover lost worlds, can unravel today the tangle of extraordinary philological expertise, antiquarian networks, and communities of active critical readers that went into the invention and consumption of the new Catholic apocryphal traditions.”— Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas at Austin ****

“Forging the Past offers a comprehensive and wholly original account of one of the most important but often forgotten chapters in Spain’s sacred history. Meticulously researched and a pleasure to read, this gem of a study represents scholarship at its very best.”—Richard Kagan, Johns Hopkins University ****

“In her elegant and thoughtful book, Olds insightfully unveils the overlapping of myth and history in Higuera's 'false chronicles' and how the use of reliable historical sources to construct a forged past shaped the Spanish and European early modern historical landscape. A terrific and wonderful book!"—Teofilo F. Ruiz, University of California, Los Angeles ****

"In this elegant and erudite book, Katrina Olds explains why the Jesuit Jerónimo Roman de la Higuera devised a complex imaginary history for the early Spanish church. Her work brilliantly illuminates both Counter-Reformation Catholicism and early modern historiography."—Anthony Grafton, Princeton University ****

Spain’s infamous “false chronicles” were alleged to have been unearthed in 1595 in a monastic library deep in the heart of the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire by the Jesuit priest Jerónimo Román de la Higuera. Though rife with anachronisms and chronological inaccuracies, these four volumes of invented “truths” about Spanish sacred history radically transformed the religious landscape in Counter-Reformation Spain and were not definitively exposed as forgeries until centuries later, after nearly two hundred years of scholarly debate.

In this fascinating study, Katrina B. Olds explores the history, the author, and the legacy of one of the world’s most compelling and consequential frauds. The book examines how a relatively obscure Jesuit priest so successfully fabricated a set of supposedly historical documents that they were accepted as authentic for generation after generation. In fact, the chronicles exerted such a powerful influence that they continued to shape scholarly discourse, religious practice, and local heritage throughout Spain well into the twentieth century, despite having been debunked as forgeries in the eighteenth. Olds’s fascinating analysis brings together intellectual, cultural, religious, and political history while reinvigorating an ongoing debate on the uses and abuses of history and the nature of historical and religious truth.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Material of Memory in the Seventeenth-Century Andes: The Cross of Carabuco and Local History," in Remembering the Reformation, Routledge, 2020

Remembering the Reformation, 2020

After the Reformation, Spanish scholars sought evidence of the antiquity of Catholicism in Iberia... more After the Reformation, Spanish scholars sought evidence of the antiquity of Catholicism in Iberian territories. Yet if proof of early Christian history was sparse in Spain, it was entirely lacking in the Americas. This changed as clerical historians and indigenous communities uncovered relics and memories of a New World apostolate. One such discovery was documented c.1600 by Jesuit missionaries in the Andean indigenous community of Carabuco, where an apostle’s cross was unearthed near Lake Titicaca. This chapter suggests that the Cross of Carabuco, like other objects and narratives of early Christianity, was both shaped and inspired by local memory cultures as well as by the concerns of clerical historians. It contends that since Spanish-American chroniclers of sacred history, like their counterparts in Spain, were hard-pressed to find textual or material evidence of primeval Catholicism in their localities, they turned to a third class of evidence which included oral traditions, natural wonders, miracles, and other prodigious phenomena. As relics about early Christianity emerged from the ground, they buttressed local memories of religious continuity, many of which have since survived five successive centuries of political, religious, and epidemiological upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic.

Research paper thumbnail of “Local Antiquaries and the Expansive Sense of the Past: A Case Study from Counter-Reformation Spain” in Local Antiquities, Local Identities: Art, Literature, and Antiquarianism in Early Modern Europe, Kathleen Christian and Bianca Divitiis, eds. (Manchester University Press, 2019)

In the seventeenth century, Spanish antiquarians collected inscriptions, coins, and other evidenc... more In the seventeenth century, Spanish antiquarians collected inscriptions, coins, and other evidence of their community’s illustrious Christian origins, conflictive medieval past, and glorious present. Efforts to compile a suitable local history were particularly determined and prolific in the Andalusian diocese of Jaén, where two local enthusiasts of the past – Francisco de Rus Puerta and Martín Ximena Jurado – generated a voluminous body of manuscripts and printed books under the sponsorship of Jaén’s bishop. Like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, Jaén’s antiquaries documented the past in both text and image, as the authors sketched coins, ruins in situ, and ongoing excavations for antiquities and saints’ relics.

In these efforts, Greco-Roman antiquity played the handmaiden to the early Christian era, for it was of intense concern for Andalusian Catholics to prove that the Islamic invasion had not disrupted the region’s deep and essential Christian identity. In this way, ‘antiquity’ was a rather motley-colored creature, encompassing not only the remains of Roman Hispania, but also including pre-Roman antiquities from Spain’s early Greek, Phoenician, and Celtiberian peoples, as well as Visigothic and some Islamic artifacts. This promiscuous sense of antiquity is evident in the historical texts and images – including sketches, woodcuts, and other visual representations of coins, inscriptions, and ruins – compiled and produced by these local antiquarians. This distinctive vision of the past is only aberrant when viewed from the perspective of Renaissance Italy; as modern scholarship on the shape of local antiquarianisms continues to evolve, it has become evident that, both in their methods, preoccupations, and distinctly broad sense of ‘antiquity,’ the Jaén scholars were far from unique in the intellectual and social environment of early modern Europe.

Research paper thumbnail of “Neo-Latin Forgeries,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Neo-Latin World Online, eds. Philip Ford, Jan Bloemendal, and Charles Fantazzi

Research paper thumbnail of "The 'False Chronicles,' Cardinal Baronio, and Sacred History in Counter-Reformation Spain," Catholic Historical Review (2014)

Catholic Historical Review, v. 100, n. 1, pp. 1-26, Jan 2014

The forged histories known as the “false chronicles” touched upon many controversial matters in e... more The forged histories known as the “false chronicles” touched upon many controversial matters in early-modern Spain. Less familiar to scholars is that the forger, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, was also reacting to the Roman reforms spearheaded by Cardinal Cesare Baronio. Higuera’s 1589 letter to Baronio reveals his principal preoccupations, as well as the maneuvers that he would later employ in the false chronicles. These included direct interventions by Higuera on behalf of communities such as Sigüenza, which were attempting to protect local historical and hagiographic traditions that they believed were jeopardized by Baronio’s revisions of the Church’s liturgical texts.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Ambiguities of the Holy: Authenticating Relics in Seventeenth-Century Spain," Renaissance Quarterly (2012)

Renaissance Quarterly, 2012

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Research paper thumbnail of "Visions of the Holy in Counter-Reformation Spain: The Discovery and Creation of Relics in Arjona, c.1628," in The 'Vision Thing': Studying Divine Intervention, William A. Christian Jr. and Gábor Klaniczay (eds), 2009

In The 'Vision Thing': Studying Divine Intervention, edited by William A. Christian Jr. and Gábor Klaniczay, 135-156. Budapest: Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, 2009., 2009

At the end of the scorching Andalusian summer in 1628, residents of Arjona, a town of 3000 inhabi... more At the end of the scorching Andalusian summer in 1628, residents of Arjona, a town of 3000 inhabitants in southern Spain, began staying up until the wee hours of the morning to gather around the crumbling citadel on the hilltop at the western end of town. In the last weeks of August and into September, news had spread that many arjoneros -sometimes individually, but more often in the company of neighbors, friends, and relatives -had experienced otherworldly visions, smells, and sounds in and around the castle, which was believed to be Arjona's oldest structure. Townspeople reported ghostly apparitions of priests or Roman soldiers floating around the castle; glowing orbs or flashing lights around its towers; the tolling of celestial bells, and occasionally sweet and heavenly odors. Soon virtually the entire town -including members of the clergy and lay men and women of all ages -regularly gathered around the castle in the late night hoping to witness these extraordinary sights, sounds, and smells.

Research paper thumbnail of "How to Be a Counter-Reformation Bishop: Cardinal Baltasar de Moscoso y Sandoval in the Diocese of Jaén, 1618-1646," in Entre el cielo y la tierra. Las élites eclesiásticas en la Europa Moderna (2009)

Sierra Mágina: Revista universitaria 12, no. Ejemplar dedicado a "Entre el cielo y la tierra. Las élites eclesiásticas en la Europa Moderna" (2009): 197-213., 2009

Research paper thumbnail of “Exceptions that Prove the Rule? Troublesome Jesuits in Early Modern Spain,” UC Berkeley, 2016

As part of a conversation on "What Was Jesuit About the Jesuits?" at UC Berkeley, sponsored by De... more As part of a conversation on "What Was Jesuit About the Jesuits?" at UC Berkeley, sponsored by Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Research paper thumbnail of "Focus on Renaissance Book Culture" Thacher Gallery roundtable for exhibit "Reformations, Durer, and the New Age of Print" at the University of San Francisco

Dürer & the New Age of Print Events: Tuesday, Jan. 27: An insider’s introduction and roundtable ... more Dürer & the New Age of Print Events:

Tuesday, Jan. 27: An insider’s introduction and roundtable will take place from 1:30-3 p.m. in USF’s McLaren Conference Center 250, followed by an opening reception from 3-4 p.m. in Thacher Gallery and the Donohue Rare Book Room. The roundtable will feature Susan B. Dackerman (Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University), Elizabeth A. Honig (Professor of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley), Katrina B. Olds (Associate Professor of History, University of San Francisco), two Museum Studies student curators, Sabrina Oliveras and Melissa Zabel, and will be moderated by Kate Lusheck (Assistant Professor, Art History & Museum Studies, University of San Francisco).