Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000-1700 (Cursor Mundi, 42) 9782503596303, 2503596304

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Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700

CURSOR MUNDI Cursor Mundi is produced under the auspices of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Uni­ver­sity of California, Los Angeles.

Volume 42

General Director Chris Chism (English, UCLA) Managing Editor Allison McCann (CMRS, UCLA) Editorial Board Matthew Fisher (English, UCLA) Javier Patiño Loira (Spanish & Portuguese, UCLA) Peter Stacey (History, UCLA) Erica Weaver (English, UCLA) Bronwen Wilson (Art History, UCLA) Luke Yarbrough (Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, UCLA)

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700

Edited by

Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-2-503-59630-3 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59631-0 DOI: 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.125256 ISSN: 2034-1660 e-ISSN: 2565-943x Printed in the EU on acid-free paper. D/2022/0095/1

Table of Contents List of Illustrations

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Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700: Introduction Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar 9 Urban Communities Landscapes of Salvation, Landscapes of Power: Jews, Christians, and Urban Space in Fourteenth-​Century Seville Maya Soifer Irish

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From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic: The Role of the Town-​Ports of Northern Iberia in the First Internationalization of the European Economy in the Middle Ages Jesús Ángel Solórzano Telechea 39 The Fiscal Dialogue at the Castilian Cortes of Madrigal of 1438 Denis Menjot 55 Ethno-​Religious Self-​Fashionings Ruling Between and Across the Lines: Liminal Identities and Political Legitimacy in al-​Andalus Travis Bruce 75 The Medi­eval/Early Modern Divide along the Franco-​Spanish Border Francesca Trivellato 91 The Declinación of the Hidden One: Encubertismo during the Reigns of the Later Spanish Habsburgs Bryan Givens 107

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Writing, History, and Political Authority Reconsidering the Shift from Latin to Romance in the Castilian Chancery: A Historio­graphic Review Antonio M. Zaldívar 123 History Writing in Spain from Humanism to Counter-​Reformation: On Deeds, Books, and Truth Xavier Gil 139 ‘Above all, to thine own self be true’: Pedro de Valencia, Self-​Censorship, and the (Unwritten) History of Chile Richard L. Kagan 157 Mobility and Encounter Medi­eval Encounters Between Iberia, the  Mediterranean, and Asia: Myths and Realities Francisco García-​Serrano 181 Intertwining Granada and North Africa: New Evidence on Diplomatic Contacts, Naval Power, Mobility, and Family Ties in the Late Medi­eval Western Islamic Mediterranean Roser Salicrú i Lluch 197 An Infanta Travels: Catalina of Aragon, 1485–1501 Theresa Earenfight 211 Afterword Teofilo F. Ruiz 227 Index 231

List of Illustrations Figure 12.1. Livery Badge, Tudor Rose & Pomegranate, early sixteenth century. 

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Figure 12.2. Napkin, linen with inserted bands of woven linen and silk, red silk em­broidery in Spanish-​stitch style depicting lions and castles, bordered by narrow floral bands, c. 1500s, Spanish. 

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Figure 12.3. Juan de Flandes, ‘A Spanish Princess’, c. 1496. Oil on panel. 

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Figure 12.4. Chapines, c. 1550–1650, silk and metal, Italian. 

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Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700 Introduction Different ages bring different perspectives. What seemed logical, necessary and even desirable at the end of the nineteenth century looks less logical and necessary, and somewhat less desirable, from the vantage point of the early years of the twenty-​first. — Sir J. H. Elliott1 In the 1950s, a young John H. Elliott arrived in the Iberian peninsula on a summer excursion. That trip and subsequent visits to the peninsula sparked a deep-​seated interest in and passion for Spanish culture and history, a feeling many foreign researchers of the peninsula can relate to well. In the ensuing years, Elliott’s magisterial scholarship helped open up Spanish history to scores of anglophone historians.2 Following in his footsteps, a first generation of foreign researchers contributed to the sustained efforts of subsequent Iberian historians by venturing into the archives and exploiting their holdings to reassess, refine, and de-​regionalize the field, in the process attracting a new generation of students to the study of premodern Iberian history. With the gradual reintegration of Portugal and Spain into the European community — a process that increased rapidly after those countries’ transitions to democracy in the 1970s — Iberian historio­graphy continued to develop from a periphery discredited by its lingering association with the ‘Black Legend’ and dislocated from the grand historical narratives long dominated by Italy and northwestern Europe into an extraordinarily active and promising area of historical research.3 Accompanying this gradual political transformation, a growing international interest in the multicultural aspects of Iberian history (ironically, another feature that had once helped relegate Iberia to the  1 Elliott, Spain, Europe, and the Wider World, p. 4.  2 See Kagan and Parker, ‘Sir John Elliott: An Appreciation’.  3 On the emergence of the Black Legend during the early modern period and the develop­ ment of foreign stereotypes regarding Iberian character and the celebration of Iberian decline, see Hillgarth, The Mirror of Spain, pp. 503–44. On the reintegration of Spain and Portugal, see Powell, ‘Spanish Membership of the European Union Revisited’ and Fishman, ‘Shaping, not Making, Democracy’. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 9–19 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126174

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margins of western European historio­graphy) combined with the incredible richness of the peninsula’s archival resources have transformed Iberia into an international hub of research.1 Our interpretations of the past are constantly evolving in response to new evidence, novel methodo­logies and theoretical approaches, and the changing circumstances of the societies in which we live, research, and write. This volume and the international conference that set it in motion stem from these ongoing processes of revitalization. Between 11–13 October 2018, specialists in Iberian and Mediterranean history gathered in Los Angeles for an international conference entitled Iberia, the Mediterranean, & the World in the Medi­eval & Early Modern Periods, hosted by the University of California at Los Angeles’ CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.2 Over the course of three days, these scholars presented their current research and debated the state of premodern Iberian history alongside dozens of colleagues who contributed as session chairs and audience participants. Inspired by the scholarship of our dear colleague, friend, and teacher Teofilo F. Ruiz, the conference centred on three major themes: Iberia as a site of exchange; Iberia’s connectivity with the broader world (Atlantic, European, Mediterranean); and a reconsideration of the traditional divide between the medi­eval and early modern periods. Together with the seven essays that appear in a dossier of the Spanish journal Pedralbes (published by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), the twelve essays that make up this volume attest to the conference’s stimulating intellectual environment, the quality and depth of the presentations, and the participants’ commitment to continuing the ongoing process of reassessment and further exploration of Iberian history. Although interrelated, these two collections emphasize different areas of the larger topic of the conference that produced them: while the articles in the Pedralbes dossier, entitled ‘Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the Larger World in the Late Medi­eval and Early Modern Periods’, focus on networks of contact and exchange, the chapters in this volume concentrate, in one form or another, on individual and collective identities within the Iberian Peninsula between 1000–1700. Scholars of premodern Europe have adopted numerous methodo­logical and conceptual approaches to the study of identity and focused their analyses on a diverse range of contexts and processes, from the identity formation of the individual as shaped by social forces or groups to a more intentional individual process that takes into account a ‘dynamic relationship between the individual and his or her societal boundaries’.3 Identities can be  1 For a vivid account of one American scholar’s participation in this reopening, see Abate, ‘“Ever Since Castro”: Thomas F. Glick, Medi­eval Spain, and Convivencia’.  2 https://cmrs.ucla.edu/conference/iberia-​​the-​mediterranean-​and-​the-​world-​in-​the-​ medi­eval-​and-​early-​modern-​periods.  3 Self-​Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medi­eval and Early Modern Iberia, ed. by Delbrugge, pp. 4–5 (quote at p. 5). For social forces, see Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-​ Fashioning, pp. 3–9. For groups, see Persons in Groups, ed. by Trexler, pp. 3–4, 15–16.

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collective as well as individual, whether they arise organically from individual perception, are deliberately promoted by political elites through means of various techno­logies, or are ‘a label […] that defines an imagined group, noticed and described by an outside observer’.4 In all cases, the construction of identity, whether collective or individual, is a process that depends on the existence of an (equally constructed) Other.5 Identity is thus a multivalent concept, the product of the intertwining of individual and community, of Self and Other, and of unconscious processes and deliberate strategy. It is also a concept that scholars have occasionally found problematic. Critics have argued that the same flexibility and breadth that make the concept so useful tend to attenuate it to the point where it loses its power of signification. Another, perhaps thornier, objection concerns scholars’ tendency to elide the distinction between identity as a category of practice (i.e., something that historical actors individually or collectively engage in) on the one hand, and as a category of analysis (something that historians use to understand and frame the decisions and actions of the historical actors they are analysing) on the other, thereby running the risk of reifying the constructs (e.g. ‘nation’; ‘race’; ‘ethnicity’) being built by our historical actors.6 These are both cautions to be taken seriously. But we, as editors, also find ourselves in agreement with the coordinators of a recent volume on Mediterranean identities that the concept’s power to draw together scholarship on politics, culture, economy, and society as part of a broader set of linked historical processes remains valuable enough to justify the risks of employing a contested term as an analytical framework.7 The essays in this collection focus on disparate topics spanning seven centuries with the aim of generating a broader and deeper understanding of premodern Iberian history, particularly in regard to the varied consequences of identity formation and propagation. Although only some of the contributions explicitly centre their analyses on questions of identity, all of the following chapters engage implicitly with some aspect of the overarching concept. The volume’s authors focus on how collective and individual identities impacted the lives of premodern Iberians, including, but not limited to, the exercise of power, the writing of history, and patterns of exchange and movement. In doing so, they continue moving beyond outmoded debates about a distinct Iberian identity, the nature of the ‘Homo Hispanus’, and/or strictly ‘national’ (or ‘proto-​national’) origins.8

 4 Imagined Communities, ed. by Pleszczyński and others, pp. 3–4 (quote at p. 3).  5 Bedos-​Rezak, ‘Medi­eval Identity’, p. 1497. See also Wurgaft, ‘Identity in World History’, pp. 67–85; Herzog, Defining Nations, pp. 119–40.  6 Brubaker and Cooper, ‘Beyond “Identity”’, pp. 1–5.  7 Mediterranean Identities in the Premodern Era, ed. by Watkins and Reyerson, p. 5.  8 Castro, España en su historia; Sánchez-​Albornoz, España: un enigma histórico. These debates continue to thrive in disciplines other than history; for example see, Bueno, España Frente a Europa, and Menocal, The Ornament of the World. For discussions of the emer­gence of

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In order to highlight the interconnections between the different contributions, we have grouped the essays in this collection into four parts. The authors in Part I (‘Urban Communities’) engage with the formation of collective identities at the level of the late medi­eval city.9 Maya Soifer Irish considers the local ambit of Archdeacon Ferrán Martínez of Écija, whose polemical preaching in Seville is known to have sparked the forced conversions and deaths of many thousands of Jews throughout Iberia in 1391. Turning away from previous research on the immediate causes or expression of this violence, Soifer Irish instead directs her attention to deeper local roots. She proposes that initiatives by members of the Christian and Jewish communities to shape Seville’s urban landscape as a means of memorializing charitable contributions within their respective communities may have helped undermine Jewish-​Christian coexistence within the city. Jesús Á. Solórzano Telechea next traces how a very specific type of urban community, the Cantabrian ​town-port, was the conscious creation of urban leaders working within broader Mediterranean and Atlantic trade networks. His study of around fifty such towns along Spain’s Cantabrian coast shows how the international trade that flowed through the important trading hubs of Genoa and Venice at one geographic extreme and London and Bruges on the other was supplemented by the participation of these same towns in both regional and international maritime traffic. It was, he argues, the conscious and cultivated dynamism of these ports and the economic and sociocultural links that they forged among themselves that ensured their success in a competitive and increasingly connected world. The third and final essay in this section turns to the self-​fashioned identities of leaders of medi­eval cities and to concerns about urban representatives’ self-​presentations. Denis Menjot examines the negotiation of power between various socio-​economic interest groups in late medi­eval Castile. He shows how the petitions at the Cortes of Madrigal of 1438 reflect the culmination of socio-​economic and political tensions between the Crown, the high nobility, the Church, and town representatives in fifteenth-​century Castile. The fiscal dialogue between the king and town representatives at Madrigal highlights the way that municipal representatives bound their own collective identity to that of the monarch and of monarchy itself. Urban elites’ denunciation of the nobility’s predatory tax practices as infringements on royal sovereignty sheds light on the role that they sought to play in governance as well as the place they aimed to occupy within the broader political landscape. The three essays that constitute Part II (‘Ethno-​Religious Self-​Fashionings’) explore aspects of what has arguably become the most intensively researched

‘national’ identities in premodern Iberia, see Cingolani, La formació nacional de Catalunya; Ballester Rodríguez, La identidad Española en la Edad Moderna.  9 In this respect, this section joins recent collections, such as Medi­eval Urban Identity: Health, Economy and Regulation, ed. by Sabaté, and Urban Identity and the Atlantic World Public Sphere, ed. by Fay and von Morze.

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and hotly debated aspect of premodern Iberian history: the peninsula’s complex and pervasive ethno-​religious pluralism. Whereas certain historians once used the substantial population of Jews and Muslims as a reason to treat Iberia as an outlier and thereby exclude it from the master narrative of ‘European’ history, this pluralism now places the region at the centre of conversations about the very nature of premodern European society and its position within a wider geopolitical context.10 In the first essay in this section, Travis Bruce focuses on the uses of identity in the legitimation of power, looking at how the eleventh-​century taifa king ʿAlī b. Mujāhid reached across confessional, geo­graphic, and temporal lines to fashion a basis for his rule of the kingdom of Denia. ʿAlī sought to associate himself with the trappings of legitimate Islamic power, including the promotion of maritime jihad at the time of the taifa’s foundation. Yet he never fully divorced himself from the ‘foreign’ identity that had attached to him as a result of his sixteen years as a hostage in Pisa. This layering of identities, both those assumed by others and those claimed by ʿAlī b. Mujāhid himself, complicates our understanding of legitimacy and authority in the medi­eval western Mediterranean. The next essay in this section explores how those who constructed imagined religious identities reached across the centuries to do so. Francesca Trivellato scrutinizes the context and content of the Usages and Customs of the Sea, written by the Bordeaux lawyer Étienne Cleirac in the mid-​seventeenth century, in terms of what they tell us about how early modern Europeans imagined Iberia’s pluralistic past. Composed at a time when numbers of ‘new Christians’ had been allowed to migrate from Portugal to south-​western France and when bills of exchange were growing in popularity, Cleirac’s widely circulated treatise assigned the invention of such credit instruments to Jews. Trivellato uses Cleirac’s implicit — and false — assumption of a connection between Jews and credit as a means to explore early modern uses of the medi­eval past and to re-​evaluate the significance and validity of the traditional medi­eval/early modern division and the trajectory of Jewish-​Christian history. Bryan Givens rounds out the section with an essay on the intersection between politics and religious culture in the construction of an eschato­logically inflected dynastic identity for the Spanish Habsburg emperors. The Iberian variant of the broader Last World Emperor tradition, encubertismo, was of the conviction that a Hidden King would emerge to unify the kingdoms of ‘Hispania’ and the Christian world and lead a final decisive crusade against Islam before the End of Time. Givens argues that suspicion of popular prophecies in post-​Tridentine  10 For a sampling of recent collaborative work on this topic, which has been dominated by the RELMIN project coordinated by John Tolan, see Les relations des pays d’Islam avec le monde latin, du milieu du Xe siècle au miliu du XIIIe siècle, ed. by Tolan and Josserand, Religious Cohabitation in European Towns (10th–15th Centuries), ed. by Tolan and Boissellier, Religious Minorities in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Law, ed. by Tolan and others, and Law and Religious Minorities in Medi­eval Societies: Between Theory and Praxis, ed. by Echevarria, Monferrer-​Sala, and Tolan.

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Catholicism combined with the Habsburg dynasty’s indifference and even hostility to encubertismo undermined the belief in a Last World Emperor in early modern Spain. Turning from religious to political identities, the three authors in Part III (‘Writing, History, and Political Authority’) explore the intersection of culture, politics, and historical writing. The study of politics never truly disappeared from Iberian studies, even during the heyday of social and cultural histories during the final third of the twentieth century. It did, however, evolve, especially as historians pivoted to consider how the traditional subjects of political history are embedded in broader cultural frameworks. The authors in this section approach political history in this mode, by examining historical actors’ use of the practice of writing to engage with, mould, or transform a political identity, whether for an individual monarch, a nascent ‘nation’, or a transatlantic empire.11 Antonio Zaldívar begins the section by offering a historio­graphic review of the well-​studied shift from writing in Latin to the romance in the Castilian royal chancery. He identifies three major interpretations that continue to influence our understanding of this phenomenon, notes their strengths, and identifies their limitations. These explanations link the proliferation of Castilian writing within the royal chancery with: 1) the Christian conquest and settlement of Andalucía (the so-​called Reconquista); 2) the formation and promotion of a common political and sociocultural identity in the high Middle Ages; or 3) a combination of sociolinguistic and cultural factors taking place throughout western Europe in the aftermath of the Carolingian Renaissance. Only the latter two offer promising avenues for further study according to Zaldívar, who advocates revisiting them with fresh eyes, novel theoretical frameworks from various disciplines (history, linguistic anthropo­logy, sociolinguistics), and a more comparative methodo­logy. The section continues with the contribution of Xavier Gil Pujol, who turns to the question of how humanist historians in Iberia engaged with both theoretical and practical matters in the process of recording history during the early modern period. Díaz del Castillo, Zurita, Gracián, and many others debated about ways and places to keep historical records, the value of tradition, the authority of eyewitness accounts, the topos of arms versus letters, the moral lessons obtained from the past, and how to convey these lessons according to rhetorical rules. While these authors may have disagreed on these issues, Gil argues that they all sought to promote the heroic feats of Spain — including, but not limited to its expansion in the Americas — to foreign nations and peoples with a steady production of history books. Richard Kagan completes the section by exploring the meaning of political censorship in the writing of early modern historians. Rather than look at censorship as a top-​down exercise,

 11 For notable examples of recent scholarship on these issues, see Aurell, Authoring the Past: History, Autobio­graphy, and Politics in Medi­eval Catalonia; Gil, Tiempo de política; Tomás Faci, El aragonés medi­eval.

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Kagan focuses on the issue of self-​censorship, in particular in the writings of Pedro de Valencia, royal chronicler of the Indies, whom King Philip III had commissioned to write the official history of the conquest of Chile. Kagan uses Pedro de Valencia’s eventual decision to abandon the project as an avenue to exploring the nature of self-​censorship and its implications within early modern society. In doing so, he offers a unique perspective on the contested nature of the war in Chile along with the political cleavages of the Spanish court at the start of the seventeenth century. The essays in this volume’s final section (‘Mobility and Encounter’) explore how Iberia’s connections with the world beyond the peninsula on the level of culture, economics, and kinship networks contributed to the construction of identities, whether by the historical actors themselves or by others.12 The authors in this section consider travel and travellers, and the impact that factors like gender, religious identity, and geopolitical origin could have on the construction of both the self and the ‘Other’ within a densely interconnected world. Collectively, they make the case that Iberian history is only fully intelligible when scholars are conscious of the deep integration of its models and patterns with extra-​peninsular lands and peoples, and when they actively work to view their historical subjects within the larger societal and geopolitical contexts of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the wider world. In the first essay of the section, Francisco García-​Serrano ponders the means by which Europeans introduced their culture to peoples beyond the Mediterranean and learned about the existence and nature of non-​European cultures during the medi­eval period. He explores these interchanges over the course of the high and late Middle Ages by assessing journeys made by various types of European travellers, including ambassadors, merchants, and religious figures. The knowledge that these witnesses to the world beyond the peninsula brought back with them when they returned mediated the encounter with the ‘Other’ for those Iberians who stayed at home and helped to shape the beginnings of a global consciousness. Roser Salicrú i Lluch sheds further light on these extra-​peninsular dynamics through her in-​depth analysis of the interrogations of Muslims from Granada and North Africa who were taken captive and brought to Valencia during the first half of the fifteenth century. Transcripts of their interrogations contain a range of fascinating information regarding these captives, their family situations and kinship networks, and their reasons for migrating. Taken together, these interrogations help to balance out our wealth of knowledge regarding ruling and intellectual Muslim elites from this period with the lived experience of ordinary Muslims on both sides of the Strait. Finally, Theresa Earenfight closes out this section and the essays in the volume as a whole by exploring the evolving ‘Spanish’ identity of Catalina (Catherine) of Aragon, both at home and abroad. In the first half of

 12 For example, see Representing Women’s Political Identity, ed. by Roe and Andrews, and Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers.

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the essay, Earenfight shows how the young Catalina’s participation as infanta in royal ceremonial in her homeland did double duty, solidifying the dynasty’s political authority by displaying how its children represented the future of the realm while simultaneously providing the royal children with an important education in performative rulership. In the second half of the essay, Earenfight turns to Catalina’s journey to marry the heir to the English throne and how both the English court and Catalina herself focused on sartorial markers of her essential Spanishness. This literal wearing of her Spanish identity on her sleeve demonstrates the double-​edged sword of identity for foreign queens: on the one hand, these women represented a link to power centres that lay beyond a kingdom’s borders; on the other hand, their visible foreignness often relegated them to the periphery in their adoptive homes. As a whole, the collection showcases the current diversity of scholarship on the greater peninsula, including not just Castile but also once-​peripheral entities such as the Crown of Aragon, to add to our understanding of Iberian identities both within the peninsula and in relation to Europe and the Mediterranean world.13 The twelve authors in this volume explore different aspects of Iberia’s multi-​faceted, transregional, and integrative nature throughout these periods, foregrounding the complex interactions between the peninsula’s various communities, as well as with collectives and societies further afield in both Muslim-​and Christian-​ruled contexts. In considering these issues over a wide chrono­logical scope spanning the eleventh through the seventeenth centuries, the volume as a whole challenges the traditional historio­graphic boundary separating the medi­eval and early modern periods in the Iberian peninsula. The shifting roles of historio­graphy and language come under serious scrutiny, as do factors shaping the strategies and ideo­logies of rulership. Finally, the essays help to liberate Iberian history from the hold of both nationalist and exoticizing discourses by probing the origins of cataclysmic ethno-​religious violence and re-​evaluating the integration of local and international networks that connected Iberia to the wider world. Our hope is that these pieces, when read in conjunction, will promote a deeper understanding of the issues raised in this volume, and that readers will emerge with a heightened awareness of the potential of future research to participate in this re-​envisioning of Iberia’s place within the broader premodern world. Teofilo Ruiz concludes the volume with reflections on the scholarly gathering that produced this volume, the enduring relevance (sometimes to our great sorrow) of the themes that the contributors to this volume explore, and how important it is, now more than ever, for historians to stand for an unflinching exploration of the truths of our shared past so that we may move forward towards a better world. In this regard, Ruiz recalls to our notice the debt that the fields of Iberian and Mediterranean studies owe to Sir J. H.

 13 For examples of other collaborative work on this area, see, Catalonia and Portugal: The Iberian Peninsula from the Periphery, ed. by Sabaté and Adão da Fonseca.

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Elliott and Olivia Remie Constable: both recently deceased, and both greatly missed. The group of historians whose work is represented here range from junior to senior scholars and hail from an array of countries. Their diversity, the assortment of topics and methodo­logies that they engage with, and the varied foci of their essays are emblematic of the sea change that has transformed the field of premodern Iberian studies over the past half-​century. As a group, they embody the dynamism of historical interpretation observed by Elliott in the epi­graph that opens this introduction. Even though he was not able to attend the conference that gave shape to this volume, Elliott’s long-​standing influence as a path-​breaking historian and generous mentor was nevertheless felt deeply by all of the collaborators. We dedicate this volume to his memory, in grateful recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of Iberian studies, without which its dramatic and continuing revitalization over these past decades might never have taken place. We gratefully acknowledge the publication subvention grant from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of San Diego, which funded the index prepared for this volume by Laura Napran. On a final note, we would like to recognize Professor Zrinka Stahuljak of French and Francophone Studies and Comparative Literature at UCLA, who was an invaluable member of our editorial team before her appointment as director of CMRS pulled her away. We thank her for her numerous invaluable contributions to this project.

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Works Cited Abate, Mark T., ‘“Ever Since Castro”: Thomas F. Glick, Medi­eval Spain, and Convivencia’, in Convivencia and Medi­eval Spain: Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick, ed. by Mark T. Abate (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 1–61 Aurell, Jaume, Authoring the Past: History, Autobio­graphy, and Politics in Medi­eval Catalonia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012) Ballester Rodríguez, Mateo, La identidad española en la Edad Moderna (1556–1665): Discursos, símbolos y mitos (Madrid: Tecnos, 2010) Bedos-​Rezak, Brigitte Miriam, ‘Medi­eval Identity: A Sign and a Concept’, American Historical Review, 105 (2000), 1489–1533 Brubaker, Rogers, and Frederick Cooper, ‘Beyond “Identity”’, Theory and Society, 29 (2000), 1–47 Bueno, Gustavo, España frente a Europa (Oviedo: Pentalfa Ediciones, 2019) Castro, Américo, España en su Historia: cristianos, moros, y judíos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1948) Catalonia and Portugal: The Iberian Peninsula from the Periphery, ed. by Flocel Sabaté and Luís Adão da Fonseca (New York: Peter Lang, 2015) Cingolani, Stefano M., La formació nacional de Catalunya i el fet identitari dels catalans (785–1410) (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 2015) Elliott, John H., Spain, Europe, and the Wider World, 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) Fishman, Robert M., ‘Shaping, not Making, Democracy: The European Union and the Post-​Authoritarian Political Transformations of Spain and Portugal’, in Spain and Portugal in the European Union: The First Fifteen Years, ed. by Sebastián Royo and Paul Christopher Manuel (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 25–37 Gil Pujol, Xavier, Tiempo de política: Perspectivas historiográficas sobre la Europa moderna (Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions Universitat de Barcelona, 2006) Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-​Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, new edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) Hamilton, Michelle M., and Núria Silleras-​Fernández, ‘Iberia and the Mediterranean: An Introduction’, in In and Of the Mediterranean: Medi­eval and Early Modern Iberian Studies, ed. by Michelle M. Hamilton and Núria Silleras-​ Fernández (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2015), pp. ix–xxvii Herzog, Tamar, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) Hillgarth, Jocelyn N., The Mirror of Spain, 1500–1700: The Formation of a Myth (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000) Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities in Medi­eval Europe, ed. by Andrzej Pleszczyński, Joanna Aleksandra Sobiesiak, Michał Tomaszek, and Przemysław Tyszka (Leiden: Brill, 2018) Kagan, Richard L., and Geoffrey Parker, ‘Sir John Elliott: An Appreciation’, in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, ed. by Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 1–13

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La Mediterránea a l’época moderna: societat, poders i cultura, ed. by María Ángeles Pérez (Sant Cugat del Vallès: Argegio, 2018) Law and Religious Minorities in Medi­eval Societies: Between Theory and Praxis = De la teoría legal a la práctica en el derecho de la minoría[s] religiosas en la Edad Media, ed. by Ana Echevarria, Juan Pedro Monferrer-​Sala, and John Tolan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) Medi­eval Urban Identity: Health, Economy and Regulation, ed. by Flocel Sabaté (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2015) Mediterranean Identities in the Premodern Era: Entrepôts, Islands, Empires, ed. by John Watkins and Kathryn L. Reyerson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) Menocal, María Rosa, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medi­eval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2002) Powell, Charles, ‘Spanish Membership of the European Union Revisited’, in Spain and Portugal in the European Union: The First Fifteen Years, ed. by Sebastián Royo and Paul Christopher Manuel (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 123–39 Persons in Groups: Social Behavior As Identity Formation in Medi­eval and Renaissance Europe, ed. by Richard C. Trexler (Binghamton: Medi­eval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985) Les relations des pays d’Islam avec le monde latin, du milieu du Xe siècle au miliu du XIIIe siècle, ed. by John Tolan and Philippe Josserand (Rosny: Bréal, 2000) Religious Cohabitation in European Towns (10th–15th Centuries) = La cohabitation religieuse dans les villes européennes, Xe-​XVe siècles, ed. by John Tolan and Stéphane Boissellier (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) Religious Minorities in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Law (5th–15th Centuries), ed. by John Tolan, Capucine Nemo-​Pekelman, Nora Berend, and Youna Hameau-​ Masset (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) Representing Women’s Political Identity in the Early Modern Iberian World, ed. by Jeremy Roe and Jean Andrews (New York: Routledge, 2021) Self-​Fashioning and Assumptions of Identity in Medi­eval and Early Modern Iberia, ed. by Laura Delbrugge (Leiden: Brill, 2015) Sánchez-​Albornoz, Claudio, España, un enigma histórico, 2 vols (Barcelona: Edhasa, 2010) Tomás Faci, Guillermo, El aragonés medi­eval: lengua y estado en el reino de Aragón (Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2020) Trivellato, Francesca, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-​Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009; repr. 2012) Urban Identity in the Atlantic World, ed. by Elizabeth A. Fay and Leonard Von Morzé (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Wurgaft, Lewis, ‘Identity in World History: A Post-​Modern Perspective’, History and Theory, 34 (1995), 67–85

19

Urban Communities

Maya Soifer Irish

Landscapes of Salvation, Landscapes of Power Jews, Christians, and Urban Space in Fourteenth-​Century Seville

On 20 May 1385, Ferrán Martínez, a secular canon at St Mary’s Cathedral in Seville, finalized an agreement with the cathedral chapter regarding some houses in which he intended to establish a hospital for the poor. Like other such charitable institutions, Martínez’s hospital would combine the functions of a hospital, an asylum, and a temporary shelter, and take care of those on the margins of the urban society: the destitute elderly, the sick, and the transients.1 Martínez’s motives in pursuing this project were not entirely altruistic: like other men and women of his time preparing for afterlife, he was making ‘an investment in eternity’ in the hopes of earning a warm reception at the heavenly court.2 His hospital would be named in honour of ‘Virgin Saint Martha’, to whom he professed a particular devotion. Many years later, when dictating his will, he expressed hope that upon his passing St Martha would intercede for him with God and carry his soul into Paradise.3 As a location for his hospital, Martínez chose several adjacent buildings — all of them properties of the Cathedral Chapter — located just east of the cathedral. Among these buildings was the so-​called ‘mosque of Los Osos’, one of many former mosques that the church of Seville had received from Alfonso X shortly after the conquest, in 1252.4 However, the rest of the buildings eyed by Martínez had already been claimed by other prosperous citizens of Seville, laymen as well as clerics, as investments in their salvation. A man named Domingo Pérez donated several of the buildings to the cathedral, specifying that the rents were to be used to  1 Ros, ed., Historia de la Iglesia de Sevilla, pp. 159, 192–93, 238–40; Ladero Quesada, Historia de Sevilla, p. 146.  2 Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, p. 37.  3 Martínez expresses this wish in his will, written in Carmona and dated 7 June 1403. Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 78, #9.  4 See Ecker, ‘The Conversion of Mosques to Synagogues in Seville’, pp. 190–207. Maya Soifer Irish ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of History at Rice University. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 23–37 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126175

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pay for masses and anniversaries in his name. Other buildings and a bodega (cellar) were part of an endowment made by Pedro Pérez, a prebendary at the cathedral, to fund anniversaries for himself and his father. To safeguard the wishes of the original donors and ensure that their salvation would not be compromised, Ferrán Martínez provided the cathedral with ample compensation, some of which came from the rents of the houses that Martínez owned at another prime spot — just north of the cathedral and next to the alcaicería (royal market).5 The complex negotiations between Martínez and the cathedral chapter over the buildings for the future Hospital of St Martha reveal an urban space tightly controlled and inventoried by clerical and secular elites seeking to capitalize on their success in this world to help them in the afterlife. The cathedral was not only the seat of the archbishop of Seville and the city’s largest centre of Christian worship, but also the focal point of its parochial district, collación de Santa María, one of the most prosperous and prestigious neighbourhoods in the city.6 To the south, it bordered on the royal palace complex — the Alcázar. To the east and southeast, the residents of the cathedral district had neighbours whose proximity they found far less desirable — the Jews living in the walled judería. Only six years after the creation of the Hospital of St Martha, in June of 1391, hundreds of Jews in the judería were massacred during a violent riot, and the hospital’s founder and administrator, Ferrán Martínez, archdeacon of Écija and a canon at the cathedral, was called the instigator of the riot and the cause of the violence.7 As the news of the massacre in Seville spread far and wide, Christians in dozens of towns and villages in Castile, Valencia, Catalonia, and Aragon violently assaulted Jewish men, women, and children — killing, raping, pillaging, and forcibly converting them to Christianity. By the time the last tremors of the violence reached the mountainous regions in northern Aragon, in April of 1392, many previously vibrant Jewish communities lay in ruins, never to recover.8 Scholars have struggled to explain this unprecedented explosion of anti-​Jewish violence in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, both of which had a long tradition of interfaith coexistence. In a groundbreaking article published almost fifty years ago, Philippe Wolff called attention to the variations in the political, social, and religious factors that motivated the attackers and propelled the violence in each particular locale.9 The impossibility of reducing the peninsular riots to a single common denominator, and the need to understand the local roots of the violence are also the premises that

 5 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 79, #1/1, and #1/2.  6 On the concept of collación in Andalusia, see Ecker, ‘How to Administer a Conquered City in Al-​Andalus’, pp. 53–55. The collación of Santa María was divided into four barrios: Castellanos, Francos, Génoa, and Mar. See Álvarez, Ariza, and Mendoza, Un padrón de Sevilla, p. 12.  7 López de Ayala, Crónicas, pp. 713, 739.  8 Gampel, Anti-​Jewish Riots, pp. 13–184.  9 Wolff, ‘The 1391 Pogrom in Spain’, p. 16.

l an d s c ap e s o f s alvat i o n , land scape s o f pow e r

underpin Benjamin Gampel’s recent study of the 1391 massacres in the Crown of Aragon.10 Despite historians’ intense focus on Ferrán Martínez’s role in triggering the first riot, little effort has been made to understand the specific context of the interfaith conflict in Seville. In an attempt to fill in some of the blanks in the puzzle, this essay marshals archival documentation to probe the extent to which the efforts by Jews and Christians to control urban space for the purpose of charitable bequests contributed to the escalation of Martínez’s anti-​Jewish preaching. While wealthy Christians endowed churches, chapels, and altars, Jewish elites sponsored the construction of synagogues that were intended to memorialize their pious contributions to the Jewish community. As is well known, the archdeacon made the demolition of synagogues, which he branded ‘houses of the Devil’ and ‘synagogues of Satan’, one of the main goals of his campaign to restrict Jewish life in Seville and the surrounding towns. He claimed that the high number of synagogues in the judería of Seville — twenty-​three, to be exact — was unacceptable because they were built illegally.11 I will show that one of the Jewish houses of worship provoked Martínez’s special ire because it was built outside the walls of the Jewish quarter and in close proximity to his Hospital of St Martha. Indeed, one way to understand the archdeacon’s campaign against Seville’s Jews is to look at it as a manifestation of the cathedral chapter clerics’ quest to dominate ‘spaces of charity and salvation’ and thereby augment their power and influence in the city.12 The wall surrounding the judería was a physical reminder of the Jews’ religious alterity, but the community that it enclosed was in major respects a mirror image of the Christian one.13 Both communities were highly stratified. Comprised mostly of paupers, Muslim slaves, artisans, labourers, physicians, shopkeepers, and traders of modest means, Christian and Jewish communities each had a relatively small number of oligarchs who exercised a disproportionate amount of political and economic influence.14 The Christian urban society was dominated by caballeros de cuantía or caballeros ciudadanos — knights of mercantile (non-​noble) origin, also known as urban knights. Required to purchase weapons and horses needed for service in the urban militia to maintain their status, non-​noble knights were exempt from most taxes. In the course of the fourteenth century, the most successful of the Andalusian urban

 10 Gampel, Anti-​Jewish Riots, pp. 185–89.  11 ‘Acta Capitular del Cabildo de Sevilla’, ed. by Lea, p. 224. Madrid, AHN, Sección Clero, Toledo, Catedral, leg. 7215; Amador de los Rios, Historia social, politica y religiosa, p. 588.  12 See Lester, ‘Crafting a Charitable Landscape’, pp. 125–48.  13 Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘Las minorías étnico-​religiosas’, p. 144.  14 Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘La aljama judía de Sevilla’, p. 28; Ladero Quesada, Historia de Sevilla, pp. 127–29. Unlike Jews, free Muslims did not have their own neighborhood until the fifteenth century and were dispersed throughout the city. See Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘Las minorías étnico-​religiosas’, pp. 136–37.

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knights became indistinguishable from hijosdalgo (lesser nobility) to form an urban patriciate that dominated municipal offices and passed them down from father to son.15 Since canonries at cathedrals were socially equivalent to membership in the veinticuatria (city council), caballero families sought to obtain lasting control over them as well, sometimes forming whole ‘dynasties’ of canons.16 Some urban knights in Seville had close ties to the monarchy, obtaining the rank of vasallo del rey (the king’s vassal), and serving him as contadores (treasurers) of Seville, Andalusia, or even the entire kingdom, as well as collectors of various royal taxes.17 In these tasks they were joined by Jewish contadores and almojarifes (tax collectors), whose wealth and service to the Crown gave them a privileged status in the aljama ( Jewish community) similar to that of the caballeros in the Christian municipality. In the fourteenth century, several Jewish oligarchs from Seville or its vicinity came to occupy the office of the chief royal treasurer.18 Many Jewish residents of Seville and nearby communities participated in the farming of royal and municipal taxes in the almojarifazgo (tax district) of Seville.19 While both the Christian urban nobility and the Jewish elites received privileges and grants from the king, the Jews’ dependence on the Crown was much greater, because, like the rest of medi­eval European Jewry, the Castilian Jewish community was considered to be the ‘property of the royal chamber’ and its well-​being hinged on the king’s legal and physical protection. In the years following 1369, when Enrique Trastámara defeated and killed King Pedro I and seized the Castilian throne, many Jewish and Christian urban oligarchs took advantage of the political transformations to build local bases of power. Even though Enrique had employed anti-​Jewish propaganda during the civil war to get support from the municipal councils in northern Castile, as Enrique II, the first Trastámara ruler of Castile reverted to his predecessors’ practice of putting Jews in charge of royal finances at the kingdom-​wide and local levels.20 The main criterion for success in the post-​civil war period was personal loyalty to the new monarch. The loyalists of Pedro had their property confiscated, and in some cases were imprisoned and executed. Those who had supported Enrique throughout his wars against Pedro, or switched sides early enough to gain his favour, received royal grants of rural

 15 Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity, pp. 237–48; Ladero Quesada, Historia de Sevilla, pp. 132–33; Collantes de Terán Sánchez, ‘El mundo humano: las élites y la organización ciudadana’, pp. 92–96.  16 Díaz Ibáñez, ‘Iglesia y nobleza en la Sevilla bajomedi­eval’, pp. 882–83.  17 Collantes de Terán Sánchez, ‘El mundo humano: las élites y la organización ciudadana’, p. 98.  18 Yuçaf de Écija, Yuçaf Pichon, and Samuel Abravanel. Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘Las minorías étnico-​religiosas’, p. 144.  19 Inventario de los papeles de mayordomazgo del siglo XIV, ed. by Collantes de Terán Delorme, pp. 14, 20, 39, 70; Valdeón Baruque, ‘Un pleito cristiano-​judío’, pp. 230–31.  20 Suárez Fernández, Monarquía hispana y revolución Trastámara, pp. 57–59; Valdeón Baruque, Los judíos de Castilla y la revolución Trastámara, p. 39.

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and urban properties and were given access to positions of power in their communities. For example, Alfonso Fernández Portocarrero, a member of an aristocratic Sevillian family, had been one of Enrique’s most trusted supporters and subsequently received a gift of half of the shops in the royal alcaicería of Seville. Yuçaf Pichón, who belonged to an influential Jewish family, had been an early supporter of Enrique (several documents from Enrique II’s chancery dating to 1366 and 1369 bear the signature of a ‘Yuçaf ’), and by 1371 he was given the post of the contador mayor (chief treasurer) of Castile. Thanks to the royal patronage, Pichón accumulated many urban properties inside and outside of Seville’s judería, including some shops in the alcaicería, as well as cereal lands, olive groves, and vineyards near Seville.21 The new political era in Castile also brought opportunities and challenges for Seville’s Cathedral Chapter. The Trastámara monarchy’s strong support for the nobility created favourable conditions for a rapid accumulation of wealth by the local elites. As Enrique’s loyalists aged and made preparations to face eternity in the 1370s and 1380s, the chapter had a reasonable expectation of becoming a recipient of their largesse. Being the final resting place of Castilian kings Fernando III, the conqueror of Seville, and of his son, Alfonso X, the cathedral was a prestigious location for the nobility to bury their dead.22 Endowments of family chapels, altars, anniversaries, processions, and the lighting of candles were available to wealthy patrons hoping to transform their material success into spiritual redemption. Other factors, however, dampened the chapter’s prospects. As described by Teofilo Ruiz in his study of northern Castilian wills, after about 1230, the custom of bestowing wealth on a single institution was replaced by the practice of dividing gifts among numerous urban churches, religious orders, brotherhoods, and pious causes. In the charitable donations and testaments of the urban knights in late fourteenth-​century Seville, one sees the same ‘hard-​nosed bargaining for salvation’ and detailed inventories of properties that Ruiz has detected in the earlier period.23 Some urban nobles preferred to give the bulk of their donations to their local parish churches. Others strongly favoured mendicant orders and bequeathed money and property to the convents of San Francisco and San Pablo.24 All this meant that the chapter needed shrewd administrators from among their members who would actively manage its holdings, buy rural and urban properties that brought in regular and secure income, persuade laymen to donate generously to the cathedral, and, most importantly, bequeath their own landed estates and other properties to the chapter. According to Montes Romero-​Camacho, the period between 1376 and 1425 was a time

 21 Die Juden im christlichen Spanien, ed. by Baer, ii, 203, 218; Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘El judío sevillano don Yuçaf Pichón’, pp. 562–65, 572.  22 Ruiz Souza, ‘Capillas Reales funerarias catedralicias de Castilla y León’, pp. 9–14.  23 Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, pp. 47–49.  24 Sánchez Saus, Las élites políticas, p. 159.

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of prosperity for the chapter thanks to the capable, hands-​on leadership of several administrators, among them, the cathedral’s dean, Pedro Manuel (a relative of Enrique II’s queen consort, Juana Manuel), and Ferrán Martínez, the archdeacon of Écija. One consequential strategy involved letting go of the chapter’s seigniorial domains and investing in more secure sources of income: fixed rents, cereal lands (less labour-​intensive than vineyards or olive groves), and urban properties.25 Many of these types of properties came into the chapter’s possession through bequests made by clerics associated with the Cathedral of Seville, especially by its canons. In fact, clerics comprised the majority of the cathedral’s donors after 1300.26 Canons and other prebendaries were expected to make substantial donations to the cathedral. Ferrán Martínez did not disappoint these expectations. In 1376, he bought a large estate, called Pulgar, which was composed of tierras para pan (lands used for cereal production) and was located in a fertile agricultural zone east of Seville and south of Carmona.27 To augment the estate, he later bought several smaller properties adjacent to Pulgar.28 His donation of the estate to the Cathedral Chapter in 1379 was not only the fulfilment of an obligation to the chapter, but also an investment in the economy of his and his family’s salvation. The income from the estate was to be used for the benefit of his soul as well as those of his parents and two sisters. They included endowments for a chaplaincy and an altar in honour of St Martha, an annual procession on her feast day, and two sepulchres near her altar — one for the archdeacon himself and one for his sisters and their descendants.29 Many clerics holding benefices from the cathedral lived in the collación of Santa María and donated houses, shops, and cellars located in this neighbourhood and elsewhere in the city. For example, in 1378, Benito Ferrández, a chaplain in the chapel of St Thomas at the cathedral, donated houses and shops located in three different collaciones: Santa María, San Juan, and San Miguel (where he lived).30 Benito Ferrández’s bequest was an investment in his eternal life: he wanted to be buried near the chapel of St Thomas, with memorial masses and anniversaries celebrated at his tomb.31 Centred on the collación of Santa María and radiating to other parts of the city and to the countryside and the surrounding towns, cathedral-​owned properties generated revenues for the chapter while providing spiritual succour to its donors and projecting the cathedral’s power and influence. They comprised a mini-​economy that required careful management and supervision. A special chapter official, the mayordomo de Pitancería, one of

 25 Montes Romero-​Camacho, Propiedad y explotación, pp. 178, 182–85; Ros, Historia de la Iglesia de Sevilla, pp. 220–21; Sánchez Saus, Las élites políticas, p. 149.  26 Montes Romero-​Camacho, Propiedad y explotación, p. 29.  27 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 23, #10/3.  28 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 23, #10/5; #10/8; #10/9; #10/10; #10/6.  29 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 23, #10/1; leg. 78, #10/1.  30 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 39, #2/2.  31 Pérez-​Embid Wamba, Culto funerario y registro necrológico, p. 321.

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the three mayordomos, was appointed to administer the properties donated to the cathedral for the purpose of conducting liturgical and funerary services. In 1411, Diego Martínez, the cathedral prior and a friend and collaborator of Archdeacon Ferrán Martínez, compiled a register known as El Libro Blanco (The White Book). Organized by chapels, it catalogued the names of donors and the rural and urban properties they had bequeathed to the chapter in return for interments inside the cathedral, memorial masses, anniversaries, processions, and the lighting of candles.32 Whereas the cathedral’s own clerics were expected to donate their possessions to the chapter, laymen had no such obligation and could spread their bequests among numerous religious institutions and pious causes. Laypersons who resided in the collación of Santa María or who had strong personal and familial connections to the cathedral were more likely to make large donations to the chapter. Family ties were the reason why in 1373 Alfonso Fernández Portocarrero decided to give the cathedral half of an orchard located just outside of Seville and next to the road connecting the city to Carmona. The other half of the property had been in the chapter’s possession for several decades thanks to the donation made by Alfonso Fernández’s maternal grandparents, admiral Alfonso Jofré Tenorio and his wife Elvira. Adding to their original endowment of the chapel of Jesús in the Patio de los Naranjos, Alfonso Fernández stipulated that the income from the orchard be used for anniversaries with a mass for the souls of his parents and grandparents, as well as his own. The signing of the contract was a solemn occasion requiring the presence of the entire chapter, including the dignitaries such as the dean, Diego Díaz, the prior, Pedro Manuel, and the archdeacon of Écija, Ferrán Martínez.33 To maintain the cathedral’s preeminent position in the constantly changing urban world of late medi­eval Seville, the chapter’s administrators — men like Ferrán Martínez — needed to keep a vigilant eye on the real estate market, striving to keep or even increase the chapter’s share in the city’s charitable landscape. The archdeacon of Écija is known to posterity primarily for his harsh anti-​Jewish preaching that helped trigger the riots of 1391, but his campaign against the Jews was an extension of other activities that occupied the bulk of his time. Ferrán Martínez was, first and foremost, a bureaucrat and a manager with an avid interest in Seville’s real estate. From the mid-​1370s to the mid-​1390s, he was involved in numerous property transactions, both on his own behalf and on behalves of the cathedral and the Hospital of St Martha. Martínez’s reputation for financial acumen and his managerial abilities were  32 See Pérez-​Embid Wamba, Culto funerario y registro necrológico, and Fernández, ‘Organizar, Administrar, Recordar: El Libro Blanco y El Libro de Dotaciones’, pp. 156–57, 183–90. Diego Martínez was named as one of the executors of Ferrán Martínez’s will: Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 78, #10; Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 78, #9.  33 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 40, #37. See also Pérez-​Embid Wamba, Culto funerario y registro necrológico, p. 316.

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the likely reason why many caballero families in Seville chose him to serve as an executor of wills for their dying family members. Overseeing the property of those who were about to face eternity gave the archdeacon an opportunity to solicit charitable donations to the cathedral and his hospital. In 1394, the family of Alfonso Fernández del Marmolejo, one of the richest men in the city, who had served as a royal tax collector, a jurado (district official), a member of the city council, and a contador mayor of Seville, asked the archdeacon to be an executor of the dying man’s estate.34 Alfonso Fernández lived in the collación of Santa María, but made his preference for the mendicant orders very clear. He wanted to be buried in the convent of San Francisco, dressed in the habit of St Francis, in a family chapel that he generously endowed. The Dominican monastery of St Pablo also received a lavish donation from him to fund memorial masses for the souls of his parents-​in-​law. Otherwise, Alfonso Fernández spread his legacies widely among many other religious institutions, foundations, and charitable causes, including the cathedral, where twenty clerics and priests were to celebrate vigils and masses for his soul in the Chapel of San Clemente. One of his bequests was clearly the consequence of Ferrán Martínez’s involvement in managing Alfonso Fernández’s estate: while every hospital in Seville and Triana received a token donation of five maravedís each, the archdeacon’s hospital of St Martha was awarded a much more substantial sum of 1000 maravedís.35 Ferrán Martínez had ambitious plans for the hospital he founded in the collación of Santa María in the area between the cathedral and the south-​ western wall of the judería.36 His acquisition of the mosque of Los Osos from the chapter was only the first step in creating a space dedicated to the pauperes christi (Christ’s poor), whose intersession would be crucial for his salvation.37 To ensure that his hospital would have sufficient space for a future expansion, Martínez acquired other properties in the vicinity of the former mosque. In 1387, he and a local resident, Doña Isabel, exchanged a pedaço de corral (portion of a courtyard) adjacent to his hospital of St Martha for his houses located elsewhere in the collación of Santa María. The location of this property was named after Doña Isabel’s late father, Enrique Enriquez, and popularly known as the barrera de don Enrique Enriquez. It was likely an enclosed space with a gate that abutted either the wall of the Alcázar or the wall of the judería.38 Undoubtedly, Martínez was hoping to add other

 34 See Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘El ascenso de un linaje protoconverso en la Sevilla Trastámara’, pp. 256–310; and Sánchez Saus, Linajes sevillanos medi­evales, pp. 157–63.  35 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 59, #5.  36 The exact distance that separated Martínez’s hospital from the wall of the judería is unknown, but a tower that was recently discovered in the Convent of the Incarnation, the location of the former Hospital of St Martha, may have been part of the wall surrounding the Jewish quarter. Collantes de Terán Sánchez, ‘La judería de Sevilla: el espacio urbano’, p. 119.  37 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 78, #10/1.  38 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 79, #1/2–3, #4. The location of the Barrera de Enrique

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buildings in the neighbourhood to his hospital complex. However, there was one major obstacle for this expansion plans: a synagogue that the Jews possessed in the barrera. Because very few records of Jewish charitable bequests in Iberia have survived, little is known about how donations of property by Jews shaped urban landscapes in Castile. Judah Galinsky has argued that the Iberian Jews’ beliefs about the link between charity and salvation were not that dissimilar from those of Christians. Like Christians, Jews thought that generous donations of money and property protected one ‘from the judgment of Hell’ and helped gain entry to the world to come. However, since the Jewish community did not have a clerical class or saints as intercessors for one’s soul, their charitable practices were somewhat different. Instead of donating to religious institutions, Jewish donors either contributed to a communal fund, or set up a private or semi-​private trust — a hekdesh. These funds or trusts distributed money for maintaining synagogues, helping the poor and the sick, supporting scholars and teachers, and burying the dead.39 By chance, one document establishing such a charitable trust survives from early fourteenth-​century Seville. In 1332, Yuçaf de Écija, also known as Yuçaf el Levi, who was at the time an almojarife mayor of King Alfonso XI, set up a pious endowment (para servicio de dios) that was to be administered jointly by Yuçaf (and after his death, by his eldest son) and the aljama. The endowment included the sum of 5000 maravedís, invested to yield annual revenues, as well as the rents from houses and an orchard that Yuçaf possessed in Écija. Yuçaf designated some of this money for supporting an escuela de ley (yeshiva) in Écija and buying books for the school. One remarkable clause in the bequest linked Yuçaf ’s donation with the spiritual benefits of prayer said on his behalf during public worship at the synagogue that he had established. The document requests that En cada anno en todo tienpo de la vida del dicho raby Yosef el Levi una dobla al qui fase oracion en la sinoga del dicho raby Yocef el Levi, e que ge la den a honse dias de setienbre en cada anno, en tal que bendiga su nonbre del dicho raby Yocef el Levi el dia del perdon, e despues que finare, que le den la dicha dobla al que fase oracion, segunt dicho es, en cada anno e en tal que fagan oracion por su alma del dicho raby Yocef el Levi el dia del perdon. (Every year during rabbi Yuçaf el Levi’s lifetime, a dobla be given to whomever prays in the synagogue of rabbi Yuçaf el Levi on the eleventh of September, to bless the name of rabbi Yuçaf el Levi on the Day of Atonement, and after his death, that the said dobla be given to

Enriquez has not been identified until now. See Collantes de Terán Sánchez, Diccionario Histórico de las Calles de Sevilla, p. 323.  39 Galinsky, ‘Jewish Charitable Bequests’, pp. 423–40.

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whomever prays every year for the soul of the aforementioned rabbi Yuçaf el Levi on the Day of Atonement).40 Although the exact location of Yuçaf de Écija’s synagogue is unknown, there is no doubt that it was built in Seville and that it was the same synagogue that Alfonso XI wrote about to Pope Clement VI, seeking to exempt it from the canonical prohibition on constructing new Jewish houses of worship.41 The building of new synagogues was explicitly proscribed by canon and secular legislation, but there is plentiful evidence that the prohibition was frequently skirted.42 Moreover, in Iberia and elsewhere in medi­eval Europe, contributing to the construction of a new synagogue was considered to be an important redemptive act that also enhanced the benefactors’ social status. In the Nürnberg Memorbuch, donations to the synagogue planning and construction are recorded alongside cemetery upkeep, synagogue lighting, education, support for the poor and the sick, and the community fund.43 The evidence from Iberia is sketchy, but it appears that, while in some cases building a prayer house may have been a collective effort with many individual donors contributing, in other cases one particularly wealthy donor was responsible for shouldering most or all of the expenses. Galinsky cites an example of a woman from Arévalo in northern Castile, who sponsored a hekdesh to build a new synagogue for the benefit of her soul.44 The best-​known, and still standing, synagogues funded by a single affluent donor are the synagogue ‘El Tránsito’ in Toledo, sponsored by Samuel Halevi Abulafia, the treasurer of King Pedro I, and the synagogue in Córdoba, built by Isaac Moheb.45 After the Christian conquest of Seville in 1248, three of the city’s mosques were given to the newly established Jewish community.46 However, Yuçaf de Écija’s sponsorship of another synagogue, sometime before 1332, shows that those three original houses of worship were inadequate to accommodate the growing population of Seville’s judería. How many more synagogues were established in Seville in the course of the fourteenth century? Heather Ecker believes that the building called Mezquita de la Judería in the documents, acquired in 1327 from the Cathedral Chapter by Yhuda Abenxabat, a local almojarife, was turned into a synagogue.47 The only other evidence on the number of synagogues in Seville comes from a very hostile source: in his  40 Die Juden, ed. by Baer, ii, 154. The Hebrew text was composed in Seville in 1332; a Castilian translation was made in 1393.  41 Ecker, ‘The Conversion of Mosques to Synagogues in Seville’, p. 192.  42 Las Siete Partidas prohibits the construction of new synagogues, except by the order of the king. Partida VII, Title XXIV, Law IV. Las Siete Partidas, V, p. 1434.  43 Baumgarten, Practicing Piety in Medi­eval Ashkenaz, pp. 109, 111, 121–22.  44 Galinsky, ‘Jewish Charitable Bequests’, p. 431.  45 Dodds, ‘Mudejar Tradition and the Synagogues of Medi­eval Spain’, pp. 113–31; Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas Españolas, p. 23.  46 Ecker, ‘The Conversion of Mosques to Synagogues in Seville’, p. 190.  47 Ecker, ‘The Conversion of Mosques to Synagogues in Seville’, pp. 195–99.

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speech at the royal court known as the Tribunal del Alcázar in 1388, Ferrán Martínez claimed that there were twenty-​three synagogues in Seville, as he put it, erected ‘contra dios e contra derecho’ (against God and against law).48 This may well be an exaggeration, but given the concentration of wealth in Seville’s aljama, it is reasonable to suppose that many of its well-​to-​do members would seek spiritual rewards by donating money and real estate for synagogue projects. Some of these synagogues were located outside the walled perimeter of the judería.49 Jews were not required to live inside the judería and continued to own houses, shops, and warehouses elsewhere in the city.50 In 1333, Alfonso XI reminded the aljama that every Jew (and Muslim) living outside the Jewish quarter had to pay a tax called cuartas (fifteen dineros) to the church of Seville.51 It was possibly for the convenience of Jews living or working outside the judería that synagogues were established in the Christian-​controlled parts of the city. These islands of Jewish space in the predominantly Christian environment were vulnerable to attacks. It was bad enough, as the Christian jurados complained to Enrique II in 1371, that the judería was located ‘cerca de Santa Maria e cerca lo mejor desta çibdad’ (close to [the church of] Santa María and near the best part of the city).52 The expansion of Jewish ritual life — even a very limited one — into the urban landscape closely monitored and controlled by Christian religious and secular powers was interpreted as a provocation by forces seeking to control it for the material and spiritual benefits that it provided. The Christian elites’ desire to regulate and dominate Seville’s urban space was not the only factor behind the explosion of violence in 1391, but it must be considered as part of a comprehensive inquiry into the causes of the massacres. At the meeting of the Cathedral Chapter in January of 1391, Ferrán Martínez claimed that the archbishop of Seville had ordered the demolition of two ‘mal dichas sinagogas’ (accursed synagogues) because they were built ‘contra la santa Iglesia de Dios et sin licencia de alguna persona’ (against God’s Holy Church and without a licence from any person). One of them was located in the Corral de los Tromperos (just outside the judería, on the site of the modern Virgines street) and the other ‘en la varrera de Don Enrique Enriquez’ (in the barrera de Don Enrique Enriquez).53 As we now know, the second of the synagogues stood in the path of expansion for the archdeacon’s Hospital

 48 Madrid, AHN, Sección Clero, Toledo, Catedral, leg. 7215; Amador de los Rios, Historia social, politica y religiosa, ii, 588; Die Juden, ed. by Baer, ii, 217.  49 Collantes de Terán Sánchez, ‘La judería de Sevilla: el espacio urbano’, p. 119.  50 Montes Romero-​Camacho, ‘La aljama judía de Sevilla’, p. 28.  51 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 6, #2/5.  52 Valdeón Baruque, ‘Un ordenamiento de Enrique II a Sevilla’, pp. 289, 298.  53 ‘Acta Capitular del Cabildo de Sevilla’, ed. by Lea, pp. 224–25 (Lea’s transcription reads ‘barrera de don Enrique antiguas’, but it is clearly a mistake); Ecker, ‘The Conversion of Mosques to Synagogues in Seville’, p. 199.

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of St Martha, and he probably asked the archbishop to order its demolition soon after purchasing the property in 1385. Abigail Agresta has drawn attention to tensions over physical space in the city of Valencia, where the jurats saw the Jewish quarter as an obstacle to the realization of their plans for an ‘open, legible and rational’ space controlled by Christian public authority. After the massacre of 1391, they moved quickly to eliminate Jews from the city.54 In Seville, too, the judería disappeared, replaced by three new collaciones — Santa Cruz, Santa María la Blanca (de la Nieve), and San Bartolomé el Nuevo. The three main synagogues were converted into churches. Houses of those who fled or were killed, and the synagogues not converted into churches passed into royal possession and were given to the king’s servitors living in Seville. Although some Jews continued to reside in the former judería, others were dispersed throughout the city.55 Jews and Christians had similar ideas about the salvific value of property donations, but only one of the communities had the power to eliminate the other from the urban landscape.

 54 Agresta, ‘“Unfortunate Jews” and Urban Ugliness’, pp. 320–41.  55 Seville, ACS, Fondo Capitular, leg. 10, #1. Collantes de Terán Sánchez, ‘La judería de Sevilla: el espacio urbano’, pp. 127–29.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Madrid, Archivo Historico Nacional [AHN], Sección Clero Seville, Archivo de la Catedral de Sevilla [ACS], Fondo Capitular Primary Sources Burns, Robert Ignatius, ed., Las Siete Partidas, trans. by Samuel Parsons Scott, vol. 5: Underworlds: The Dead, the Criminal, and the Marginalized (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Inventario de los papeles de mayordomazgo del siglo XIV, ed. by Francisco Collantes de Terán Delorme (Sevilla: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 1968) Die Juden im christlichen Spanien. Erster Teil: Urkunden und Regesten, vol. ii: Kastilien, Inquisitionsakten, ed. by Yitzhak Baer (Berlin: Schocken, 1936) ‘Acta Capitular del Cabildo de Sevilla’, ed. by Henry Charles Lea, The American Historical Review, 1.2 (1896), 220–25 López de Ayala, Pero, Crónicas, ed. by José-​Louis Martín (Barcelona: Planeta, 1991) Secondary Works Agresta, Abigail, ‘“Unfortunate Jews” and Urban Ugliness: Crafting a Narrative of the 1391 Assault on the jueria of Valencia’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 43 (2017), 320–41 Álvarez, Manuel, Manuel Ariza, and Josefa Mendoza, Un padrón de Sevilla del siglo XIV: Estudio filológico y edición (Sevilla: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 2001) Amador de los Rios, José, Historia social, politica y religiosa de los judíos de España y Portugal, ii (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1984) Baumgarten, Elisheva, Practicing Piety in Medi­eval Ashkenaz: Men, Women, and Every­ day Religious Observance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) Belmonte Fernández, Diego, ‘Organizar, administrar, recordar: El Libro Blanco y El Libro de Dotaciones de la Catedral de Sevilla’ (PhD Dissertation, Universidad de Sevilla, 2016) Cantera Burgos, Francisco, Sinagogas Españolas (Madrid: Instituto ‘Benito Arias Montano’, 1984) Collantes de Terán Sánchez, Antonio, Diccionario Histórico de las Calles de Sevilla, i (Sevilla: Junta de Andalucía, 1993) —— , ‘El mundo humano: las élites y la organización ciudadana’, in Sevilla, siglo XIV, ed. by Rafael Valencia (Sevilla: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2006), pp. 87–111 —— , ‘La judería de Sevilla: el espacio urbano’, in La memoria de Sefarad: Historia y cultura de los sefardíes, ed. by Pedro M. Piñero Ramírez (Sevilla: Fundación Sevilla NODO y Fundación Machado, 2007), pp. 115–38

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Díaz Ibáñez, Jorge, ‘Iglesia y nobleza en la Sevilla bajomedi­eval’, Anuario de Estudios Medi­evales, 39.2 ( July–December 2009), 877–931 Dodds, Jerrilynn D., ‘Mudejar Tradition and the Synagogues of Medi­eval Spain: Cultural Identity and Cultural Hegemony’, in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medi­eval Spain, ed. by Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds, (New York: Braziller, 1992), pp. 113–31 Ecker, Heather L., ‘How to Administer a Conquered City in Al-​Andalus: Mosques, Parish Churches and Parishes’, in Under the Influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medi­eval Castile, ed. by Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 45–65 —— , ‘The Conversion of Mosques to Synagogues in Seville: The Case of the Mezquita de la Judería’, Gesta, 36.2 (1997), 190–207 Galinsky, Judah D., ‘Jewish Charitable Bequests and the Hekdesh Trust in Thirteenth-​Century Spain’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 35.3 (2005), 423–40 Gampel, Benjamin, Anti-​Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) Kirschberg Schenck, Debora, and Marcos Fernández Gómez, El Concejo de Sevilla en la Edad Media (1248–1454), 2 vols (Sevilla: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 2002) Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel, Historia de Sevilla: La ciudad medi­eval (1248–1492), 3rd rev. edn (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1989) Lester, Anne E., ‘Crafting a Charitable Landscape: Urban Topo­graphies in Charters and Testaments from Medi­eval Champagne’, in Cities, Texts and Social Networks: 400–1500, ed. by Caroline Goodson, Anne E. Lester, and Carol Symes (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 125–48 Montes Romero-​Camacho, Isabel, Propiedad y explotación de la tierra en la Sevilla de la Baja Edad Media (Sevilla: Fundación Fondo de Cultura de Sevilla, 1988) —— , ‘El judío sevillano don Yuçaf Pichón, contador mayor de Enrique II de Castilla (1369–1379)’, in Judaísmo Hispano: Estudios en memoria de José Luis Lacave Riaño, ed. by Elena Romero, ii (Madrid: CSIC, 2002), pp. 561–73 —— , ‘La aljama judía de Sevilla en la Baja Edad Media’, in El Patrimonio hebreo en la España medi­eval, ed. by Alberto Villar Movellán and María del Rosario Castro Castillo (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2004), pp. 25–52 —— , ‘Las minorías étnico-​religiosas en la Sevilla del siglo XIV: mudéjares y judíos’, in Sevilla, siglo XIV, ed. by Rafael Valencia (Sevilla: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2006), pp. 135–55 —— , ‘El ascenso de un linaje protoconverso en la Sevilla Trastámara. Los Marmolejo’, eHumanista/Converso, 4 (2016), 256–310 Pérez-​Embid Wamba, Javier, Culto funerario y registro necrológico de la catedral de Sevilla (siglos XIII–XV) (Madrid: Editorial Dykinson, 2015) Ros, Carlos, ed., Historia de la Iglesia de Sevilla (Sevilla: Editorial Castillejo, 1992) Ruiz, Teofilo, Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medi­eval Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994) —— , From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)

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Ruiz Souza, Juan Carlos, ‘Capillas Reales funerarias catedralicias de Castilla y León: Nuevas hipótesis interpretatives de las catedrales de Sevilla, Córdoba y Toledo’, Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte, 18 (2006), 9–29 Sánchez Saus, Rafael, Linajes sevillanos medi­evales, vol. 1 (Sevilla: Guadalquivir, 1991) —— , Las élites políticas bajo los Trastámara: poder y sociedad en la Sevilla del siglo XIV (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) Suárez Fernández, Luis, Monarquía hispana y revolución Trastámara (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1994) Valdeón Baruque, Julio, Los judíos de Castilla y la revolución Trastámara (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1968) —— , ‘Un ordenamiento de Enrique II a Sevilla’, Archivo Hispalense, 56.171–73 (1973), 285–300 —— , ‘Un pleito cristiano-​judío en la Sevilla del siglo XIV’, Historia. Instituciones. Documentos, 1 (1974), 221–38 Sevilla, siglo XIV, ed. by Rafael Valencia (Sevilla: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2006) Wolff, Philippe, ‘The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?’, Past & Present, 50 (1971), 4–18

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Jesús Ángel Solórz ano Telechea

From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic The Role of the Town-​Ports of Northern Iberia in the First Internationalization of the European Economy in the Middle Ages Introduction The Atlantic was the large maritime field over which the Crown of Castile extended itself during the Middle Ages. The Iberian Peninsula enjoyed a strategic geo­graphic position on the long-​distance routes between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries and on the expansion routes over the Atlantic Ocean. However, until the thirteenth century, the development of these maritime routes remained very modest. It was driven primarily by maritime pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela and the fleets of crusaders from northern Europe who circumnavigated the Iberian Peninsula on their way to the new Christian kingdoms of the Mediterranean Levant between 1096 and 1270. From the thirteenth century onward, a shift unfolded from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic owing to political, economic, and techno­logical factors, thence granting the Atlantic coastline a strategic position of the highest order within medi­eval commercial exchanges.1 The economy of Atlantic area evolved around three large hubs of growth: the Northern Cantabrian area, Lisbon to the west, and Seville to the South. Urban historio­graphy has granted priority to the study of these large ports over the smaller ones. However, recent research on maritime commerce, navigation, and port societies has demonstrated the valuable role played by small and medium-​sized ports within the network and have led to a correction



* This essay is part of the collective Research Project: ‘BARMER. From the boat to the market. Economic activity, social relations and armed conflicts in the port cities and towns of Atlantic Europe in the late Middle Ages’, funded by Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (PID2020-​ 118105GBI00).  1 Blockmans, ‘L’unification européenne par les circuits portuaires’, pp. 133–44. Jesús Ángel Solórzano Telechea ([email protected]) is Professor of Medi­eval History at the University of Cantabria. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 39–53 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126176

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of such a myopic approach by macroeconomic studies. On the other hand, some important issues of medi­eval Cantabrian town-​ports remain unexplored, especially the emergence of interurban relations in the Bay of Biscay and the relationships between this maritime region and the rest of Western Europe. The small town-​ports were decisive for exchange economies, which were based on the use of maritime routes as the main path of communication. They also connected with land communication routes, thus acting as central nodes of a communications system that linked the maritime horizon of the ports with the foreland, the hinterland, and beyond.2 The main advantage town-​ports enjoyed on the littoral was their strategic position midway on the route that connected two large maritime networks, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This positioning made them necessary ports of call for the vessels from both North and South, as well as the natural gateway for merchandise and people from the peninsular interior. The establishment by royal charters of some fifty town-​ports between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries laid the structural foundations for the development of maritime routes along the Cantabrian coastline. This essay will illustrate how Cantabrian ports constituted a subset of the urban system of the Crown of Castile and its relations with the Mediterranean and the Atlantic through the exploration of diverse factors such as geo­graphic conditions, political-​administrative dynamics, infrastructures, and economic and particularly commercial relationships. Therefore, this essay aims to shed some light on the role of the small town-​ports of the Iberian Peninsula in the broadening of European trading. Iberian kingdoms played a leading role in a globalization process, whose path inevitably depended on the development of communications between urban centres that were in charge of centralizing the exchange of people, goods, news, and ideas, especially between port cities.

The Affirmation of Royal Power in the Foundation of the Ports on the Cantabrian Sea At the dawn of the twelfth century, the Cantabrian coast was a fundamentally rural territory, dominated by secular and ecclesiastical seigniors, and very isolated due to its topo­graphy. The Codex Calixtinus describes Galicia as a land ‘scant in cities and towns’. The bishop of Oporto, Hugo, on his journey through the Cantabrian coast in the 1220s, makes no mention of town-​ports and describes the inhospitable nature and the difficulties of the routes due to the sea and the cliffs.3 However, in the early fifteenth century, fifty ports

 2 The foreland is the ocean-​facing mirror of the hinterland. It is, above all, the maritime space within which a port performs commercial relationships.  3 Guía del peregrino medi­eval (Codex Calixtinus), p. 38.

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had emerged along the 1300-​kilometre coastline known as Costeira do gran mar d’Espanna (Coast of the great sea of Spain). The foundation of town-​ports on the Cantabrian shore began in the twelfth century as a specific project of monarchs to establish a chain of maritime defensive sites along the coast and, in particular, as a means to affirm the power of the monarchy in the face of resistant feudal lords. The process of the foundation of these towns began in 1155 with the formal founding of Avilés and multiplied after the separation of the kingdoms of Castile and León as a result of the repopulation efforts of Fernando II and Alfonso IX on the coastal margin of León, of Alfonso VIII in that of Castile, and of Sancho VI the Wise in Navarre.4 In the kingdom of Castile, when Alfonso VIII married Eleanor of England, daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, in 1170, her dowry included Gascony, while the port of Santander served as the bride price. These holdings encouraged the strengthening of the Crown’s presence along the coast to open the kingdom to new Atlantic horizons and connect with the town-​ports of the Angevin Empire. Alfonso VIII and Eleonor initiated this process by granting fueros (charters) to four ports on the coast of the kingdom: Santander (1187), Laredo (1200), Castro Urdiales (1202), and San Vicente de la Barquera (1210). The incorporation of the Guipúzcoa territory into the kingdom of Castile in 1200, which included the port of San Sebastián, founded by Sancho the Wise of Navarre in 1180, was reinforced by the charters granted by Alfonso VIII to Fuenterrabía (1203), Guetaria (1209), and Motrico (1209).5 In all these fueros, commercial relationships take precedence; and some fueros even include privileges for the export of goods from the inland plains.6 The goal was to bolster the professional sector of merchants against any foreign competitor. Thus, for example, all retail commerce with foreigners was prohibited or limited, unless they obtained an explicit licence to do so.7 In the kingdom of Leon, the monarchs Fernando II (r. 1157–1188) and Alfonso IX (r. 1188–1230) also deployed enormous efforts to found ports in the Galician and Asturian littoral. These foundations were able to neutralize the influence of lay feudal estates as well as that of Santiago de Compostela’s archbishopric and the episcopal sees of Oviedo and Mondoñedo. In Asturias, Fernando founded Avilés in 1155, followed by the ports of Noya (1168) and Pontevedra (1169), although they soon came under the control of the see of Compostela. In Galicia, Alfonso created Ribadeo (1182), Viveiro (c. 1190), La Guardia (c. 1200), Bayona (1201), Betanzos (1219), and La Coruña (1208), the most important royal town-​port of the region.

 4  5  6  7

Ruiz de la Peña Solar and others, coord., Los fueros de Avilés y su época, p. 15. Solórzano Telechea, ‘Medi­eval Seaports of the Atlantic Coast of Spain’, pp. 81–100. Castro Urdiales’ charter (1202): Bilbao, AFV, Archivos de Familia, Familia Villaria, no. 2702. Santander’s charter (1187): Martínez Díez, ‘Fueros locales en el territorio de la provincia de Santander’, p. 592.

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The county of Biscay was the last Cantabrian region to partake in the foundation of town-​ports, precisely because it was a feudal territory. With the creation of Bermeo in 1236, Biscay entered the Atlantic routes as a port of embarkation for inland commodities. However, the foundation of other ports between late thirteenth century and early fourteenth century meant a diminishing of its predominant role in the commerce of the Biscayan coast. Plencia was founded on the shore of the river Butrón in 1299, Bilbao in the estuary of the river Nervión in 1300, Portugalete in 1322 at the end of that same estuary, Lequeitio in 1325 on the river Lea, and Ondárroa on the river Artibai in 1327. The competition between these ports led them to develop a certain specialization. Hence, Bermeo, Lequeitio, and Ondárroa concentrated on fishing activities, Portugalete combined commerce and fishing, and Bilbao finally established itself as the great commercial centre of the eastern Cantabrian coast. This process of creating town-​ports along the Atlantic littoral of the Iberian Peninsula disrupted the preexisting territorial organization by inserting towns directly dependent on the king into a territory that had traditionally featured strong seigniorial control. The new ports served to increase royal revenue through their maritime activities. Customs ordinances in Castilian ports issued by the Cortes of Jerez in 1268 allow us to perceive an early hierarchization of Cantabrian ports depending on their role as channels for mercantile traffic in the kingdom. From the west to east, these towns were San Sebastián, Fuenterrabía, Castro Urdiales, Laredo, Santander, Avilés, Ribadeo, Viveiro, Betanzos, La Coruña, Santa María de Ortigueira, Cedeira, Ferrol, Bayona, La Guardia, Pontevedra, Padrón, and Noya.8 After the unification of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon in 1230, Fernando III (r. 1230–1252) concentrated his efforts on issuing economic privileges. His son, Alfonso X (r. 1252–1284), granted important toll exemptions to northern ports that had helped in the conquest of Seville in 1248, such as Santander, Castro Urdiales, and Laredo. The foundation of new town-​ports was accompanied by the granting of economic privileges and protectionist measures, which strengthened the relations between the monarchy and the merchants and shipmasters. On the one hand, the kings granted general tax exemptions to the town dwellers. In 1280, Alfonso X gave a privilege to the inhabitants of Hondarribia that exempted them from all poll tax and imposts, except the tithe, ‘que se pueble mejor’ (so that it [the town] might be better populated).9 Likewise, monarchs helped to consolidate the position of the emerging elites enriched by maritime activities by allowing merchants to share in the profits of royal taxation. One of the most significant royal levies was the renta de las ferrerías (iron forge duties). In 1257, Alfonso X allocated

 8 Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla, p. 74.  9 Colección documental del Archivo Municipal de Hondarribia. (1186–1479), ed. by Larrañaga, pp. 8–9.

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the royal rights over iron forges in the Cantabrian region, from Asturias de Santillana to Fuenterrabía, for 15,000 maravedies for five years, to two merchants from Santander, Pero Pérez de Pámanes and Domingo Pérez. These men maintained strong relations with the royal court: the latter was related to Don Sancho, abbot of Santander, bishop-​elect of Toledo, chancellor, and the king’s brother.10 Royal concern for the fostering of mercantile activities of the Cantabrian ports lasted until the late Middle Ages. In 1503, Queen Isabel I granted La Coruña the privilege of holding a free fair for thirty days, with the aim of attracting foreign merchants with fiscal advantages. This type of privilege was a significant spur to the urban economies of ports.11 The diezmos de la mar (import taxes) represented one of the more lucrative sources of revenue for the Castilian Crown until their abolition by Enrique IV. The arrival at Castro Urdiales, Laredo, Santander, and San Vicente de la Barquera of Atlantic commodities, taxed at 10 per cent of their value, in the same manner as those leaving the kingdom, represented a source of income of the highest order. In 1448, the arrendadores (tax collectors) of the diezmos de la mar denounced the fraud committed by merchants diverting goods from the ports of the eastern Cantabrian coast to the west. Their intention was to avoid paying for the goods in ports under the jurisdiction of the customs of Burgos, resulting in a reduction of 80 per cent and thereby causing great harm to royal tax revenues.12 This case demonstrates the considerable competition between Basque and Cantabrian ports and those of Galicia and Asturias. In this context, the construction of port infrastructure was vital for the development of the international trade of the town-​ports. Nevertheless, of the fifty town-​ports founded along the Cantabrian coast, only the eastern ones built wharves, with the exception of La Coruña in Galicia. Thus, the construction of port infrastructure in the town-​ports along the eastern Cantabrian coast through the fifteenth century, from San Vicente de la Barquera up to Fuenterrabía, set up a new port hierarchy on the eastern shore that was more dynamic and stronger than the one on the western shore.13

The Role of Cantabrian Ports in the ‘Maritimization’ of the Peninsular North Having analysed the various physical and political factors that stimulated the formation of an urban network along the Cantabrian coastline, in this section we will analyse the process of ‘maritimization’ of the peninsular north. Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, the littoral increased its influence on

 10 Hernández, Las rentas del rey, p. 460.  11 Ferreira Priegue, Galicia en el comercio marítimo medi­eval, p. 113.  12 Díez de Salazar, El diezmo viejo y seco, p. 19.  13 Solórzano Telechea, ‘Medi­eval Seaports of the Atlantic Coast of Spain’, pp. 91–98.

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the economy of the northern Crown of Castile, in particular in the area from Burgos to the ports on the eastern Cantabrian coast. Following the creation of the town-​ports, the merchants acted as agents who simultaneously generated and modified consumption and production patterns of the population. From the thirteenth century on, the highly competitive international commerce was in private hands. This commerce was led by merchants who created wide mercantile coalitions in different ports. The actions of these mercantile agents manifested in interurban connections that, during the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, played a significant role in the regulation of mercantile activities in the absence of formal institutions. The first commercial relations between Cantabrian merchants and European town-​ports are documented at the beginning of the thirteenth century, when records mention that the port of La Rochelle was frequented by merchants sailing to England and Flanders in 1224. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, ships from the kingdoms of Galicia, León, and Castile disembarked in Bruges with the following merchandise: grain, wax, hemp, mercury, almonds, iron, silver, wine, leather, leatherwork, fur, and wool.14 During those same years, we find merchants from San Sebastián in the ports of southern England, with an increasing presence after the marriage between Leonor of Castile and the Edward I of England and the signing of the Anglo-​Castilian treaty of 1254.15 The profitability of commerce in the Cantabrian ports was evident in the creation by Alfonso X of the diezmo de la mar of Castile, taxing all commodities arriving in and departing from these ports at 10 per cent of their value. According to the customs tax register of 1293 and 1294, the Cuatro Villas de la Costa de la Mar had collected more than twice those of Guipúzcoa, namely 65,508 and 64,973 maravedis, respectively, with 46 per cent of the receipts of the Cuatro Villas de la Costa corresponding to Santander, thus informing us that it was the most active port at the end of the thirteenth century, shortly before the foundation of Bilbao in 1300.16 Among the imported goods were over fifty varieties of cloth, foodstuffs, metal goods, ornaments, dyes, and cattle from Flanders, England, and France bound for the ports and the interior of the Castilian Plateau.17 The diezmo de la mar of 1293 informs us about the commercial relations between the Cantabrian coast and, fundamentally, the Atlantic town-​ports of Abbeville, Arras, Bailleul, Caen, Cambray, Commines, Douai, Ghent, Langemark, Lille, Lincoln, Montreuil, Parthenay, Poperinge, Provence, Reims, Rouen, Saint Omer, Tournai, and Yprès, and to a lesser extent with the Mediterranean (Montpellier and Venice). From the second half of the fourteenth century,

 14  15  16  17

Inventaire, ed. by Gilliodts van Severen, p. 226. Childs, ‘Commercial Relations between the Basque Provinces and England’, pp. 55–64. Gaibrois Riaño, Historia de Sancho IV de Castilla, p. 106. Castro, ‘Unos aranceles de aduanas’, pp. 1–29.

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vessels from the town-​ports of the eastern Cantabrian coast visited the port of Mallorca frequently, as is revealed by the records of ancoratge, with the arrival of ships from Bermeo, Castro Urdiales, Fuenterrabía, Guetaria, Lequeitio, San Sebastián, and Santander.18 For example, the case of Pedro Amor, shipmaster of Santander, is very well documented in the first half of the fourteenth century. As shipmaster, he assumed the most important responsibilities and carried out several functions, such as recruiting and paying the crew, equipment and maintenance of the ship, as well as the financial management of the company. In 1329, while he was in Bruges, he engaged Pedro Debo, an agent for the Catocho company, to deliver eighty-​five woollen sacks and six bales of cloth in Seville to Roger de Berto of the Bardi company, and then to sail towards Majorca. However, his cargo was requisitioned in Cádiz, when the authorities thought that it belonged to Venetians. Pedro Debo was already in Palma by 14 May 1330, and returned on 26 October 1332. In 1338, he made a contract with the Nigri Cocho, a Venetian company, to bring Greek wine and alum to Sluys. But he did not respect the contract and travelled to Harfleur, where he declared that the ownership of the freight corresponded to the Bardi and Peruzzi companies. In total he ended up making the Balearic-​Dutch route at least twice during a nine-​year period.19 Towards the end of that century, in 1385, 42 per cent of the ships arriving in London belonged to Castilian merchants. By the end of the fifteenth century, 480 Castilian merchants are documented as living in Bristol, London, Southampton, and Sandwich. The main commodities exported from England were cloth, followed by grain, leather, fish, tin, ornaments, and books, whereas those sailing from the Cantabrian town-​ports were wine, spices, oil, silk, and wool.20 Furthermore, Cantabrian ships transported goods between France, England, Flanders, Andalusia, and Italy. Likewise, the merchants of the Cantabrian town-​ports linked the Mediterranean and Atlantic town-​ports of the Iberian Peninsula. For example, Esteban de Sarasquo, town dweller of Bayonne, transported lead from Valencia to La Coruña in 1393.21 In the northern Peninsula, the ports and their merchants created institutions, such as the Hermandad de la Marina de Castilla, also known as Hermandad de las Marismas. Cantabrian ports agreed to associate with a clear twofold aim: mutual protection and commercial prosperity. In 1296, the Hermandad de la Marina de Castilla was established, which comprised the eight most dynamic ports of the Cantabrian region (Santander, Laredo, Castro Urdiales, San Vicente de la Barquera, Bermeo, Guetaria, San Sebastián, and Fuenterrabía) plus the city of Vitoria in the Álava inland. The capital of the Hermandad was

 18 Santamaría, ‘La reconquista de las vías marítimas’, pp. 41–133.  19 Ortega Villoslada, El reino de Mallorca y el mundo atlántico (1230–1349), p. 261.  20 Childs, Anglo-​Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 154–78.  21 València, ARV, MR, no. 11 (733) and Barcelona, ARV, BG, no. 255, fol. 194v. Ferreira Priegue, Galicia en el comercio marítimo, p. 503.

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established in Castro Urdiales. Among the purposes defined in their charter was the prohibition of trading with Bayonne in the British Guiana, with England and Flanders for the duration of the war with France, to free the ports from the obligation of paying tolls to Burgos’ bishop, to ensure peace and trade with Portugal, settle internal conflicts peacefully, and uphold the king’s rule throughout the coast.22 This Hermandad contributed to strengthening the commercial role of the eastern Cantabrian littoral, whose ports emerged as intermediary centres, becoming the only gateway for the inland produce of the kingdom of Castile and serving as ports of call on the route connecting the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. In spite of this agreement, commercial agents could not ignore their very close links with ports under English control, Bayonne and Bordeaux, in the thirteenth century, as manifested in the safe-​conduct obtained by Castilian merchants and mariners in 1297 from King Edward I, or the truces, such as the one signed in 1293 between the king of Castile and the commune of Bayonne, or those established by Castro Urdiales, Laredo and, Santander, signed in 1306 and 1309, in the same manner as the ports of Guipúzcoa did in 1309, 1311, and 1328.23 A petition issued by the port of Bermeo in 1317, addressed to King Edward I in the name of all the Biscayan towns, entreated the English not to attack them, despite the conflict between the Kingdoms of Castile and England.24 This petition informs us that the ports of eastern Cantabrian coast devised their own political treaties. The goals of these agreements were to sustain their military or commercial influence in English and French ports and avert the competition of other commercial networks, such as the Hanse, which could have taken advantage of the international context to infiltrate these markets. The role played by the Cantabrian town-​ports in the Hundred Years’ War was very important for the consolidation of Castile as a maritime and economic powerhouse of the West in the Late Middle Ages. The institution of the Hermandad de la Marina de Castilla was short-​lived. From the onset of the Hundred Years’ War, the activities of port towns abroad were conducted by merchants, who established themselves as representatives of each of the marina provinçias (maritime provinces) of the so-​called mar d’España. Castilian neutrality during the war until the naval defeat at Winchelsea in 1350 allowed merchants of the Cantabrian coast to do good business with Flanders, England, and other western ports. In 1339, the same year that Philip VI of Valois granted merchants certain privileges to attract them to Normandy, minor Hermandades were founded at a number of towns, including Guetaria, San Sebastián, and Motrico. Such new associations eroded at the unity of action against external agents and fragmented the Hermandad de la Marina de Castilla. For his part,

 22 Benavides, Memorias de don Fernando IV de Castilla, pp. 81–85.  23 Solórzano Telechea, ‘La primera internacionalización’, p. 160.  24 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, iii, 53.

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Edward III of England deployed a prudent strategy regarding Castile during the early years of the war to avoid retaliation in Bayonne, where he obtained his warships. In 1343, John IV of Brittany signed a commercial treaty with Biscayan merchants opening this market to wool and iron.25 This state of affairs that benefited Cantabrian merchants was broken in 1350 with the English victory in Winchelsea over the Castilian convoy sailing from Flanders and with the onset of the war of the corsairs in Bayonne on the Cantabrian coast. Before long, several truces were signed with the aim of ending a confrontation that benefited no one. In 1351 and 1353, two treaties were finalized between the kingdom of England and ‘Toutes Marismes & Costeres de Meer, Portz, Citees & Villes de la Seignure le Rois de Castelle & du Counte de Viscaye’ (All Salt Marshes & Sea Coasts, Ports, Cities & Towns of the Lord King of Castile & of the County of Biscay), with the aim of fostering commerce, guaranteeing the protection of the Cantabrian ships in the English ports, and preventing Castilian vessels on the Cantabrian from supporting the French.26 The latter of these, from 29 October 1353, was signed in the parish of Fuenterrabía by Bayonne and Biarritz, with representatives from Castro Urdiales, Fuenterrabía, San Sebastián, Guetaria, Motrico, and Laredo on behalf of the town-​ports of the whole Hermandad de la Marina, and included rules for the punishment of transgressors.27 A year later, Edward III confirmed this agreement.28 Such treaties illustrate how town-​ports served their own interests, signing agreements first and only later requesting the Castilian king’s blessing. In the context of the Castilian Civil War between Pedro I of Castile and Enrique II de Trastámara (1366–1369), Pedro I signed the treaty of Libourne with Carlos II, king of Navarre, and England’s ‘Black Prince’ Edward in 1366.29 This treaty divided the ports of the Hermandad de la Marina into two factions: the fleet of the Cuatro Villas de la Costa gave the support to Pedro I, while the fleet of Biscay and Guipúzcoa, despite their interests in England, rose in favour of Enrique II in 1367. This rupture meant the end of the unity of the Hermandad de la Marina.30 For most of the merchant networks of the Cantabrian coast, the alliance with England was crucial in maintaining commerce with Flanders. Nevertheless, the alliance with France brought several naval victories to the ports of the Cantabrian littoral, leading to the opening of Atlantic ports to Castilian commodities. Hence, the poor relations of the Cantabrian ports with Enrique II evolved from hostility to good relations. Certainly, the alliance between France and Castile seriously harmed the interests of Flanders, but

 25 Suárez Fernández, Intervención de Castilla, p. 7.  26 Rymer, Foedera, vi, 717–19.  27 Rymer, Foedera, v, 767–71.  28 Rymer, Foedera, v, 790–91.  29 Russell, The English intervention in Spain, p. 66.  30 Rymer, Foedera, iii, 115–17.

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some years later, in 1384, Philip II of Burgundy confirmed the privileges of the Castilians, most of them coming from the Cantabrian coast.31 The internationalization of the economy of Castile in the fifteenth century is largely explained by the settlement in Bruges of transporters and merchants from Cantabrian ports who were able to integrate Castile within international commercial circuits.32 During the fifteenth century, merchants established ‘nations’ and consulates, institutions meant to resolve conflicts safely, especially regarding payments. Such establishment of merchant colonies and consulates in Bruges had numerous benefits, including reduced transaction costs, increased trust, and enhanced emotional stability of merchants. These foundations assisted with the closing of deals and the search for products. They also reinforced the solidarity between their members on foreign ground and facilitated their integration in the host societies.33 Castilian merchants established themselves early in Bruges. The first to do so were Castilian merchants from Cantabria, as proven by the records of the Zwin channel in 1230. The earliest privilege was granted on 26 August 1280 by the count of Flanders, Guy de Dampierre. This privilege addressed a problem that had occurred some years earlier, when Castilian and German merchants complained to the count about the imposition of tolls and imposed a boycott that lasted two years. This scenario demonstrates that the commercial position of these merchants in Flanders was already very solid. The merchants went to Ardenbourg for two years with a letter of liberties from the count of Flanders to prevent them from leaving the town.34 This letter laid the foundation for future privileges of the merchants. Granted to four consuls, such privileges protected their interests by guaranteeing the safety of their persons and assets and their entitlement to hold a seal. The colony received the name of Nación de Vizcaya y de la costa marina de España (Nation of Biscay and of the Coast of Spain) in 1441. The main export from Castile was fine wool for the Flanders market and, in return, the import of Flemish products such as cloth, furniture, tapestries, and decorative objects. In the early days of the Bruges colony, Cantabrian merchants and mariners lodged in inns, where they would sleep, eat, and store their merchandise in warehouses, as was the case of the Ter Beurse inn.35 The nation of Cantabrian merchants, which was the oldest, came into conflict from the 1440s with the Burgalese merchants installed in Bruges, who adopted the name of Nación de España. This Nación de España included merchants from Burgos, Seville, Toledo, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid, Medina del Campo, Logroño, Nájera, Navarrete, and other Spanish inland  31 Cartulaire de l’ancienne consulat d’Espagne à Bruges, ed. by Gilliodts van Severen, p. 18.  32 Stabel, ‘Foreign Merchant Communities’, pp. 154–74.  33 Smith, Historia de los Consulados de Mar, pp. 11–28. Llibre del consulat del Mar de Valencia, ed. by Simó, p. 25.  34 Hansisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Höhlbaum and others, pp. 295–99.  35 González Arce, ‘La ventaja de llegar primero’, pp. 92–93; Casado Alonso, ‘Genèse et fin des réseaux de commerce castillans’, pp. 129–49.

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towns. On their side, the Nación de Vizcaya y de la Costa de España grouped all the merchants from the coast, from Galicia to Guipúzcoa.36 The foundation of the consulate of Burgos in July 1494, on which the Nación de España in Bruges was dependent, complicated relations between Castilian merchants, as it included under its jurisdiction all towns from the merindad (administrative division) of Trasmiera to Fuenterrabía along the Cantabrian coast. On the one hand, Cantabrian merchants had no intention of being controlled by Burgalese merchants. On the other, the latter group did not want to depend on the shipmasters of the coast for the transport of wool by sea. For this reason, the town council of Bilbao (the most important Cantabrian port in the late fifteenth century), acting together with the Cofradía de mercaderes y maestres de nao de Santiago (Confraternity of merchants and shipmasters of Santiago) and the Nación de la Costa de España (Nation of the Coast of Spain) in Bruges, worked to defend their own commercial interests in the town-​ports of the Cantabrian coast, separate from the interests of Burgos. In 1495, the Catholic Monarchs freed the Lordship of Biscay of the jurisdiction of the consulate of Burgos. In 1499, the areas of influence were defined, with the Cuatro Villas de la Costa de la Mar remaining under the jurisdiction of the University of Burgos, and a confraternity established for the tax contributions of Biscay, Guipúzcoa, Las Encartaciones, and Álava. The foundation in 1511 of the Consulate of Bilbao, with the same capacities as those of the Consulate of Burgos, meant the definite breakdown of the unity of action of the merchants of the eastern Cantabrian coast.37 Thus, the port system of the northern Peninsula was divided between two categories of ports: larger ones with a clear commercial and international purpose, led by Bilbao and including Laredo, Santander, San Sebastián, and La Coruña, and smaller ones that combined the similarly lucrative businesses of fishing and fish-​salting.

Conclusions The port structure of European maritime commerce in the Middle Ages was thus organized in a hierarchical manner, with a framework composed of the ports of large maritime and economic powerhouses, as points of origin and destination of the large Mediterranean and Atlantic routes that structured international commercial traffic. These included ports such as Genoa and Venice on the Mediterranean, and London and Bruges on the Atlantic. On a secondary level, there existed an intermediate grade of ports that participated both in their regional sphere and in international maritime traffic, and that were vital parts of a navigation system that depended on cabotage and ports

 36 Solórzano Telechea, ‘La Nación de Vizcaya y de la Marina Costa de España’, pp. 221–44.  37 Guiard y Larrauri, Historia del Consulado y Casa de Contratación de la villa de Bilbao, p. 7.

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of call as a means of provisioning and exchange. This is the case of the town-​ ports of the Cantabrian Sea, La mar de España, which, being intermediate ports, became dynamic poles in the Cantabrian region and nodal hubs of commercial traffic in the kingdom of Castile. Two heterogenous groups of ports evolved along the Cantabrian coast. On the one hand, there were those town-​ports on the stretch from Santander to Fuenterrabía during the second half of the fifteenth century, with a clear international orientation led by Bilbao. This group of town-​ports functioned as a spatially interconnected urban regional system with strong economic, political, and sociocultural links. On the other hand, there were the town-​ports between San Vicente de la Barquera and Bayona, involved mainly in fishing activities and maritime transport. Only the town-​ports of Avilés and La Coruña stand out within this group for not being integrated within a proper urban regional system, even though they did establish connections with the other ports. Only the five town-​ports of Bilbao, Laredo, Santander, San Sebastián, and La Coruña played a leading role in serving as a bridge between the ports of the Western Mediterranean and those of the North Sea. Thus, we can conclude that the network of the fifty Cantabrian ports of the late Middle Ages, despite their internal differences, were successful because their collaboration was based on a series of key similarities that included their geo­graphic conditions, infrastructures, and dynamic societies. They were also successful because they developed, in their politics and governance, common characteristics in response to local needs and conditions — in particular their positioning as the maritime frontier of the Crown of Castile — that differed from those of inland towns. Consequently, the success of the Iberian kingdoms relied on the fact that the small town-​ports knew how they could fit effectively into the international routes between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. These developments had brilliant results during the Hundred Years’ War, and new routes to ports in Africa, Asia, and America were added from mid-​fifteenth century onwards. In sum, understanding the role of the Cantabrian ports allows for a better understanding of the relevance of the Iberian kingdoms in the origins of European global expansionism.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Barcelona, Batllia General [BG], no. 255 Bilbao, Archivo Foral de Vizcaya [AFV], Archivos de Familia, Familia Villaria, no. 2702 València, Arxiu del Regne de València [ARV], Mestre Racional [MR], no. 11 (733) Primary Sources Benavides, Antonio, Memorias de don Fernando IV de Castilla, ii (Madrid: Imprenta de José Rodríguez, 1860) Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, iii: Edward II, 1317–1321 (London: Mackie, 1903) Cartulaire de l’ancienne consulat d’Espagne à Bruges, ed. by Louis Gilliodts van Severen (Bruges: Impremérie de Louis de Plancke, 1901) Castro, Américo, ‘Unos aranceles de aduanas del siglo XIII’, Revista de Filo­logía Española, 8 (1921), 1–29 and 9 (1922), 325–56 Colección documental del Archivo Municipal de Hondarribia (1186–1479), ed. by Miguel Larrañaga Zulueta and Izaskun Tapia Rubio (San Sebastián: Eusko Ikaskutza, 1993) Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla, i (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1861) Díez de Salazar, Luís Miguel, El diezmo viejo y seco, o diezmo de la mar de Castilla (s. XIII–XVI) (San Sebastián: Grupo Dr Camino de historia de San Sebastián, 1983) Gaibrois Riaño, Mercedes, Historia de Sancho IV de Castilla (Madrid: Editorial Voluntad, 1922) —— , ed., Inventaire des archives de la ville de Bruges. Inventaire de chartres, ii (Bruges: Gaillard, 1873) Guía del peregrino medi­eval (Codex Calixtinus), ed. by Millán Bravo Lorenzo (Sahagún: Centro estudios Camino de Santiago, 1989) Hansisches Urkundenbuch, ed. by Konstantin Höhlbaum and Karl Kunze, i (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1876) Hernández, Francisco J., Las rentas del rey: sociedad y fisco en el reino castellano del siglo XIII: estudio y documentos (Madrid: Fundación Ramón Areces, 1993) Historia compostelana, ed. by Emma Falqué Rey (Madrid: Akal, 1995) Inventaire des archives de la ville de Bruges. Section premiere. Inventaire des Chartes. Premiere serie. Treizieme au seizieme siècle, ed. by Louis Gilliodts-​van Severen (Bruges: Typo­graphie Edw. Gailliard & Cie, 1873) Llibre del consulat del Mar de Valencia, ed. by Vicente L. Simó (València: ayuntamiento de Valencia, 2006)

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Martínez Díez, Gonzalo, ‘Fueros locales en el territorio de la provincia de Santander’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español, 46 (1976), 527–608 Rymer, Thomas, Foedera, conventiones, literae et cuiuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Anglie, iii (London: Hagae comitis, 1739) —— , Foedera, conventiones, literae et cuiuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Anglie, v (London: Hagae comitis, 1727) —— , Foedera, conventiones, literae et cuiuscunque generis acta publica inter reges Anglie, vi (London: Hagae comitis, 1740) Salazar, Javier Garay, and Ramón Ojeda San Miguel, Notas históricas del noble cabildo de pescadores y mareantes de San Andrés y San Pedro de Castro Urdiales (Bilbao: Beta III Milenio, 2003) Secondary Works Blockmans, Wim, ‘L’unification européenne par les circuits portuaires’, in La ville médiévale en débat, ed. by Amélia Andrade Aguiar and Adelaida Millán da Costa (Lisboa: Instituto de Estudos Medievais, 2013), pp. 133–44 Casado Alonso, Hilario, ‘Genèse et fin des réseaux de commerce castillans dans l’Europe des XVe et XVIe siècles’, in Réseaux marchands et réseaux de commerce. Concepts récents, réalités historiques du Moyen Âge au XIXe siècle, ed. by Damien Coulon (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2010), pp. 129–49 Childs, Wendy R., Anglo-​Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978) —— , ‘Commercial Relations between the Basque Provinces and England in the Later Middle Ages, c. 1200–c. 1500’, Itsas Memoria, Revista de Estudios Marítimos del País Vasco, 4 (2003), 55–64 Ferreira Priegue, Elisa, Galicia en el comercio marítimo medi­eval (La Coruña: Fundación Pedro Barrie de La Maza, 1988) González Arce, José Damián, ‘La ventaja de llegar primero. Estrategias en la pugna por la supremacía mercantil durante los inicios de los consulados de Burgos y Bilbao (1450–1515)’, Miscelánea Medi­eval Murciana, 33 (2009), 77–97 Guiard y Larrauri, Teófilo, Historia del Consulado y Casa de Contratación de la villa de Bilbao (Bilbao: Librería de José Astuy, 1972) Ortega Villoslada, Antonio, El reino de Mallorca y el mundo atlántico (1230–1349) (La Coruña: Netbiblo, 2008) Ruiz, Teofilo F., The Western Mediterranean and the World: 400 ce to the Present (Hoboken: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2018) Ruiz de la Peña, Juan Ignacio, ‘La función comercial de las villas nuevas del norte de España en la Edad Media (1150–1300 ca.)’, in Viajes y viajeros en la España medi­eval (Madrid: Centro de Estudios del Románico, 1997), pp. 177–92 Ruiz de la Peña Solar, Juan Ignacio, María J. Sanz Fuentes, and Miguel Calleja Puerta, coord., Los fueros de Avilés y su época (Oviedo: Real Instituto de Estudios Asturianos, 2012) Russell, Peter E., The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955)

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Santamaría, Alvaro, ‘La reconquista de las vías marítimas’, Anuario de Estudios Medi­evales, 10 (1980), 41–133 Smith, Robert Sidney, Historia de los Consulados de Mar (1250–1700) (Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 1978) Solórzano Telechea, Jesús Ángel, ‘Medi­eval Seaports of the Atlantic Coast of Spain’, International Journal of Maritime History¸ 21 (2009), 81–100 —— , ‘La primera internacionalización de la economía española en la baja Edad Media: de la Hermandad de la Marina del Cantábrico a la Nación de la Costa de España’, in Economia e instituiçoes na Idade Média: novas abordagens, ed. by Jesús Solórzano and Mário Viana (Ponta Delgada: Centro de Estudios Gaspar Frutuoso, 2013), pp. 155–82 —— , ‘La Nación de Vizcaya y de la Marina Costa de España: la colonia de mercaderes, marineros y transportistas del cantábrico en la ciudad de Brujas en la Edad Media’, in Diplomacia y comercio en la Europa atlántica medi­eval, ed. by Jesús Ángel Solórzano Telechea, Beatriz Arízaga Bolumburu, and Louis Sicking (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2015), pp. 221–44 Stabel, Peter, ‘Foreign Merchant Communities in Bruges, Antwerp and Amsterdam, c. 1350–1650’, in Cultural Change in Early Modern Europe, vol. II: Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, ed. by Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 154–74 Suárez Fernández, Luis, Intervención de Castilla en la Guerra de los Cien Años (Valladolid: Industrias Gráficas ESPE, 1950) —— , Navegación y comercio en el golfo de Vizcaya: Un estudio sobre la política mari­ nera de la casa de Trastámara (Madrid: Escuela de Estudios Medi­evales, 1959) Tranchant, Mathias, Le commerce maritime de La Rochelle à la fin du Moyen Age (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2003)

53

Denis Menjot

The Fiscal Dialogue at the Castilian Cortes of Madrigal of 1438 During the last centuries of the Middle Ages, the Castilian monarchy — like others in western Europe, but before them — gradually developed a fiscal system, that is to say, a set of tax procedures and levies conceived so that no source of income or wealth could avoid being tapped.1 Originally created with an aim to cover public expenditures, the fiscal system ended up being instrumental to economic development — either supporting or hindering it — and to the acceleration or the obstruction of social dynamics and the genesis of administrative structures. Whether they were aware of it or not, the authorities played their part in this process by carefully directing the collection of private resources on the one hand and the redistribution of the proceeds on the other. Taxation was also a means for the monarchy to impose its power over a territory and its inhabitants. Yet the establishment and development of the monarchy’s fiscal system did not occur without resistance from the country’s political forces, namely the Church, the nobility and the towns, and the relations between the latter and the monarchy altered quite noticeably throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. All monarchies must communicate and have a dialogue with the political forces of their realms to avert conflicts and obtain consent to the levying of taxes.2 In Castile, this dialogue took place in assemblies called Cortes.3 The Cortes were born at the end of the thirteenth century and grew in importance over the following two centuries, thus reflecting a particular state of affairs: the power and autonomy acquired by urban communities, the

* This work is part of the Research Project of the State Program of the I&D system ‘La con­ strucción de una cultura fiscal en Castilla: poderes, negociación y articulación social (ca. 1250–1550)’, (PGC2018–097738-​B-​100), integrated in the network Arca Comunis. Translated by Christopher Mobley (introduction, part 1and 2) and Peter Clark (part 3 and conclusion), I thank them both most gratefully.  1 The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, 1200–1815, ed. by Bonney.  2 Hébert, Parlementer; Hébert, La voix du peuple..  3 On the Cortes’ organization, see Gautier-​Dalché, ‘L’organisation des Cortes de Castille et León (milieu XIIIe–1473)’, pp. 267–88.

Denis Menjot (denis.menjot@ish-​lyon.cnrs.fr) is Emeritus Professor of Medi­eval History, University of Lyon, France. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) p p.   5 5 – 7 1 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126177

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only ones able to provide kings with the financial support they needed, but in exchange for a say in the monarch’s decisions. Kings summoned the Cortes most often to obtain consent for extraordinary taxation, but the representatives took advantage of these meetings to present petitions to the king because they knew that if he approved them, they would become the law of the land. From the fourteenth century, only representatives of towns attended the Cortes. However, only towns located in royal territory were entitled to representation, and in the fifteenth century the number of these stood at the rather low figure of seventeen. These towns were always represented by members of the minor urban aristocracy: hidalgos and caballeros de villa. The discussions between the king and procuradores (representatives) of the towns were written down in cuadernos (notebooks) that took the form of a dialogue between the king and his subjects. In general, the procuradores presented their grievances to the king, explaining the reasons for their complaints, and the king could then consent or refuse to provide redress. Some of these resolutions received royal sanction and acquired the status of law. The cuadernos therefore had legal value. The king’s decisions were legally enforceable; hence numerous royal decrees were issued during the Cortes. However, in many cases the king put off giving a decisive response. Royal officials were responsible for drafting the cuadernos, and as such, the representatives’ words were mediated by the royal administration and therefore passed down to us in a way that was deemed acceptable by the monarchy. During the reign of John II (1406–1454), an office known as the ‘escribano de los fechos de los procuradores’ (notary for acts of the procuradores), or simply ‘escribano de los procuradores’ (notary of the procuradores) was even created.4 Lastly, we must keep in mind that the representatives nearly always described the situation in the kingdom in very alarming terms: an inefficient justice system, economic struggles, widespread fraud and corruption, arbitrary decisions by lords, abuses by finance officials and tax-​farmers. This discourse was part of a political communication strategy: it was a traditional means of addressing one’s requests to the king in the hopes of obtaining redress. Therefore, we must take words of the procuradores with a grain of salt. The proceedings of the Cortes of León and Castile regarding the kingdom’s tax matters have been studied in depth from the reign of Alfonso X, who set up a new tax system, until 1429, when the innovations introduced by the newly-​reigning House of Trastámara had been fully established and stabilized.5 Further research has focused on the Cortes proceedings beginning  4 The first reference to this institution in a royal document dates back to 1449, but it can legitimately be assumed that it existed previously; on the reign of John II, see Porras Arboledas, Juan II, 1406–1454.  5 Ladero Quesada, ‘Las Cortes de Castilla y la política hacendistíca de la monarquía (1252–1369)’, pp. 57–72; Menjot, ‘L’établissement du système fiscal en Castille’, pp. 149–73; Ladero Quesada, ‘Cortes de Castilla y León y fiscalidad regia (1369–1429)’, pp. 289–373.

the fiscal dialogue at the castilian cortes of madrigal of 1438

in the mid-​fifteenth century, although the intermediary two-​decade period has been relatively neglected by historians.6 No books have been published on the subject of the Cortes and royal taxation during this period, although Miguel-​Angel Ladero did mention them in his more general research.7 Yet the Cortes were held frequently during this period, the same time that the king’s privado, the constable Álvaro de Luna, was at the height of his power.8 There were no fewer than eleven sessions in the seventeen years from 1430 to 1447: Burgos 1430, Palencia 1431, Zamora 1432, Madrid 1433 and 1435, Toledo 1436, Madrigal 1438, Valladolid 1440 and 1442, Olmedo 1445, and Valladolid 1447. As in previous and subsequent periods, the notebooks of this period are therefore very rich in information of varying nature and importance on royal taxation. This paper endeavours to fill this gap in the scholarship by focusing on a single session of the Cortes, the one that took place in Madrigal in 1438. It examines the 1438 notebook to identify the complaints of the Cortes relating to tax matters, the reforms they proposed to remedy the wrongs they denounced, and the tax policy they recommended.9 The sovereign summoned these Cortes to grant a servicio (extraordinary tax), which they did by granting him a pedido (distribution levy) of twenty-​seven million maravédis, the same amount as granted by the Cortes of 1436, but less than the Cortes of 1435, which had granted thirty million. These Cortes, gathered in the small Castilian town of Madrigal, took on special importance because they were held in the unique circumstances of the late 1430s, when Castile was going through a period of economic difficulties and serious political unrest and the strengthening of the king’s authority, with the privado of King John II, Álvaro de Luna, angering members of the upper nobility, the ‘Grandees’, who revolted.10 The Cortes brought together representatives of the towns who presented their demands to the king and explained the reasons for  6 Olivera Serrano, Las Cortes de Castilla y León y la crisis del reino (1445–1474); Hermann and Le Flem, ‘Les finances’.  7 Ladero Quesada, La Hacienda real de Castilla en el siglo XV; Ladero Quesada, Poder político y sociedad en Castilla. Siglos XIII al XV; Ladero Quesada, the papers collected in El Siglo XV en Castilla. Fuentes de renta y política fiscal.  8 Jaen, John II of Castile and the Grand Master Álvaro de Luna; Round, The Greatest Man Uncrowned; Calderón Ortega, Álvaro de Luna: Riqueza y poder en la Castilla del siglo XV; Rucquoi, ‘Privauté, fortune et politique: la chute d’Alvaro de Luna’, pp. 287–310.  9 All citations to the various petitions of the Madrigal Cortes in this essay come from ‘Cuaderno de las Cortes celebradas en la villa de Madrigal en el año de 1438’, iii, 311–67, with specific petitions noted in the text.  10 The Cortes, after a golden age at the end of the fourteenth century, suffered a continuous erosion of their powers throughout the fifteenth century and were unable to control the royal power or even change its policy. On the Cortes, in their historical evolution, organization and relations with the various social categories and other institutions, see the works published in the two voluminous tomes of Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media; see also González Alonso, ‘Poder regio, Cortes y régimen político en la Castilla bajomedi­eval’, pp. 201–54.

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their grievances: abusive levies, excessive tax pressure, and arbitrary taxation by the upper nobility. They explained to the sovereign how this arbitrary taxation occurred: it was mainly the nobility that was at fault for demanding exorbitant tolls for travelling by road and unhesitatingly using methods that flouted the law. These considerations led the representatives to depict this nobility in a very poor light, disrespectful of the king’s laws. They called on the king, in the tradition of his predecessors, to restore the legal order and to rein in the upper nobility. As such, the Cortes, which lay at the heart of exchanges between political institutions, give us a good idea as to the state of the kingdom, the role townsmen wanted to play, and the place they wanted to hold in the political scene. By examining the notebook to identify complaints relating to tax matters presented at the Cortes of Madrigal, the reforms proposed to remedy the denounced wrongs, and the tax policy recommended, this paper presents a deeper appreciation of this Cortes’ role in the evolution of the Castilian fiscal system.

Reforms to End Abuses and Correct Dysfunctions Of the fifty-​nine petitions in the notebook, eighteen (i.e. one-​third of them) relate to tax matters. This is in no way unusual because the main purpose of the Cortes was to approve the levying of servicios (extraordinary taxes) to meet the monarchy’s growing financial needs.11 The grievances and petitions that the procuradores addressed to the king during the Cortes had two aims: to protect taxpayers from abuses by tax officials and lords, and to ensure the monarchy’s tax revenues. The Cortes did not put forward any major reforms, much less any ‘revolution’ in the tax system. In petition no. 3, they agreed to all taxes: the alcabalas (ad valorem sales taxes), tercias (two-​ninths of the ecclesiastical tithe paid by the Church to the Castillan monarchy), monedas and pedidos (extraordinary direct levies, the last two of which had been referred to collectively as servicios since 1406), as well as diezmos y aduanas (customs duties), and almojarifazgos (duties on the import, export, and first sale of goods) (petition no. 41).12 In these two petitions, they even referred to ‘otros pechos e derechos’ (other tributes and duties). The representatives did not even protest the high level of taxes, but only abusive taxation. They denounced dysfunctions in the system and put forward tangible, limited reforms aimed at avoiding abuses and improving royal tax collection. These were the matters of interest and concern to them, to the dominant class of  11 The king of Castile enjoyed tax sovereignty, meaning that he was the only legitimate holder of the right to raise taxes or to exempt payment; see Menjot, ‘Taxation and Sovereignty in Medi­eval Castile’, pp. 84–103; Ortego Rico, ‘Justificaciones doctrinales de la soberanía fiscal regia en la baja Edad Media’, pp. 113–38.  12 For a detailed definition of these royal taxes, see Critical Glossary of Medi­eval Taxation, ed. by Menjot and Verdès.

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Castilian towns, and to all the pecheros (taxpayers) whose interests they were supposed to defend and especially, as they stated, the interests of the ‘gente simple e ignorante’ (simple and ignorant people) (petition no. 59). The abuses denounced are few in number, and some were due to tax officials not complying with the rules for tax collection and tax-​farming, and/ or not applying the laws laid down during previous Cortes’ sessions. This was the case for the alcaldes des sacas (royal officials assigned to each diocese and responsible for watching goods exports along border areas), who abused their powers by recording the loads carried in pack-​saddles, contrary to royal decree (petition no. 31). It is also the case for the tax-​farmers, treasurers, and collectors of pedidos and monedas over the previous ten years, who had also collected sums ‘por vias catadas e escogidas’ (in their own way, i.e. without complying with the law). The representatives demanded an investigation and restitution of the sums collected. They also called for a prosecutor to be appointed on behalf of all the towns and their inhabitants to prosecute these tax officials. The king acceded to this petition but prohibited the regidores (town councillors) from holding this office (petition no. 12). In at least some cases, these abuses were attributable to dysfunctions that were made possible or encouraged by vague rules for tax collection that created confusion in towns and were harmful for the taxpayers and the royal treasury. These dysfunctions were due first to the fact that there was no time limit for royal tax collectors to claim taxes. The Cortes wished to restrict this time limit to the year the tax official held office, plus two additional years (petition no. 3). The representatives also complained (petition no. 41) that there was no time limit for claiming the collateral that tax-​farmers and collectors had to put up. This collateral was often provided by their family and friends, who, according to the procuradores, ‘eran mucho plazenteros de fazer las fianzas’ (were very happy to do so). However, if they were asked to pay this collateral for many years, and they and their heirs could not prove that their relatives had already paid up because it was so long ago that the receipts could no longer be found in the coffers and albaquias (unpaid debt registries), then the tax-​farmers and collectors would no longer find guarantors and could therefore no longer pay for leases or collect rents. The representatives asked for a time limit for claiming collateral, but they shied away from proposing a specific time limit, letting the king make the decision. In the same vein (petition no. 18), they demanded a time limit for the tax-​farmers to collect unpaid taxes from 1428! The king replied that this time limit, which was initially to be 1435, had been extended by two years to 1437. However, he did not renounce attempts to recover the unpaid taxes that were obviously hard to collect given the long delays. The representatives wanted to resolve another dysfunction by requesting that the treasurers and collectors live in the town in the centre of their district so that vassals could make payments quickly without wasting time trying to find the person to pay (petition no. 9).13  13 On the tesoreros and the contadores, see Torres Sanz, La administración central castellana en la baja Edad Media, pp. 213–32.

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The Cortes also demanded that the decree issued by the king at the Cortes of Madrid and Toledo should be enforced (petition no. 14). Under this decree, for products bought and sold at fairs and markets (where no taxes were levied), the sellers should pay the alcabalas in the towns and locations from which they brought the products, and the buyers in the places where they brought the products they had purchased, in order the tax was not being paid in several different places. In addition, the representatives requested (petition no. 37) the continued enforcement of a decree (based on ancient custom) that prohibited wine, grape must, or grapes from being brought into towns from outside the neighbouring areas, and that stipulated heavy fines for violations. The clergy and ‘otras personas de las Ordenes’ (other members of the religious orders) were not respecting this decree and did not pay the alcabala, contrary to the pecheros who grew and produced these goods. This amounted to lost revenue for the royal treasury and the tax-​farmers, and it would be ‘muy justa cosa e razonable […] que todos sean uniformes […] para el bien public comun del pueblo’ (very just and reasonable […] if all were equal […] for the general good of the people). Prelates, counts, and other lords and officials were accused of committing other abuses when they travelled to the towns where the court was staying. They were charged with seizing all the bedding in hostels, leaving only two pillows for the hostel owners to sleep on the floor. They also allegedly used so much charcoal that the surrounding wooded areas were destroyed as was all of the straw. This excessiveness had caused the prices of staple goods to rise so much that the townspeople could no longer afford them and thus had generated strife within the population. The representatives requested that these high-​ranking men should only bring a reasonable number of people in their entourage (without specifying how many), and that the king should draw up a list of hostels that should be given to each official in the town and surrounding villages if there were not enough hostels in the town (petition no. 32).14 The representatives further complained that the tax-​farmers for the monedas ‘fatigan mucho los pueblos … por muchas e diversas maneras e con muchas cautelas e malicias’ (tire many people … in various ways and with much cunning and malice) and asked for changes to the payment cuaderno, which the king claimed to have drafted ‘con mucha deliberación’ (after a lengthy deliberation) at the Cortes of Madrid (petition no. 52). It should be noted that the collection of the monedas was complex.15 It involved town officials and tax-​farmers whose  14 John II would adopt an order dated 6 April 1442 to try to settle these relations during the court’s stays in the city of Valladolid, Ordenanza de Juan II ‘para el sosiego y govierno de la Corte, dirigida a Valladolid, por estar alli más de continuo’ por la que se reglamenta la vida en la Corte y las relaciones entre los cortesanos y los vecinos de Valladolid, BN, Madrid, MSS.13.107, éd. by Rucquoi in Valladolid en la Edad Media, pp. 533–35.  15 Menjot, ‘La fiscalité royale directe en Castille sous les premiers Trastamares. Remarques sur l’évolution d’une pratique financière dans un cadre urbain (1374–début XVe)’, pp. 98–101.

the fiscal dialogue at the castilian cortes of madrigal of 1438

duties were apportioned by the king. For each parish and each moneda, the town was to appoint an enroller responsible for drawing up the tax rolls. In these rolls, the king wanted each taxpayer to be classified as either ‘cierto’ (certain) or ‘dubdoso’ (doubtful). The town was also to appoint — for each parish and each moneda — a collector responsible for the ‘cierto’ portion, i.e. for the taxpayers recorded as being reliable in the rolls. The tax-​farmers were responsible for collecting monedas from the ‘dubdoso y encubierto’ (doubtful and hidden) portion and to make sure that all the amounts indicated on ‘los padrones del cierto’ (the certain rolls) had been collected. The representatives clearly pointed out a few problems. The king collected the monedas in three periods and asked for three rolls to be drawn up and three collectors appointed, i.e. six people in all, which small towns had great difficulty finding. Distinguishing between ‘certain’ and ‘doubtful’ taxpayers was also difficult because the enrollers lacked the time, and the town authorities the desire, to make a serious estimate. They therefore relied only on visible signs of wealth: ‘bienes raices o ganados o otros bienes muebles que parecían públicos’ (real property or livestock or other property that can be seen in public). Lastly, the length of time for collecting and surveying the taxpayers was not specified (petition no. 52). To resolve these problems, the representatives asked that officials only draw up one single roll for Christian and Jewish communities with fewer than fifteen inhabitants and appoint only one collector and one surveyor. They also wanted the moneda estimation and collection process to last no more than one year except for ‘condenados’ (convicts) and those subject to fines. The tax-​farmer would have to follow the roll drawn up by the surveyor and to comply with the decisions classifying taxpayers as ‘certain’ or exempt from tax (non cuantiosos). The surveyor would have to indicate in the roll the property and buildings owned by individuals ‘en que abonare e diere por quantioso’ (that they considered be liable for tax). If the surveyor credited the pechero, the tax-​farmer would have to comply with the tax brackets set out in the king’s charter (petition no. 52). All in all, the representatives therefore proposed amendments that, although not insignificant, were minor inasmuch as they did not involve the tax estimation brackets, tax exemptions, or collection methods. The representatives asked for the repeal of only one law (petition no. 59). The law in question laid out the tax-​farming conditions for the ‘diezmos e aduanas’ (tithes and customs). It required all owners of livestock in an area within ten leagues of the border markers for the kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre to register their herds within three days of the tax-​farmers’ announcement. The representatives argued that this requirement was prejudicial to the population due to the very short deadlines and because they were simple, uneducated people who did not understand the law. Furthermore, they claimed that this law would lead to depopulation of the border areas, with inhabitants ‘se iran a vivir a otras partes … de fuera de vuestros regnos’ (will leave to live in other parts outside of your kingdoms).

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The procuradores thus proved to be very conservative in the reforms they proposed: complying with ‘ordenanças usos, e costunbres antiguas’ (laws, decrees and ancient customs) (petition no. 37); applying the legislation and decisions made during previous assemblies at the Cortes of Toledo (petition no. 13), Madrid (petition no. 4), Zamora (petition no. 3), and Madrid (later reiterated at Toledo; petition no. 14); overseeing tax officials and tax-​farmers more closely; and clarifying tax collection methods by asking for dates to be set, but without setting the dates themselves. These are timid proposals for modest reforms, showing that the powers of the Cortes were on the decline. Nevertheless, they are judicious proposals that could improve the effectiveness of a system without challenging the system in any significant way. The Cortes of Madrigal addressed, in addition, two petitions that were specially intended to guarantee the tax receipts of the Crown. In one of them, the petitioners denounced the purchase of domains by the nobility and the Church (prelates, abbots, monasteries, churches, members of religious orders) who managed to acquire the best lands because they had large financial resources, making prices rise so that laymen could no longer buy such lands which escaped taxation because they were fiscally exempt (petition no. 33). The Cortes insisted that these lands should be subject to the extraordinary direct levies: monedas and pedidos and to the same fiscal calculations as were the laity; and in Andalusia, if the property purchased should reach the cuantía (value) for which a layman must have a horse, the clergy should be forced to maintain one too since it was for the defence of the faith. Another petition (no. 38) sought to guarantee taxable assets by calling on the king to make a sumptuary ordinance forbidding women and daughters of pecheros, artisans, husbandmen and ploughmen, and also women of small estate, Jewish and Muslim women, and the concubines of clergy, to procure luxury clothes with gold and silver trimmings because, in this way, men ‘se desfazen de los cabdales que tienen e lo lançan sobre las dichas sus mugeres e fijas’ (dispose of the goods they have and transfer them to their wives and daughters) with the result that, when it was necessary to allocate and collect taxes (‘pechos e derechos e pedidos e monedas’), there were no other goods to tax. The Cortes also proposed the creation of a new tax on merchandise emanating from Aragon to compensate for the quema (a levy established by the Aragonese monarchy to compensate its victims for damages in their commercial activities) collected in the territories of the king of Aragon on merchandise imported there by Castilian merchants (petition nos 3 and 4). John II refused and continued to oppose the reintroduction of the marca, imposed on several occasions between 1330 and 1396, despite it being demanded by the Cortes seven times in the years from 1419 to 1444.16

 16 Ladero Quesada, ‘Las aduanas de Castilla en el siglo XV’; Menjot, ‘La fiscalité douanière dans le royaume de Murcie’, pp. 209–34.

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Denouncing Confiscatory Taxation by Crooked Noblemen The Cortes energetically expressed their discontent with the arbitrary tax decisions made by the nobility. The town representatives to the Cortes complained (petition no. 42) of abusive collection of the ‘portazgos, rodas, pasajes e barcajes’, in other words, all the domestic tolls and duties collected from men and goods in the cities and towns of the Crown, as well as the towns, places, lands, and manors of the military orders (the Orders of Santiago, Alcántara, and Calatrava).17 Almost all these tolls and duties — which dated back to the ninth century and were intended to compensate the authority ensuring the protection of the men travelling and goods circulating — were seignorial or municipal in origin. The king received portazgos at a rate (set in the Partidas) of 1/8, (12.5 per cent) of the total value of goods; but the royal treasury derived very little revenue from this in the fifteenth century. In 1429, the year of the earliest preserved records, the portazgos brought in only 147,260 maravédis, compared to the royal treasury’s total tax revenue of 62,250,928 maravédis (0.23 per cent)!18 The representatives denounced (petition no. 42) the fact that these tolls and duties ‘que se llaman derechos, se cogen e recaudan … por tales maneras e tan asperas que antes parecen ser por robo e fuerza que non derecho’ (which are duties that are collected … in such strict ways that they appear to be collected by theft and by force, not by law). They accused many ‘caballeros, señores y otros omnes de grandes estados’ (knights, lords and other men of high status) of demanding exactions, under the pretext of following the law, of acting through ‘constraint’ ‘theft’, ‘force’ and ‘without pity’, and to demand tolls without any licence — therefore, illegally — and to deny the exemptions, deductions, and privileges that had been acknowledged and conceded by John II’s predecessors. They cited, as an example, a decision made at the Cortes of 1351 whereby local residents were exempt from the portazgo.19 They also accused these noblemen of confiscatory taxation by raising tax rates at will, requiring one silver real instead of one dinero per head of livestock (about 80 per cent more!).20 This example may very well have been exaggerated to show the magnitude of the exactions. Lastly, the noblemen were accused of

 17 González Mínguez, El portazgo en la Edad Media. Aproximación a su estudio en la Corona de Castilla.  18 Ladero Quesada, ‘Ingreso, gasto y política fiscal de la Corona de Castilla desde Alfonso X a Enrique III’, p. 57.  19 Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla, ii, ‘Cuaderno segundo dado a petición de los procuradores de las ciudades y villas del reino en las Cortes de Valladolid (1351)’, petition 10, p. 54.  20 The silver real was a coin created by Peter I in the mid-​fourteenth century and whose alloy had remained fairly stable, worth around 11 dineros. MacKay, Money, Prices and Politics in Fifteenth-​Century Castile, appendix 2, pp. 144–46.

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forcing people to pay these portazgos not only at the customary and ‘lugares e pasajes antiguos’ (ancient passing points) but also in new places, without any authorization or permission, but at their own will. The fact that there were no guards posted at toll points meant that seignorial officers could act wherever they wanted and could enforce fines for non-​payment and confiscate goods. These serious complaints and accusations were not new, but had become almost ritualistic, and the kings simply listened to them without actually tackling the proliferation of illegal portazgos. The Cortes of 1258 had already demanded that portazgos be collected only in the places where they were collected during the reign of Alfonso VIII and in the large reconquered towns.21 Additional illegal portazgos were denounced at the Cortes of 1329, in the Ordenamiento de Alcalá (1348), at the Cortes of 1351 and 1371, and again at the Cortes of 1425 and 1432. The Crown only took a real interest in this topic when its duties for the circulation of livestock herds were affected. In 1438, however, this situation was denounced much more vehemently than before; we can assume that the procuradores believed that their claims had a greater chance of success because they were compatible with Álvaro de Luna’s policy against the nobility.22 The reasons and signs of this antagonism between the towns and the upper nobility are well known. Due to the grandees’ usurpation and embezzlement of rents and town property, the urban oligarchs who controlled the towns saw a reduction in their area of influence. This is also the reason why the procuradores complained of tax extortion in royal towns. We must also remember that the Castilian nobility was refocusing its economic strategies in the fifteenth century to compensate for the reduction in its revenues from landholdings. It diverted revenues intended for the Crown and increased taxation on the circulation of goods in order to benefit from the growing economy. What shocked the town representatives at the Cortes the most were the upper nobility’s attacks on royal majesty and sovereignty, as the nobles were often collecting duties without the king’s licence and without his order, and they had ‘ningun título ni derecho’ (no title or right) to levy portazgos, or even when they did have the right, they exceeded it. Yet this right that they denied belonged to the king or was the customary law written in the fueros. The only raison d’être of the Castilian nobility was to serve the sovereign and defend the res publica. Or at least, this is the view conveyed by political thinkers of the fifteenth century such as Diego de Valera, who — following the opinion of the fourteenth-​century Roman-​law jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato  21 ‘Ordenamiento de las cortes celebradas en Valladolid (era 1296, año 1258)’, in Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla, i, 61.  22 The question was not resolved in any way since, in the Cortes of 1442, the procuradores asked that portazgos could only be taken from the seigniorial estates if it had been an uninterrupted custom for fifty years. The Cortes of 1451, 1455, 1465, 1473, 1476, and 1480 still denounced portazgos raised illegally and at arbitrary rates. González Mínguez, El portazgo en la Edad Media, pp. 197–203.

the fiscal dialogue at the castilian cortes of madrigal of 1438

— argued that the civil nobility should hold preeminence due to its devotion to defending the republic.23 Yet the full task of the procuradores at the Cortes of Madrigal consisted of demonstrating that Castilian noblemen were not up to the duties that their status nevertheless conferred on them. They acted ‘contra toda razón e derecho’ (against all reason and law), or ‘contra todo derecho e justicia’ (against all law and justice), as stated by the representatives on several occasions. They broke away from any rules of a legal or moral nature. They put their own private interests ahead of the interests of the realm and the king. Unwilling to follow the law, they were unable to enforce the law to those that they commanded; they did not fulfil the duties of justice that fell on a lord holding jurisdiction over his lands. This noble elite were predatory, causing a general feeling of insecurity to hang over the kingdom of Castile. Their divisions led to violence and caused disorder that was in very large part responsible for the political and social situation of Castile in the late 1430s. In petition no. 42, the procuradores purposefully depicted an exceedingly bleak view of this situation: ‘se fazen cada dia muchos agravios e syn razones e muchos descaminados e robos e otras cosas mucho feas e malas e mucho contra todo derecho e justicia’ (each day, harm, theft and other very ugly, bad acts are committed against law and justice). Yet quite cautiously, the Cortes refused to take a bolder stance in seeking out the causes for this situation ‘por razones e por otras muchas que son muy luengas de escribir’ (for reasons that are too lengthy to write down); they simply made the observation (petition no. 42).

Restoring the Monarch’s Authority The procuradores of 1438 depict a predatory nobility that could only be countered by appealing to the king to restore the legal order and repress abuses (petition no. 42). The towns were aware that only a strong monarchy could protect their own interests and the fueros, privileges, franchises, charters, and freedoms that had been granted to them by the sovereigns of Castile — hence their loyalty to the king. The representatives did not claim to want to act on their own, whereas the towns had actually done so during periods of very intense agitation, as in the late thirteenth century, when they formed hermandades (municipal leagues) tasked with defending the towns and the kingdom.24 At the Cortes, the town representatives relied on the goodwill of the monarch, whom they expected to fulfil their needs. The towns believed that their salvation would come through the restoration of the monarchy’s legal order

 23 Rucquoi, ‘Être noble en Espagne aux XIVe–XVIe siècles’, pp. 273–98.  24 Ruiz, ‘Oligarchy and Royal Power: The Castilian Cortes and the Castilian Crisis, 1248–1350’, pp. 95–101.

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to rein in tax officials, and especially because only the king himself was able to put an end to abuses by the nobility.25 In petition no. 42, the representatives boasted of the work of the king’s predecessors whom they declared had established the portazgos and other tolls of traffic, fixed rates of taxes, defined the ways of their collection, and designated the places where they should be levied, in contrast to seigneurial lords whose agents and collectors were liable to make exactions at anytime, anywhere and to demand excessive amounts. It was right and proper, we hear, that the king should redress the injustices committed by the nobility. The monarchy needed to make sure that nobles would no longer institute taxes arbitrarily and could levy them only in customary places and at rates fixed by the Crown. The king must ensure ‘derecho y justicia’ (law and justice) prevailed, two essential attributes of the Crown. The king, the fount of law, had to assure justice ruled everywhere in the kingdom, a justice that was impartial, and that applied equally ‘al pobre como al rico o al pequenno commo al grande aya e le sea guardada su justicia e fuerça nin agravio nin syn razon non sea fecha’ (to the poor as well as the rich, to the small like the great, so that whoever sought the protection of justice, no offence should be done against him). Here was a protest against the feeling of immunity among the nobility, who did their best to escape the legal orders of the Crown. It was also a plea for a state fiscal system that was both just and equitable. This was a policy advocated and implemented by Alvaro de Luna, who aimed to rely on the towns to thwart the influence of the upper nobility, many of whose dependents originated from the urban elites. The petitions presented at Madrigal revealed the alliance between the king and the towns whose interests were perfectly complementary. To violate urban privileges was also to attack the Crown that had granted them. Urban representatives had grown less numerous and more dependent on the Crown. The number of cities and towns enjoying the right of voz y voto (voice and vote) at the Cortes was sharply reduced, falling from 101 in 1313 to only seventeen during the reign of John II, partly due to the number of urban centres that came under seigneurial jurisdiction and partly due to royal policy, which had paid the representatives from its treasury since 1422, and had a vested interest in them being as few as possible. Since the privileged orders, the nobility and clergy, did not vote on the raising of taxes, they only attended the Cortes very infrequently and then in an individual capacity and not together as an ‘estate’.26 Their absence permitted the freedom of the representatives to criticize the behaviour of the nobility. Furthermore, the

 25 On the relations between nobility and monarchy, see Suárez Fernández, Nobleza y monarquía. Puntos de vista sobre la historia política castellana delsiglo XV and the radical revision of Rucquoi, ‘Nobleza y monarquía en Castilla ¿una ilusión?’, pp. 609–25.  26 On the ecclesiastics at the Cortes, see Linehan, ‘Ecclesiastics and the Cortes de Castilla y León’, pp. 99–141.

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representatives were increasingly dependents of the monarchy, which tended more and more to control the process of nomination to the Cortes, giving preference to candidates, and even going as far as to impose them. The extent of this control especially increased after 1422, when the Crown arranged to pay the representatives a complicated remuneration which included several components: a merced (salary) paid at the end of their stay at the Cortes and a mantenimiento (daily maintenance payment), to which was added an ayuda de costa (payment equivalent to their daily activity) and a reimbursement for their assistance in the deuda (levying of taxes). These sums were much higher than the personal expenses occurred by attendance at the Cortes and rewarded the procuradores for their loyalty and docility.

Conclusion Miguel-​Angel Ladero in his study of the Cortes and royal taxation during the first sixty years of the Trastámara dynasty (1369–1429) wrote: En definitiva, las Cortes asumían un papel de órgano consultivo, eran tribuna de sugerencias y reclamaciones, y utilizaban a veces la fuerza que les confería el otorgamiento de ingresos extraordinarios, pero no iban más allá, porque sus procuradores estaban vinculados, de diversas formas, a los equipos gobernantes o grupos en el poder existentes en cada momento […] Los procuradores formaban parte del sistema de poder establecido, su función de crítica o denuncia se integraba en él. (In short, the Cortes played the role of a consultative body; they served as a forum for proposals and demands and sometimes used the power that the granting of extraordinary taxes gave them. But they never went beyond that because the procuradores were linked in diverse ways to the regime and existing power groups at all times […] The procuradores belonged to the established political system, and their role as critics and denouncers of injustice were a part of that system.)27 This assessment remains valid and is applicable to the session of the Cortes of Madrigal which denounced abusive exactions, abuses by royal officers and tax-​farmers, and other administrative dysfunction; but, above all, the procuradores condemned the arbitrary taxation of the seigneurial nobility manifested principally in the levying of excessive tolls for the movement of goods with methods which made a mockery of the law. The complaints that they addressed to the king came with a double perspective: the denunciation of a predatory seigneurial nobility with little apparent care for the common

 27 Ladero Quesada, ‘Cortes de Castilla y León y fiscalidad regia (1369–1429)’, pp. 293, 372.

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good, and a passionate defence of the institution of the monarchy, which was called on to assure order and security prevailed everywhere under its authority. At Madrigal, the Cortes did not seek to reform the fiscal system or even to control the collection or usage of taxes as they had under John I during the war against Portugal.28 As in other sessions of the period 1440–1444, the Cortes of Madrigal, still without defined powers in the realm of taxation, was nevertheless not an institution that was superfluous or lacking in importance. If it did not pretend to be an autonomous political actor and was, above all, an instrument at the service of the Crown, it kept its important function of giving counsel and making proposals to the king by pointing out administrative failures, recalling abuses, decisions not implemented, and proposing improvements. The procuradores identified themselves with defence of the interests of the pecheros and worked, as they said (petition no. 37) for ‘el bien público comun del pueblo’ (the common good of the people).

 28 Valdeón Baruque, ‘Las Cortes de Castilla y León en tiempos de Pedro I y de los primeros Trastámaras (1350–1406)’, pp. 183–217.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y Castilla, i, ii (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1861, 1863) ‘Cuaderno de las Cortes celebradas en la villa de Madrigal en el año de 1438’, in Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y de Castilla, iii (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1866), pp. 311–67 Secondary Works Calderón Ortega, José Manuel, Álvaro de Luna: Riqueza y poder en la Castilla del siglo XV (Madrid: Dykinson, 1998) Critical Glossary of Medi­eval Taxation, ed. by Denis Menjot and Pere Verdès: http://gcfm.imf.csic.es [accessed 12 March 2019] Gautier-​Dalché, Jean, ‘L’organisation des Cortes de Castille et León’, in Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Madrid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), i, 267–88 González Alonso, Benjamín, ‘Poder regio, Cortes y régimen político en la Castilla bajomedi­eval’, in Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Madrid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), ii, 201–54 González Mínguez, César, El portazgo en la Edad Media. Aproximación a su estudio en la Corona de Castilla (Bilbao: Universidad de País Vasco, 1989) Hébert, Michel, Parlementer. Assemblées représentatives et échanges politiques en Europe occidentale à la fin du Moyen Âge (Paris: De Boccard, 2014) —— , La voix du peuple. Une histoire des assemblées au Moyen Âge (Paris: PUF, 2018) Hermann, Christian, and Jean-​Paul Le Flem, ‘Les finances’, in Le premier âge de l’État en Espagne (1450–1700), ed. by Christian Hermann (Paris: CNRS, 1989), pp. 301–40 Jaen, Didier T., John II of Castile and the Grand Master Álvaro de Luna (Madrid: Castalia, 1978) Ladero Quesada, Miguel-​Angel, ‘Las aduanas de Castilla en el siglo XV’, Revue internationale d’histoire de la banque, 7 (1973), 83–110 —— , La Hacienda real de Castilla en el siglo XV (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Universidad de la Laguna, 1973) —— , El Siglo XV en Castilla. Fuentes de renta y política fiscal (Barcelona: Ariel, 1982) —— , ‘Las Cortes de Castilla y la política hacendistíca de la monarquía (1252–1369)’, Hacienda Pública Española, 87 (1984), 57–72 —— , ‘Cortes de Castilla y León y fiscalidad regia (1369–1429)’, in Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Madrid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), i, 289–373 —— , ‘Ingreso, gasto y política fiscal de la Corona de Castilla desde Alfonso X a Enrique III’, in Poder político y sociedad en Castilla. Siglos XIII al XV, ed. by

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Miguel Ángel Quesada and Jose Manuel Nieto Soria (Madrid: Dykinson, 2014), pp. 13–57 —— , Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Madrid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988) Linehan, Peter, ‘Ecclesiastics and the Cortes de Castilla y León’, in Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Madrid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), i, 99–141 MacKay, Angus Money, Prices and Politics in Fifteenth-​Century Castile (London: Royal Historical Society, 1981) Menjot, Denis, ‘L’établissement du système fiscal en Castille (1268–1342)’, in Genèse médiévale de l’Etat moderne, ed. by Adeline Rucquoi (Valladolid: Ambito, 1987), pp. 149–73 —— , ‘La fiscalité douanière dans le royaume de Murcie’, in L’argent au Moyen Age, XXVIIIe congrès de la Société des médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne 1998), pp. 209–34 —— , ‘La fiscalité royale directe en Castille sous les premiers Trastamares. Remarques sur l’évolution d’une pratique financière dans un cadre urbain (1374-​début XVe)’, in Actes du 102e Congrès national des sociétés savantes: Limoges, 1977, section de philo­logie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610 (Limoges: 1977; Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1979), pp. 91–107 —— , ‘Taxation and Sovereignty in Medi­eval Castile’, in Authority and Spectacle in Medi­eval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz, ed. by Yuen-​Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodríguez (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 84–103 Olivera Serrano, César, Las Cortes de Castilla y León y la crisis del reino 1445–1474. El registro de Cortes (Burgos: Cortes de Castilla y Léon, Inst. de Estudios Castellanos, 1986) Ortego Rico, Pablo, ‘Justificaciones doctrinales de la soberanía fiscal regia en la baja Edad Media’, En la España Medi­eval, 32 (2009), 113–38 Porras Arboledas, Pedro Andrès, Juan II, 1406–1454 (Palencia: La Olmeda, 1995) The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, 1200–1815, ed. by Richard Bonney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Round, Nicholas, The Greatest Man Uncrowned. A Study of the Fall of Don Álvaro de Luna (London: Tamesis Books, 1986) Rucquoi, Adeline, Valladolid en la Edad Media, ii (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1987) —— , ‘Être noble en Espagne aux XIVe–XVIe siècles’, in Nobilitas. Funktion und Repräsentation des Adels in Alteuropa, ed. by Otto Gerhard Oexle and Werner Paravicini (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), pp. 273–98 —— , ‘Privauté, fortune et politique: la chute d’Alvaro de Luna’, in Der Fall des Günstlings. Hofparteien in Europa vom 13. bis zum 17. Jahrhundert, ed. by Jan Hirschbiegel and Werner Paravicini (Neuburg am Donau: Jan Thorbecke, 2004), pp. 287–310 —— , ‘Nobleza y monarquía en Castilla ¿una ilusión?’, in Homenaje a Julio Valdeón, ed. by Ma Isabel del Val and Pascual Martínez Sopena, (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2009), pp. 609–25

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Ruiz, Teofilo F., ‘Oligarchy and Royal Power: The Castilian Cortes and the Castilian Crisis 1248–1350’, Parliaments, Estates and Representations, 2. 2 (1982), 95–101 Suárez Fernández, Luis, Nobleza y monarquía. Puntos de vista sobre la historia política castellana del XV (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1975) Torres Sanz, David, La administración central castellana en la baja Edad Media (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1982) Valdeón Baruque, Julio, ‘Las Cortes de Castilla y León en tiempos de Pedro I y de los primeros Trastámaras (1350–1406)’, in Las Cortes de Castilla y León en la Edad Media (Madrid: Cortes de Castilla y León, 1988), i, 183–217

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Ethno-​Religious Self-​Fashionings

Travis Bruce

Ruling Between and Across the Lines Liminal Identities and Political Legitimacy in al-​Andalus The collapse of the Cordovan Umayyad caliphate at the beginning of the eleventh century splintered the unity of al-​Andalus into the realms of the party kings (mulūk al-​ṭawā’if, sing. malik al-​ṭā’ifa).1 Throughout the ensuing decades-​long civil war, known in Andalusī historio­graphy as the fitna, the taifa rulers vied for power, territory, and legitimacy.2 So long as they lacked the cover granted by the caliphate, the taifa rulers’ temporal authority was illicit and lacked stability. Legitimizing their de facto power was thus a constant dilemma for them and is detectable in their policies throughout the period.3 In his history of the taifa kingdoms, the fourteenth-​century Granadan historian Ibn al-​Khaṭīb criticized the illegitimacy of the taifa rulers, and yet in his criticism he listed the very means by which they surrounded themselves with the trappings of legitimate rule: ٌ ‫ليس أل َ َحدِهم في الخالفة إِ ْر‬ ‫ وال في شروط‬، ‫سب‬ َ َ‫ وال في الفُ ُروسيَّة ب‬، ‫سبَب‬ َ ‫اإلمارة‬ ِ ‫ث وال في‬ َ َ ،‫ و َجبَ ُوا الماالت و األمصار‬،‫ و اقتسموا المدائنَ ال ِكبَار‬، ‫ اقتطعوا ألقطار‬، ‫اإلمامة ُم ْكت َسب‬ ِ ْ َ‫ و َكتَب‬،‫ وانتحلوا األَلقاب‬،‫ وقدَّموا القُضاة‬، ‫و َجنَّدوا ال ُجنود‬ ‫شدَهم‬ َ ‫ وأ َ ْن‬،‫ت عنهم ال ُكتّابُ األَعالم‬ ْ ‫ووقَف‬ ْ َ‫ش ِهد‬ ْ ‫ ودُ ّ ِون‬، ‫شعرا ُء‬ ُ ‫ال‬ ‫َت بأَبوابهم العُلَمأ‬ َ ، ‫َت بأَسماهم الدواوين‬ َ ، ‫ت بوجوب حقِّهم الشهود‬ ُ َ ‫ و ُم َجنَّ ٍد‬، ‫ وبَ ْربَري َمجْ لوب‬، ‫ وتوسَّلت إِليهم الفُضأل ؛ وهم ما بَيْنَ َمجْ بُوب‬، ، ‫غيْر َمحْ بُوب‬ ُ ‫و‬ .‫سوب‬ ُ ْ‫غ ْف ٍل ليس في السُّراةِ ب َمح‬

(None of the mulūk al-​ṭawā’if possessed the right of inheritance to the caliphate, a reasonable claim for the emirate, a lineage of bravery, or any quality of the conditions of the imamate. In spite of this, they divided the lands and great cities amongst themselves. They exacted taxes on districts and cities. They built armies, appointed judges, and  1 On the taifa kingdoms in general, see Wasserstein, The Rise and Fall of the Party Kings; Guichard and Soravia, Les royaumes des taifas: apogée culturel et déclin politique des émirats andalous du XIe siècle.  2 On the Andalusī fitna, see Scales, The Fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba; Tixier, ‘La fitna andalouse du xie siècle’.  3 Cf. Clément, Pouvoir et légitimité en Espagne musulmane à l’époque des taifas. Travis Bruce ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of History at McGill University. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 75–89 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126178

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adopted surnames. The most eminent of the kuttāb wrote about them, and poets praised them. Notaries and administrators testified to their legitimacy. Scholars stood at their doors and the learned sought their favour. And yet, the mulūk were no more than eunuchs, imported Berbers, lowly recruits, obscure and unimportant people.)4 Ibn al-K ​ haṭīb concludes his description of the taifa kings by comparing them to a cat who puffs itself up, making too much noise, as if it were a lion. Of these realms ruled by over-​compensating felines, the taifa of Denia was a dominant actor.5 Its emir, Mujāhid, was an emancipated slave of the famous chamberlain al-​Manṣūr and had been a senior lieutenant of the erstwhile caliphal regime. In the aftermath of the regime’s collapse, he parlayed his position into control over a large portion of the eastern seaboard, extending his rule as far as the Balearic Islands and the Mediterranean sea lanes. Mujāhid was quite aware of his servile origins and the precariousness of his claims to legitimate power.6 He thus applied a complicated semiotic programme to counter doubts surrounding his reign: claiming to rule in the name of a puppet and then in the name of a fictitious caliph, and surrounding himself with the bureaucratic and administrative machines that signified, surrounded, and define legitimate power, as will be discussed in further detail. In line with ideals of Islamic rulership, Mujāhid cultivated an image of religious orthodoxy for himself and his court, patronizing Islamic scholars and building his city into one of the primary nodes of religious studies in the Western Mediterranean. These efforts lent stability and weight to his regime, allowing Mujāhid to become one of the most powerful of the taifa rulers and to build a kingdom to pass on to his son. The transition of power from Mujāhid to his son ʿAlī was, however, not as obvious as it might seem. ʿAlī had spent his youth as a diplomatic hostage in Pisa after having been captured during his father’s failed conquest of Sardinia.7 Ibn al-​Khaṭīb wrote that when ʿAlī returned to Denia, he dressed and spoke

 4 Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Kitāb aʿmāl al-​āʿlām, ed. (partially) by Lévi-​Provençal, p. 144 (English trans. adapted from Chejne, Muslim Spain: Its History and Culture, p. 52).  5 On Denia, see Bruce, La taifa de Denia et la Méditerranée au XIe siècle; Rubiera Mata, La taifa de Denia.  6 Although he was one of the leading taifa rulers, Mujāhid’s servile origins remained with him. After Mujāhid had insulted him in a heated epistolary exchange, ʿAbd al-​ʿAzāz b. Abī ʿĀmir, the ruler of Valencia and grandson of al-​Manṣur, and so technically heir to any claims over his grandfather’s clients, remarked that the world seemed to have been turned upside down, since slaves were now insulting free men: Ibn Bassām, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥīsin ahl al-​jazīra, ed. by ʿAbbās, iii, 171.  7 Ibn Bassām, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥīsin ahl al-​jazīra, iv, 183; Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Kitāb aʿmāl al-​āʿlām, pp. 252–54; Liber maiolichinus, ed. by Calisse, pp. 42–43; Ibn ʿIdhārī, al-​Bayān al-​mughrib, iii, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane au XIème siècle, ed. by Lévi-​Provençal, pp. 156–57.

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as the Pisans and even professed their Christian faith, and yet was later able to displace his brother as the legitimate successor to their father.8 Using ʿAlī b. Mujāhid as a case study, this paper demonstrates an approach to political legitimacy from the perspective of identity. Despite his foreignness, ʿAlī was able to craft an identity that conformed to the expectations of legitimate Islamic rule. He continued to promote the maritime jihād that lay at the heart of the taifa’s foundation.9 He continued the religious and intellectual patronage of his father, attracting to Denia renowned Muslim scribes and scholars who then defended him against the attacks of rival courts. He handily used the trappings of legitimate Islamic power, such as coinage that bore the ruling titles he had chosen for himself, to communicate his claims to authority. He corresponded with Muslim rulers from al-​Andalus and across the Mediterranean as a peer. Nevertheless, ʿAlī did not abandon his foreign identity altogether. He maintained familiar relations with the counts of Barcelona, who negotiated with him as an equal, and may have maintained similar relations with León. Trade with Pisa increased during ʿAlī’s reign, and he attracted Christians to his court. The ambidexterity of ʿAlī’s ruling identity thus complicates our assumptions regarding legitimacy and authority in the medi­eval Western Mediterranean.

ʿAlī’s Ambidextrous Personal Identity ʿAlī’s ambidexterity is one of the key analytical frames of this paper. While ʿAlī might have been a relatively exceptional individual for how he personally

traversed the multiple dividing lines of country, religion, and language, his existence is nonetheless a reflection of the intense multicultural interactions by which we might define the medi­eval Mediterranean. Rather than seeing ʿAlī in our own dichotomous, essentializing, or perhaps Platonic terms, we should allow him to be messy.10 Scholars of identity theory, such as Lahire and Burke, remind us that individuals hold multiple non-​hierarchical identities that are tied to group memberships and specific roles they might play.11 These  8 Fierro briefly discusses ʿAlī as an example of hostages and cultural contact, while König highlights his status as a child raised in different cultural spheres, noting specifically the energy necessary to install him on the throne: Fierro, ‘Hostages and the Dangers of Cultural Contact’, p. 74; König, ‘Caught Between Cultures?’, pp. 65–66.  9 Space restrictions prevent me from addressing this aspect of ʿAlī’s policies, but many relevant or similar aspects are covered in Bruce, ‘Piracy as Statecraft’.  10 On this use of ‘Platonic’, borrowed from Catlos, especially from discussions and presentations during the Mediterranean Seminar’s 2015 NEH Barcelona Summer Institute, see Catlos and others, ‘Reflections: Talking Mediterranean’, p. 105, who refer to Taleb, The Black Swan.  11 Rebillard summarizes well the pertinent literature on identity theory and the internal plurality of the individual in his Christians and Their Many Identities, pp. 3–5; Burke, ‘Relationships between Multiple Identities’, pp. 195–214; Burke and Stets, Identity Theory.

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identities may complement or even conflict with each other. According to context and specific situational factors, people activate or perform overlapping identities, none of which necessarily exclude the other facets of themselves.12 The conjunction of identities held and performed by an individual is an essential key to understanding his or her role in any given context. These concepts apply well to studying the complex identities and relations typical of al-​Andalus and its place in the medi­eval Mediterranean. Contemporary sources present ʿAlī as a rather complicated character or person. He was seven years old when the Pisans captured him, offered him to the Holy Roman Emperor as a prize, and eventually turned him over to a Pisan magnate, Ildeperto Albizone, to be held as a diplomatic hostage.13 Although Mujāhid was able to ransom his daughters and other household members shortly after, ʿAlī remained in Pisa for well over a decade before his father negotiated his return in 423/1030–1031. We should note that either Mujāhid’s mother or wife was also captured and chose not to return to Denia.14 There was thus very little that was Andalusī about ʿAlī, having been born to a Christian and possibly Italian mother or grandmother, and to an emancipated slave, himself rumoured to have been Frankish, perhaps even Sardinian.15 As mentioned above, when ʿAlī did return to Denia as a man in full maturity, he was very much a foreigner. He dressed and spoke as a Pisan — he is later said to have never completely lost his foreign accent — and he even practiced the Pisans’ Catholic religion. It might be somewhat surprising then that ʿAlī succeeded Mujāhid as ruler of Denia in 436/1044, displacing his younger brother Ḥasan, who had been secure enough in his eventual succession to appear on coins with his father and on his own.16 It is perhaps less surprising since Mujāhid himself oversaw ʿAlī’s (re)education, and ʿAlī

 12 Lahire, ‘From the Habitus to an Individual Heritage of Dispositions’, pp. 329–55.  13 Bruce, ‘The Politics of Violence and Trade’, pp. 137–39.  14 The anonymous author of the Liber maiolichinus and Thietmar of Merseburg write that Mujāhid’s wife and queen was captured (Thietmar actually writes that she was beheaded, and that Pope Benedict took her crown as a trophy), while Ibn al-​Khaṭīb writes that Mujāhid’s mother, Jūd the Christian, chose the people of her religion, along with her sister: Liber maiolichinus, ed. by Calisse, pp. 42–43; Thietmar of Merseburg, Annales, chronica et historiae aevi Saxonici, ed. by G. H. Pertz, p. 851; Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Kitāb aʿmāl al-​āʿlām, ed. by Lévi-​Provençal, pp. 251–54.  15 Rubiera Mata’s speculation on Mujāhid’s possible Sardinian origins involves some romanticizing of his motivations for invading the island, but this is perhaps what Abū Yaḥya b. Masʿada meant when he called Mujāhid the ‘the non-​Arab of Denia and of the fishermen of Sardinia’ in his refutation of Ibn García’s Shuʿūbiyya letter: Monroe, The Shu‘ūbiyya in al-​Andalus, p. 35; Rubiera Mata, La taifa de Denia, pp. 70–71. Al-​Marrākushī calls Mujāhid ‘al-​Rūmī’, likely referring to an Italian, rather than Greek, ethnic origin: al-​Marrākushī, The History of the Almohads, ed. by Dozy, p. 56.  16 Vives y Escudero, Monedas, nos 1296–1300, 1323–1325; Prieto y Vives, Los reyes de taifas, nos 199–208; Canto García and Ibrāhīm, ‘Suplemento a las monedas de los Reinos de Taifas’, nos 81–84. In the two years immediately preceding Mujāhid’s death, ʿAlī and Ḥasan appear on coins together with their father: Vives y Escudero, Monedas, nos 1297–1301; Prieto y Vives,

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is said to have professed his father’s religion well.17 After what seems to have been a short period of shared rule between the brothers, and a failed coup and assassination attempt by Ḥasan, ʿAlī succeeded his father and ruled Denia effectively for three decades. Most contemporary accounts of ʿAlī’s rule accept the sincerity of his return to Islam, and he certainly worked to maintain the public image of a legitimate Islamic ruler. He even publicly abstained from many of the vices, such as drinking, indulged in by other taifa rulers more secure in their religious legitimacy.18 The main criticism levelled at him in the sources was not his former religion, but his love of money, clothing, and food, and his obsession with finances over defences.19 This did not, however, erase ʿAlī’s past, or his complexity, and this Christian background seems to have dogged him. After Ḥasan’s failed assassination attempt against ʿAlī, in perhaps a last-​ditch attempt to undermine his brother’s Islamic legitimacy, he is said to have fled through the streets of Denia, proclaiming to his fellow Muslims that they had been betrayed. Moreover, a recently published twelfth-​century text fragment describes a complicated episode of gift-​diplomacy between ʿAlī, the Fatimid caliph al-​Mustanṣir bi-​Llāh, and King Fernando I of León.20 In 1056, while a famine was decimating Egypt, ʿAlī sent a ship loaded with food to the Fatimid caliph.21 The ship returned to Denia filled with precious stones, gold and other treasures, including perhaps an antique sardonyx chalice that would make its way into Fernando’s treasury.22 According to the twelfth-​century Egyptian author al-​Qifṭī, ʿAlī had specifically asked al-​Mustanṣir for the chalice, believing it to be the Holy Grail, to use in his diplomatic negotiations with the king of León. As an aside, al-​Qifṭī reminds readers of ʿAlī’s mother’s Christian origins, hinting that some people suspected ʿAlī of being a crypto-​Christian and that he may have requested the Christo­logical chalice for himself. Arguments concerning the current location of the Grail aside, this text shows that even a century after his death, and across the Mediterranean, ʿAlī b. Mujāhid’s complex identity remained a point of discussion.

 17  18  19  20  21  22

Los reyes de taifas, nos 206–08; Canto García and Ibrāhīm, ‘Suplemento a las monedas de los Reinos de Taifas’, nos 85–89. Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Kitāb aʿmāl al-​āʿlām, ed. by Lévi-​Provençal, pp. 253–54. Rubiera Mata, La taifa de Denia, p. 97. Ibn Bassām, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥīsin ahl al-​jazīra, ed. by ʿAbbās, iv, 183; Ibn Buluqqīn al-​Zīrī, Kitāb al-​tibiyān, ed. by Ṭībī, p. 103; Rubiera Mata, La taifa de Denia, p. 98. Turienzo Veiga, ‘De dos pergaminos árabes y un cáliz supuestamente milagroso’, pp. 23–25. Ibn ‘Idhārī, Bayān, III, 228; Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Kitāb aʿmāl al-​āʿlām, ed. by Lévi-​Provençal, p. 254; Ibn Bassām, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥīsin ahl al-​jazīra, ed. by ʿAbbās,, iii, 295–97. Torres Sevilla and Ortega del Río have argued that a chalice currently housed in the treasury of San Isidoro de Leon is not only this same chalice, but, in fact, the actual Holy Grail. Their claims have been roundly refuted by numerous scholars, including Turienzo in the article cited upra: Los Reyes del Grial. See Molina’s review in the Revista de Libros, ‘La “invención” de una reliquia en el siglo XXI: el Grial de León en las crónicas árabes’. See also Pick’s recent analysis of the chalice and this exchange: Her Father’s Daughter, pp. 199–203.

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ʿAlī’s Ambidextrous Statecraft Far from inhibiting his rulership, ʿAlī’s complex identity served his and Denia’s interests. Although state-​sponsored piracy against Christian coasts continued under ʿAlī, commercial contacts with Italy increased during his reign. Ships from Denia and Majorca likely carried ceramic wares and perishable products to ports such as Pisa, exporting goods from the taifa and redistributing imports from North Africa and other Andalusī centres.23 Pisan merchants actively traded in Sicily and North Africa during the later eleventh century, and their ships may also have travelled to Denia or Majorca, which would have provided even higher fiscal income for the taifa court’s coffers than duties collected on its own merchants returning from Italy.24 Given ʿAlī’s adoption of Pisan clothing, language, and beliefs during his time in the house of Ildeperto Albizone, one of the most successful Pisan merchant households, it is plausible that he also acquired a merchant’s education and business acumen that translated into an active and profitable commercial policy for his court and kingdom later in life. Denia and the Balearic Islands were particularly well-​situated for trade with Italy, but we should also consider how ʿAlī’s ambidextrous identity might have contributed to his taifa’s preeminent place in the intercultural trade routes of the Western Mediterranean. Perhaps because of his Christian and Latin background, ʿAlī maintained genial relations with the county of Barcelona. During the same period that he was corresponding with the Fatimid caliph, ʿAlī also exchanged surprisingly cordial letters with the countess Almodis of Barcelona. Although only a scrap of the original correspondence remains, dated between 1053 and 1056, the fragment points to a personal and even familiar relationship between the two courts.25 ʿAlī’s letter is, in fact, a response to one delivered by Bernard Amat, a faithful associate of the Catalan court, who probably carried the extant response back to Barcelona. ʿAlī warmly addresses the countess and does not forget to send his regards to her husband, Count Ramon Berenguer I. The letter’s language and tone communicate an acquaintance that was, at least to some degree, personal as well as diplomatic.26 The letter likely coincided with negotiations surrounding a treaty signed between Denia and Barcelona in

 23 Azuar Ruiz, ‘La taifa de Denia y el mercado mediterráneo del siglo XI’, pp. 219–34; Azuar Ruiz, ‘Arqueo­logía de las relaciones entre las taifas de al-​Andalus y las repúblicas italianas en el siglo XI’, pp. 1–23.  24 On Pisan commercial expansion, see most recently: Smith, ‘Calamity and Transition’. On the higher duties paid by foreign merchants in Muslim ports, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, i, 344–45; Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain, pp. 128–29.  25 Els pergamins de l’Arxiu Comtal de Barcelona de Ramón Borrell a Ramón Berenguer I, ed. by Feliu and Salrach, iii, doc. 776, pp. 1325–26; Bruce, ‘An Intercultural Dialogue’, pp. 23–25.  26 The letter’s language also indicates that it was either dictated or written originally in Arabic, then translated into Latin: Mesa Sanz, ‘Para la edición crítica de la carta de Alî ibn Muyâhid a la sede episcopal de Barcelona (1057)’, pp. 225–40.

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1058.27 This unique treaty placed Christians living in the taifa of Denia under the spiritual authority of the bishop of Barcelona, while stipulating that those same Christians would recognize ʿAlī’s rulership during their weekly sermons. Thus, although ʿAlī and his lieutenants sponsored pirate attacks on the Catalan coast, itself a source of political legitimacy, he simultaneously connected with Barcelona’s Christian rulers to achieve diplomatic compromises that bolstered his and their claims to legitimate authority. ʿAlī’s interactions with Christians extended beyond diplomatic relations. His Islamic identity did not prevent him from attracting Christians to his court and employing them in his chancery. The Christian Abū’l-​R abīʿ, who had served as court secretary in charge of the foreign mercenaries in Granada, fled to Denia after the anti-​Jewish riots of 1066 made him fear for his life as a non-​Muslim.28 A close analysis of the letter ʿAlī sent to Almodis reveals numerous traits that indicate the scribe was a Mozarab whose handwriting and command of Latin were the product of a hybrid Iberian education outside northern Christian Spain.29 The lexico­grapher Ibn Sīda ascribed any mistakes that might appear in his work to the fact that in ʿAlī’s court he was surrounded by the accented Arabic of foreigners.30 In a letter to the Fatimid vizir that he wrote for ʿAlī, Ibn Arqam praises the purity of al-​Mustanṣir’s court by lamenting the poorly-​spoken Arabic of those around him that comes from too much contact with foreigners and Christians.31 None of these alone proves the consistent role of Christians in ʿAlī’s court, but together they point to a stronger presence than at any other taifa court. Ruling over and drawing on the abilities of Christians would not only have coincided with ʿAlī’s hybrid identity, but would also have bolstered his political legitimacy as an Andalusī and Mediterranean ruler.32 Such diplomatic coups and diverse court entourages would not, however, have sufficed to maintain ʿAlī’s claims to power, had he not also consciously worked within the framework of Islamic rulership. Key to ʿAlī’s success as ruler

 27 For a more complete discussion of this treaty, see Bruce, ‘An Intercultural Dialogue’, pp. 25–33. See also Aillet’s more recent critique of my interpretation and of the treaty’s validity: Les Mozarabes, pp. 53–55.  28 Ibn Buluqqīn al-​Zīrī, Kitāb al-​tibiyān, ed. by Ṭībī, p. 95.  29 Díaz y Díaz, ‘A propósito de una carta del rey de Denia Alí a la Condesa Almodís de Barcelona’, pp. 25–30.  30 Scholarly consensus disagrees with Ribiera’s translation of the term ʿajam here as referring to local Christians speaking Romance: Ribera, Disertaciones y opúsculos, i, 100; de Epalza, ‘Notas sobre el linguista Ibn Sidah y la historia de Denia y su region en el siglo XI’, p. 168; Rubiera Mata, La taifa de Denia, pp. 123–25; Barceló, ‘Mossàrabs de València i “llengua mossàrab”’, pp. 198–99.  31 Ibn Bassām, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥīsin ahl al-​jazīra, ed. by ʿAbbās, iii, 295.  32 The managed presence of Christians and Jews in the Cordovan Umayyad court was an important part of caliphal rhetoric and imagery. Fancy has demonstrated how the use of religious minorities could later support imperial-​like claims in Aragon: The Mercenary Mediterranean.

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of Denia was his habile employment of the signs and tools of legitimate rule. He followed his father’s example and worked to attract literary, intellectual, and religious figures whose presence legitimized his claims to authority. He consciously patronized religious sciences and literary and intellectual arts on a grand scale to that end. Denia thus became a primary node in the intellectual networks that spanned al-​Andalus and the Mediterranean. Renowned scribes and scholars actively supported the taifa, writing letters and serving as diplomats, dedicating their works to ʿAlī, and debating and defining Islamic law under the aegis of his court. These men, and their words and writing, played an essential role in the constant negotiation of ʿAlī’s claims to legitimate rule vis-​à-​vis his peers across the Peninsula and the Mediterranean.

Legitimizing ʿAlī’s Ambidextrous Rule Perhaps because of his ambiguous or ambidextrous character, religious studies and their patronage played an essential role in supporting ʿAlī’s claims to legitimate power. Mujāhid had built his capital into the most important centre for the study of Koranic reading (qirā’a) in al-​Andalus, and ʿAlī was careful to maintain what his father had built.33 Throughout ʿAlī’s reign, Denia maintained its place as the second port of call for Islamic scholars travelling to or from al-​Andalus.34 Denia’s qirā’a school was especially known for the presence and teachings of Abū ʿAmr al-​Dānī.35 Al-​Dānī himself attracted over fifty students to Denia, from al-​Andalus and across the Mediterranean, placing it at the centre of scholarly networks. Al-​Dānī was such a renowned figure that ʿAlī marched at the head of this funeral procession in 1053.36 Although ʿAlī may indeed have been sincere in this public performance of grief, this act, as well as ʿAlī’s patronage of Islamic scholarship, also presented political benefits. A regime’s conservatism and attachment to tradition could contribute to its legitimacy, especially during troubled times. In this instance, Koranic reading was one of the ‘most important sciences to which religious men could devote themselves’, rigorously orthodox and based solely on the religious texts.37 In associating himself and his rule so intimately with the Islamic sciences, and specifically with Koranic recitation, ʿAlī thus enrolled the very words and sounds of the Koran in legitimizing his power.

 33 Ibn Khaldūn, Kitāb al-​ʿibar, I, 552. On Mujāhid’s literary and intellectual court in general, see Sarnelli Cerqua, ‘La vita intelletuale a Denia alla corte di Muðâhid al-​’Âmirî’; Rubiera Mata, La taifa de Denia, pp. 115–53; Soravia, ‘Les ‘ulamâ’ andalous au Ve siècle de l’Hégire’, p. 295.  34 Bruce, La taifa de Denia, pp. 372–73.  35 Wagner de Al-​Ganabi, ‘La escuela coránica de Denia’; Wagner de Al-​Ganabi, ‘Abū ʿAmr ʿŪtmān b. Saʿīd el Deniense’.  36 Ibn Bashkūwāl, Kitāb al-​Ṣila, ed. by al-​Abyārī, p. 592, no. 882.  37 Guichard and Soravia, Les royaumes des taifas, p. 222.

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Legitimacy, or at least the appearance of legitimacy, was not simply a question of reputation vis-​à-​vis ʿAlī’s taifa and Mediterranean peers. Ibn al-​ Khaṭīb’s criticism of the taifa rulers mentioned earlier bemoans ʿAlī’s collection of taxes, building of armies, and appointment of judges. However, these are all activities of a legitimate state, falling under Weber’s definition of a state as controlling the means and expression of legitimate violence.38 Bourdieu refines this concept to include especially symbolic violence, most importantly the state’s ability to exert violence in the form of taxation.39 Following Bourdieu’s analysis, the power of the state to exert symbolic violence in the form of taxes rests on the appearance of legitimacy that comes from bureaucracy and that manifests components of a bureaucratic state. Ibn al-​Khaṭīb condemned the taifa rulers for collecting taxes, but he also wrote that notaries and administrators recognized them, literally that the dīwāns were kept in their name. In this term, dīwān, we find the chancellery, fiscal, and administrative apparatus of the state, that is the bureaucracy that formed the basis of an Islamic state’s symbolic power. Denia under ʿAlī was no exception. For example, in a letter to Ibn Abī ʿĀmir, the ruler of Valencia, ʿAlī underlined the legitimate transfer of power from his father, Mujāhid, to himself.40 ʿAlī was writing to Ibn Abī ʿĀmir concerning his brother Ḥasan’s recent failed coup d’état after his father’s death. ʿAlī emphasized that those who held power in his father’s name and controlled his dīwān had sworn oaths to him, oaths that they renewed after his brother’s failed rebellion. Thus, in times of transition and turmoil, the dīwān was the arbiter of legitimacy. Ibn al-​Khaṭīb also mentions the literary scribes, or kuttāb al-​inshā’, who peopled the dīwān and provided ʿAlī with the essential trappings of the bureaucratic state. In many ways, in fact, they themselves were the trappings of the bureaucratic state. In the years after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, the taifa rulers sought to wrap themselves in the legitimacy of writing. As Soravia has noted, a veritable market of literature was created, in which the most talented and the most learned were sought after by political patrons seeking to ornament their courts with the literary legitimacy associated with the erstwhile caliphate. She refers specifically to the kuttāb al-​inshā’ as ‘king makers’.41 One of the primary responsibilities of these kuttāb al-​inshā’ for ʿAlī was maintaining epistolary relations with his Muslim peers, Andalusī and elsewhere, and these relations followed strict protocols and literary conventions requiring a long and onerous education. Letter writing, already ornate under the Umayyad caliphate, became a tortuous art under the taifas, ‘voluntarily bombastic, in  38 Weber, Economy and Society, English trans. of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, ed. by Roth and Wittich, pp. 54–57.  39 Bourdieu, Sur l’Etat, p. 322.  40 Ibn Bassām, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥīsin ahl al-​jazīra, ed. by ʿAbbās, iii, 130–31.  41 Soravia, ‘Les fonctionnaires epistoliers (kuttāb al-​inshā) en Espagne musulmane a l’époque des roitelets (Ve siècle h./XIe s.)’, p. 204.

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rhythmical and rhyming prose, and making abundant reference to literary and Koranic traditions’.42 Trained and educated kuttāb were thus essential for Denia’s court, and the literary culture (adab) of the secretaries, that is, their ‘moral and literary orthodoxy’, contributed to the regime’s legitimacy.43 In addition to letter writing, the kuttāb al-​inshā’ and other scholars bolstered the authenticity of their patrons’ claims to power through panegyric works. For ʿAlī, these works often implicated him in the world of Islamic science and writing. For example, the renowned lexico­grapher Ibn Sīda praised him for his loyal patronage, while describing the other taifa kings as uncultivated enemies of science who shower effeminate singers with silks and treat scholars with disdain.44 He lauds ʿAlī as the host of those who cultivate the sunna, literature, and philosophy, and who carry with them the Koran and poetry. Ibn Sīda laments ʿAlī’s eventual death, when men like himself will become as useless as a dangling wāw. This praise and close association of ʿAlī with core elements of Islam were reiterated both because of, and in spite of, his complex past and character.

Conclusion One final work highlights ʿAlī’s multiple and yet seemingly contradicting claims to legitimate rule: Ibn Garsiyya’s Risāla.45 This famous letter is associated with the Shuʿūbiyya movement in al-​Andalus, which argued for the superiority of non-​Arabs within the world of Islam, especially in the realms of literature and culture. As Soravia has suggested, the work was not likely meant as the manifesto it is often assumed to be, but as a piece of literary prowess and majlīs poetic jousting.46 Nevertheless, Ibn Garsiyya does associate his letter with his patron, ʿAlī, praising his son Muʿizz al-​Dawla as a proxy, commending his generosity and personal qualities.47 Since ʿAlī himself was a non-​Arab, this association of non-​Arab superiority with ʿAlī and his son would not have been lost on Ibn Garsiyya’s readers (or, more likely, listeners). Despite being a literary exercise, it was also a claim to legitimacy that resounded across al-​Andalus. In fact, when Ibn Hud, the ruler of Zaragoza, was preparing his invasion of Denia a few years later, he commissioned a refutation of Ibn Garsiyya’s letter by the kātib Jazzār al-​Saraqusṭī.48 This refutation not only rejects Ibn Garsiyya’s claims concerning non-​Arab superiority, but in a swipe at ʿAlī himself, portrays his court as one of libertines who live in contradiction  42 Sarnelli Cerqua, ‘La vita intelletuale a Denia’, p. 8.  43 Guichard and Soravia, Les royaumes des taifas, p. 237.  44 Cabanelas Rodríguez, Ibn Sida de Murcia, pp. 55–56.  45 Monroe, The Shu‘ūbiyya in al-​Andalus, pp. 23–29.  46 Soravia, review of Larsson’s Ibn Garcia’s Shub‘ubiyya Letter, pp. 201–04.  47 Monroe, The Shu‘ūbiyya in al-​Andalus, pp. 28–29.  48 Jazzār al-​Saraqustī, Dīwān, ed. and Spanish trans. by Barberá, pp. 102–03/78–79.

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to the sacred law. The refutation letter uses language and arguments similar to Abū Isḥaq’s near contemporaneous incendiary poem against the Jewish vizir Joseph ibn Naghrila, which helped provoke the pogrom of 1066 in Granada.49 Al-​Saraqusṭī calls on the orthodox people of Denia to rise up against their illegitimate ruler and cease giving refuge to Christians. The words of the literary secretaries were thus weaponized, projecting and performing identity, claiming and contending legitimacy, sometimes intending to stabilize claims to power, but in effect, contributing to the turmoil of the taifa period. ʿAlī sat at the centre of that turmoil, manipulating it even to his benefit, performing various roles and identities that kept him in power. Those roles and ʿAlī’s complexity do not remove him from categories of Islamic rulership, but they do show that such categories can oversimplify and dull the constantly changing nature of power in post-​caliphal al-​Andalus and the medi­eval Mediterranean.

 49 Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Kitāb aʿmāl al-​āʿlām, ed. by Lévi-​Provençal, pp. 265–67.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Ibn Bashkūwāl, Kitāb al-​Ṣila, ed. by Ibrahim al-​Abyārī (Cairo: al-​Maktabat al-​ Andalusiya, 1989) Ibn Bassām al-​Shantarīnī, Abu al-​Ḥasan ‘Alī, al-​Dhakhīra fī maḥāsin ahl al-​jazīra, ed. by Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dar al-​Gharb al-​Islāmī, 2000) Ibn Buluqqīn al-​Zīrī, ‘Abd Allāh, Kitāb al-​tibyān li–l-​āmīr ‘Abd Allāh b. Buluqqīn ākhir umarā’ banī zīrī bi-​Gharnāṭā, ed. by Amin T. Ṭībī (Rabat: Manshūrāt ʻUkāẓ, 1995) Ibn ‘Idhārī al-​Marrākushī, al-​Bayān al-​mughrib, iii, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane au XIème siècle. Texte arabe publié pour la première fois d’après un manuscrit de Fès, ed. by Évariste Lévi-​Provençal (Leiden: Brill, 1930) Ibn Khaldūn, Kitāb al-​‘ibar wa-​dīwān al-​mubtada’ wa-​al-​khabar fī ayyām al-​‘arab wa-​al-​‘ajam wa-​al-​barbar wa-​man ‘āṣarahum min dhawī al-​sulṭān al-​akbar (Beirut: Dār al-​Kitāb al-​Lubnānī, 1956–1961) Ibn al-​Khaṭīb, Lisān al-​Dīn, Kitāb ā‘māl al-​ā‘lām. Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane extraite du Kitāb a‘māl al-​ā‘lām, ed. by Évariste Lévi-​Provençal (Rabat: Éditions Félix Moncho, 1934) Jazzār al-​Saraqusṭī, Dīwān, ed. and Spanish trans. by Salvador Barberá (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2005) Liber maiolichinus de gestis pisanorum illustribus, ed. by Carlo Calisse (Roma: Forzani, 1904) al-​Marrākushī, ʿAbd al-​Wāḥid, The History of the Almohades: Preceded by a Sketch of the History of Spain from the Time of the Conquest Till the Reign of Yúsof Ibn-​Téshúfin, and of the History of the Almoravides, ed. by Reinhart Dozy (Amsterdam: Oriental Press, 1968) Els pergamins de l’Arxiu Comtal de Barcelona de Ramon Borrell a Ramon Berenguer I, ed. by Gaspar Feliu and Josep Salrach, 3 vols (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 1999) Thietmar of Merseburg, Annales, chronica et historiae aevi Saxonici, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, ed. by J. M. Lappenberg, 39 vols to date (Hannover, 1826–), iii (1839), pp. 723–871 Secondary Works Aillet, Cyrille, Les mozarabes: christianisme et arabisation en al-​Andalus (IXe–XIIe siècle) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2010) Azuar Ruiz, Rafael, ‘Arqueo­logía de las relaciones entre las taifas de al-​Andalus y las repúblicas italianas en el siglo XI’, eHumanista/IVITRA, 38 (2018), 1–23 —— , ‘La taifa de Denia y el mercado mediterráne del siglo XI’, in Bataliús III. Estudios sobre el reino aftasí. Remebranza de un ciclo de conferencías tenido en Badajoz entre el 13 y 14 de marzo de 2014, ed. by Juan Z. Stabel-​Hansen and Guillermo S. Kurtz Schaefer (Badajoz: Gobierno de Extremadura, 2014), pp. 219–34

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Barceló, Carmen, ‘Mossàrabs de València i “llengua mossàrab”’, Caplletra, 20 (1996), 183–206 Bourdieu, Pierre, Sur L’État: Cours au Collège de France, 1989–1992. Cours et Travaux (Paris: Raisons d’agir, 2012) Bruce, Travis, ‘The Politics of Violence and Trade: Denia and Pisa in the Eleventh Century’, Journal of Medi­eval History, 32 (2006), 127–42 —— , ‘An Intercultural Dialogue between the Muslim Taifa of Denia and the Christian County of Barcelona in the Eleventh Century’, Medi­eval Encounters, 15 (2009), 1–32 —— , ‘Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-​ Century Taifa of Denia’, Al-​Masāq, 22 (2010), 235–48 —— , La taifa de Denia et la Méditerranée au XIe siècle (Toulouse: CNRS – Université de Toulouse–Le Mirail, 2013) Burke, Peter J., ‘Relationships among Multiple Identities’, in Advances in Identity Theory and Research, ed. by Peter J. Burke, Timothy J. Owens, Richard T. Serpe, and Peggy A. Thoits (Cham: Springer, 2003), pp. 195–214 Burke, Peter J., and Jan E. Stets, Identity Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Cabanelas Rodríguez, Darío, Ibn Sida de Murcia: el mayor lexicógrafo de al-​Andalus (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1966) Canto García, Alberto, and Tawfiq ibn Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm, ‘Suplemento a las monedas de los Reinos de Taifas’, in Los Reyes de Taifas: estudio numismático de los musulmanes españoles en el siglo V de la Hégira (XI de J.C.), ed. by Antonio Prieto y Vives (Madrid: Ibersaf Editores, 2003) Catlos, Brian A., Cecily J. Hilsdale, Peregrine Horden, and Sharon Kinoshita, ‘Reflections: Talking Mediterranean’, in Can We Talk Mediterranean? Conversations on an Emerging Field in Medi­eval and Early Modern Studies, ed. by Brian Catlos and Sharon Kinoshita (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 103–23 Catlos, Brian A., and Sharon Kinoshita, eds, Can We Talk Mediterranean? Conversations on an Emerging Field in Medi­eval and Early Modern Studies (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Chejne, Anwar G., Muslim Spain: Its History and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1974) Clément, François, Pouvoir et légitimité en Espagne musulmane à l’époque des taifas Ve–XIe siècle). L’imam fictif (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997) Constable, Olivia Remie, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) Díaz y Díaz, M. C., ‘A propósito de una carta del rey de Denia Alí a la Condesa Almodís de Barcelona’, in Homenaje a Don José María Lacarra de Miguel en su jubilación del profesorado: estudios medi­evales, ed. by José María Lacarra, 5 vols (Zaragoza: Anubar, 1977), v, 25–30 Epalza, Mikél de, ‘Notas sobre el linguista Ibn Sidah y la historia de Denia y su region en el siglo XI’, Revista del Instituto de Estudios Alicantinos, 33 (1981), 161–72

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Fancy, Hussein Anwar, The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medi­eval Crown of Aragon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016) Fierro, Maribel, ‘Hostages and the Dangers of Cultural Contact: Two Cases from Umayyad Cordoba’, in Acteurs des transferts culturels en Méditerranée médiévale, ed. by Rania Abdellatif, Yassir Benhima, Daniel König, and Elisabeth Ruchaud (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 73–83 Goitein, Shelomoh Dov, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) Guichard, Pierre, and Bruna Soravia, Les royaumes de taifas: apogée culturel et déclin politique des émirats andalous du XIe siècle (Paris: Guethner, 2007) König, Daniel, ‘Caught Between Cultures? Bicultural Personalities as Cross-​ Cultural Transmitters in the Late Antique and Medi­eval Mediterranean’, in Acteurs des transferts culturels en Méditerranée médiévale, ed. by Rania Abdellatif, Yassir Benhima, Daniel König, and Elisabeth Ruchaud (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), pp. 56–72 Lahire, Bernard, ‘From the Habitus to an Individual Heritage of Dispositions: Towards a Socio­logy at the Level of the Individual’, Poetics, 31.5 (2003), 329–55 Mesa Sanz, Juan-​Francisco, ‘Para la edición crítica de la carta de Ali ibn Muyahid a la sede episcopal de Barcelona (1057)’, in Studia linguistica in honorem Francisco Gimeno Menéndez, ed. by Brauli Mas i Miralles Montoya-​Abat and Antoni Mas i Miralles (Alicante: Publicacions de la Universitat d’Alacant, 2013), pp. 225–40 Molina, Luis, ‘La “invención” de una reliquia en el siglo XXI: el Grial de León en las crónicas árabes”’, Revista de Libros (5 July 2017). https://www. revistadelibros.com/la-​invencion-​de-​una-​reliquia-​en-​el-​siglo-​x xi-​el-​grial-​de-​ leon-​en-​las-​cronicas-​arabes/ Monroe, James T., The Shu‘ūbiyya in al-​Andalus: The Risāla of Ibn Garcia and Five Refutations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970) Pick, Lucy, Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in the Early Spanish Kingdoms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017) Prieto y Vives, Antonio, Los Reyes de Taifas; Estudio Histórico-​Numismático de los Musulmanes Españoles en el Siglo V de la Hégira (XI de J.C.) (Madrid: [Impr. de E. Maestre], 1926) Rebillard, Éric, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 ce (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012) Los Reyes de Taifas: estudio numismático de los musulmanes españoles en el siglo V de la Hégira (XI de J.C.), ed. by Antonio Prieto y Vives (Madrid: Ibersaf Editores, 2003) Ribera y Tarragò, Juan, Disertaciones y opúsculos (Madrid: Impr. de E. Maestre, 1928) Rubiera Mata, María Jesús, La taifa de Denia (Alicante: Instituto Juan Gil-​Albert, 1985) Sarnelli Cerqua, Clelia, ‘La vita intelletuale a Denia alla corte di Muğâhid al-​’Âmirî’, Annali dell’Istituto universitario orientale di Napoli, Scritti in onore di Laura Veccia Vaglieri, 14 (1964), 1–26

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Scales, Peter C., The Fall of the Caliphate of Córdoba: Berbers and Andalusis in Conflict (Leiden: Brill, 1994) Smith, Romney David, ‘Calamity and Transition: Re-​Imagining Italian Trade in the Eleventh-​Century Mediterranean’, Past and Present, 228 (2015), 15–56 Soravia, Bruna, ‘Les fonctionnaires épistoliers (kuttâb al-​inshâ’) en Espagne musulmane à l’époque des roitelets (Ve s. H./XIe s.)’ (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Université de Paris III, 1988) —— , ‘Les ‘ulamā’ andalous au Ve siècle de l’Hégire. Antagonistes ou courtisans des mulūk al-​ṭawā’if’, in Saber religioso y poder político en el Islam: actas del Simposio Internacional (Granada, 15–18 Octubre 1991) (Madrid: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 1994), pp. 285–301 —— , review of Goran Larsson, Ibn Garcia’s Shub‘ubiyya Letter. Ethnic and Theo­ logical Tensions in Medi­eval al-​Andalus (Leiden: Brill, 2003) in al-​Masāq, 18 (2006), 201–04 Taleb, Nassam, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007) Tixier du Mesnil, Emmanuelle, ‘La fitna andalouse du XIe siècle’, Médiévales, 60 (2011), 17–28 Torres Sevilla-​Quiñones de León Margarita and Ortega del Río José Miguel, Los Reyes Del Grial. Primera edición. Ensayo Histórico (Madrid: Reino de Cordelia, 2014) Turienzo Veiga, Gustavo 2015, ‘De dos pergaminos árabes y un cáliz supuestamente milagroso’, Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos en Madrid, 43 (2015), 19–52 Vives y Escudero, Antonio, Monedas de las dinastías arábigo-​españolas (Madrid: Establecimiento tipográfico de Fortanet, 1893) Wagner de Al-​Ganabi, Wilhelmina T. F., ‘La Escuela Coránica de Denia: Abu Amr Utma B. Sa’id Ad-​Dani, Figura, Obra Formativa y Obra Escrita’ (Dissertation, Universidad de Granada, 1988) —— , ‘Abū ʿAmr ʿŪtmān b. Saʿīd el Deniense: esbozo biográfico’, in Biografías y género biográfico en el occidente islámico, ed. by M. L. Avila Navarro (Madrid: CSIC, 1997), pp. 345–65 Wasserstein, David, The Rise and Fall of the Party Kings: Politics and Society in Islamic Spain 1002–1086 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) Weber, Max, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Socio­logy, English trans. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)

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The Medi­eval/Early Modern Divide along the Franco-​Spanish Border In the autumn and winter months of 1686–1687, the royal emissary of the French Crown in Guyenne, in the south​west of the kingdom, complained repeatedly about the widespread presence of ‘nouveaux convertis’ (new converts) across the region.1 The Edict of Fontainebleau (October 1685) had recently revoked the privileges granted to the Huguenots at the end of the wars of religion nearly a century prior. But the ‘new converts’ to whom intendant Louis Bazin de Bezons referred were not Calvinists then required to resume an outward Catholic identity. Rather, they were descendants of those Spanish and Portuguese Jews who in the 1490s had been forced to either convert or emigrate. In his expansive and at times moving history of the Western Mediterranean from antiquity to the present, Teofilo Ruiz insists on religious conversion as a key to understanding ‘the Iberian experience’ and the Mediterranean at large.2 There is no doubt that the forced conversion of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims left a profound mark on all aspects of life in Iberia. Adding to a rich and controversial literature, David Nirenberg and the late Remie Constable have recently dissected the manifold legacy of mass conversions. Following the massacres of Jews in 1391 and the ban of Spanish Muslims (mudéjars) in 1502, baptized Jews and baptized Muslims, rather than religious infidels, became the objects of fear and regulation — the fear that they were undetectable and yet pulling the strings of power, that they contaminated a Catholic society which was imagined to be under constant assault from internal religious enemies. Paradoxically, the very institutions that promoted conversion also dreaded its consequences, and the indiscernible convert became a veritable obsession not only for ecclesiastical and secular authorities but also for writers, artists, and ordinary folk.3 We often forget that Iberia was not the only region of Europe where crypto-​Judaism became an institutionalized reality. In 1550, King Henry II  1 Correspondance des intendants, ed. by Le Roy Ladurie, pp. 253–90.  2 Ruiz, The Western Mediterranean, p. 139.  3 Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths; Constable, To Live Like a Moor. Francesca Trivellato ([email protected]) is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 91–105 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126179

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of France invited ‘les marchands et autres portugaiz appellez nouveaulx chrétiens’ (merchants and other Portuguese known as New Christians) to come and live in the kingdom with their families. Everyone understood what these words meant.4 In 1492, the Portuguese Crown had offered refuge to Jews fleeing Spain in return for a hefty tax, but only six years later, in 1497, it had abruptly rescinded its promise of a safe haven and banned the open practice of Judaism from all its territories. In the meantime, the Portuguese monarchy and clerical establishment lobbied for the right to create a modern Inquisition modelled on the Spanish one. In 1536, the papacy finally conceded and three tribunals were set up in Lisbon, Coimbra, and Évora (an additional seat was created in Goa in 1560). The years between 1497 and 1536 were the golden age of crypto-​Judaism in Portugal. In spite of persistent underlying antagonism and even outbursts of popular violence toward Jewish converts (brutally in the case of the 1506 Lisbon massacre), the absence of a modern inquisition during this period meant that those Jews who had been coerced into baptism were relatively free to practice a minimum of Jewish religious customs in secret — to light candles and change their clothes on Friday or shun pork and whisper ritual words that neighbours found incomprehensible. Those suspected of harbouring less than sincere Catholic beliefs were targets of scorn and physical attacks, but, before the 1530s, the Portuguese authorities did not unleash repression on a massive scale, and even then, they initially allowed for the departure of those New Christians (also derogatively referred to as Marranos) who wished to search for a better life elsewhere.5 The timing of the French king’s invitation to ‘merchants and other Portuguese known as New Christians’ to settle in the southwest thus coincided with the first exodus of Marranos from Portugal. The dubious Catholic allegiance of those whom the French Crown encouraged to come to the region alarmed the parlement of Bordeaux, which took thirty years to enact the invitation.6 To be sure, the 1550 edict included some extraordinary concessions: these immigrants would not be considered foreigners but would be automatically granted the status of régnicoles (subjects of the French Crown); they would be free to move, engage in any economic activity they chose, and bequeath their assets, because they would be exempted from the droit d’aubain, the much maligned king’s prerogative to confiscate the property of any foreigner who died in the kingdom.

 4 The 1550 edict is reproduced in Les ‘Nations’ juives portugaises, ed. by Nahon, pp. 21–26.  5 Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto.  6 To be actionable, all royal edicts in Old Regime France had to be ratified by the parlement of Paris as well as every pertinent regional parlement. A specific decree protecting ‘Portuguese and Spaniards’ settling in Bordeaux was issued in 1574 (Les ‘Nations’ juives portugaises, ed. by Nahon, pp. 29–31), while the 1550 patents were confirmed in 1656 (pp. 32–35). Both these ordinances are mentioned explicitly in the royal edict of 1723 that permitted the open practice of Judaism in Bordeaux and the neighbouring areas (pp. 35–39).

the medi­e val/early modern divide along the franco-spanish border

In the wake of the 1550 decree, growing numbers of New Christians trickled across the border — most of them traversed France on their way to Amsterdam and Hamburg, where they could live openly as Jews, but a few made Bordeaux and nearby towns their home. In 1636, by official count, Bordeaux housed 260 Portuguese and Spanish residents, which reached some 1500 by the mid-​eighteenth century, when the port city played a major role in the Atlantic transport of commodities and human cargo. They were hardly all rich but a disproportionate contingent was involved in local, regional, and international trade. New Christian merchants assumed a particularly significant role at the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce between Spain and the United Provinces in 1621, when commerce between the two countries was officially suspended and they carved out corridors of contraband connecting Iberia to northern European markets in cooperation with their kith and kin in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, in 1627, Count-​Duke Olivares wooed affluent New Christian bankers from Lisbon to Madrid with the prospect of asientos, that is, contracts to run the Spanish Crown’s finance and custom houses. Olivares’ many critics accused him of having put the fate of the Spanish monarchy in the hands of Portuguese New Christians, who only sought to enrich themselves. In a particularly virulent satire written around 1639, Francisco de Quevedo depicted the Count-​Duke as participating in a general assembly of Jewish rabbis meeting in Salonica with the purpose of conspiring to the ‘ruin of all others’.7 Among the New Christians who fled Iberia, a few prominent figures occasionally returned for brief visits carrying appropriate licences, but even these so-​called judíos de permiso were ‘barely tolerated’.8 Many more went back and forth or corresponded with relatives, friends, and associates on both sides of the border at their own peril. By transgressing the prohibition to cross the Franco-​Spanish frontier, they often ended up in the hands of the Inquisition, which is why we owe most of what we know about them to the records left by those who hunted them. After France declared war on Spain in 1635, the Spanish monarchy confiscated all French subjects’ belongings and the Inquisition pursued with renewed vigour those New Christians who operated in French territory. In 1637 Juan Núñez Saraiba, a prosperous hombre de negocios and Olivares’ asientista, was burned at the stake in Toledo at the end of a lengthy trial designed to prove, among other allegations, that he practiced Jewish rites ‘de la manera que se observaba en Francia’ (in the manner they were observed in France) and that he had arranged for a rabbi to travel from Amsterdam to Bordeaux in order to circumcise his old father, who lived there and was nearing death.9 A year later, in 1638, a New Christian merchant residing in Biarritz handed to the inquisitors of Toledo a list of

 7 Poliakov, The History of Anti-​Semitism, ii, 291.  8 For the example of Samuel Pallache, see Garciěa-​Arenal and Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds, p. 128.  9 Caro Baroja, Los Judíos, ii, 60–67.

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160 alleged crypto-​Jews, whom, we are to infer, he had met in person as he moved between France and Spain.10 Interrogated by the Lisbon inquisitors in 1668, a certain Diogo Rodrigues described his wide-​ranging peregrinations, including stays in Madrid, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and declared that wherever he went, his goal was to make money; by his account, he traded with every sort of person, regardless of whether they were ‘Old’ or ‘New’ Christians (‘tratava com toda a casta de gente que se offereçía ou fossem christão velhos ou nouvos’).11 Whether we take it literally or as an attempt to deflect the inquisitors’ assumption that he preferred to keep company with other crypto-​Jews, Rodrigues’ statement reminds us that the Franco-​Spanish border was porous and that trade offered a frequent opportunity for testing the boundaries imposed by ecclesiastical norms. In an effort to dispel the long shadow of the Black Legend on narratives of the Spanish Inquisition, Ruiz reminds us that the Papal Inquisition was born not in Aragon, and certainly not in Castile, but rather in thirteenth-​century Occitania, during the so-​called Albigensian Crusade.12 That, however, was the medi­eval Papal Inquisition. In the sixteenth century, seizing on the prerogatives of the Gallican Church, the French monarchy did not accept the presence of a branch of the new, Counter-​Reformation Papal Inquisition created in 1542, whose tribunals each regional Italian state had to host. Nor did France follow the example of Spain and Portugal, both of whom had demanded the establishment of a monarchic inquisition. As a result, those ‘Portuguese’ who came to live in Bordeaux and its surroundings after 1550, although perpetually suspected of being crypto-​Jews, were free from inquisitorial persecution. New Christians in the south​west of France were nonetheless antagonized by the clergy, the local population — which saw them as both religious enemies and political traitors — and by those merchants, wine producers, insurance underwriters, and bankers who felt threatened by real and imaginary competition. It fell on the king, who regarded them as an economic asset, to ensure their protection and well-​being. In spite of the official ban on the presence of Jews in the kingdom, and weary of the negative consequences that the departure of New Christian merchants would have on French commerce, Crown officials were charged with a delicate balancing act. The correspondence of Louis Bazin de Bezons reveals that royal authorities had no illusions about the immigrants’ religious identity. In May 1688, the intendent called them ‘les Juifs qui sont dans cette province sous le nom des Portugais’ (the Jews who reside in this province under the name of Portuguese).13 Having acknowledged that, he nevertheless discouraged them from emigrating and bringing their

 10  11  12  13

Caro Baroja, Los Judíos, iii, 336–44. Lisbon, ANTT, Tribunal do Santo Ofício: Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 5101, fol. 28r. Ruiz, ‘The Holy Office in Medi­eval France’, pp. 34–35. Paris, AN, G/7/134, letter by Louis Bazin de Bezons to the contrôleur général, Bordeaux, 13 May 1688.

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wealth and talent abroad, notably to the United Provinces, France’s foe, with which war was about to break out again. He even threatened to arrest those suspected of preparing to flee and ordered them to pledge their goods.14 At the same time, he laboured to bring New Christians into religious compliance and pursued a Jesuit project for the establishment in Bordeaux of ‘une espèce de séminaire’ (a sort of seminary) specially designed for the education of New Christian children.15 This was the context in which a Bordeaux lawyer, Étienne Cleirac, edited a volume of maritime laws titled Us et coustumes de la mer (Usages and Customs of the Sea).16 Both this title and its author are today virtually unknown, even though the book was a notable success. First published in 1647, Us et coustumes de la mer appeared in 1661 in an expanded edition printed in at least 1200 copies (an exceptional print-​run for a non-​religious book at the time) and was then re-​issued four more times. The frontispiece of the 1647 edition, an otherwise unadorned tome, displays the motto ‘Undarum Terræque Potens’ (Potent over sea and over land) under the coat of arms of Anne of Austria, the regent queen of France during the minority of Louis XIV (1643–1651), to whom the book is dedicated. Both instrumental and genuine motivations moved Cleirac to assemble an antho­logy of recent maritime laws accompanied by his commentary. Published when France was beginning to assert its position in the increasingly competitive arena of international commerce, Us et coustumes de la mer was a means for its author to ingratiate himself with the monarchy after his son had gone into exile for joining the local branch of the Fronde known as the Ormée. But Cleirac’s intellectual project had broader ambitions and ramifications. As the dedication explains, he wished to make available to judges and lawyers with little or no direct experience of maritime trade a handbook that would assist them in their task of adjudicating disputes among merchants, ship captains, sailors, and underwriters. He also aimed to confer prestige on the ‘fils de Neptune’ (children of Neptune), as he called all people working at sea, who had long been regarded as inferior to the ‘fils de la terre’ (children of the land).17 Evidently, Cleirac was not an unabashed critic of the emerging commercial society. A devout Catholic, he did not espouse intransigent condemnations of the moneyed economy, of which there were plenty. As a barrister in the parlement of Bordeaux and a legal official in the Admiralty court, he belonged to the urban elite but was not eligible to purchase an aristocratic title and  14 Paris, AN, G/7/133, letter sent by Louis Bazin de Bezons to the contrôleur général, Bordeaux, 15 October 1686.  15 Paris, AN, G/7/134, letter sent by Louis Bazin de Bezons to the contrôleur général, Bordeaux, 27 May 1689.  16 The following para­graphs build on Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit.  17 Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer (pages without numbers). All citations from Cleirac come from the second (1661) edition of his 1647 work.

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was thus less threatened by the rising status of merchants than the nobility of sword and of robe. In his commentaries, he alternates between praise and disparagement for merchants and bankers: he heralds them as treasures for state and society as long as they behave honestly but condemns those who act as profiteers.18 What distinguished the two groups? What qualified as dishonest behaviour? Cleirac never answers these questions in any straightforward way. Instead, he tells a story — a story in which Jews stand in for fraudulent behaviour with a rhetorical penchant that reveals the self-​evidence of such claim for his readers, and that added an original and insidious twist to a plethora of well-​worn stereotypes. Glossing over the first article of an authoritative Rouen collection of norms concerning marine insurance, Cleirac writes: Les polices d’asseurance, & les lettres de change, furent méconnuës à l’ancienne Iurisprudence Romaine, & sont de l’invention posthume des Iuifs, suivant la remarque de Giovan Villani en son histoire universelle. Insurance policies and bills of exchange were unknown to ancient Roman jurisprudence and are the posthumous invention of Jews, according to the remarks of Giovan[ni] Villani in his universal history.19 These are puzzling words. If it is true that premium-​based insurance and bills of exchange ‘were unknown to ancient Roman jurisprudence’, there is no basis whatsoever for contending that Jews invented either of them, nor did Giovanni Villani, the famous Florentine chronicler who died of the plague in 1348, ever make this claim. However, repeated and expanded in the second edition of Us et coustumes de la mer, for the following three and a half centuries these lines formed nothing short of a legend that captivated great minds like Montesquieu and Marx, that was broadcast through myriad lesser texts, and that inspired a number of counter-​narratives. Whether coined by Cleirac or adapted by him from an oral tradition that has been lost, the legend of the Jewish invention of marine insurance and bills of exchange mixes facts and fiction, and blends together views of Jews and of credit that belong to two distinct historical moments — what today we call the Middle Ages and early modernity. Through a meandering narrative, Cleirac recounts that when Jews were expelled from France by a series of kings whom he mentions by name — Dagobert (r. 629–634), Philip Augustus (r. 1180–1223), and Philip the Tall (r. 1316–1322) — they devised new financial instruments in order to retrieve their assets abroad (every expulsion was accompanied by confiscation). As they fled to ‘Lombardy’, that is, to northern and central Italy, Jews — Cleirac writes — carried their invention with them. There, Guelfs and Ghibellines, supporters of the pope and the Holy

 18 Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer.  19 Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer, p. 218.

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Roman Emperor, respectively, found marine insurance and bills of exchange very useful when each faction was expelled from its hometown by political adversaries and had to shield its properties. The story culminates with these Italian exiles perfecting the use of these financial inventions and bringing them to Germany, Flanders, and eventually to Amsterdam. Cleirac refers to Jews harshly, using a theo­logically inflected vocabulary. But the ultimate targets of his invective are ‘Lombards’, a term that originally referred to moneylenders hailing from Asti and adjacent towns in northern Italy and that soon encompassed all Christian lenders, especially those who operated north of the Alps. In Cleirac’s account, Lombards, having absorbed the teaching of wicked Jews, extorted usurious rates from naïve Christian debtors. They were considered worse than Jews — namely, Christians who behaved like Jews. They were also more dangerous than Jews because they were not easily recognizable and because Christian kings were reluctant to expel them. At least, Cleirac comments, ‘Jews were hated, treated as jackanapes, and continuously ridiculed’.20 He also notes that, since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Jews were obliged to wear a ‘bonnet jaune’ (yellow hat), which marked them apart from the rest of the population. By contrast, nothing distinguished Lombards outwardly from reputable Christian merchants. Moreover, the 1274 Church canon The Abyss of Usury had ordered all Christian rulers to expel foreign Christian moneylenders from their domains, and Lombards had been banned from France more than once. But ‘these rustics’, as Cleirac calls them, ‘had many friends at court’ and as a result, in 1311 were readmitted ‘on condition that they would become honest in the future and would abstain from all their bad practices’.21 Unsurprisingly, Cleirac adds, ‘instead of reforming themselves, these parasitical hypocrites became even more dissolute’.22 It was only in 1347 that the French king finally ‘purged his kingdom of them and drove them out of France’.23 There are several layers of meaning in Cleirac’s bewildering narrative. Here I would like to stress how this seventeenth-​century Bordeaux lawyer turned the Middle Ages into a usable past. A graduate of the Collège de Guyenne, one of the kingdom’s most renowned humanist secondary schools, attended by the young Michel de Montaigne and Joseph Scaliger, Cleirac went on to study law. He was thus educated in the scholarly tradition that during the sixteenth century had revolutionized the study of Roman law and history and that taught him to look to the Middle Ages instead of antiquity for

 20 ‘…les Iuifs vivoient odieux, traités en faquins, & ridicules continuellement’: Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer, p. 220.  21 ‘ces Rustres eurent tant d’amis en Cour … [à] condition qu’ils seroient plus gens de bien pour l’advenir, & qu’ils s’abstiendroient de toutes les male fassons’: Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer, p. 221.  22 ‘au lieu de s’amander, la dissolution de ces parivrés hypocrites augmenta’: Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer, p. 221.  23 ‘en purgea son Royaume, & les deterra de France’: Cleirac, Us et coustumes de la mer, p. 222.

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arguments about the formation of the French state and society, especially as a defender of the monarchist cause.24 When he died, Cleirac had a personal library of 671 volumes. That said, he was neither a philo­logist nor a first-​class savant — something that helps explain his eclectic use of sources (a point to which I will return). For sure, he was no Hebraist. His knowledge of Jewish history was limited to the dates of the expulsions from the French kingdom, which figured in most chronicles of France, and his views of Judaism were shaped by Churchmen and secular authors equally averse to Jews. In any case, Cleirac was not interested in Jews qua Jews. Rather, he deployed them as a trope to address his real concern: the growing influence of private finance as evidenced by the increasing diffusion and intricacy of marine insurance and, even more, bills of exchange. By describing Lombards as ‘judaizers’, Cleirac inserted himself into a tradition that harkened back to the Church fathers and that the semi-​coerced and forced conversions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, not to mention of the presence of large numbers of ‘Portuguese’ in the south​west of France, revived with particular intensity. The invisibility of Bordeaux’s New Christians was matched by the increasingly inscrutable nature of bills of exchange, which were becoming more and more complex while also more commonly used. In this unstable social and economic order, the figure of the medi­eval Jewish usurer functioned as a symbolic surrogate for missing legal lines of demarcation between good and bad credit, and between genuine and insincere Catholics. Written in coded words on thin slips of paper, bills of exchange could be hard to decipher (especially by those who did not handle them professionally). They had no intrinsic value and yet were capable of moving wealth across vast distances and from one individual to another. No one invented bills of exchange, which evolved slowly from notarial contracts into commercial papers as the need to remit sums abroad increased during the thirteenth-​century commercial revolution. Instead of placing silver coins on board a ship or on the back of a horse at risk of losing them to a storm or a corrupt customs guard, a merchant could now make payments in a distant town and in local currency by sending his agent a piece of paper. During the sixteenth century, bills of exchange became ever more arcane. International merchants settled their debts and credits in account books by the stroke of a pen, so that it was no longer necessary for a trader to deposit cash with a banker to have a bill of exchange issued to him. By the early seventeenth century, bills of exchange could also be endorsed and passed on to a new creditor, a procedure that increased their circulation and generated the technically erroneous impression that they were paper money. Meanwhile, a new institution emerged in Europe: the financial fair. At these gatherings, the best known occurring in sixteenth-​century Lyon, a select group of bankers and brokers engaged in the purchase and sale of bills of exchange  24 Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship.

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rather than commodities. Financial fairs epitomized the divorce between money and commodity markets and favoured the development of new and abstruse techniques of currency arbitrage. They stood at the pinnacle of early modern European capitalism, which in Cleirac’s narrative appears to be as oligopolistic, as Fernand Braudel would later depict it.25 A long line of economic thinkers, from Aristotle to Adam Smith, condemned speculation for the sake of speculation as opposed to the trade in natural resources and manufactured goods. In the sixteenth century, following the Thomistic opposition between trade and finance, influential Catholic moral theo­logians devised seemingly precise classification systems to parcel legitimate bills of exchange (those used as remittances) from those they categorized as loans, and thus as usury. In 1582 the Florentine writer Bernardo Davanzati, scion of a banking family and member of several learned academies, likened those bills of exchange that were employed to convert currencies for the purpose of facilitating long-​distance trade to a seed of grain that, once it falls on the ground, first dies and then is reborn as a new fruit ‘per imitazione di natura’ (imitating nature). By contrast, he called bills that were utilized for purely speculative goals ‘cambi secchi’ (dry exchange) because they dried up the blood from the veins. Dry exchange, he wrote, ‘non serve al comodo della mercanzia, ma solamente all’utile del danaio’ (does not sustain the utility of trade, but only the utility of money).26 Like Davanzati, Cleirac did not censure the use of bills of exchange altogether, but unlike Davanzati, he did not accept the Church taxonomies that condemned all forms of currency arbitrage because he knew how intrinsic to commercial practice those practices had become. Nor could Cleirac find an alternative framework in civil law. Then, like now, the complexity of commercial credit perpetually exceeded the regulatory frameworks set in place to tame its risks. This normative vacuum, I suggest, explains his recourse to Jews as allegorical figures. While bills of exchange increased in sophistication and theo­logians debated their varying degrees of acceptability, in Europe’s principal commercial hubs a parallel phenomenon was under way: local and foreign merchants involved in international trade operated more and more independently from corporate organizations like guilds and consular jurisdictions. Institutional variation in this regard was considerable. Amsterdam was the only European city where foreign merchants were not subjected to any legal discrimination: in return for forgoing any form of institutional self-​regulation, they were given equal access to all financial and judicial services. But elsewhere, too, the definition of who was an international merchant became less and less tied to a guild structure. In other words, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, bills of exchange became more abstract while social hierarchies were becoming more fluid.

 25 Braudel, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism.  26 Davanzati, ‘Notizia de’ cambi’, pp. 45–46.

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In Bordeaux, Cleirac witnessed these profound challenges to the established order of the Old Regime when he took it upon himself to assemble the first comprehensive compilation of maritime laws written in vernacular. According to the so-​called loi de dérogeance, French aristocrats who engaged in manual work, conducted commerce, or served as a magistrate lost their prerogatives, including their much-​coveted fiscal immunities. During the seventeenth century, several legislative measures chipped away at this principle. In 1629, after years of negotiations with the relevant representative bodies, a wide-​ ranging reform project championed by Michel de Marillac proposed, among other things, that those noblemen who invested in overseas wholesale trade be exempted from the dérogeance. It also recommended the ennoblement of those merchants who manned a vessel weighing no less than 200 tons for at least five years and of anyone who served as a consul or magistrate, as long as he did not engage in petty trade.27 Never registered by the parlement of Paris as prescribed to become law of the kingdom, these recommendations were not implemented. But the setback was only temporary. The Crown was determined to divert some aristocratic wealth toward its newly established companies for intercontinental trade and to boost overseas commerce more generally in order to compete with its Dutch and English rivals. By 1669, the energetic finance minister Jean-​Baptiste Colbert succeeded in drafting and implementing a royal decree that, after describing commerce as an essential source of public and private wealth, made maritime (though not overland) trade compatible with the status of nobility.28 A related principle was inscribed in the better-​known 1673 ordonnance de commerce, which stated that everyone who signed a bill of exchange would be subject to the jurisdiction of tribunals run by merchants (title XII, art. 2). In light of this norm, as an eighteenth-​century jurist later put it, noblemen, office-​holders, and clergymen who signed a bill of exchange lost their ‘qualité’ (quality), that is, their rank.29 In short, long before the Revolution did away with feudalism, the Crown was introducing small but significant changes in a feudal regime and an anti-​commercial ideo­logy that had nurtured its legitimacy for centuries in the hope of advancing France’s stature in global commerce. The baseless attribution of the invention of bills of exchange to medi­eval Jews found its way into print at a moment when these bills had reached an unprecedented level of complexity and the age-​old culture of inheritable aristocratic honour was being eroded at a faster pace than ever before. Confronted with more and more abstract paper credit instruments and less and less rigid social hierarchies, Cleirac looked back at the Middle Ages as a time when Jews, the presumed culprits of all economic crimes, could be isolated, expropriated, and expelled.

 27 Isambert, Recueil général, xvi, 280 (art. 198) and 339 (art. 452).  28 Isambert, Recueil général, xviii, 217–18.  29 Jousse, Nouveau commentaire, p. 365.

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What constrained the most cunning merchants from using bills of exchange for pure personal gain and from tricking gullible borrowers? A practicing lawyer, Cleirac found no satisfactory answers to this fundamental question either in the writings of moral theo­logians (whose classificatory schemes he found too rigid) or in existing norms issued by civil authorities (which were either too strict or too vague, or altogether absent). Financial fraud hid potentially everywhere and yet was seemingly undetectable. Faced with this legal vacuum, Cleirac turned to a stockpile of erudite and popular anti-​Jewish imagery that equated Jews with economic treachery and that his readers grasped without difficulty. For Cleirac, its alleged Jewish origin was the bill of exchange’s original sin. Nothing prevented good Christian merchants from using these bills properly to sustain the long-​distance trade that benefited the Christian community at large. But if Christian merchants resorted to the same credit instruments for purely self-serving goals, they deserved to be called ‘Jewish’. Thus far, I have surveyed a number of circumstantial reasons that may have induced Cleirac to designate marine insurance and bills of exchange as a medi­eval Jewish invention. But why did he credit the fourteenth-​century chronicler Villani with an idea the Florentine never expressed? The question is all the more baffling because virtually every other citation in Cleirac’s commentaries is accurate. Wishing to nail the symmetry between Jews and usury (understood in the broadest possible sense, as the opposite of charity, as any rapacious and exploitative economic behaviour), Cleirac borrowed lines from a great number of pertinent authors, ranging from Father Ambrose, Dante, and Matthew Paris to Jesuit theo­logians and recently deceased French historians. From the late thirteenth century onward, a host of ecclesiastical decrees and artistic representations had impressed the continuity between Jews’ religious and economic infidelities on the minds of learned and common people alike. None of these sources, however, ascribed the invention of marine insurance or bills of exchange to Jews. Villani’s chronicle was a well-​known text, accessible in a sixteenth-​century Venetian edition. It had a lot to say about Florentine commerce and banking, as well as about usury and Jews. Indeed, Cleirac refers to it correctly on a number of occasions, as when he recalls the date of the coinage of the first golden florin. Curiously, in a commentary on the customs of Guyenne that only survives in a nineteenth-​century manu­script copy, he cites a specific chapter in Villani that may give us an additional clue. It is a famous passage, in which Villani offers what became the standard version of the so-​called miracle of the consecrated host, said to have occurred in Paris in 1290 and better known today from its representation painted by Paolo Uccello for the Corpus Domini confraternity of Urbino in the 1460s.30 According to this miracle, a Christian woman brings a Jewish moneylender a host as a pawn; once he throws it into the fire, the host bleeds — proof that it was the body of  30 Croniche di messer Giovanni Villani, fol. 94r (book 7, chap. 136).

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Christ. The woman is punished for her sin and the Jewish moneylender burnt at the stake. One of the most widespread and inimical images of Christian anti-​semitism, the miracle of the consecrated host was meant to strengthen popular belief in transubstantiation (the Catholic doctrine according to which during mass the host is transformed into the real body of Christ), and did so by drawing an iron-​clad analogy between usury and blood libel. The name of Villani likely conjured up this narrative. Was Cleirac a forger? Yes, of course he was. Was he a deliberate forger of the calibre of some of his contemporaries who adulterated the past as a way of generating new historical criticism?31 No, he was not a forger of that stature, nor was he a serial forger. We may never determine what led him (or his publisher) to credit Villani with this tale of origin. What we know is that tales of origins proliferated in early modern scholarship and that Cleirac was schooled in a sixteenth-​century legal and humanistic tradition that would have encouraged him to immerse himself in medi­eval as much as classical authors. The legend of the Jewish origin of private finance was a delayed projection of quintessentially early modern anxieties onto a half-​real, half-​imagined Middle Ages. Recent scholarship has shown that medi­eval French Jews were engaged in a variety of economic activities aside from moneylending and that even when they lent to their Christian neighbours, they did not necessarily enter into conflict with them. Important as it is, because it challenges an entrenched narrative about the economic functions of Jews in late medi­eval Europe, this research does not help us to decipher the implicit associations that Cleirac and his readers drew between Jews and credit. The Bordeaux lawyer grafted the expansion of the paper economy of the time onto a medi­eval past that his readers perceived at once as proximate and yet altogether different. By locating the alleged invention of marine insurance and bills of exchange and their subsequent diffusion across Europe along a chrono­logical continuum stretching from the seventh to the seventeenth century, when Amsterdam reached its apogee as Europe’s main mercantile and financial hub, Cleirac collapsed together multiple moments in the history of credit, of Jews, and of Jewish economic roles. This chrono­logical compression, in turn, allowed for expansive allegorical readings. The unfounded story that surfaced in print in the mid-​seventeenth century was the product of an age of confessional wars, conversion missions, and dissimulation. After the Reformation tore Christendom apart and baptism was forcibly administered to Jews, Muslims, and native people at home and overseas, exterior identity ceased to be a stable indicator of one’s inner beliefs. In the most comforting historio­graphical account of this drama, scepticism became a defining trait of European culture at the same time as repressive institutions perfected their bureaucratic apparatus and ideo­logical hegemony. In an equally uplifting grand narrative of European history, the increasing  31 Grafton, Forgers and Critics.

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abstraction of credit markets went hand in hand with the expansion of commercial society to bolster modern capitalism by facilitating exchanges between traders near and far. That very same abstraction, however, magnified concerns about malpractice and oligopolies that were hard to trace and contain. The legend gave voice to these darker thoughts. A piece of paper rather than a silver coin that one could weigh and bite was now sufficient to purchase goods or settle a debt in a remote town that one might never visit in person. Coinage fraud and clipping had long been and remained a major problem in marketplaces the world over — and it is not a coincidence that clipping coins was among the frequent accusations levied against medi­eval Jews — but paper credit instruments intensified fears of fraud because they dissociated value from anything tangible. Conservative theo­logians were not the only commentators who felt acutely the dangers that accompanied the expansion of private finance. Long before the invisible hand became an enduring metaphor of the idealized self-​regulation of the market, many observers were ready to recognize the benefits brought by new credit instruments and the intensification of market exchanges between strangers, even as they worried about how to curb excesses. The forgotten tale of origin that I uncovered gave bills of exchange, objects of endless admiration and no less puzzlement, an illusory stability by allowing for a supposedly Jewish origin to ‘explain’ why fraud always lurked behind those enigmatic credit contracts. The legend of the Jewish invention of Europe’s most advanced financial instruments seized on the Middle Ages as a time when Jews could be identified, controlled, and subjugated, as the counter-​example to seventeenth-​century Bordeaux, the only European city where New Christians were recognized to be crypto-​Jews and yet allowed to live and prosper. Cleirac turned the Middle Ages into a usable past, as have so many authors and institutions in later epochs. He latched on to a story that, misguided as it was, allegorized the perils of increasingly impersonal credit markets, in which mysterious financial contracts benefited some more than others and predatory lending went unpunished. It was the wrong approach to a thorny problem for which we have yet to find a solution.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo [ANTT], Tribunal do Santo Ofício: Inquisição de Lisboa, Processo 5101 Paris, Archives Nationales [AN], G/7/133, G/7/134 Primary Sources Cleirac, Estienne, Us et coustumes de la mer, divisées en trois parties: I. De la navigation. II. Du commerce naval & contracts maritimes. III. De la iurisdiction de la marine. Avec un traicté des termes de marine & reglemens de la nauigation des fleuves & rivieres (Bordeaux: Guillaume Millanges, 1647) —— , Us et coustumes de la mer, divisées en trois parties: I. De la navigation. II. Du commerce naval & contracts maritimes. III. De la iurisdiction de la marine. Avec un traicté des termes de marine & reglemens de la nauigation des fleuves & rivieres (Bordeaux: Iacques Mongiron Millanges, 1661) Correspondance des intendants avec le contrôleur général des finances, 1677–1689: Naissance d’une administration, sous-​série G7. Inventaire analytique, ed. by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, ii (Paris: Archives Nationales, 1990) Croniche di messer Giovanni Villani (Venezia: Bartholomeo Zanetti Casterzagense, 1537) Davanzati, Bernardo, ‘Notizia de’ cambi’, in Notizie mercantili delle monete e de’ cambi, ed. by Luigi Carrer (Venezia: Co’ tipi del Gondoliere, 1840), pp. 33–47 Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la révolution de 1789, ed. by François-​André Isambert, 29 vols (Paris: Berlin-​Leprieur, 1821–1833) Jousse, Daniel, Nouveau commentaire sur les ordinances des mois d’août 1669, & mars 1673, new edn (Paris: Debure, l’aîné, 1775) Les ‘Nations’ juives portugaises du sud-​ouest de la France (1684–1791): Documents, ed. by Gérard Nahon (Paris: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Centro Cultural Português, 1981) Secondary Works Braudel, Fernand, Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism, trans. by Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977) Caro Baroja, Julio, Los Judíos en la España moderna y contemporánea, 3 vols (Madrid: Arion, 1961) Constable, Olivia Remie, To Live Like a Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identities in Medi­eval and Early Modern Spain, ed. by Robin Vose (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)

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García-​Arenal, Mercedes, and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe, trans. by Martin Beagles, with a foreword by David Nirenberg and Richard Kagan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977) Grafton, Anthony, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) Kelley, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) Nirenberg, David, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014) Poliakov, Léon, The History of Anti-​Semitism, trans. by Richard Howard, 4 vols (New York: Vanguard Press, 1965–1985) Ruiz, Teofilo F., ‘The Holy Office in Medi­eval France and Late Medi­eval Castile: Origins and Contrasts’, in The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind, ed. by Agenal Alcala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 33–51 —— , The Western Mediterranean and the World, 400 ce to the Present (Hoboken: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2018) Trivellato, Francesca, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend About Jews and Finance Tells Us About the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019) Yerushalmi, Yoseph Hayim, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso: A Study in Seventeenth-​Century Marranism and Jewish Apo­logetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971)

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The Declinación of the Hidden One Encubertismo during the Reigns of the Later Spanish Habsburgs Encubertismo — belief in the Hidden One — was the Spanish variant of the broader Last World Emperor tradition. It claimed that a Hidden King would unify the kingdoms of ‘Hispania’ and the Christian world, and would lead a final, decisive crusade against Islam before the End of Time.1 Unsurprisingly, given these expectations, this legend had particular resonance during the reigns of Fernando the Catholic (r. 1479–1516) and of his grandson, Emperor Charles V (r. 1516–1556). Fernando had accepted, or at least used, the idea to bolster his authority and claims to leadership. Charles, however, was cool toward the idea, even though support for him as the Last World Emperor was more widespread than it had been for Fernando. The evidence in apocalyptic literature and in the trials of royal critics reveals that faith that one of the later Spanish Habsburgs would fulfil the role of Universal Monarch declined steadily in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I will show that this was due to Spain’s increasing geopolitical and financial difficulties as well as the indifference of Charles and his successors toward the legend. Hopes that Fernando of Aragon would be revealed as the Hidden One emerged while he was still the Crown Prince, and they grew as his reign progressed. The conquest of Granada on 2 January 1492 did the most to solidify the faith of his supporters that Fernando was the promised Last Ruler who would unify Christendom and break the power of Islam. During his reign, several writers connected to the Aragonese court, such as Alonso de Jaén and Peré Azmar, wrote in favour of Fernando’s eschato­logical destiny, indicating at least tacit support for the legend by Fernando himself. The clearest piece of evidence that Fernando used and perhaps genuinely believed in the legend of the Encubierto is found in a 1496 work written by his physician and astro­loger, Jerónimo Torella. Torella’s ‘De Rege Valentino’ included a section that purported to be a dialogue between Torella and the king about the prophecies of the  1 Vallés Borrás, La Germanía, p. 32. Bryan Givens ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of History at Pepperdine University. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 107–120 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126180

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Hidden One and the recovery of Jerusalem. By the end of his life, Fernando almost certainly believed that he was the Encubierto, especially after he came under the influence of the Dominican beata, Sor Maria de Santo Domingo, who predicted he would recover Jerusalem for Christendeom.2 As heir to the houses of Habsburg, Burgundy, and Trastámara, Charles V was even more widely acclaimed as the hoped-​for Universal Monarch than Fernando had been. His glorious destiny seemed to be confirmed by victories over his French rival, Francis I (r. 1515–1547), and he was celebrated as the hope of Christendom by poets, writers, and theo­logians throughout Europe. Charles also had two important advocates for his prophetic destiny in his own government: his chancellor, Mercurino di Gattinara; and his Latin Secretary, Alfonso de Valdés, who produced a number of works which laid out the case that Charles was the Universal Monarch. Despite the breadth of support for him, Charles never embraced the idea himself or actively supported it; after the deaths of Gattinara and Valdés in the early 1530s, no one in his regime produced eschato­logical defences of his authority as Emperor.3 His son, Philip II (r. 1556–1598), would later tell a papal nuncio, ‘it was never the practice of the emperor, my father, to believe in or act on [prophecies]’.4 Charles’ example of indifference toward the legend would shape the attitude of his successors until the end of the Spanish Habsburgs in 1700.

The Monarch of the World: Philip II and the Hope for Universal Monarchy The late sixteenth century saw declining support for members of the Habsburg dynasty as possible candidates to be the Universal Monarch. Given the breadth of support for Charles V, this is not as surprising as it might appear; reality was bound to be disappointing after the heady early days of Charles’ reign. In addition, the military and financial challenges faced by Philip would have been discouraging to all but the most committed believers. As Crown Prince and early in his own reign, there were high hopes that Philip would accomplish the tasks his father could not. He was the most powerful monarch in Europe and a committed defender of the Catholic faith. Over time, however, these hopes not only diminished, but a number of ‘counter eschato­logical monarchs’ (to use Alain Milhou’s term) who rejected a positive eschato­logical role for the Spanish king emerged in Philip’s own realms. In fact, they used the apocalyptic

 2 Givens, ‘“All Things to All Men”’, pp. 59–62; Morel-​Fatio, ‘Souhaits de Bienvenue’, pp. 333–56; Milhou, ‘La Chave-​souris’, pp. 61–78; and Profecia i poder, ed. by Duran and Resquens, pp. 32–33, 126–43, 210–40, 327–67, 375–82, 403–12.  3 Givens, ‘“All Things to All Men”’, pp. 62–66.  4 Kagan, ‘Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition’, p. 114, citing Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Nunziatua spagnola 34, p. 197.

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tradition of the encubierto to characterize Philip as an unjust tyrant.5 The hopes that could be used to support the regime could also be used to critique it. One of the earliest examples of eschato­logical hope for Philip came from a writer from Luxembourg, Nicholas Mameranus. Mameranus served as a soldier in Charles’ campaigns and wrote extensively about his travels. In 1549, Mameranus presented a copy of his poem, Carmen gratulatorium, to the twenty-​two-​year-​old Infante.6 He was sure that ‘Great Philip’ would become Emperor, repel Turkish attacks, and would free the Balkan Christians by expelling the Turks from their lands. He would also recover the Hagia Sophia, restore Antioch to Christian control, and free Jerusalem from Muslim control. He would then be the Augustus who would bring about world peace and fulfil the prophetic hopes of so many in sixteenth-​century Europe.7 A unique element in the hopes surrounding Philip was his identification with the figure of Solomon, with Charles often filling the more traditional role of (the New) David. In 1549, as the two progressed through the Netherlands, the image of Charles as David and Philip as Solomon greeted them in virtually every city in the form of triumphal arches or tableaux vivants, and some included scenes of Philip building the Temple. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this motif was a sermon preached at Westminster in 1554 by Reginald Pole on the occasion of Philip’s wedding to Queen Mary I of England. Cardinal Pole knew that Charles had tried to heal the religious divisions of Christendom, but had failed, just as David had failed to build the Temple. Pole said: Though he [David] were a manne elected of God, yet, for that he was contaminate[d] by bloode and war, coulde not builde the temple of Jerusalem, but left the finishynge thereof to Salamon, which was Rex Pacificus. So may it be thought, that the appeasing of controversies of religion in Christianity is not appointed to this emperor, but rather to his sonne, who shall perfourme the buildyng that his father hath begun.8 Two years later, the Spanish scholars, Sebastián Fox Morcillo and Felipe de la Torre, presented treatises (De regno regisque institutione and Institución de un rey cristiano, respectively) that used this trope for the new king. Both urged him to become a new Solomon and build a new Temple by renewing the Catholic Church. During a funeral service for his father in Brussels in 1558, Philip was encouraged to be a new Solomon and build a new Temple, and in 1559, a painting portraying Philip as Solomon was commissioned for the chapter meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece at Ghent.9 Soon after Mary of England died in 1558, Philip returned to Spain and spent the rest of his long reign confronting a seemingly endless list of challenges:  5 Milhou, ‘La Chave-​souris’, p. 72.  6 Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England’, pp. 180–81.  7 Mameranus, Carmen gratulatorium, fols Aiiiv–Avr, Biir–Biiv.  8 Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England’, p. 181.  9 Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England’, pp. 181–82.

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an aggressive Ottoman policy in the Mediterranean, the Dutch Revolt, and, closer to home, a rebellion of the nominally-​converted moriscos. All these conflicts and the other expenses of his vast empire required a combination of ever-​higher taxes, debt, and endless streams of American silver. Even that was not enough, though, and Philip had to declare state bankruptcy several times, actions which crippled the Spanish economy. Philip took his duty to protect the Catholic faith and his Habsburg inheritances seriously and, as a result, his lands were only completely at peace for six months out of his forty-​two-​year reign. This can hardly be what Cardinal Pole had wanted for the man he had hoped would be the Rex pacificus of Christendom.10 The crushing naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 was undoubtedly one of the high points of Philip’s reign.11 Throughout Christendom, the victory was celebrated as a proof of God’s care for His beleaguered people and encouraged some to believe the Spanish ruler was the promised Hidden King. In a letter dated 29 January 1572, Don Pedro de Deza Manuel, the auditor of the Suprema, recounted that he had been given an ancient manu­script full of prophesies that the Turks would be defeated by the encubierto, a ruler from Austria and son of an Emperor named Charles. Deza ended his letter by saying that he was certain that God would continue to prosper Spain and that He would soon put an end to their common enemy ‘por mano de su Majestad’, in other words, Philip II.12 Another success for Philip was the easy conquest of Portugal in 1580 after the death of his nephew, Sebastian I (r. 1557–1578), in North Africa. Most Portuguese preferred a native-​born candidate to the Spanish Habsburg, but Philip’s veterans made quick work of the ill-​trained Portuguese army at Alcántara. The elites of Portugal accepted the inevitable and, at the Cortes of Tomar in 1581, Philip was proclaimed king of Portugal. This was a sign to the Spanish jurist, Lorenzo de San Pedro, that Philip had a prophetic destiny. In his Diálogo llamado philippino (1580), he claimed that Philip was the western monarch predicted in the Book of Daniel, and that the Iberian Union would be a stepping-​stone to the Christian recovery of Jerusalem.13

‘The Counter-​Monarchs’ Despite these successes, Philip II’s reign had many prophetic critics, and not only among Protestants for whom he represented the sword-​bearing arm of the papal Antichrist. In the 1570s, some of his own Catholic subjects began to reject any positive role for Philip, and to criticize him in apocalyptic terms.

 10 Elliott, Imperial Spain, pp. 231–41, 258–68; Parker, The Imprudent King, pp. 61–64.  11 Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 241.  12 ‘By the hand of his Majesty’, Cardaillac, Morisques et Chrétiens, pp. 412–14.  13 Parker, The Imprudent King, p. 267; Bouza, Imagen y propaganda, p. 75.

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One of the earliest was Francisco de la Cruz, a zealous Dominican who held a variety of teaching posts in Peru. By 1571, Cruz had come to hold some unique beliefs that reflected both his European heritage and his American setting. He rejected European Christendom as hopelessly corrupt and the Roman Papacy as an abomination. Instead, he predicted that the Apostolic See would be transferred to Lima and that he, Cruz, would preside over a millennial kingdom in Peru as both king and pope. The new utopian regime would be made up of purified Europeans and Incas, whom Cruz identified as the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Cruz claimed he was the New David, and obliquely rejected Philip as the evil king Saul, ‘el qual posseya el reyno y el David rey nombrado de Dios’ (who possessed the kingdom and David, the king named by God). Even under torture, he refused to abjure his claims, and so he was executed by the Inquisition as a pertinacious heretic in the spring of 1578.14 Cruz’s criticism of Philip was indirect, but other contemporary prophets who rejected the Spanish king were more explicit, and closer to home. During the late 1580s, there were many street prophets in Spain, and especially in Madrid. By then, the war against the Dutch seemed interminable, and the taxes necessary to keep the military effort going were yet another burden on a struggling economy. The most high-​profile of the popular prophets were the itinerant tinker, solider, and foreteller of doom, Miguel de Piedrola, and his visionary protégé, Lucrecia de León. Their stories have been well told by Richard Kagan in Lucrecia’s Dreams, so all of the details do not need to be reviewed here.15 We should, however, examine the role the legend of the encubierto played in their criticisms of Philip. Piedrola frequently warned his listeners that disaster was coming to Spain, but that they could survive the cataclysm in a cave-​refuge just outside of Toledo known as ‘Espelunça’. He claimed the foreign house of Habsburg would become extinct during a Muslim invasion of Spain, after which a new king would emerge from Espelunça like a latter-​day Pelayo. This new king would reform Spain as a benevolent, constitutional monarch, and would lead it to new glory. He was rather cagey about the identity of this king during his trial, but other sources reveal that the king would be Miguel de Piedrola himself.16 Silencing Miguel de Piedrola did not end the prophetic criticisms of Philip’s government and, by the time of the prophet’s arrest in late 1587, some of his supporters had already come into contact with the young visionary, Lucrecia de León.17 She became widely known in Madrid for her predictions that the  14 ‘Who possessed the kingdom [even though] David was the king named by God’, Milhou, Colón y su mentalidad messicanica, p. 243; see also, Vivanco Roca Rey, ‘Un profeta criollo’, pp. 26–40.  15 See Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams.  16 Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, pp. 78–96.  17 Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, pp. 14, 40, 45.

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Armada would fail and that Spain would be devastated. Over time, the tone and content of her dreams became more dire: she predicted the death of the infante Philip, a massive revolt of the moriscos, and the death of King Philip himself for not listening to the divine warnings he had been given. All these disasters would culminate in an invasion by the French, English, Moors, and Turks, which would result in the complete collapse of Spain. Only Toledo would be providentially spared, and a hidden army would emerge from a nearby cave to defeat the invaders. The army’s leader — none other than Miguel de Piedrola — would found a renewed, benevolent monarchy. He would also make Lucrecia his queen and then go on to defeat the powers of Islam and recover Jerusalem.18 On 25 May 1590 she was taken into custody along with many of her supporters.19 The centrality of the legend of the encubierto to her arrest and trial is clear from the fact that the Inquisitors questioned her extensively about the identity of the ‘captain-​king who would direct this restoration, and the coming Golden Age’.20 The tradition of the Hidden One clearly still had considerable cultural resonance in the late sixteenth century. What did Philip himself think of the legends of the Hidden One? Did he believe that he was or could be the long-​hoped-​for Hidden King? I do not think so. Doubtless, Philip displayed providentialist thinking, though more frequently in his rhetoric than in his actual decisions. Like his father, Philip distanced himself from seeking prophetic validation for his rule. Others gave such validation it to him, but no one associated with Philip’s regime produced a defence of his policies or his person based on prophetic sources or claims. He never had a Gattinara or a Valdés to promote him as the Universal Monarch as Charles had had early in his reign.21 What, then, was the origin of Philip’s decision not to embrace apocalyptic validation as the encubierto? His decision was not due to a lack of familiarity with the relevant eschato­logical claims: by 1549, at the latest, Philip had been exposed to the continental traditions about the Last World Emperor in Mameranus’ Carmen gratulatorium. Part of the answer would certainly be the example of his father, whom Philip tried to imitate. Father and son shared a melancholic personality and a sincere piety that largely consisted in stoically fulfilling one’s obligations before God no matter the trials the Almighty would send.22

 18 Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, pp. 75–80, 118–24.  19 Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, pp. 12–13, 129–32.  20 Kagan, Lucrecia’s Dreams, p. 152.  21 Pérez García and Catalá Sanz, Epígonos del encubertismo, p. 154.  22 Parker, ‘The Place of Tudor England’, pp. 180, 209; Parker, The Imprudent King, pp. 25, 125–27, 367–69.

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The Eclipse of the Spanish Habsburgs The encubierto tradition was deeply rooted in Spanish culture, but it underwent a subtle shift in the seventeenth century, in part because of Charles and Philip’s rejection of the legend. The treatises that were published in the early decades of the century testify to the continuing hope that one of the Habsburgs would reveal himself as the Last World Emperor, but fewer name either of the ruling kings — Philip III (r. 1598–1621) and Philip IV (r. 1621–1665) — as the Encubierto, which is in marked contrast to the claims made during the reigns of Charles V or Philip II. Instead, most favoured a generic Spanish king or, interestingly, Philip III’s third son, Fernando (1609–1641), the Cardinal-​Infante, a point which will be discussed in the following para­graphs (see below). Perhaps the disappointment that the high hopes which had surrounded Charles V and Philip II had not been fulfilled contributed to the authors’ caution in linking the prophecies to individuals. Faith in the prophetic tradition seems to have remained strong; confidence that a specific ruler would fulfil them less so. Few historians would rate the twenty-​three-​year reign of Philip III as a successful one for Spain. After all, this was the moment in which the question of Spain’s decline — declinación — was first broached.23 The monarch was known for little other than his general affability and his profound piety. He had none of his father’s capacity for hard work, and he disastrously left the reins of government in the hand of his royal favourite, the notoriously corrupt duke of Lerma. He did, however, inherit his father’s wars with the Dutch and the English as well as the monarchy’s crippling debts. That debt led to another bankruptcy in 1607 and to an unfavourable twelve-​year truce with the Dutch rebels on 9 April 1609. In an early modern example of spin control, on the same day the humiliating truce was revealed, Philip’s government also announced the expulsion of the moriscos — around 300,000 in all — in order to cleanse his realms of the ‘evil sect’. Over the next five years, the Edict of Expulsion was carried out by Philip’s forces to the praise of many in Spain and to the further devastation of the Spanish economy.24 The expulsion also revived hopes, for a time at least, that a Spanish Habsburg would fulfil the promises of the Encubierto. One supporter of a Spanish king as the Last Monarch even before the expulsion was the celebrated playwright and poet, Lope de Vega. In 1609, he published an epic poem, Jerusalén conquistada. In it, he creatively and ahistorically retold the story of the Third Crusade with a more prominent role for Spain than warranted by actual events. He did this by including Alfonso VIII of Castile (r. 1158–1214), along with Richard the Lion-​Heart and Philip Augustus of France, as one of the crusading kings to confront Saladin during the Third Crusade. Alfonso VIII was venerated in Castile as a great crusader because

 23 Elliott, ‘Self-​Perception and Decline’, pp. 241–62.  24 Elliott, Imperial Spain, pp. 300–08.

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of his crushing victory over the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, but he did not participate in the Third Crusade. Nonetheless, Lope de Vega included him as a protagonist in a way that not only gratified national pride, but also raised eschato­logical hopes for the present. In Book vii, he retold the story of the famous meeting of Richard with Joachim of Fiore by having the Calabrian prophet compare Alfonso to Godfrey of Bouillon — who had captured Jerusalem in the First Crusade — and predict his illustrious line of descendants all the way down to Philip III. Lope de Vega described Philip as ‘Llegue sabio en la paz, fuerte en guerra,| Rayo al Hereje vil, cuchillo al Moro| El Tercero Filipe al siglo de oro’ (Wise in peace, strong in war,| Lightning bolt to the vile heretic, dagger to the Moor| The Third Philip, leads to the Golden Age).25 The poet left no doubt as to his desires for the near future in final stanzas of the epic where he calls on the ‘Felipe heroyco’ (Heroic Philip), ‘Rey de Ierusalen’ (King of Jerusalem), to take possession of the Holy City and rebuild its walls.26 The Expulsion of the moriscos beginning in 1609 was the occasion for the Memorable expulsión y iustissimo destierro de los moriscos de España (1613) by Fr. Marcos de Guadalajara y Xavier. The Carmelite priest celebrated the expulsion of the moriscos from Spain, not only as a good policy, but as an eschato­logical marker for the Last Days. Most of the work was a lurid retelling of the history of Islam and of the ‘Spanish Moors’’ stubborn resistance to Christian instruction.27 The work was dedicated to the royal princes (Philip, Charles, and Fernando) and the dedication included explicit references to prophecies that they would fulfil. Father Marcos promised them: La conquista y triunfa de Ierusalem, y libertad del Santo Sepulchro, com notables victorias de los Mahometanos, dando por tierra sus menguantes Lunas, poniendo en su lugar la Cruza Santissima; començandose esto despues de la Expulsion de los Moriscos de España [emphasis added]. (The conquest and triumph of Jerusalem and the liberation of the Holy Sepulchre with notable victories over the Mohammedans, hurling to the ground their crescent moons and putting in their place the Most Holy Cross, which would begin after the expulsion of the moriscos of Spain.)28 The final chapter (xxix) contains the work’s most extended treatment of apocalyptic prophecy. Guadalajara y Xavier began with a discussion of the significance of the Great Conjunction of December 1603, and concluded that it had revealed that the ‘sect of Mohammed’ would fall within twenty years

 25  26  27  28

Lope de Vega, Jerusalén conquistada, i, 280–83; and iii, 73. Lope de Vega, Jerusalén conquistada, ii, 432–33, and iii, 30–36. Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, fols 1r–65r. Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, ‘Dedicatoria a los Serenissimos Principes’.

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and that the power of Islam would be wholly broken by 1661.29 He then cited a prophecy of the Erythean Sibyl that a Lion would break the power of Asia, and that a king of Spain would be that Lion. He made special mention of the recent birth of Prince Fernando in 1609, because he believed that it would be another Fernando who would destroy the Saracens.30 This ruler would reign over all Christians and, together with the Angelic Pope, purify Christendom. He would also lead a great army across the Straits of Gibraltar and conquer all before him, first capturing Cairo, then Constantinople, and finally, Jerusalem. Anyone who refused baptism would be killed. He concluded that ‘Nuestro Catholico Rey, y sus serenissimos hijos, avian de quitar a los Turcos y Moros, a fuerça de armas su Imperio, y el Santo Sepulchro de Hierusalem’ (Our Catholic King and his most serene sons were destined to take away, by forces of arms, the Empire and the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem from the Turks and Moors).31 Father Marcos’ faith was firm, but he acknowledged that some rejected the idea, given the weakness of Spain. He reminded the doubters that God did not need large armies to accomplish His will. Small forces had defeated vast Muslim armies before, and he stated that it was clearly a divine miracle that only one hundred officials could expel 600,000 moriscos without any difficulty at all, which was a preposterous claim. He urged those mockers to accept this sign of God’s favour and urged the Spanish to make the most of the opportunity God had granted them. The Memorable expulsión is therefore an example of the continuing faith in the Last World Emperor, but it is also evidence that belief in the Habsburgs’ eschato­logical role was on the wane, at least among some in early seventeenth-​century Spain. It is also evidence that Philip’s decision to expel the moriscos did not clinch his identity as the Hidden One in the minds of his contemporaries; instead, the major beneficiary was his youngest son, Fernando.32 Another work that discussed the Hidden One was Política española by the Benedictine Juan de Salazar. It was published in 1619, though he may have begun writing it as early as 1608.33 It is a lengthy treatise the central theme of which was that the Spanish were the elect people of the New Covenant, just as the Israelites had been during the Old. With such a premise, it should not be surprising that he concluded the work with an extended examination of Spain’s future destiny. He stated that two peoples aspired to Universal Monarchy: the Spanish and the Turks. The difference between them, though, was that the Spanish were descended from Japeth by Tubal, while the Turks descended from him via Magog, a name with negative prophetic connotations. As a result, the Spanish kings were just rulers who submitted to the authority of Christ’s

 29 Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, fol. 159v.  30 Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, fol. 160r.  31 Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, fols 160v–63r.  32 Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, fols 163r–63v.  33 Salazar, Política Española, pp. xxxviii–xxxix.

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vicar, the pope; the Turkish Sultan was a bloodthirsty tyrant who ruled over a bloodthirsty people.34 The outcome of this contest was foreordained: Spain would be the foundation of the true Universal Monarchy in the world, and Salazar reminded his readers that the title of the Spanish kings, the ‘Catholic Monarchs’, was a clue to their destiny since ‘catholic’ meant ‘universal’. In addition, Universal Monarchy would be granted to the kings of Spain because of their riches and lands, their obedience to the pope, and the many prophecies that foretold the Spanish role in the downfall of the Turks.35 Like Guadalajara y Xavier, Salazar used the Great Conjunction of 1603 to argue that the moriscos would be expelled from Spain within twenty years, which was a prophecy fulfilled by 1619. Similarly, he predicted that the Spanish king would conquer the Turks and recover the Holy Land. Again, anyone who refused baptism would be executed. In fact, the close similarities between the latter section of Salazar’s treatment of prophecy and the section on prophecy in the Memorable expulsión probably indicate some kind of direct connection between the two works. Even the sources they cited for these claims are the same.36 The wide gap between the Política española’s probable composition date (c. 1608) and its publication (1619) leaves the question of which influenced the other unclear since Memorable expulsión (1613) falls in the middle of those dates. Even if there was no direct influence, the two authors were reading the same sources in remarkably similar ways.37 Salazar never mentioned Fernando, or anyone else, as a specific candidate to be the victor over the Saracens, however.38 There only seems to be a single eschato­logical treatise addressing the identity of the encubierto during the long reign of Philip IV (r. 1621–1665), and it did not favour the king. Both of these details are probably symptomatic of declining faith in the Hidden One. In 1630, Cristóbal López de Cañete, a priest in Granada, published the Compendio de los pronosticos y baticinios antiguos y modernos, though the licenses needed for publication date back to 1623. It recycled much of the material from the Memorable expulsión (without attribution) and it was also dedicated to the royal brothers, Charles and Fernando. It notably omitted Philip IV, however, and gave even more reasons to hope for Fernando’s destiny than Father Marcos had. To this end, López de Cañete cited an alfaquí (an Islamic jurist) who, on Fernando’s birth date (16 May 1609), had supposedly warned the moriscos of Valencia that Philip the father would expel them from Spain, and Fernando the son would destroy all the power of Muslims overseas.39 The Compendio included a number of  34 Salazar, Política Española, pp. 199–201, 213–16.  35 Salazar, Política Española, pp. 222–24.  36 See Guadalajara y Xavier, Memorable Expulsión, fols 159v–63v and Salazar, Política Española, pp. 199–231.  37 Salazar, Política Española, pp. 224–29.  38 Salazar, Política Española, pp. 230–31.  39 López de Cañete, Compendio de los pronosticos, ‘Serenissimos Señores’.

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additional sources not found in the Memorable expulsión, such as passages from Joachim of Fiore and pseudo-​Methodius, as well as explicit references to the Spanish tradition of the Hidden One. Despite these additions, the overall picture it gave of the End Times was almost exactly the same as the Memorable expulsión: after the Edict of Expulsion, the eschato­logical pace would pick up, leading to the emergence of a Spanish Habsburg king and an angelic pope who would reform Christendom. The Spanish king would also conquer North Africa and the Holy Land by 1660 or 1661, and he would kill anyone who refused to convert.40 I know of no later seventeenth-​century writers who endorsed a Spanish Habsburg as the promised Hidden King. The zeitgeist of Europe was beginning to shift against predictions generally, but even for those who retained the traditional faith in prophecy, the latter reign of Philip IV would not inspire confidence that great deeds were at hand. The unsustainable debt; the interminable wars; the rebellions of Catalonia and Portugal in the agonizing year of 1640; the crushing defeat of the Spanish army at Rocroi in 1643; the glaring weakness of Spain in the years leading up to Philip IV’s death in 1665 — all of these developments must have discouraged all but the truest believers in the Habsburgs’ prophetic destiny.41 The reign of Charles II (r. 1665–1700), was even more tragic than his father’s had been. The product of at least six generations of Habsburg inbreeding, Charles was developmentally stunted and emotionally erratic, almost a physical embodiment of Spain’s collapse. The nation itself suffered through pestilences, famines, plagues of locusts, peasant rebellions, court intrigues, and the galling knowledge that everyone else in Europe knew Spain was a spent force. No one considered Charles II a possibility as the Last Monarch, though because of his sterility, he was, in fact, the final Habsburg ruler of Spain.42 Faith in the Encubierto may have survived among the illiterate masses and their allies among the lower clergy, but there is little documentation to confirm that possibility.

Conclusion What should we conclude from all this? Over the centuries of its existence, the legend of the Last World Emperor proved remarkably resistant to the failures of its hoped-​for candidates to fulfil what had been predicted about them. Events rarely caused believers to lose faith in the legend, even if they forced some to re-​evaluate the identity of the person who would fulfil their hopes. Acceptance of extra-​biblical, private revelations was necessary for faith in the Last Emperor to exist at all, but it seems that at least passive acceptance

 40 López de Cañete, Compendio de los pronosticos, fols 8v–27v.  41 Elliot, Imperial Spain, pp. 341–60.  42 Elliot, Imperial Spain, pp. 361–75.

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of the legend by the candidates for Last Emperor themselves was necessary for the belief to thrive. In Spain, we have seen that faith in the Habsburgs as the Hidden One began to change from support for Philip II to eschato­logical criticisms of his reign, and then a gradual shift away from faith in his successors. Belief in the Hidden One was undermined in Spain not only by the unrelenting stream of bad news that the monarchy suffered during the period, but also by the indifference of the ruling Habsburg dynasty to encubertismo. This is in marked contrast to the contemporaneous case of Portugal where belief in the encoberto thrived with the excited speculation about the future during the reign of Sebastian (r. 1558–1578) and the active advocacy of the prophecy during the reign of the first Braganza king, João I (r. 1640–1656).43 A century and a half after Fernando and Isabel had tacitly embraced the idea, faith that a Spanish king would be the World Emperor had all but evaporated, as clear a sign as any that one of the ideo­logical foundations upon which the Catholic Monarchs had laid their claim to authority in Spain had crumbled.

 43 Givens, Judging Maria de Macedo, pp. 21–44.

t h e d ec l i n ac i ó n o f t he hi d d e n o ne

Works Cited Primary Sources Guadalajara y Xavier, Fr. Marcos de, Memorable expulsión y iustissimo destierro de los moriscos de España (Pamplona: Nicholas Afsiayn, 1613) Lope de Vega, Félix, Jerusalén conquistada, ed. by Joacquin de Entrambasaguas, 3 vols (Madrid: Instituto Miguel de Cervantes, 1951) López de Cañete, Cristóbal, Compendio de los pronosticos y baticinios antiguos y modernos que publica la declinación general de la secta de Mahoma (Granada: Francisco Heylan, 1630) Profecia i poder al Renaixment: texts profétics Catalans favorable a Ferran el Catòlic, ed. by Eulália Duran and Joan Resquens (València: Eliseu Clement, 1997) Mameranus, Nicholas, Carmen gratulatorium (Louvain: Bartholomeus Gravius, 1549), https://www.bsb-​muenchen.de Salazar, Juan de, O.S.B., Política española, ed. by Miguel Herrero Garcia (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Politicos, 1945) Secondary Works Bouza, Fernando, Imagen y propaganda: capitulos de historia cultural del reinado de Felipe II, (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, S.A., 1998) Cardaillac, Louis, Morisques et Chrétiens: un affrontement polémique (1492–1640) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977) Elliott, J. H., ‘Self-​Perception and Decline in Early Seventeenth-​Century Spain’, J. H. Elliott, Spain and its World, 1500–1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 241–62 —— , Imperial Spain, 1469–1714 (New York: Penguin, 2002) Givens, Bryan, Judging Maria de Macedo: A Female Visionary and the Inquisition in Early Modern Portugal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011) —— , ‘“All Things to All Men”: Political Messianism in Late Medi­eval and Early Modern Spain’, in Authority and Spectacle in Medi­eval and Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz, ed. by Yuen-​Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodríguez (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 58–70 Kagan, Richard L., ‘Politics, Prophecy, and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-​ Century Spain’, in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. by Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 105–20, http://ark.cdlib.org/ ark:/13030/ft396nb1w0 —— , Lucrecia’s Dreams: Politics and Prophecy in Sixteenth-​Century Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) Milhou, Alain, ‘La Chave-​souris, le nouveau David et le roi cache (trios images de l’empereur des derniers temps dans le monde ibérique: XIIIe–XVIIe s.)’, Mélanges de la Casa de Veláquez, 18.1 (1982), 61–78

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—— , Colón y su mentalidad messianica en el ambiente franciscanista español (Valladolid: Seminario de la Universidad de Valladolid, 1983) Morel-​Fatio, Alfred, ‘Souhaits de Bienvenue: Advessés a Ferdinand le Catholique par un Poête barcelonais en 1473’, Romania, 11 (1882), 333–56 Parker, Geoffrey, ‘The Place of Tudor England in the Messianic Vision of Philip II of Spain: The Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12 (2002), 167–221, http://www.jstor.org/stable/367944 —— , The Imprudent King: A New Life of Philip II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014) Pérez García, Pablo, and Jorge António Catalá Sanz, Epígonos del encubertismo. Proceso contra los agermanados de 1541 (València: Biblioteca Valeciana, 2000) Vallés Borrás, Vicent J., La Germanía (València: Institució Alfons El Magnànim, 2000) Vivanco Roca Rey, Lucero de, ‘Un profeta criollo: Francisco de la Cruz y la Declaración del Apocalipsi’, Persona y Sociedad, 20.2 (2006), 25–40

Writing, History, and Political Authority

Antonio M. Zaldívar

Reconsidering the Shift from Latin to Romance in the Castilian Chancery A Historio­graphic Review

The dramatic rise of vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery is well known. Castilian first saw the light of day as a royal language under Alfonso VIII ‘The Noble’ (r. 1158–1214) and began to compete with Latin during the reign of his saintly grandson, Fernando III (r. Castile, 1217–1252; Leon, 1230–1252). By the time Alfonso X ‘The Learned’ (r. 1252–1284) inherited the throne, all internal communications produced in the royal chancery appeared in Castilian. Alfonso X, in turn, elevated Castilian writing by appropriating it in his communications with other peninsular realms and when recording official history. Historians, philo­logists, and linguists have studied this interesting development for decades, leading them to advance various intelligent and appealing interpretations. Three currents in particular dominate our understanding of vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery. The first and still most popular explanation, championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, links the proliferation of Castilian writing within the royal chancery in some form or other to the conquest and settlement of Andalucía. The second deviates from the first by instilling identity politics into the mix. Following the path forged by Rafael Lapesa in the early twentieth century, most of these scholars attribute the shift in language choice to political and sociocultural identity formation and promotion — e.g. Spanish vs. French, clerical vs. lay, multicultural vs. monocultural. Finally, the third interpretation, advanced by Roger Wright, traces the change to a combination of sociolinguistic and cultural factors taking place throughout western Europe in the aftermath of the Carolingian Renaissance.1

 1 Documentos lingüísticos de españa, ed. by Menéndez Pidal, Orígenes del español; Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española; Wright, ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’. Antonio M. Zaldívar ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of History at California State University San Marcos. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 123–138 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126181

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These three currents are hard to escape, in large part, because of the brilliant work by Menéndez Pidal, Lapesa, and Wright. All interpretations concerning the adoption and promotion of Castilian in the royal chancery grow out of their theories — practical needs and political symbolism — in some form, and most agree that the conquest and settlement of Andalucía played a crucial role. A close reading of the Castilian chancery’s surviving corpus and a comparison with extant sources from other Iberian royal chanceries, however, show the ‘Reconquista’ of Andalucía had little, if any, impact on vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery. Lapesa’s and Wright’s postulations offer more promising avenues for further study, but also fall short of providing a comprehensive and/or convincing portrait of how and why the Castilian monarchy began its shift from Latin to Romance. Perhaps we will never know why the Castilian kings and their advisors chose to write in one language over another, as Ángel López García laments.2 But while certainty may elude us, I believe we can build on previous scholars’ interpretations to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon, which in turn sheds light on broader aspects of cultural and political history. For that reason, I review the leading interpretations of why the Castilian chancery replaced Latin with vernacular writing, observe their strengths, and identify their major limitations. In doing so, I advocate for a need to continue studying language choice in the Castilian royal chancery via a multidisciplinary approach that combines theoretical frameworks from linguistic anthropo­logy, philo­logy, and sociolinguistics with historical methodo­logies.3 These methodo­logies must include a comparative component, especially one that considers other Iberian institutions and writing practices.

The Reconquista: Pragmatism in the Face of Expansion Interest in the nature and structure of romance languages dates at least to the late fifteenth century, when humanist thinkers like Antonio de Nebrija (1441–1522) formalized the study of their native tongues and began to codify them with scientific grammars.4 Their observations and interpretations about the identity, structure, and significance of these modern languages continue to  2 López García, Como surgió el español, p. 190.  3 The concepts of codeswitching, diglossia, and indexicality prove particularly useful for studying language choice in medi­eval documents. For more on these theories, see Woolard, ‘Codeswitching’, pp. 73–94; Fergusson, ‘Diglossia’, pp. 325–40; Hudson, ‘Outline of a Theory of Diglossia’, pp. 1–43; Silverstein, ‘Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life’, pp. 193–229; and Silverstein, ‘“Cultural’” Concepts and the Language-​Culture Nexus’, pp. 621–52. For an example of a study that uses these theories to interpret language choice in medi­eval texts, see Zaldívar, ‘James I and the Rise of Codeswitching Diplomacy in Thirteenth-​Century Catalonia’, pp. 189–208.  4 For more on ‘the discovery of language in early modern Europe’, see Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe, pp. 15–42.

reconsidering the shift from latin to romance in the castilian chancery

shape our understanding of them. Nebrija’s famous dictum linking language and power in the pro­logue of his Gramática de la lengua castellana, dedicated to Queen Isabel I (r. 1474–1504), for example, rings as true today as it did in 1492: ‘una cosa saco por conclusión mui cierta: que siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio’ (one thing I conclude with great certainty: that language was always the companion of empire).5 More recently, historians, linguists, and philo­logists, who professionalized their disciplines in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, laid the groundwork for subsequent studies on the evolution and implications of vernacular writing, usually their respective ‘national’ languages. While their analytical frameworks, which posited the evolution of romance languages within nationalist narratives, have been largely abandoned, many of their observations and conclusions regarding the history of vernacular writing and its association with broader cultural, political, and socio-​economic phenomena remain influential. In the case of the Castilian language, a historio­graphic precise must begin with the great Spanish philo­logist Ramón Menédez Pidal (1869–1968). In his groundbreaking work Documentos lingüísticos (1919) and later with his opus magnus Orígenes del Español (1926), Menéndez Pidal sought to demonstrate the origins of medi­eval Castilian and trace its development into modern Spanish. A product of his generation, Menéndez Pidal linked this linguistic/literary evolution to the political project of a modern and centralized Spanish state. Notwithstanding his underlying nationalist narrative, the motives Menéndez Pidal lays out for the chancery’s appropriation of vernacular writing continue to influence our understanding of Castilian’s development and historical legacy, including within the royal chancery. His belief that the Castilian monarchy adopted writing in Romance for practical purposes, specifically the need to settle newly conquered Andalucía, remains dominant in some form or other today.6 Like Nebrija five centuries earlier, Menéndez Pidal’s Castilian follows the rise of a political power, in this case not an expanding empire, but the Spanish nation-​state. Derek W. Lomax, in a short but influential article on the significance of vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery, generally agrees with Menéndez Pidal’s theory that the conquest and settlement of Andalucía (the Reconquista) drove the shift from Latin to Romance during the first half of the thirteenth century. While he flirts with the importance of cultural change (monastic reform and secularization) and the personnel running the chancery (including the influence of Fernando’s chancellor Juan de Soria) on the Crown’s decision to use vernacular writing, he views the kings’ administrative needs during the settlement of the southern frontier in the thirteenth century as  5 Nebrija, Gramática de la lengua castellana, pro­logue. Perhaps Nebrija’s observation stands as a truism; or perhaps we are trapped in a historio­graphic house of mirrors built long ago à la Renaissance.  6 Documentos lingüísticos de españa, ed. by Menédez Pidal, pp. 11–12.

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the driving force behind the switch from Latin to Romance. He posits, for example, that vernacular writing could help the king transmit a message quickly and/or secretly to an official illiterate in Latin, like an alcalde, without the intercession of a Latin-​literate translator, most likely a cleric.7 Close analysis of the surviving royal charters and letters from Fernando’s reign, however, do not support Lomax’s practical or cultural-​political propositions (or Menéndez Pidal’s for that matter). Rather than secret or private letters, as Lomax imagines, these texts were predominately public documents intended to reach a wider audience than the immediate recipient — i.e. donations, confirmations of privileges, local fueros, judicial sentences.8 Only forty-​eight of the 223 extant documents produced by Fernando’s chancery (21.52 per cent) fall outside one of these categories and instead include specific orders directed at religious institutions, city councils, and/or royal officials. The recipients of these orders, moreover, were not any more likely to be from the Andalusian frontier than Old Castile. None of these forty-​eight documents seem to contain sensitive information requiring protection from unwanted ears. They resemble in form and content the majority of royal orders emitted by Fernando’s chancery, which remained in Latin until the final five years of his reign.9 Clerics in thirteenth-​century Castile, moreover, continued to dominate as intermediaries of the written word regardless of language chosen or intended recipient. Most royal scribes as well as local and municipal notaries and scribes throughout Castile remained clerics during this period.10 A royal official, e.g. an alcalde or a portazguero, would thus more than likely depend on a cleric to read the king’s message aloud and in some cases translate it from Latin during this period. Meanwhile, in Catalonia, where lay scribes and notaries competed in earnest with clerics as intermediaries of the written word by the thirteenth century, Latin writing continued to dominate both inside and outside of the royal chancery for much longer. The contrast between clerical influence on the transmission of writing in Castile and Catalonia and its impact on general patterns of language choice complicates the assumption

 7 Lomax, ‘La lengua oficial de Castilla’, pp. 413–14. Similarly, Manuel Ariza traces the beginning of the shift to vernacular writing in the chancery to the conquest of Jaen in 1246, see Ariza, ‘Fernando III y el castellano Alfonsí’, p. 77.  8 Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, ed. by González, ii, doc. 183. González’s collection includes all 852 documents that survive from Fernando’s chancery as king of Castile and Leon. For more on the impact of public documents on language choice in the Castilian chancery, see Wright, ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’, pp. 119–20.  9 Rather than using vernacular writing, Fernando likely continued to communicate secret or private messages orally via trusted agents: porters; vassals; friendly clerics.  10 Besides the evidence in Gonzalez’s collection, see Ostos Salcedo, ‘La Cancillería de Fernando III, rey de Castilla’, pp. 59–70; López Gutiérrez, ‘La Cancillería de Fernando III, rey de Castilla y León’, pp. 71–82; and MacDonald, ‘El cambio del latín al romance’, pp. 394–402.

reconsidering the shift from latin to romance in the castilian chancery

that laicization represents a determining factor in these languages’ early proliferation or even their raison d’être. Other scholars to jump on the Reconquista bandwagon, albeit steering it at times down separate paths, include Luis Rubio García, Gerald Hilty, Robert A. MacDonald, and Pilar Ostos Salcedo. They all accept Lomax’s revision of Menéndez Pidal’s theory, although each expands on it in by focusing on other circumstances in Castilian society that likely contributed to royal writing in Romance. MacDonald, for instance, notes the likely influence on vernacular writing from ‘a more inflated administration, demo­graphic changes, and a tradition of writing oral testimonies of judicial conflicts in the vernacular’.11 Unfortunately, MacDonald does not elaborate further on the impact of these circumstances, which all seem like fruitful avenues for further investigation. Rubio Garcia, Gerold Hilty, and Ostos Salcedo also explore the ties between vernacular writing in the royal chancery, contemporary legislative works (fueros), and/or documents related to conflict resolutions in their analyses of language choice.12 Hilty credits judicial investigations ordered or conducted by the king as one of the four typo­logies of documents that appear in romance languages during Fernando’s reign.13 Ostos Salcedo, likewise, attributes the increasing inability of individuals (be they royal officials or not) to read Latin and the content of a text (in the case of her research, boundary disputes) to the shift in codes.14 Each of these scholars considers that practical necessity or convenience on the part of chancery officials prompted them to compose documents in the spoken Romance. Some also demonstrate clear connections between document typo­logies and language choice in the royal chancery. But none of these scholars convincingly explain why the kings and their agents acquiesced to these external pressures. Furthermore, the underlying reliance of these scholars on the belief that the Reconquista drove the chancery to experiment with vernacular writing remains unconvincing. It is easy to understand the appeal of the Reconquista — either in terms of resettlement, ideo­logy formation, or confluence of religious groups — in the dramatic rise of Castilian writing in the thirteenth century. After all, it makes perfect sense to attribute the uniqueness of the Castilian chancery’s language shift to the major socio-​economic and political transformation occurring at the time: the territorial expansion southward and settlement of newly conquered lands. But the surviving evidence and a comparison with

 11 MacDonald, ‘El cambio del latín al romance’, p. 408.  12 Rubio García, Del latín al castellano, p. 11.  13 Hilty, ‘La aparición del romance en los documentos de la cancillería de los reyes de Castilla en la primera mitad del siglo XIII’, pp. 435–36. The other three typo­logies include: 1) letters (cartas) to individuals not well versed in Latin; 2) orders (mandatos) made in haste or to royal officials not well versed in Latin; and 3) documents related with the ‘reconquest of Andalucía’.  14 Ostos Salcedo, ‘Cancillería castellana y lengua vernácula’, p. 476. Yet, she considers the Reconquista responsible for the rapid spread of Castilian writing, see pp. 482–83.

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other Iberian realms undermines that assumption. Vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery started and became well established, even if not dominant, before Christian forces began colonizing Andalucía. In addition to Alfonso VIII’s three surviving texts in Castilian (only one original), vernacular documents from Fernando’s chancery begin to appear in 1219. Already by 1233, three years before the conquest of Córdoba, over 25 per cent of extant royal documents survive in Castilian. Needless to say, royal scribes directed these texts to individuals and institutions in northern and central Castile, not Andalucía: e.g. the inhabitants of Talavera; the church of Santa María in Valladolid; the monasteries of Santo Domingo de Silos and Santa María de Valbuena; municipal and royal officials in Cuenca.15 If the conquest of Andalucía factored into the spread of vernacular writing in the royal chancery, it did so, as MacDonald casually noted, by inflating the size of the royal bureaucracy necessary to administer the new territories. That is, the more royal scribes wrote, the more vernacular documents survived. Finally, even after the conquest of Andalucía, royal scribes remained as likely to issue Castilian texts to individuals and institutions in the older, northern territories as to those in the south. A comparison of the trajectory of vernacular writing in the different Iberian royal chanceries further weakens any attempt to connect its proliferation with the conquest and settlement of Andalucía. The kings of Aragon, like their Castilian counterparts, dramatically increased their territories following the Christian victory at Las Navas de Tolosa. By 1250, they ruled over the kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia. Yet, they wrote almost solely in Latin until the fourteenth century and continued using it well into the fifteenth. Further west, the kings of Portugal completed their Reconquista with the conquest of Algarve in 1249. Their royal chancery, however, did not switch over to writing in the Portuguese vernacular regularly until Dinis I (r. 1279–1325) ascended to the throne thirty years later.16 Meanwhile, in Navarre, which did not reap the fruits of southward expansion in the thirteenth century, the trajectory of vernacular writing resembles more closely that of Castile, including within the Castilian royal chancery. Indeed, Navarrese kings began experimenting with vernacular writing earlier than their Castilian counterparts.17 Colonization alone, if at all, cannot explain language choice in the royal chanceries of Christian Iberia, nor can the appearance of vernacular writing among certain typo­logies of documents (i.e. legal codes, boundary disputes, and judicial inquests). In the lands of the Crown of Aragon, for example, the Usatges of Barcelona and other legislative and judicial texts also appear in romance languages during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. And yet the kings continued to write predominately in Latin.  15 Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, ed. by González, ii, docs. 148 (Talavera), 235 (Santa Maria de Valladolid), 239 (Santo Domingo de Silos), and 252 (Santa Maria de Valbuena).  16 Fernández-​Ordóñez, ‘La lengua de los documentos del rey’, pp. 346–48.  17 Fernández-​Ordóñez, ‘La lengua de los documentos del rey’, pp. 334–42.

reconsidering the shift from latin to romance in the castilian chancery

Political and Sociocultural Identity Menéndez Pidal’s student, co-​contributor, and pioneer of Castilian philo­logy in his own right, Rafael Lapesa (1908–2001), offered a variation of his mentor’s theory regarding the importance of the Reconquista in the proliferation of Castilian writing. While not abandoning practical motivations for vernacular writing in the royal chancery entirely, he offers some alternative symbolic causes behind the gradual switch from Latin to Romance that prove more promising than the Reconquista/pragmaticism paradigm. Lapesa believed that identity formation and political expediency played a central role in the royal chancery’s shift from Latin to Castilian. He argued that the monarchy utilized Castilian writing as a mechanism to promote a common and unified political identity in the midst of massive territorial expansion (Reconquista) and in opposition to Frankish clerics active in the peninsula.18 Lapesa’s claims influenced how other scholars have interpreted language choice in the Castilian royal chancery. César Hernández, for instance, accepts Lapesa’s argument that Fernando’s administration/chancery switches over from writing in Latin to Castilian as it shed French bishops and dignitaries from office in favour of peninsular replacements.19 David Rojinsky provides a more elaborate and ambitious interpretation of the Castilian kings’ adoption of vernacular writing for ideo­logical purposes. He argues the transition from ‘Latin to Castellano in the Iberian Peninsula [was] a political and not a linguistic change’, one led in a top-​down fashion by the royal chancery with clear ideo­logical motives. According to Rojinsky, the Crown utilized Castilian to forge a united, proto-​national identity with their urban subjects in the process of repopulating Andalucía and, more importantly, challenging the power of the feudal nobility. Rojinsky purports that the Castilian kings endowed their vernacular tongue with power by turning it into the language of a centralized legal code, beginning with Fernando III’s order to translate the Liber iudicorum (Fuero juzgo) and culminating with Alfonso X’s Siete partidas. He then contrasts these centralized legal codes in Romance with the traditional fueros, written in Latin and representing the interests of the feudal nobility. The adoption of vernacular writing by the Castilian royal chancery therefore ‘was not a spontaneous development arising from the early spread of literacy but was consciously constructed and promoted in response to the need for political centralization’.20 Even though Rojinski offers valuable information and bold, interesting arguments, including an admirable attempt at l’histoire à la longue durée, his analysis encounters several problems. To begin with, he does not try to connect  18 Lapesa, Historia de la Lengua Española, p. 245.  19 Hernández, ‘Acercamiento al castellano del siglo XIII’, p. 332. María Teresa Echenique Elizondo also believes a process of political unification drove the use of vernacular writing in the chancery and its eventual standardization: see Echenique Elizondo, ‘Nivellement linguistique et standardisation en espagnol (castellan) médiéval’, p. 347.  20 Rojinski, Companion to Empire, p. 17.

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or include the Crown’s vernacular production prior to the translation of the Liber iudicorum within his juridical-​political argument, even though much of that documentation relates to legal matters. Equally problematic is Rojinski’s inability to escape the great shadow of the Reconquista. As he states: the answer to why the Castilian chancery implemented the vernacular as an official language, and indeed, on such a scale, in Castile rather than anywhere else … quite simply, would appear to lie with the efforts to repopulate those territories won back from the Moors in the decades both preceding and during Alfonso X’s reign.21 Rojinski also neglects to compare the situation in the kingdom of Castile with those of other Iberian realms at any point in his study. It is as if Castile existed in a vacuum, imposing its will on its neighbours and enjoying an almost providential trajectory through the ages. For instance, he cites Alfonso X’s description of Castilian as ‘nuestro latín’ as evidence of the Crown’s success in lifting the prestige of the Castilian vernacular on par with Latin. Yet, as most scholars of early vernacular writing know, this is a generic and common, if not universal, description of romance languages in other areas of Christendom.22 Even more troubling is his omission that translations and productions of local fueros in the Castilian romance, granted by the Crown, the clergy, and nobles, predated the more centralized legal codes of the thirteenth century (the Fuero juzgo and the Siete partidas). Finally, vernacular translations of legal codes, both local and territorial, also appear around the same time, or even earlier, in the Crown of Aragon and Portugal, where the kings continued to write predominately in Latin. This last criticism cannot be extended to the work of Inés Fernández-​ Ordóñez. In an informative article, she compares the rise of vernacular writing in all of the Christian, Iberian royal chanceries during the thirteenth century: Castile, Navarre, the Crown of Aragon, and Portugal.23 After comparing the data, Fernández-​Ordóñez concludes that political expediency on the part of the Castilian, Navarrese, and Portuguese kings explains their shift to writing in Romance during the course of the thirteenth century. Similar to Rojinski, she does not see this development as a purely practical matter, but as a product of the Crown’s political interests in exploiting the vernacular languages in the service of creating or appropriating a united political identity in their realms. Unfortunately, she relies predominantly on the conclusions of previous scholars, leading her to restate that the Reconquista was ‘the chief reason’ for the appropriation of vernacular writing in Castile.24  21 Rojinski, ‘The Rule of Law and the Written Word’, p. 298.  22 To cite just one example from the Iberian Peninsula, James I of Aragon refers to Catalan as ‘nostre latí’ in his Llibre dels Fets, chs. 86, 99, 247, 312, and 367.  23 Fernández-​Ordóñez, ‘La lengua de los documentos del rey’, pp. 323–62.  24 Fernández-​Ordóñez, ‘La lengua de los documentos del rey’, p. 332 (importance of Reconquista), p, 353 (political identity).

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Political identity does not monopolize interpretations of language shift in the Castilian royal chancery. Scholars also point to the confluence of multilingual, multiethnic communities in the Iberian Peninsula as the primary impetus behind the successful propagation of Castilian writing in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, including within the royal chancery. These interpretations, like those that credit the Reconquista with the rise of Castilian writing, rely on Iberian or Spanish uniqueness or otherness. But rather than the product of practical necessity during a rapid process of territorial expansion, they attribute Castilian’s ascent to the consequences of religious, cultural, and ethnic confluence preached by Américo Castro in the mid-​twentieth century.25 Influenced by Castro’s work, Lapesa argued the Castilian kings adopted writing in Castilian at least in part to appease Jewish sensibilities in the royal court.26 Lapesa’s theory, admittedly attractive, has no basis in the surviving documentation. Only two royal texts addressed directly to a Jewish community survive in Castilian prior to Alfonso X’s reign. Both documents, moreover, contain privileges emitted to the same community in Villadiego, a town some forty kilometres north-​west of Burgos.27 The chancery’s decision to compose these two documents in Castilian likely responded more to the needs or desires of that particular community rather than those of Castilian Jewry in general. This does not mean that Jews did not play a role in the evolution of the Castilian vernacular, or other Iberian vernaculars for that matter. Francisco J. Hernández has shown that in Castile Jewish scribes contributed to the development of early vernacular writing.28 But there is no evidence that Jewish sensibilities, practices, or expectations seriously impacted the royal chancery’s decision to switch from writing in Latin to Romance.

Sociolinguistic and Ideo­logical Transformations Roger Wright’s ‘sociophilo­logical’ approach represents another promising and sophisticated attempt at understanding the rise of vernacular writing in the Iberian Peninsula more generally and Castile specifically. Wright advocates studying early romance writing using a multidisciplinary approach he terms  25 Castro, España en su Historia: cristianos, moros, y judíos.  26 Lapesa, Historia de la lengua española, p. 237.  27 Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, ed. by González, ii, docs. 174 and 329. The first (1223) is a privilege of protection and the second (1230) the relocation of a porter to protect its financial interests. Neither survives in original form, the former a thirteenth-​century copy and the latter a sixteenth-​century copy.  28 Hernández, ‘The Jews and the Origins of Romance Script in Castile’, pp. 259–306. Hernandez argues that the process began with Southern French immigrants, including Jews, who introduced in Castile the techno­logy of writing in vernacular languages, already strong in Languedoc, around the 1180s. In turn, this techno­logy appealed to the newly conquered Mozarabic and Jewish communities without a strong Latin background.

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‘sociophilo­logy’, which combines linguistic and philo­logical analyses with socio-​historical research to consider the social, political, and cultural context in which these changes in writing styles occurred. Using this approach, Wright concludes that the rise of Castilian in the royal chancery resulted from a combination of various factors that line up with his broader and revolutionary thesis about the birth of medi­eval Latin — that is, the creation of a standard phonetic pronunciation of Latin promoted by the Carolingian court. According to Wright, phonetic and morpho­logical reforms during the Carolingian Renaissance (a phonetic pronunciation of every letter), led by Alcuin’s De ortho­graphia, made Latin unintelligible to most people, creating the need for transliteration of the spoken romance tongue. Wright argues these language reforms did not reach Castile, outside of the Carolingian orbit, until the late twelfth century. Once they did, some writers, including those in the royal chancery, began to experiment with writing in the Castilian romance. This new techno­logy offered Latin-​literate officials a means of communicating public messages to a Latin-​illiterate audience. But as Wright acknowledges, the shift to Castilian in the royal chancery did not persist after its early uses, nor does it seem its members reached a consensus on language choice. Wright argues that this vacillation depended on the personalities in charge of the chancery, their institutional training, and possible cultural biases that either hindered or assisted romance writing on its course. For Wright, language choice in the royal chancery formed ‘part of a wider struggle between tradition and the avant-​garde’.29 He traces the dispute to the appointment of Martín López de Pisuerga to the archbishopric of Toledo, the nominal head of the royal chancery in 1192. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Martín was a native of the city, which Wright, Hernández, and others have demonstrated possessed a history of multilingual activity.30 Meanwhile, the acting chancellor, Diego García — a cleric educated in France — resisted the urge to employ vernacular writing, preventing its use from proliferating in the chancery. The situation changes with Fernando III’s appointment of Juan de Soria as chancellor after Diego’s death in 1208. Juan, trained in Palencia, a centre of early vernacular writing, also favoured writing in Castilian.31 Unfortunately for Juan, the arrival of the conservative Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, trained  29 Wright, ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’, p. 115.  30 Wright, ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’, p. 117; Hernández, ‘Language and Cultural Identity: The Mozarabs of Toledo’, pp. 29–48; and his ‘Acercamiento a los orígenes del español escrito’, pp. 133–66; also see Sánchez-​Prieto, ‘El Romance en los documentos de la catedral de Toledo (1171–1252)’, pp. 131–78.  31 Wright shows how vernacular writing was tied to the studium in Palencia, see Wright, ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’, p. 124. Other scholars to comment on the role of Juan de Soria and other members of the royal chancery in the promotion of Castilian writing include: MacDonald, ‘El cambio del latín al romance’, p. 403; Hilty, ‘La aparición del romance en los documentos de la cancillería de los reyes de Castilla en la primera mitad del siglo XIII’, p. 429; and Sánchez-​Prieto Borjas, ‘El romance en los documentos de la catedral de Toledo (1171–1252)’, p. 137.

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in Paris, as archbishop of Toledo in 1208 halted the experimentation, at least for some time, just as Diego García countered the vernacular tendencies of Archbishop Martín López. Nevertheless, the wave of Castilian was too strong to evade, especially after Rodrigo’s death, when the royal chancery switches completely to writing in Castilian. While intelligent and at times convincing, Wright’s theories encounter a few problems. To begin with, Wright has a tendency to overestimate the influence of specific individuals, be they Alcuin in Carolingian Europe or the officers in charge of the Castilian chancery during the thirteenth century. In doing so, he does not focus enough on comparing the trajectory of vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery with those of other Iberian realms. The Navarrese royal chancery, for example, is suspiciously absent from his historical-​linguistic analysis. Leon and Portugal do not receive much more attention. As in Castile, the Carolingian reforms arrived in these places relatively late. Yet in each of these regions or political entities, Latin remained the administrative language longer, including within royal chanceries, than in Navarre or Castile. The surviving evidence thus does not always support Wright’s chrono­logy regarding the implementation of ortho­graphic reforms in the Iberian Peninsula. Juan de Soria’s impact on Castilian writing, mostly convincing and shared by others before him (Lomax) and since, also encounters hurdles. To begin with, neither Juan nor, much less, Rodrigo were involved in the day-​to-​day operation of the chancery. The royal chancery, as Hernández observes, was itinerant, following the king and his court.32 Juan and Rodrigo, meanwhile, had other duties, either as bishops or abbots, that prevented them from travelling with the king’s entourage. Finally, if these two powerful individuals disagreed about using vernacular writing, it was regarding its use in royal documents, not in general terms. Juan, for example, wrote his court history of Castile, Chronica latina regum Castellae, in Latin, while Rodrigo employed Castilian at times.33 This does not undermine Wright’s theory, but complicates it, as debates about language may have revolved around how and when the Crown should write in the romance rather than if at all.34 Instead of a top-​down stimulus for vernacular writing in the royal chancery à la Wright, Teofilo F. Ruiz believes the impetus came from the ground up. Rather than the preferences of individual chancellors and scribes, Ruiz credits the lack of an authentic notarial culture in Castile as the cause of this rapid shift.35 Ruiz’s observation is seemingly correct. Areas with strong notarial cultures also tended to be the most linguistically conservative. That is the case of Italy and Catalonia, where the majority of documentation remained in Latin  32 Hernández, ‘Sobre los orígenes de español escrito’, p. 137.  33 Wright, ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’, p. 123. Rodrigo, a native Navarrese, likely was familiar with vernacular writing, since it spread earlier in Navarre than in Castile.  34 Hernández alludes to this when advancing the importance of typo­logies, especially price lists, in the rise of Castilian writing, see Hernández, ‘Sobre los orígenes del español escrito’, p. 153.  35 Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth, p. 31.

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until the end of the Middle Ages. The office of notary offered laymen a path for social mobility when they lived in a society with a strong dependence on written records. Thus, notaries, who increasingly passed on their profession to sons and relatives, had an interest in keeping Latin as the standard written language to protect their profession from widespread competition. The early appearance of vernacular writing in Castilian institutions lacking an autonomous notarial culture, whether the royal chancery, city governments, or monastic houses, corroborates Ruiz’s thesis. Yet, as with Wright’s argument, a comparative analysis of Castile with other peninsular realms challenges Ruiz’s interpretation. For instance, even though a notarial culture did not exist in Leon or Portugal, their chanceries remained writing strictly in Latin longer — in the case of Leon until it merged with Castile, and in the case of Portugal until Dinis I (r. 1279–1325) ascended to the throne. Furthermore, in the kingdom of Aragon — which, like Castile, did not have an autonomous notarial tradition until it was imposed from the top by the Crown — Latin continued to enjoy a longer and more active lifespan than in Castile. While the existence of a notarial culture may help explain the Latinity of the Aragonese kings or the lack of it among their Castilian counterparts, it alone cannot justify the difference.

Conclusion The three principal interpretations for the early rise of vernacular writing in the Castilian royal chancery all have their strengths and weaknesses. The first, and also the weakest, remains the most dominant interpretation. It links the proliferation of Castilian writing within the royal chancery in some form or other to the conquest and settlement of Andalucía. The other two theories prove more promising, even though they too fall short of providing a convincing alternative or continue subscribing — incorrectly, I believe — to the first current of thought, which places the Reconquista at the centre of the shift from writing in Latin to Castilian. Rather than continue circling around the practical necessities of vernacular writing in administering newly conquered territories, I propose that we look to the other two options more closely and contextualize the royal chancery’s language practices within the broader uses of vernacular writing in late twelfth-​and thirteenth-​century Castile specifically and the rest of Iberia and Western Europe more generally. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, however. Lapesa, Wright, and others have laid the groundwork to understand more deeply the motives behind language choices in the Castilian royal chancery with their innovative methodo­logies, intellectual insight, and learned interpretations. But we must revisit the surviving evidence and their conclusions with fresh eyes, consider a more comparative approach that places Castile within the broader Iberian world, and incorporates additional theoretical frameworks from various disciplines (history, linguistic anthropo­logy, sociolinguistics). Only then can we begin

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to uncover fully the process by which the Castilian language gained enough prestige to appear in royal records, how and why royal agents adopted writing in Castilian, and how royal uses of Castilian impacted writing and language choice throughout Castile and beyond.36

 36 My current research, in an essay tentatively entitled ‘Fernando’s Castilian: From Latin to the Romance in the Thirteenth-​Century Royal Chancery, 1217–52’, seeks to address this very issue.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Documentos lingüísticos de españa. Reino de Castila, ed. by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, i (Madrid: CSIC, 1966) James I, Llibre dels fets del Rei en Jaume, ed. by Jordi Brugera, 2 vols (Barcelona: Editorial Barcino, 1991); translated in English as The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon: A Translation of the Medi­eval Catalan Llibre dels Fets, ed. by Damian Smith and Helena Buffery (London: Ashgate, 2003) Nebrija, Antonio de, Gramática de la lengua castellana, ed. by Antonio Quilis (Madrid: Editorial Nacional, 1984) Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, ed. by Julio González, 3 vols (Córdoba: Publicaciones del Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Córdoba, 1980–1986) Secondary Works Ariza, Manuel, ‘Fernando III y el castellano Alfonsí’, in Estudios de lingüística y filo­ logía españolas: homenaje a Germán Colón, ed. by Irene Andrés-​Suárez and Luis López Molina (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1998), pp. 71–84 Burke, Peter, Language and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Castro, Américo, España en su Historia: cristianos, moros, y judíos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1948); translated in English as The Structure of Spanish History, trans. by Edmund L. King (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954) Echenique Elizondo, María Teresa, ‘Nivellement linguistique et standardisation en espagnol (castellan) médiéval’, in The Dawn of the Written Vernacular in Western Europe, ed. by Michèle Goyens and Werner Verbeke (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1991), pp. 337–50 Fergusson, Charles, ‘Diglossia’, Word, 15 (1959), 325–40 Fernández-​Ordóñez, Inés, ‘La lengua de los documentos del rey: del latín a las lenguas vernáculas en las cancillerías regias de la Península Ibérica’, in La construcción medi­eval de la memoria regia, ed. by Pascual Martínez Sopena and Ana Rodríguez (València: Universitat de València, 2011), pp. 323–62 Hernández, César, ‘Acercamiento al castellano del siglo XIII’, in Scripta philo­logical: in honorem Juan M. Lope Blanch, ed. by Elizabeth Luna Traill (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1991), pp. 329–44 Hernández, Francisco J., ‘Language and Cultural Identity: The Mozarabs of Toledo’, Boletín burriel, 1 (1989), 29–48 —— , ‘Sobre los orígenes de español escrito’, Vox y Letra: revista de literatura, 10.2 (1999), 133–66 —— , ‘The Jews and the Origins of Romance Script in Castile: A New Paradigm’, Medi­eval Encounters, 15 (2009), 259–306

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Hilty, Gerald, ‘La aparición del romance en los documentos de la cancillería de los reyes de Castilla en la primera mitad del siglo XIII’, in Kunst und Kommunikation: Betrachtungen zum Medium Sprache in der Romania: Festschrift zum. 60. Geburtstag von Richard Baum, ed. by Maria Lieber and Willi Hirdt (Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 1997), pp. 427–39 Hudson Alan, ‘Outline of a Theory of Diglossia’, International Journal of the Socio­ logy of Language, 157 (2002), 1–43 Lapesa Melgar, Rafael, Historia de la lengua española (Madrid: Gredos, 1980) —— , ‘La apócope de la vocal en castellano antiguo. Intento de explicación’, in Estudios de historia lingüística española, ed. by Rafael Lapesa Melgar (Madrid: Ediciones Paraninfo, 1985), pp. 167–98 Linehan, Peter, History and Historians of Medi­eval Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Lomax, Derek W., ‘La lengua oficial de Castilla’, in Actele celui de-​al xii-​lea Congres International de Lingvistica si Filo­logie Romanica, ed. by Alexandru Rosetti and Sanda Reinheimer-​Rîpeanu, 2 vols (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii, 1971), i, 411–17 López García, Ángel, Como surgió el español: Introducción a la sintaxis histórica del español antiguo (Madrid: Gredos, 2000) López Gutiérrez, Antonio J., ‘La Cancillería de Fernando III, rey de Castilla y León (1217–30): notas para su estudio’, Archivo hispalense, 77.234–36 (1994), 71–82 —— , ‘La génesis documental en la cancillería real de Alfonso X’, Documenta & Instrumenta 14 (2016), 77–116 MacDonald, Robert A., ‘El cambio del latín al romance en la cancillería real de Castilla’, Anuario de Estudios Medi­evales, 27.1 (1997), 381–414 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, Orígenes del español (Barcelona: Planeta, 2010) Ostos Salcedo, Pilar, ‘Cancillería castellana y lengua vernácula: su proceso de consolidación’, Urgellia, 7 (1984–1985), 471–84 —— , ‘La cancillería de Fernando III, rey de Castilla (1217–30): una aproximación’, Archivo hispalense, 77.234–36 (1994), 59–70 Proctor, Evelyn S., ‘The Castilian Chancery during the Reign of Alfonso X of Castile, 1252–84’, in Oxford Essays in Medi­eval History Presented to Herbert E. Salter, ed. by Frederick Maurice Powicke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 104–21 Rojinski, David J., ‘The Rule of Law and the Written Word in Alfonsine Castile: Demystifying a Consecrated Vernacular’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 80.3 (2003), 287–307 —— , Companion to Empire: A Genealogy of Written Word in Spain and New Spain, c. 550–1550 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010) Rubio García, Luis, Del latín al castellano en las escrituras reales (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1981) Ruiz, Teofilo F., From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) Sánchez-​Prieto Borja, Pedro, ‘El Romance en los documentos de la catedral de Toledo (1171–1252): La Escritura’, Revista de Filo­logía Española, 87.1 (2007), 131–78

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Silverstein, Michael, ‘Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life’, Language & Communication, 23 (2003), 193–229 —— , ‘“Cultural” Concepts and the Language-​Culture Nexus’, Current Anthropo­ logy, 45.5 (2004), 621–52 Stock, Brian, The Implications of Literacy, Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) Woolard, Kathryn, ‘Codeswitching’, in A Companion to Linguistic Anthropo­logy, ed. by Alessandro Duranti (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 73–94 Wright, Roger, Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France (Liverpool: Cairns, 1982) —— , ‘Latin and Romance in the Castilian Chancery’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 73 (1996), 115–28 Zaldívar, Antonio M., ‘James I and the Rise of Codeswitching Diplomacy in Thirteenth-​Century Catalonia’, Viator, 47.3 (2016), 189–208

Xavier Gil

History Writing in Spain from Humanism to Counter-​Reformation On Deeds, Books, and Truth

Jurist and writer Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa spent a number of years as a judge in different locations in the Italian dominions of the Spanish Monarchy, a circumstance that allowed him to become closely familiar with Italian literature. One of his main works is a re-​elaborated translation of Tomaso Garzoni’s Piazza universale (1585), a successful encyclopedic catalogue of professions and jobs that appeared in 1615. In the chapter ‘On historians’, Suárez de Figueroa offered a lengthy evaluation of the ars historica. After evoking the standard Ciceronian maxim of history as magistra vitae, he dealt with its origins and established its essential difference from both fiction and poetry. The subject matter was men: not in their thoughts, which belonged to philosophy, but in their actions (especially remarkable and uncommon ones) in public or private affairs. He argued that the benefits and uses of history were manifold, including training rulers for the business of government, teaching men to live orderly lives, and enriching all disciplines: theo­logy, law, medicine, physics, morals, grammar, and oratory. According to Suárez de Figueroa, history had as many as eight rules, among them avoiding adulation and slander, observing an elegant style, narrating events and establishing their causes, complying with chrono­logical order, and offering descriptions of regions. History, in sum, had its own ‘método historial’ (historical method). He did not spare his criticism of bad practitioners of the discipline, notably those who disagreed too much among themselves when dealing with the same theme, something that happened because they had not been eyewitnesses to the events they covered and had relied instead on untruthful accounts.1 Moreover, Suárez de Figueroa, via Garzoni and by adding references of his own, offered Spanish readers a valuable update on various historians and writers of the ars historica, above all when speaking of the said historical method, citing François Badouin, Jean Bodin, Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, Sebastián  1 Suárez de Figueroa, Plaza universal, i. discourse 38, pp. 487–514. Xavier Gil ([email protected]) is Professor of History at the Universitat de Barcelona. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 139–156 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126182

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Fox Morcillo, Francesco Patrizzi, Giovanni Pantano, Francesco Robertello, Joannes Sambuccus, Giovanni Antonio Viperano, Juan Luis Vives, Johannes Wolf, and others. This was a very timely contribution, for history had been undergoing a major epistemo­logical change during the previous decades. These theorists (especially Badouin, Bodin, and Wolf), as well as Melchor Cano, transformed the study of history into a hermeneutical discipline, founded on new, more demanding requirements of rigour and credibility of sources and conscious of the analytical importance of historical precedent, while at the same time growing increasingly (if not completely) sensitive to anachronism. Even more, history acquired the status of an all-​encompassing cultural practice, ready to assist other disciplines approach their respective fields. Reductio artium ad historiam was the way Bodin summarized his main methodo­logical argument.2 However strong, though, history’s claims were not unique: around the same time, political writers, most notably Giovanni Botero, Justus Lipsius, and Johannes Althusius, were putting forward similar claims for their own discipline, which they regarded as a true science.3 As some of the above-​mentioned names show, Spanish authors contributed to this collective endeavour of history. The great Erasmian writer Juan Luis Vives was an early case, particularly his treatises on the decay or corruption of knowledge, De tradendis disciplinis (1531), and on rhetoric, the very influential De ratione dicendi (1533). In the first book, he stressed the need for veracity and chrono­logical order in historical accounts and blamed ancient and modern writers for their tendency — often stemming from national pride — to exaggerate. In the second book, he dealt with a wider variety of issues, examining history as a branch of rhetoric. Vives basically defined history as a truthful narration of events, either public or private, mostly those promoting civil concord. History also had an educational role that had to be achieved even when providing accounts of wars: faithful to his pacifist temper, Vives argued that wars had to be narrated in a very sober way, even to the point of showing repulsion. While digressions and descriptions might be allowed for the sake of a pleasant reading, judgements were a more delicate matter. On the one hand, a historian was not supposed to include them, because he writes long after the events took place; on the other hand, however, they were permitted in so far as they helped readers to better understand the events, always under the guidance of reason rather than sentiments. Doing otherwise, Vives warned, would be ‘tarea de abogado, no de historiador’ (a lawyer’s, not a historian’s job).4 The political writer and fellow Erasmist Fadrique Furió Ceriol assumed these same viewpoints in his equally well-​known treatise Concejo y consejeros  2 Kelley, ‘The Theory of History’, esp. pp. 754–61; Kelley, ‘Introduction’, esp. pp. 3–4, 6; Soll, ‘The Uses of Historical Evidence’, pp. 149–57; Grafton, What was History?, pp. 21–23, 32–33, 61, 68, 94; Couzinet, ‘On Bodin’s Method’, p. 40.  3 Lloyd, ‘Conclusion’, p. 508.  4 Vives, Las disciplinas, chs. 5 and 6, pp. 120–27; Vives, El arte retórica, ch. 3, pp. 237–53.

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(1559), where he included proficiency in history, both ancient and modern, as one of the first qualities necessary to be a good counsellor. In addition, Furió argued for history’s high status among the disciplines: beyond its practical utility for rulers, history’s range was wide, so much so, he argued, that law and medicine were but forms of history.5 A general pattern on how history had to be written, then, was well established among Spanish authors, according to prevailing humanist requirements: narration, chrono­logical care, veracity, practical utility, teaching, and pleasantness. There were, however, some voices warning of a poor development of historical studies in Spain. Ambrosio de Morales, humanist and antiquarian, said that in 1560, when residing in Toledo, he had listened to an Italian ambassador complain that Spaniards had not written about their own history. The episode could be untrue, for Morales was at the time seeking to establish himself as a professional if not an official historian, and the anecdote could well serve his purposes.6 But warnings of this sort were not rare. Around the same time, Sebastián Fox Morcillo, a humanist in the circles of Spanish writers in Antwerp, openly acknowledged a similar neglect at the beginning of his De Historiae institutione dialogus (1557), one of the best Spanish treatises on history. Presenting his argument in the form of a dialogue among a few scholars, he had one of them ask why Spaniards had failed to write about their many military and political accomplishments in Europe and in the New World.7 The regular complaint was that Spaniards had performed great, heroic deeds (hechos, gestas, hazañas) through the centuries and were continuing to do so in the New World, but subsequently they had not troubled (or just simply forgot) to write them down in history books. The sad result of this neglect was that foreign nations were poorly informed about those res gestae and therefore Spain’s accompanying international fame was not as wide as undoubtedly deserved. Descuido (negligence) was the word frequently used to refer to this failure to write. Underlying the complaint was the topos that heroes needed both rhetoricians and historians to ensure their exploits be known into posterity, for fame rested on an eloquent narrative of worthy facts. Fernán Pérez de Guzmán addressed this issue in the introduction to his Generaciones y semblanzas (c. 1455).8 The idea had been expressed in a lapidarian mode by Lorenzo Valla in the pro­logue to his bio­graphy of Fernando I of Aragon (1445): oratory ‘es la madre de la historia’ (is history’s mother). He furthermore argued that thanks to its main function — moral teaching and edification — history was superior to poetry and philosophy, in open disagreement with the Aristotelian tradition, which deemed history a lower knowledge of particular facts, rather than universal truths. Valla’s

 5  6  7  8

Furió Ceriol, El concejo y consejeros, pp. 32–35. Cuart, ‘La larga marcha’, p. 97; Kagan, Clio and the Crown, p. 109. Fox in Cortijo Ocaña, Teoría, p. 198. Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y semblanzas, pp. 1–4.

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pro­logue became one of the most influential pieces on Humanistic ars historica. Correspondingly, Juan Costa, the Aragonese rhetorician and future historian, ranked elocutio above the other liberal arts because of its usefulness to the common good, thanks to its capacity to recount memorable events, in the textbook on the discipline he wrote for his students at the University of Barcelona in 1572.9 Complaints about the shortcomings of history writing in Spain had began by the mid-​fifteenth century if not earlier. Alonso de Palencia, Queen Isabel’s official historian, deplored that the account of the loss of Spain and of its subsequent recovery from the Muslims was ‘faltosa’ (defective) or ‘pervertida’ (perverted). Consequently, he undertook a large project to ‘compensar a nuestra gente’ (compensate our people). These words conveyed the customary praise for the hardships embedded in the historical profession and its merits. But there was more than that. Alfonso García de Santa María and Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo had been struck by the sheer ignorance about Spanish matters they found among their colleagues attending the Council of Basel (1433–1438) and in Rome. Arévalo, who wrote the Compendiosa historia hispanica (1470) to remedy this situation, explained that Spaniards tended to spend more time acting than writing and thus had disregarded justifying themselves, and cited Sallust, who said that the contemplative Greeks owed their fame to their historians, unlike the active Romans.10 Lamentations of this sort became frequent. As an aside in his treatise on politics in 1521, Alonso del Castrillo wrote that it was common in other countries to write great deeds down in books, but not in Spain. Likewise, Ramiro Núñez de Guzmán, in a letter he sent to Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda in 1533 with the purpose of encouraging him to work hard as a historian, lamented that the glorious deeds of Spanish kings were forgotten.11 With these and other voices in the atmosphere, the Cortes of Castile urged Charles V in 1523 to sponsor a new edition of Alfonso X’s Estoria de Espanna and editions of other old Castilian chronicles so that information about the past would be easily available. The request was repeated at successive meetings of the Cortes but it was not until 1543 that the new edition finally appeared, thanks, though, to the initiative of a private bookseller.12 The Cortes of Aragon proved more efficient, establishing the post of historian of the kingdom in 1547 to solve a similar situation there. Shortly afterwards, the Diputación appointed the great Jerónimo Zurita as the first official cronista.13 These later developments were accompanied by other major steps, so that a change in this situation — that is, an end to the regrettable lack of

 9 Valla, Historia, pp. 73–79 (quote at p. 73); Costa, De elocutione, pp. 178, 181, 190.  10 Tate, ‘Alonso de Palencia’, p. 193; Tate, Ensayos, pp. 80, 109.  11 Castrillo, Tratado, 132; Kagan, Clio and the Crown, p. 57 (quote).  12 Kagan, Clio and the Crown, pp. 63–64, 70.  13 Fueros de Aragón, ‘Acto de corte sobre el coronista’, ii, 352.

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works of history — seemed at hand. Archives, whether royal, municipal, ecclesiastical, or private, were a major feature of current administrative and cultural concerns. Even though some archives had been established long ago (most notably the royal archives in Barcelona in 1318, in Valencia in 1419, and in Zaragoza in 1476), the royal chronicler Juan Páez de Castro submitted two memoranda to Philip II in 1555 and 1556 encouraging him to establish, respectively, a large library and a new archive as a repository for all state papers.14 The resulting archive in Simancas, a town near Valladolid, started to receive official documents by the mid-​1570s.15 If the main functions of archives were, first, the upkeep of documents and other evidence as judicial proof in defence of rights and revenues of the Crown, town councils and the like, and second, the provision for the needs of the ordinary functioning of government, they increasingly served a third role as well: supplying evidence to historians for the study of the past. The new role became so important that one single official was sometimes both archivist and historian (e.g. Pere Miquel Carbonell and Antoni Viladamor at the Barcelona archive or Gomes Eanes de Zurara at the Lisbon archive). Meanwhile, historians got permission to visit archives on a regular basis in order to gather information for their research and books. Hernando del Pulgar, Esteban de Garibay, Ambrosio Morales, and Zurita, for example, worked in many such places. Thus, while archives remained places where sensitive documents were kept secret, they were increasingly open to research, often in the service of official histories.16 The gathering of increasing numbers of documents and the circulation of cartas de relación meant that a wealth of information lay at hand for historians. Still, contemporary precepts of the ars historica clearly distinguished between, on the one hand, mere record-keeping and fact-​collecting, and, on the other, the proper writing of historia, which, since history taught by example, had to fulfil the requirements of elevated topic, elegant style, and moral lesson.17 As a consequence, Spanish historians sought to group Spanish history together with that of its European neighbours. In 1545 Sancho de Nebrija, the son of the famous grammarian Elio Antonio, published a useful — albeit inaccurately printed — antho­logy of remarkable works by four medi­eval and then-​recent authors with the purpose of providing a perspective on the length, richness, and basic continuity of Spanish history, having reached its height in the previous generation. These works were Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s De rebus Hispaniae; Alfonso García de Santa María’s Anacephaleosis; Joan Margarit’s Paralipomenon Hispaniae; and Antonio de Nebrija’s two chronicles on the  14 Conde, Reyes y archivos; López Rodríguez, ‘El archivo Real y General del reino de Valencia’, pp. 179–81; Navarro, Escritura, poder y archivo, pp. 120–24.  15 Kagan, Clio and the Crown, pp. 96–97; Rodríguez de Diego, Memoria escrita.  16 Bouza, Del escribano a la biblioteca, pp. 126–32; Cuart, ‘La larga marcha’, pp. 87–88, 96–98, 112–13, 117–18; Navarro, Imagen del archivo, pp. 77, 108–10, 126–29.  17 Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, pp. 223–26, 247; Kelley, Faces of History, pp. 188–89.

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reign of the Catholic monarchs and the conquest of Navarre. In separate pro­logues to each piece, Sancho wrote on the importance of history and the qualities historians should have.18 Shortly thereafter, in 1552, the Fleming Ioannes Vasseus, a lecturer on humanist literature at Salamanca, published a miscellaneous volume whose main purpose was to provide information on Spanish history and historians to foreign nations that did not know about neither because of the ‘scriptorum inopia’ (paucity of writers) and, more precisely, because — as he noted — very few non-​Spaniards had written on Spanish matters. Aiming to reverse this situation, Vasseus offered a long list of chroniclers of Spain, highlighting those who wrote in Latin (Alonso de Cartagena, Petrus Martire, the Portuguese Damião de Goes, and others), instrumental to his purpose to reach a wide audience, and including also those who did so in patrio sermone (Castilian: Alfonso X the Learned, Pedro Antonio Beuter). Then came a relation of historical facts up to the early eleventh century, followed by comments belonging to the genre laus Hispaniae, in which he praised the deeds of the Spaniards in the fields of religion, military prowess (virtus), and literary studies.19 Even if Vasseus thought that Spaniards sufficiently complied with the double perquisite of worthy deeds and fine histories, complaints of historians’ descuido did not cease. In the opening parts of his wide-​ranging Compendio historial (1571), Esteban de Garibay lamented that Charles V’s glory and fame could perish for lack of authors and, more generally, stated that various kingdoms of Spain were ‘tan faltosos de buenas historias’ (so lacking in well-​written histories).20 In the following year, Francisco de Toledo, the new and resourceful viceroy of Peru, complained upon his arrival there that the only chroniclers having written on ‘nuestros hechos’ (our facts) were those who had not witnessed them and who had failed to look for the truth. At the same time, there was a shortage of works in defence of ‘nuestros títulos’ (our titles) in Peru and of what Spaniards had performed there to eradicate the barbarous customs of the local peoples. The history book he commissioned would, he said, aim to duly establish the truth.21 By that time, however, things were clearly already changing. Jerónimo Zurita had published the first part of his Anales de la Corona de Aragón (1560) and Martín de Viciana, a notary rather than a historian, had done likewise with his Crónica de Valencia (1564–1566). As for Catalonia, Antoni Viladamor, following the commission from the estates of the Corts of 1564, published the Història general de Catalunya (1585), covering from the first human settlements in the province until the present. While Viladamor lamented  18 Tate, ‘Sancho de Nebrija’, pp. 17–19.  19 Vasseus, Chronici rerum, esp. chs. 2 (quote, fol. 2v), 4, and 9. He wrote ‘Petrus Martire Siculo’, thus probably mixing up the names of two Italian historians at the court of the Catholic Monarchs: Petrus Martire Anghiera and Lucius Marineus Siculus.  20 Quoted by Cuart, ‘La larga marcha’, pp. 49, 112.  21 Kagan, Cronistas y la corona, pp. 234–35; Merluzzi, Politica e governo, pp. 142–49.

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the neglect shown to Catalan history by previous local writers, he noted that foreign historians did write at length on Catalan military victories. Therefore, ‘lo que nostra nació ha menester y les altres nacions dihuen nos falta, és una copiosa i veritable història’ (what our nation needs and others say we lack is a copious and true history).22 Still, those remarkable scholarly achievements went hand in hand with further complaints on the neglect suffered by history. Jerónimo Blancas, successor to Zurita as official historian, argued in his major work on the Justicia of Aragon (1588) that very little was known about the origins of the institution because of the successive losses of documents as well as the Aragonese demeanour, which had been noted by Fernando de Aragón, scholar and archbishop of Zaragoza: the taciturn Aragonese people valued achievements more than recording them for posterity. Love of patria, thus, pushed him to write the history of that unique constitutional magistrate.23 A similar feeling was present in Catalonia, where the Corts did not manage to appoint an official historian. Little surprise then that Francesc Calça lamented in De Cataloniae liber primus (1588) that foreign nations did not know about Catalan past glories because of the Catalans’ own carelessness and negligence. Friar Joan Benito Guardiola remarked in the pro­logue of his Antigüedad y nobleza de Cataluña (c. 1595, unpublished) that all that happened after the Muslim invasion fell into oblivion. This situation and his duty towards his patria, Barcelona, prompted Guardiola to write on the heroic actions of his ancestors.24 Even Juan de Mariana expressed a similar view: when he translated his masterful Historiae de rebus Hispaniae libri XXX (1592) into Spanish, under the title Historia general de España (1601), he said in the dedication to Philip III that Spain’s lack of a general Latin history prompted him to write that work. As he explained in the first chapter, the history of Spain was filled with remarkable figures of war and peace, but it lacked writers to record and illustrate its greatness in deeds and exploits.25 The commonplace justification that historians wrote in defence of their respective patriae showed that emulation of other nations was waged on two fronts: res gestae and historia. Vives warned of the dangers involved in this attitude, blaming the historian who ‘no pone la mira en la verdad objetiva, sino en la mayor gloria de [su] nación’ (pays no attention to the objective truth, but to the higher glory of [his] nation).26 This warning, however, did not prove easy to heed. The French historian La Popelinière lamented that none of the authors whom he had read were able to shed the affection for their country or the hate for its enemies. Likewise, Bartolomé Leonardo de  22 Viladamor, Història, pp. 209–10, 212, 243.  23 Blancas, Comentarios, pp. 7–9. In 1622, Blasco de Lanuza also mentioned the Aragonese demeanour: Historias ecclesiásticas, i. pro­logue, no pagination.  24 Galdeano, ‘La polèmica historiogràfica’, pp. 66, 71–72, 74.  25 Mariana, ‘Historia’, pro­logue, no pagination; p. 1.  26 Vives, Las disciplinas, p. 126.

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Argensola spoke of the serious dangers of writing about one’s own patria, since historians tended to grossly overvalue any stone or physical remain from the past in their city or region. He did so precisely in the memorandum he submitted to the Aragonese officials around 1590 asking unsuccessfully to be appointed as the official historian. Sometime later, the Catalan jurist and chronicler Jeroni Pujades pointed to another angle of this question in his Crónica universal del Principado de Cataluña (1609). After recalling the failure of the Hebrew people to write their own history, despite the abundance of learned persons among them, he remarked with discomfort that many nations honoured their historians, unlike Catalans, who accepted instead the work of foreign authors and gave them full credit.27 The stakes in the emulation battle were high. ‘Los reyes no pueden carecer de historia’ (kings cannot lack history), remarked Valla at the beginning of his bio­graphy of Fernando I of Aragon. François Badouin stated in his De institutione historiae universae (1561), one of the best treatises on the ars historica, that a lack of histories in a country was a sign of barbarianism, and Viladamor shared this jurgement: ‘De quantes nacions ha en lo món, aquéla es pot dir més fortunada la que amb més històries és solemnitzada’ (among the nations in the world, the one solemnized by the most historical works can truly be called the most fortunate).28 As these opinions show, the lament for the lack of history books was mostly grounded on the dishonour it caused to national pride, rather than as a loss for good politics, as history was commonly taken as a requirement for sound government. This general attitude helps to explain why Ambrosio de Morales regarded his great Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (1575) as a response to the Italians who criticized the Spaniards for failing to write about their Roman remnants.29 It was known that Renaissance Italians tended to place themselves well above other contemporary nations in cultural terms. But the question was nonetheless serious: even a person as sympathetic towards the Spanish monarchy as Giovanni Botero hammered on about the alleged failure. After his remark that it was very appropriate for princes to have their campaigns and other actions accurately and beautifully written down in order to propagate pride among their subjects and to be diffused abroad, he remarked that Castilians ‘non si hanno presso cura che queste loro imprese […] fosero scritte da persone che ciò saperesso fare’ (did not care to ensure that able writers wrote about their deeds). The Portuguese, he noted however, did succeed in spreading news of their exploits by means of works written in both Latin and Portuguese.30

 27 La Popelinière, quoted by Huppert, L’idée de l’histoire, p. 171; Leonardo de Argensola, ‘Sobre las cualidades’, pp. 269–70; Pujades, quoted by Amelang, ‘The Mental World’, p. 223.  28 Valla, Historia, p. 70; Badouin, quoted by Kelley, Foundations, p. 133; Viladamor, Història, p. 242.  29 Kagan, Clio and the Crown, p. 111.  30 Botero, La ragion di stato, p. 198.

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A number of issues were therefore at play. Fox Morcillo willingly sorted them out in his answer to the colleague who asked him about the scarcity of Spanish history books, quoted above. Fox did not deny such scarcity, but specified that many historical works were available in Spain, although written — he admitted — in Castilian rather than in Latin. These works were correct as far as ‘hechos’ (facts) were concerned, although they lacked the elegance and distinction, ‘como pide la ley de la historia’ (as the law of history dictates). The reason for this problem was some authors’ sole preoccupation with narrating the ‘truth’ rather than the style in which they did so, while others wrote hastily ‘como indoctos y desconocedores del método apropiado para hacerlo’ (as unlearned and ignorant in the appropriate method of doing so). He expressed his confidence that the peace that Spain was finally enjoying would permit a more intense cultivation of the arts and the emergence of authors who would write histories with due elegance. Finally, as a persuasive blow in his defensive reply, Fox recalled that Cicero had likewise complained about the lack of historians in the Rome of his times.31 The issue of historio­graphic negligence appeared in other European countries as well. In 1495, Erasmus wrote a short apo­logy of the historical discipline — the first text he ever published — addressed to his friend, the French historian Robert Gaguin, where, besides praising those historians who would honour their patria, he was ready to argue that France did not lag behind Italy, in spite of the fact that there were far fewer history books on the former than on the latter.32 Similarly, around a century later, Montaigne drew much inspiration from Plutarch, endorsing his preference for strife (polemós) over learning (sofia). By a time when reason of state and Tacitism were becoming the prevailing political trends, he remained committed to the ideal of the Renaissance individual man making himself through action.33 Thus, echoes of the querelle between arms and letters or, alternatively, between vita activa and vita contemplativa, revolved around the question of how many or how few history books a given nation might have. Such a question would linger on during the next generation in Spain. While Juan Velázquez de Acevedo, author of a treatise on mnemotechnic learning, found little inclination among Spaniards towards memory because of the climate,34 some major names of the literary world addressed the doing vs. writing issue. Baltasar Gracián placed hazañosos well over hazañeros because the former performed real deeds and left others to tell them, and evoked the then-​commonplace assumption that Spaniards tended towards the sword rather than the pen. For his part, Francisco de Quevedo clearly militated in the arms camp. Writing in the voice of a fictional character, he recalled that

 31  32  33  34

Fox in Cortijo Ocaña, Teoría, pp. 199–200, 265–66, 268. Barral-​Baron, ‘Fides et libertas’, pp. 592–93. Regent, ‘Montaigne’, pp. 153, 158–59. Velázquez de Acevedo, El Fénix, p. 146.

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Rome had lost vigour when Cicero, Brutus, and Julius Caesar started to write. Ancient Spain had experienced a similar decay. More recently, the invention of print had challenged the power of artillery: ‘plomo contra plomo’ (lead against lead).35 These Spanish instances of biblioclasm were confirmed in a primer for the infant king, Charles II, in 1666. When addressing the relationship between the sword and the book, he sketched a dim panorama: just as the appreciation of oratory in Rome had caused military decay, the flourishing of university studies in Spain now meant that ‘está muy solo el camino de Flandes’ (the military road to Flanders has been left alone).36 If history books on remarkable exploits, preferably written in Latin, were no less important than having performed those exploits, an appropriate stylistic quality was another necessary requirement. Juan Verzosa, the able Aragonese archivist in the Spanish embassy in Rome and chronicler, however, had his own opinion. As he explained in the pro­logue of the annals of Philip II’s reign that he undertook in the late 1560s, his purpose was to offer a short, substantive account of the main events, leaving aside harangues, the causes of events and other facts, often ‘ficticios e inútiles’ (fictitious and useless), so that readers could enjoy more easily the naked historical truth.37 Verzosa’s concern that nuda veritas could be damaged by other, supposedly secondary content was due to the fact that he wrote annals, rather than a fully elaborated historia. Still, veracity and elegance could not be separated. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, companion of arms of Hernán Cortés and chronicler, had to learn this at his own expense with the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, which, written around 1570, suffered the intervention of other authors before it was published in1632, when it achieved belated celebrity. Bernal wrote this lengthy work taking advantage of the fact that he had been an eyewitness, and even more, a protagonist, of many of the events he recounted, a circumstance that was usually thought to be a guarantee of veracity, as he himself and other conquistadores-​chroniclers so often emphasized. As far as elegance was concerned, however, he had to extensively revise his first draft because, as he admitted, it lacked refinement.38 Even if a variety of motives drove Díaz del Castillo’s wish for a true account of the conquest of Mexico, he, in any case, contributed significantly to new standards of veracity in history. The notion of historical truth became the object of increasingly personal fashioning. If in the great medi­eval chronicles, the author tended to disappear from the account, now historians played a more active role in conferring authenticity on a truth that they themselves had partially shaped. Jean Froissart and more clearly Philippe de Commynes

 35 Gracián, El discreto, p. 323; Gracián, El criticón, ii, 105; Quevedo, ‘La fortuna con seso’, pp. 742–45.  36 Albornoz, Cartilla, fol. 80r. On biblioclasm, see Bouza, Comunicación, pp. 113–16.  37 Verzosa, Anales, pp. 5–7.  38 Delgado, ‘La crónica imposible’, p. 29.

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had exemplified this trend. At the same time, humanist historians, mostly Machiavelli and even more Guicciardini, accorded history a more pragmatic character, thanks to which it was to become more useful in the Florentine political struggles they both experienced and wrote about. The closer contact between history and politics meant that the former faced increased demands for factual accuracy that, in turn, would help the historian establish the link between causes and consequences, both in the past and in the present.39 Erasmus, for his part, had established a sharp contrast on the key issue of veracity. Pure truth was the exclusive domain of sacred history, while profane history was necessarily limited in this respect: truth was fragile and imperfect, for it rested on philo­logical reasons and could be reached only through deductions and probabilities, not through proper judgements; it was only verisimilitude.40 Erasmus’s distinction was widely shared, and Melchor Cano, for example, assumed that profane history was a field prone to lies.41 This reservation had repercussions in the world of justice. At a time when historical precedent was used as evidence in courts, the notion of judicial truth depended on both evidence and, increasingly, arguments of authority, which in turn — in a cultural world shaped by ius commune — were part and parcel of an understanding of veracity in problematic terms, rather than axiomatic ones.42 Historical truth — profane historical truth — consequently had more than one face. If no historian failed to duly acknowledge veracity as his uppermost goal, lingering questions of style and blurring of boundaries among genres, not to mention religious and national allegiances, caused ongoing debates about the means of achieving this goal. Just as a modicum of poetic licence had found its place in a truthful historical account, epic poetry was likewise considered a legitimate genre for narrating actual events, provided it honoured some rules of chrono­logical order, proportion, and sheer information. This was Joan Pujol’s claim in his heroic poem on the battle of Lepanto, centred on the figure of Don Juan de Austria and published in Barcelona in 1574. While sharing literary concerns with other epic poems, such as Luis de Camões’s Os Lusíadas (1572) and Alonso de Ercilla’s Araucana (1574), Pujol explicitly defended the historical nature of this kind of composition, even if its formal aspects were of course poetic and implied a degree of fictionalization. Accordingly, he asserted that he got information on the events from both eyewitnesses in the battle and Fame herself.43 Historians, however, increasingly grew weary of poetic or rhetorical excesses. Jean Bodin, for example, had little patience with the emphasis on the pleasure  39 Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, pp. 218–19, 228–33, 239, 245–46; Grafton, What Was History?, p. 39; Moeglin, ‘La verité’, pp. 522, 532–38; Kagan, Clio and the Crown, pp. 29–30.  40 Barral-​Baron, ‘Fides et libertas’, pp. 591, 600–01, 604–07.  41 Kagan, Clio and the Crown, pp. 4–5.  42 Genet, ‘La verité et les vecteurs’, pp. 43–44; Hespanha, Como os juristas, pp. 16–17.  43 Esteve and Moll, ‘Ficción épica’.

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that reading history books was expected to provide.44 More particularly, such a popular genre as the remote origins of dynasties and nations came under growing criticism. Fox Morcillo warned against the uncritical habit of mixing fables (fabulae) with history, and for this reason dismissed the false Berosus, the Chaldean writer invented by Annius of Viterbo as unreliable. Annius’s Antiquitates (1498), together with his booklet on the first twenty-​four kings of primitive Spain, enjoyed wide diffusion in many European countries, but became also a main target in these debates. Vives, Cano, Gaspar Barreiros, Goropius Becanus, and Étienne Pasquier dismissed them as forgeries, while Zurita and Mariana chose to skip or downplay those remote times.45 The rejection by prestigious historians of tales of primitive origins did not meet with immediate success, to be sure. Such tales would survive in other authors, together with those of fictious foundations of cities and genealogies of noble families. Even new false accounts were forged, most notably the so-​ called lead plates (plomos) of Sacromonte in Granada, supposedly discovered between 1588 and 1595.46 This is why the most telling expression of the new demands of factual accuracy lay elsewhere, in the care shown in order to ground historical accounts on extensive use of written sources. Fernão Lopes, the leading Portuguese historian, explained in his work on the reign of João I his reasoning for leaving ‘affeiçao’ (friendship) aside when writing history. Lopes claimed to have labored hard consulting long books in several languages and public records so that readers would not find in his historical writing ‘fermosura e novidade de palavras’ (beautiful and novel words), but the truth, ‘sem outra mistura’ (without any confusion). Likewise, after pleading to observe the simple truth, with no rhetoric embellishments, Viciana stated that he relied on ‘historiadores aprovados y […] quadernos y escripturas auténticas y verdaderas’ (approved historians and […] authentic and truthful records and writings) kept in archives.47 Zurita referred as well to archival documents and books by other authors, whom he valued according to his own analytical sensibility. Indeed he accompanied his accounts with comments such as ‘yo hallo’ (I find), ‘a lo que yo puedo entender’ (as I understand), ‘según muy ciertas conjeturas’ (according to very certain conjectures) and so on.48 An intense willingness to proclaim a commitment to historical accuracy was shown by Viladamor. He described in detail how, rather than filling in the historical gaps with words of his own, he had undertaken sustained research at the royal archive in Barcelona (whose archivist he was) and at other archives in Catalonia and France. He even proudly informed his readers that he had searched in ‘molts sachs plens de papers’ (many bags full  44 Kelley, Faces of History, p. 199.  45 Cortijo, Teoría, p. 216; Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones, pp. 52–54, 95–96; Grafton, Forgers and Critics, ch. 4.  46 Caro Baroja, Las falsificaciones, pp. 97–109, 115–43; Los plomos, ed. by García-​Arenal and Barrios.  47 Viciana, Crónica, ii, 10. Lopes, Chronica de el-​rei D. Joao I, pp. 17–18.  48 Zurita, Anales, i, 4, 16, 82, 117, 142.

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of documents) at the royal archive, where he found precious information. He went on to say that he relied on what he had collected from different authors and that when they showed diverging opinions, he followed the one that seemed to him closer to the truth. The whole truth expressed succinctly was his declared main purpose. Likewise, Garibay boasted the numerous archives and works he had consulted for his volumes.49 Documentary evidence, critical reading of the work of other authors, chrono­logical order, a conscious commitment to historical truth, and a simple style were thus the contemporary main features, in Spain and elsewhere, of accurate historical writing. By the late sixteenth century, history had developed as a scholarly discipline with distinctive rules of its own, capable of attaining historical truth. The truth reached through historical research, though, could not be contrary to nor autonomous from religious dogma, just like what happened with other fields of knowledge. Moreover, in those times of increasingly bitter confessional struggles, profane history was liable to be placed, more clearly than before, at the service of religion, ancilla religionis, while ecclesiastical history and the history of martyrs became almost synonymous with militant defence of orthodoxy. The Historia eclesiástica del cisma del reino de Inglaterra by the Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneyra (1588) is one such case. The book — in fact an extensive rewriting of a work by the English Catholic priest Nicholas Sanders — covered the reign of Henry VIII until (in subsequent reeditions) that of Elizabeth I, and, as Ribadeneyra explained, was both profane and ecclesiastical history: political struggles and heresy. He was confident that the book would be useful, mainly in arousing admiration towards the English Catholics in their sufferings and in teaching rulers not to practice dissimulation with heretics. The book, however, was not devoid of political intent, as it contained a theory for the deposition of Elisabeth I.50 Secular and ecclesiastical histories were also the twin genres cultivated by Vicencio Blasco de Lanuza, canon of the cathedral of Zaragoza. His goal was to build on the work of Zurita and Blancas with a special focus on religious matters, which neither had paid much attention to. There was a further reason to do so: as he argued, secular history alone could not reach perfection without ecclesiastical matters, which additionally surpassed all other great events in Aragonese history. To handle both topics, he consciously followed a peculiar chrono­logical pattern: while secular matters started with the reign of Charles V, ecclesiastical history went all the way back to primitive times.51 Religious history and the lives of saints, however, were likewise subject to exaggeration. As Vives had warned, hagio­graphers tended to follow their blind devotions, precisely in a genre where truth ‘debería ser más puntual y

 49 Viladamor, Història, pp. 212–17, 244–45; on Garibay, Cuart, ‘La larga marcha’, pp. 113, 116.  50 Ribadeneyra, ‘Historia’, pp. 182–84, 300; Iñurritegui, La gracia y república, pp. 224–25.  51 Blasco de Lanuza, Historias, i. dedications (no pagination), 1.

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absoluta’ (should be most precise and absolute).52 Blasco de Lanuza belonged fully to this world. Outstanding among the many Aragonese religious events, saintly persons, and sanctuaries about which he wrote was the arrival in Spain of the apostle James, his successful predication in primitive Zaragoza, and the apparition of the Virgin Mary there. The belief in these episodes was grounded in a deeply rooted tradition. Traditions, vox populi often reinforced by bookish accounts, were a respected source of knowledge in premodern societies. In this way, Blancas meant to be scrupulous with historical traditions concerning the origins of the Justicia of Aragon, but at the same time avowed that he could not afford to ignore part of the Sobrarbe tradition to shed light on his topic.53 The Counter-​Reformation took a clear interest in religious traditions and Trento accepted the main local devotions. Still, the story of Saint James and the Virgin in Zaragoza was challenged by the great Catholic historian Cesare Baronio and other authors. Blasco de Lanuza did his best to counter them by appealing to more than two hundred unnamed authors.54 Whether or not history and tradition reinforced each other in the pursuit of truth remained a debatable issue. In any case, the polymath Andreas Schottus, a Brabant-​born Jesuit, had by then published in Frankfurt large antho­logies of Spanish historians under the title Hispaniae illustratae in three volumes (1603–1608). Including a map by Abraham Ortelius and genealogies of the medi­eval kings, the volumes started with Isidore and reached up to Blancas and Mariana, containing authors from all the Iberian kingdoms.55 It seemed as if the long-​felt grief because of the poor information in European circles on historians of Spain would no longer be justified. Even more, according to the ancient maxim tempus omnia revelat, truth, unaffected by passing circumstances, was expected to shine in the future. Juan de Mariana so believed: ‘El tiempo, como juez y testigo abonado y sin tacha, aclarará la verdad, pasada la afición de unos, la envidia de otros’ (time, as judge and witness established without blemish, will clarify the truth, after the bias of some and envy of others).56

 52 Vives, Las disciplinas, p. 126.  53 Blancas, Comentarios, p. 25.  54 Blasco de Lanuza, Historias, i. 487–90. On Baronio’s work concerning other issues, see Tutino, ‘“For the sake of truth”’, pp. 125–59.  55 Schottus, Hispania illustratae.  56 Mariana, ‘Historia’, pp. 32–33.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Albornoz, Diego Felipe de, Cartilla política y christiana (Madrid: Manuel Sánchez, 1666) Blancas, Jerónimo, Comentarios de las cosas de Aragón [Latin or. ed., 1588], trans. by Manuel Hernández (Zaragoza, 1878; facsimile edn., Zaragoza: Cortes de Aragón, 1995) Blasco de Lanuza, Vicencio, Historias ecclesiásticas y seculares del reino de Aragón [1622], ed. by Guillermo Redondo, José Antonio Salas, and Encarna Jarque, facsimile edn (Zaragoza: Cortes de Aragón, 1995) Botero, Giovanni, La ragion di stato [1589], ed. by Chiara Continisio (Roma: Donzelli, 1997) Castrillo, Alonso, Tratado de república, con otras hystorias y antigüedades [1521] (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1958) Costa, Juan, De elocutione oratione libellus [1572], bilingual ed.; trans. by Lorenzo Santana (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2018) Fueros, observancias y actos de corte del reino de Aragón, ed. by Pascual Savall and Santiago Penén (Zaragoza, 1866; facsimile edn, Zaragoza: Justicia de Aragón, 1991) Furió Ceriol, Fadrique, El concejo y consejeros del príncipe [1559], ed. by Henry Méchoulan (Madrid: Tecnos, 1993) Gracián, Baltasar, El discreto [1646], ed. by Aurora Egido (Madrid: Alianza, 1997) —— , El criticón [1651–1657], ed. by Evaristo Correa, 3 vols (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1971) Leonardo de Argensola, Bartolomé, ‘Sobre las cualidades que ha de tener un perfecto cronista’, in Lupercio and Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola, Obras sueltas, ed. by Conde de la Viñaza (Madrid: Tello, 1889), ii, 255–77 Lopes, Fernão, Chronica de el-​rei D. Joao I (Lisbon: Escriptorio, 1897) Mariana, Juan de, ‘Historia general de España’ [1601], in Obras, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 30 (Madrid: Atlas, 1950) Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán, Generaciones y semblanzas, ed. by Robert Brian Tate (London: Tamesis, 1965) Quevedo, Francisco de, ‘La fortuna con seso y la hora de todos’ [1650], ed. by Lia Schwartz, in Obras completas en prosa, ed. by Alfonso Rey, vol. 1, part 2 (Madrid: Castalia, 2003) Ribadeneira, Pedro de, ‘Historia eclesiástica del scisma del reino de Inglaterra’, in Pedro de Ribadeneira, Obras escogidas, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 60 (Madrid: Ribadeneira, 1868), pp. 178–357 Schottus, Andreas, Hispaniae illustratae seu rerum urbiumque Hispaniae … scriptores varii, 3 vols (Frankfurt: apud Claudium Marnium, 1603–1608) Suárez de Figueroa, Cristóbal, Plaza universal de todas las ciencias y artes [1615], ed. by Mauricio Jalón (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 2006)

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Valla, Lorenzo, Historia de Fernando de Aragón [1445], trans. from Latin and ed. by Santiago López Moreda (Madrid: Akal, 2002) Vasseus, Ioannis, Chronici rerum memorabilium Hispaniae tomus prior (Salamanca: Ioannis Iunta, 1552) Velázquez de Acevedo, Juan, El Fénix de Minerva y el arte de la memoria (Madrid: Juan González, 1626) Verzosa, Juan de, Anales del reinado de Felipe II [Latin MS, c. 1567], bilingual ed., trans. by José M. Maestre (Alcañiz: CSIC, 2002) Viciana, Martín de, Crónica de Valencia [1564–1566] (València: Sociedad Valenciana de Bibliófilos, 1881) Viladamor, Antoni, Història general de Catalunya [1585], ed. by Eulàlia Miralles (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2007), i Vives, Juan Luis, Las disciplinas [Latin or. ed., 1531], trans. by Lorenzo Riber (Esplugues: Orbis, 1985) —— , El arte retórica, De ratione dicendi [1533], bilingual ed., trans. and ed. by Emilio Hidalgo-​Serna and Ana Isabel Camacho (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988) Zurita, Jerónimo, Anales de la Corona de Aragón, [1560–1579], ed. by Ángel Canellas López (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1967–1977) Secondary Works Amelang, James, ‘The Mental World of Jeroni Pujades’, in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, ed. by Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 211–26 Barral-​Baron, Marie, ‘Fides et libertas: l’historien peut-​il dire la verité? Érasme et les critères de la verité en histoire’, in La verité. Verité et credibilité dans le système de communication de l’Occident (XIIIe-​XVIIe siècle), ed. by Jean-​Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016), pp. 589–608 Bouza, Fernando, Comunicación, conocimiento y memoria en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII (Salamanca: SEMYR, 1999) —— , Del escribano a la biblioteca. La civilización escrita europea en la alta edad moderna, 2nd edn (Madrid: Akal, 2018) Caro Baroja, Julio, Las falsificaciones en la historia (en relación con la de España) (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1992) Conde y Delgado de Molina, Rafael, Reyes y archivos en la Corona de Aragón. Siete siglos de reglamentación y praxis archivística (siglos XII-​XIX) (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2008) Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio, Teoría de la historia y teoría política en Sebastián Fox Morcillo. De Historiae institutione dialogus, Diálogode la enseñanza de la historia (Alcalá de Henares: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá, 2000) Couzinet, Marie-​Dominique, ‘On Bodin’s Method’, in The Reception of Bodin, ed. by Howell A. Lloyd (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 39–65 Cuart Moner, Baltasar, ‘La larga marcha de las historias de España en el siglo XVI’, in La construcción de las historias de España, ed. by Ricardo García Cárcel (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2004), pp. 45–126

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Delgado Gómez, Ángel, ‘La crónica imposible de Bernal Díaz’, in Los límites del océano. Estudios filológicos de crónica y épica en el Nuevo Mundo, ed. by Guillermo Serés and Mercedes Serna (Bellaterra: Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona, 2009), pp. 25–45 Esteve, Cesc, and Antoni-​Lluís Moll, ‘Ficción épica y verdad histórica: el poema sobre Lepanto de Joan Pujol’, e-​Spania. Revue Interdisciplinaire d’Études Hispaniques Médievales et Modernes, 27 ( June 2017) Findlen, Paula, ‘Historical Thought in the Renaissance’, in A Companion to Western Historical Thought, ed. by Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza (London: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 99–120 Galdeano Carretero, Rodolfo, ‘La polèmica historiogràfica a la Catalunya de la segona meitat del segle XVI: l’obra de Joan Benito Guardiola (m. 1600)’, Butlletí dela Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona, 55 (2015–2016), 63–89 Genet, Jean-​Philippe, ‘La verité et les vecteurs de l’ídéal’, in La verité. Verité et credibilité dans le système de communication de l’Occident (XIIIe-​XVIIe siècle), ed. by Jean-​Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016), pp. 9–45 Gilbert, Felix, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-​Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965) Grafton, Anthony, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) —— , What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Hespanha, António M., Como os juristas viam o mundo, 1550–1750 (Lisbon: [s.n.], 2015) History and the Disciplines: The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Donald R. Kelley (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997) Huppert, George, L’idée de l’histoire parfaite (Paris: Flammarion, 1973) Iñurritegui, José Mª, La gracia y la república. El lenguaje político de la teo­logía católica y el ‘Príncipe cristiano’ de Pedro de Ribadeneyra (Madrid: UNED, 1998) Kagan, Richard L., Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medi­eval and Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) —— , Los cronistas y la corona. La política de la historia en España en las Edades Media y Moderna (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2010) Kelley, Donald R., Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) —— , ‘The Theory of History’, in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. by Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 746–61 —— , ‘Introduction’, in History and the Disciplines: The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Donald R. Kelley (Rochester: The University of Rochester Press, 1997), pp. 1–9 —— , Faces of History: Historical Inquiry from Herodotus to Herder (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) Lloyd, Howell A., ‘Conclusion’, in European Political Thought, 1450–1700: Religion, Law and Philosophy, ed. by Howell A. Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, and Simon Hodson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 498–509

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López Rodríguez, Carlos, ‘El archivo Real y General del reino de Valencia’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, 17 (1996), 175–92 Merluzzi, Manfredo, Politica e governo nel Nuovo Mondo. Francisco de Toledo, vicerè del Perù (1569–1581) (Roma: Carocci, 2003) Moeglin, Jean-​Marie, ‘La verité de l’histoire et le moi du chroniqueur’, in La verité. Verité et credibilité dans le système de communication de l’Occident (XIIIe-​XVIIe siècle), ed. by Jean-​Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016), pp. 521–38 Navarro Bonilla, Diego, La imagen del archivo. Representación y funciones en España (siglos XVI y XVII) (Gijón: Trea, 2003) ———, Escritura, poder y archivo. La organización documental de la Diputación del reino de Aragón (siglos XV-​XVIII) (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2004) Los plomos del Sacromonte. Invención y tesoro, ed. by Mercedes García-​Arenal and Manuel Barrios Aguilera, 2nd edn (València: Universitat de València, 2015) Regent, Nikola, ‘Montaigne and the Lessons of Ancient History’, Global Intellectual History, 1 (2016), 151–71 Rodríguez de Diego, José Luis, Memoria escrita de la Monarquía Hispanica. Felipe II y Simancas (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 2018) Soll, Jacob, ‘The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), pp. 149–57 Tate, Robert B., Ensayos sobre la historiografía peninsular del siglo XV (Madrid: Gredos, 1970) ——— , ‘Alonso de Palencia and his Antigüedades de España’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 66 (1989), supplement 1, 193–96 Tate, Brian, ‘Sancho de Nebrija y su anto­logía historiográfica’, Insula, 551 (November 1992), 17–19 Tutino, Stefania, ‘“For the sake of the truth of history and of the Catholic doctrines”: History, Documents and Dogma in Cesare Baronio’s Annales Ecclesiastici’, Journal of Early Modern History, 17 (2013), 125–59 La verité. Verité et credibilité dans le système de communication de l’Occident (XIIIe-​ XVIIe siècle), ed. by Jean-​Philippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016)

Richard L. Kagan

‘Above all, to thine own self be true’ Pedro de Valencia, Self-​Censorship, and the (Unwritten) History of Chile ‘el hacer es de saber’ (doing is knowledge) — Pedro de Valencia The year is 1614. The place: Madrid, and royal court of the Spain’s Habsburg kings. The chief protagonist: Pedro de Valencia, one of the official chroniclers of King Philip III (r. 1598–1621). The issue: Valencia’s decision to abandon, in a deliberate act of self-​censorship, the history of the Spanish conquest of the Kingdom of Chile that he had been specifically commissioned to write. The connections between that history, the ongoing war in Chile, and Valencia’s self-​censorship are many and complex. Numerous factors are involved, among them his reading, as an official censor, of the manu­script of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Historia General de Peru. Valencia approved of the book’s publication, but Garcilaso’s observations about historio­graphical practice seemingly factored directly into the chronicler’s decision to abandon the history he had begun to write.

Self-​Censorship First: Self-​Censorship. It is not easy to define, but according to one scheme, two different types of self-​censorship exist — one public, the other private.1 Public self-​censorship exists in societies and countries that maintain a well-​ organized censorial regime that establishes certain limits on topics that can



* The following represents a revised and expanded version of my essay, ‘Ante todo, nunca te mientas a tí mismo: Pedro de Valencia, la Historia de Chile y la autocensura’.  1 See Cook and Heilman, Censorship and Two Types of Self-​Censorship (2010). Also useful is Pew Research Council, ‘Self Censorship: How Often and Why’, . Richard L. Kagan ([email protected]) is Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History Emeritus and Academy Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 157–178 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126183

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be published or debated in a public form. Under such conditions, public self-​censorship consists of those strategies that writers (and artists) use to adapt to these limits so as to avoid censure, imprisonment, or punishment of various sorts. Private self-​censorship is something else, as it arises less from attempts to adapt to external factors than from self-​imposed limits, scruples, or norms. In other words, private self-​censorship is highly individualized as it depends more on the conscience of the writer (or artist) than on limits imposed by an external agency. The line separating these two classes of self-​censorship is often quite difficult to discern, but that of Valencia was more a private act than a conscious effort to avoid running foul of the norms of expression imposed by either the Inquisition or the Habsburg monarchy. As we shall see, issues of honour and patriotism also played a role in Valencia’s decision to abandon the history of Chile in media res, and in this respect his actions are in line with what has been labelled ‘patriotic self-​censorship’.2 However defined, self-​censorship, as opposed to censorship by an external agency, is not a subject premodern historians have often addressed. By definition, it is an inherently private act, one that creates silences and leads to voids in the historical record. But for reasons this essay will explain, Valencia created a paper trail that allows for an exploration of the reasons why he engaged in a deliberate act of self-​censorship, or what he is apt to have considered ‘mental reservation’.3 In this respect, his case, especially for the early modern era, is unique.

Pedro de Valencia In many ways, Pedro de Valencia (1555–1620) is synonymous with Zafra, the small town in Extremadura where he was born. An important market centre straddling the old Roman ‘silver road’ leading from the north of Spain to Seville and home to an important market, Zafra’s 8000 inhabitants were predominantly farmers and herdsmen, many working on lands owned by the town’s seigneur, the counts (and later dukes) of Feria. Yet the Feria, together with other Spanish grandees, tended to be absentee landlords, visiting Zafra only on rare occasions even though they maintained there a sumptuous palace (currently a luxury hotel) that served as their ancestral home.4 But if the dukes of Feria avoided Zafra, it was where Pedro de Valencia spent much of his life. His family background is somewhat obscure. His father was a lawyer, probably one of converso or New Christian ancestry, and connected in some way with the management of the Feria’s estates. That lineage also may  2 See Herwig, ‘Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-​Censorship in Germany after the Great War’, pp. 87–127.  3 See Sommerville, ‘The “New Art of Lying”: Equivocation, Mental Reservation, and Casuistry’, pp. 159–84.  4 See Cortés Cortés, ‘La población de Zafra en los siglos XVI y XVII’, pp. 525–32.

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explain why, c. 1570, Pedro’s father decided to move to the city of Córdoba in order to further his son’s education. Córdoba was host to a large New Christian population, and many of its city fathers were of converso ancestry. It also had a college administered by the Society of Jesus, an order known for its receptivity to persons of converso descent. In that college, Pedro, in addition to perfecting his Latin, also likely absorbed something of Ignatius de Loyola’s teachings about the importance of a life predicated on the doctrine of service as opposed to self-​interest, worldly ambition, and personal gain. Valencia’s next move was to Salamanca, where he matriculated in the city’s famed university. His father encouraged him to study law, which he dutifully did, earning a bachelor’s degree in that subject in 1576. Yet Valencia had little aptitude for jurisprudence. His preferred subjects were classical studies, philosophy, and theo­logy, along with Greek. After Salamanca, Valencia returned to Zafra, where he joined his mother and younger brother and, following his father’s death, seemingly lived off the proceeds from his estate. Details are few, but starting around 1578 and in keeping with his humanistic concerns, Valencia made regular visits to Seville to study Hebrew with the famed humanist scholar, Benito Arias Montano, and also to serve as his secretary. Montano also visited Valencia in Zafra on several occasions, and their relationship was sufficiently close that the older humanist referred to the younger one as his ‘son’. As for Valencia’s private life, in 1587 he married his first cousin, Inés Ballesteros, after Montano helped him to secure the necessary papal dispensation. Their union produced five children, and the costs of paying for their education figures among the reasons why, in 1607, Valencia decided to accept the position of royal chronicler and move together with his wife and family to Madrid.5

Royal Chronicler How Valencia managed to obtain that appointment is a story in itself. He had never written so much as a word of history, but being a historian was not necessarily a prerequisite for the post. Loyalty to the person of the monarch, together with the institution of the monarchy, came first. Henry IV (1443–1474) had created the office of cronista real for the purpose of creating news reports (relaciones) and chronicles (crónicas) favourable to his image and reputation. Later monarchs made similar demands of their chroniclers, with some writing this kind of historia pro persona, others historiae pro patria, which focused more broadly on the history of Spain and its monarchy. In some instances, the individuals serving as royal chroniclers were established historians, but many, like Valencia, were simply accomplished men of letters.6

 5 For Valencia’s bio­graphy, see Gómez Canseco, El humanismo después de 1600, and the various introductory essays in Valencia, Obras Completas, i.  6 For royal chroniclers, see Kagan, Clio and the Crown.

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Valencia’s appointment is best attributed to the help he received from his friend and fellow zafrense, García Suárez de Figueroa, then serving as ayuda de cámara, or personal assistant of Philip III. Early in 1607, Valencia had been summoned to the royal court in order to testify in an investigation involving the financial misdealings of a friend. Once in Madrid, Figueroa introduced Valencia to several powerful courtiers, including the Count of Lemos, President of the Council of the Indies, and the Condestable de Castilla, Juan Fernández de Velasco, a ranking member of the Council of State, who suggested the creation of two new offices of royal chronicler, both earmarked for Valencia. The Cámara de Castilla, the agency nominally responsible for the management of royal patronage, rejected the proposal on the grounds that the king already had several official chroniclers in his employ, but its members were soon overruled by orders of the monarch, Philip III. At this point, the customarily lethargic machinery of the court moved surprisingly quickly. On 4 May 1607 the monarch informed Valencia that he had been appointed Cronista General de las Indias, a position he accepted within three days. According to his letter of appointment, the king instructed the Council of the Indies to share with the new chronicler all of the ‘histories, reports, memorials, letters, descriptions, and pictures’ housed in the Council’s archives, together with those arriving there in the future. For his part, Valencia was required to write about the history of the Indies with as much ‘clarity, information and intelligence’ as possible so that the ‘truth of that history is better known’. Valencia’s office also carried with it a substantial salary of 500 ducats per annum, twice that of the king’s other chroniclers. In order to collect that salary, payable in December, Valencia had to provide the Council with copies of what he had written in the course of the previous year.7 Three weeks later, the king honoured Valencia with his second office — that of Cronista General de los Reinos de Castilla — with a similar salary but one that obliged him to write a history of the reign of Philip III. Valencia accepted this position as well, but when news of the appointment leaked out, Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, one of the king’s other chroniclers, circulated a letter of protest indicating that Valencia’s appointment was not only an ‘insult’ but an ‘injustice’. Pointing to Valencia’s lack of experience as a historian, Herrera also suggested that he was totally unqualified for the office of royal chronicler, arguing that the appointment had been made to ‘acomodar la persona y no el buen público’ (accommodate the person as opposed to the public good).8 Herrera had a point, but jealousy, coupled with the recognition that Valencia’s annual salary was more than double his own, explains much of this criticism. Herrera also failed to recognize that Valencia was no ordinary humanist. Biblical exegesis, Greek philosophy, and classical learning had defined most of his scholarly career. By the 1590s, influenced by the Flemish

 7 See Paníagua Pérez, ‘Pedro de Valencia, cronista e historiógrafo oficial de las Indias’, pp. 231–49.  8 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 752, Petition of Antonio de Herrera, 17 July 1615.

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scholar Justus Lipsius, he also cultivated an interest in neo-​stoicism, with its emphasis on constancy in the face of adversity and the importance of prudence in matters of state. Inspired by Lipsius’s De Politica, Valencia also started writing about some of the most pressing economic and social issues of the day. Why Valencia added what Lipsius referred to as ‘materie seria’ as opposed to ‘materie docta’ to his repertoire remains unknown, although Castile’s well-​documented ‘crisis of the 1590s’ was undoubtedly a contributing factor as it had not only impoverished many of Zafra’s residents and possibly affected Valencia’s ability to tend to the needs of his growing family. What’s certain is that c. 1600 Valencia entered into the service of the duke of Feria, although the first tangible evidence of this relationship only surfaced in 1603 when Valencia, together with the duke’s estate manager, prepared a proposal to ‘grow’ Zafra’s languishing economy with several suggestions for improvement, among them the creation of a new Jesuit college and a new university, neither of which bore fruit.9 Other proposals, written under the guise of what Valencia alternately called discursos, memoriales, and tratados designed to improve the welfare of Zafra’s inhabitants, soon followed. These addressed a variety of economic issues, including the taxes paid by the local peasantry (Valencia recommended these be reduced), the inflated cost of bread and other basic commodities, and corruption on the part of local tax collectors and other officials. Also on Valencia’s agenda were the moriscos (Christians of Muslim descent) and their alleged refusal to abandon their traditional customs and beliefs and integrate more fully into Christian society. At the start of the seventeenth century, criticism of the moriscos reached the point where opinion favoured their expulsion from the kingdom. At the request of the royal confessor, Fray Gaspar de Córdoba, Valencia addressed this issue in a treatise completed in 1605. Expulsion, he argued, was not only unnecessary but immoral. Instead, he recommended patience and suggested that more religious instruction would better enable the moriscos to adapt Christian ways. More radical was his recommendation that the process of integration could be accelerated by encouraging Christians to marry morisco women.10 As this and his other discursos suggest, by the start of the seventeenth century Valencia had positioned himself as a Christian moralist determined to improve the public welfare. He also believed that the king’s vassals had an obligation to publicize their opinions on matters of governance and was especially critical of scholars who shirked this responsibility. He expressed his  9 García Gutiérrez, Rubio Masa, and Serrano Mangas, ‘Recuperación de un texto perdido de Pedro de Valencia’, pp. 429–44.  10 For this and Valencia’s other tratados and memoriales, see Valencia, Obras completas, iv–v. For the university project, see García Gutiérrez, Rubio Masa, and Serrano Mangas, ‘Recuperación de un texto perdido de Pedro de Valencia’, pp. 429–44. His treatise on the moriscos is the subject of Magnier, Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic Apo­logists of the Expulsion of the Moriscos.

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thoughts on this issue in a letter to Fray José de Sigüenza, the royal librarian at El Escorial, in 1603. Sigüenza had complained to Valencia that he had no time to write about issues of public concern as he was already overworked. Citing Plato, Valencia replied that Sigüenza should set aside time for such writing; otherwise he would confirm, ‘la opinion … de los políticos … que dicen que los llamados filósofos no saben del mundo ni son de provecho para gobiernos ni para nada’ (the opinion … of politicians … who say that the so-​called philosophers know nothing of this world nor [are] useful for governments nor for anything else).11 Valencia never aspired to be another Plato, although, in keeping with the traditional ideas about the responsibility of vassals to offer consilium, to their rulers, he equated the act of offering such advice as a res sacra, an obligation to be attended to without ambition nor in any hope for reward. Valencia’s dedication to selfless service to the monarchy helps also to explain why Philip III and his ministers were eager to keep him at court. That same sense of dedication, combined with his apparent willingness to express his opinions on controversial subjects, also suggests that Valencia would have applied the same criteria to the writing of history. Prior to becoming royal chronicler, Valencia expressed the opinion that anyone who accepted public office had the obligation to attend to the interests of the Republic as well as the king ‘con cuidado, y fidelidad, y diligencia’ (with care, fidelity, and diligence). He added that a good minister was ‘el que armado del temor de Dios y de los preceptos sencillos de su sabiduría pone por delante el provecho público y el hacer el dever en raçó de oficial de tal oficio aunque sea no solamente sin ganancia, pero aun con riesgo y daño suyo’ (who, armed with the fear of God and the simple process of his wisdom, puts first the public good and the carrying out his duties as a public servant, even though this brings him little in the way of personal gain and might even entail risks and personal danger).12 These were high standards, and in many ways, Valencia lived up to them during his tenure as royal chronicler. Yet as he once admitted, he originally accepted that office expecting that it would accord him the to write about ‘cosas’ (things) other than history, namely biblical exegesis, philosophy, and other humanistic topics. That freedom never materialized. After taking up residence in Madrid, Valencia quickly discovered that the office of royal chronicler was freighted with numerous obligations, many more than those specified in his original letters of appointment. One entailed working as a royal censor and reviewing book manu­scripts that, in accordance with prevailing laws, had to be submitted to the Royal Council of Castile for a publication licence. Valencia was repeatedly called upon to perform this service, ultimately

 11 Valencia, Epistolario, p. 151.  12 ‘Carta al Licenciado Alonso Ramírez de Prado cuando fue provéido Fiscal de Hacienda, Zafra, 1590’, in Valencia, Obras completas, iv. 1, p. 4.

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approving no fewer than eighteen manu­scripts for publication.13 Yet there were other manu­scripts whose publication Valencia squelched, notably a Castilian translation of Girolamo Franchi de Conestaggio’s Storia de la guerre de la Germania inferior (1614), a history of the Dutch Revolt. Valencia considered this work little more than an impassioned polemic designed to ‘vencer la causa en favor de los flamencos y condenar al Rey i toda la nación española y hacerla odiosa ante todas las naciones’ (defend the cause of the Dutch and condemn that of His Majesty the king and the entire Spanish nation in order to render it odious for the world at large).14 As we shall see, issues of Spain’s reputation and that of its monarchy also figured in Valencia’s rationale for self-​censorship. In addition to his duties as censor, other obligations awaited the new chronicler as well, among them the expectation that he would serve as a humanist advisor and provide the ruler with advice on various issues, especially those touching on matters of history, icono­graphy, and pageantry among others.15 Other requests for advice arrived from various ministers. Valencia, for example, had only been in Madrid a few months before the Inquisitor General, Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, asked for his opinion on the authenticity of a series of purportedly first-​century parchments written in Arabic, Castilian, and Latin recently ‘discovered’ in Granada that supposedly demonstrated that Arabs then in the city had expressed their belief in the sanctity of Christ. From the outset, the parchments in question sparked controversy. The powerful archbishop of Seville (and former bishop of Granada), Pedro Vaca de Castro, was outspoken in support of their authenticity, but several scholars, starting with Benito Arias Montano, maintained they were fakes. Valencia agreed with his mentor, but went even further in his Discurso sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada (1607) with the suggestion that the devil had a hand in the parchments’ creation.16 Valencia again went out on a limb in his Discurso contra la ociosidad (1608), a treatise probably commissioned by the king’s favourite, the duke of Lerma, and one in which he pinpointed the causes underpinning recent downturns in the kingdom’s economy. These included an excessive number of clergymen and officials, noblemen who eschewed both merchandise and trade, women who did not work, and the practice among tradesmen of sending their children to school to learn Latin and even to university instead of encouraging them to follow more useful, productive careers. Valencia followed this discurso with another on the need for land reform as means of increasing the kingdom’s  13 For his work as a censor, see Valencia, Obras completas, vi, 367–613.  14 See Valencia, Obras completas, vi, 584–87.  15 Among other projects, in 1608 Philip III ordered Valencia to develop the programme for the ceiling paintings executed by Vicente Carducho in the palace of El Pardo outside Madrid. See Martínez Martínez, ‘Monarquía y Virtud’, pp. 283–91, and ‘Descripción de la pintura de las virturdes’, in Valencia, Obras completas, vi, 183–224.  16 Valencia, Obras completas, xii, 259–82. See also Valencia, Sobre el pergamino.

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wealth, and in 1610 with his now famous discurso on witchcraft, a treatise solicited by the Inquisitor General in the midst of a series of witch trials then underway in the Basque Country. Valencia responded with expressed doubts about the reliability of the evidence being presented in these cases and suggested that the veracity of all accounts of supernatural happenings ought to be subjected to firm evidence along with common sense.17 These discursos testify to Valencia’s continuing commitment to royal service. They also demonstrated that he was politically engagé, ready to tackle any number of controversial issues. Throughout, moreover, and in keeping with the anti-​Machiavellian strain of thought then prevalent in Castile, he downplayed the issue of Realpolitik and emphasized the moral responsibility of the monarch to look after and protect his flock. This idea, that of ‘el rey pastor’ or ‘shepherd king’, took centre stage in Valencia’s Consideraciones … acerca las enfermedades y salud del reino, a treatise dating from 1618 and written in conjunction with debates in the Cortes of Castile over the monarchy’s demands to renew the millones tax on foodstuffs in order to raise additional revenues needed for the defence of its interests in the Low Countries. The issue divided the Cortes, with some members questioning the wisdom of adding to Castile’s fiscal burden. This argument aligned with Valencia’s thoughts on the millones, and explains why the Consideraciones suggested that the ‘el casamiento del Reino [de Castilla] con la Monarquía [austriaca]’ (marriage of the kingdom [of Castile] with the [Habsburg] monarchy) was ill-​advised to the extent it only served to drain much-​needed resources away from the former in order to serve the interests of the latter. If Castile’s rulers wanted an empire, he suggested, better to concentrate on nearby North Africa as opposed to the Low Countries, let alone distant lands in the New World. He also reminded the king that he had to serve his nation much like a father looks after his family and cares for their overall welfare — cut costs, reduce pomp and extravagances, reduce privileges accorded the privileged and the wealthy.18 Written towards the end of Valencia’s tenure as royal chronicler, this treatise attests to the strength of his abiding commitment to justice, to the protection of the public weal, and willingness to provide consilium to his prince. To be sure, the time and effort he invested in consilium chipped away at the ‘freedom’ Valencia had expected when he first accepted the office of royal chronicler, but it was consistent with his notion of counsel as a res sacra to which every vassal, especially the king’s ministers, had to attend. On the other hand, when it came to writing the histories he was expressly commissioned to write, the royal chronicler hesitated, failing in this respect to comply with the obligations of his office. Why this difference?

 17 Valencia, Obras completas, vii, ‘Discurso acerca de los cuentos de las brujas’.  18 Valencia, Obras completas, iv. 2, p. 514.

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The History of the Indies As noted above, Valencia’s appointment as royal chronicler sparked considerable opposition at the royal court. Sceptics included various members of the Council of the Indies who argued that Valencia lacked the inclination, let alone the knowledge, to write the history of the Indies he was commissioned to undertake. Instead of pressing the issue, the Council temporarily excused the new chronicler from his historical duties and, as a way of introducing him to a region Valencia knew little about, ordered him to prepare a set of relaciones geográficas modelled on those previously prepared for Philip II. In 1604, the Council had distributed a new set of questionnaires soliciting geo­graphical information for the kingdom of New Granada (roughly today’s Ecuador and Columbia) and by the time Valencia had assumed office, many had been returned to Madrid. Valencia had to review this material, organize it, and present it in narrative form. Valencia performed this task, essentially one of compilation, without complaint, or as one document notes, ‘lo hizo sin replica porque desea obedecer y agradar en todo’ (he did it without protest on account of his desire to obey and be appreciative of everything).19 But compilation is one thing, writing history another. Valencia’s preferred genre of literary expression was the discurso, or discourse. According to the rules of classical rhetoric, a discourse represented a method of making a legal argument before a judge. It required the author (or his representative) to organize the relevant facts in ways to convince the judge of the logic of the argument and render a judgement in his favour. The discourse in this sense was essentially a method of argument centred on the presentation of a particular interpretation of the relevant facts. That interpretation, while it had to be convincing, did not necessarily have to conform to truth in the absolute sense of the term.20 The genre of history was something else. Together with discourse it privileged logic along with elegance of style and expression, but it also prioritized truthfulness, thus Cicero’s famous definition of history as lux veritatis, the lamp of truth. Renaissance theorists of history — Anthony Grafton’s ‘artists of history’ — thought along similar lines. One was the sixteenth-​century Sevillian writer, Sebastián Fox Morcillo, who had defined history as ‘the truthful exposition of a fact’.21 Another was Valencia’s contemporary, Luis Cabrera de Córdoba, whose treatise, De historia, para entenderla y escribirla (1611) emphasized the importance of truthfulness for historians, especially

 19 Valencia, Obras completas, vi, 371. See also Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 752, ‘Memorial del duque de Lerma’, 17 September 1616. For Valencia’s geo­graphical reports, see his Obras completas, v. 1–2.  20 Valencia’s understanding of discurso had its origins in Aristotle’s Ars Rhetorica, a treatise on civic discourse and the art of persuasion.  21 Grafton, What Was History?, p. 123; Fox Morcillo, Diálogo sobre la enseñanza de la historia, , p. 25.

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those aspiring to write ‘historia legítima y perfecta’ (perfect and legitimate history).22 Valencia never wrote a treatise about history, but his other writings indicate that he understood history in Ciceronian terms, and he especially favoured historians such as Garcilaso de la Vega who wrote ‘dispassionately’ and with zeal for ‘truth’.23 He also reflected on the nature of truth, and the best way to know it, in his Académica, where he adopted the position that only God offered the sure way to ascertain truth. He returned to the subject in his discourse on the parchments of Granada, where he concluded that it would be impossible to determine whether the documents in question were ‘authentic’, that is, truthful, ‘without rigorous investigation’.24 As for the need for historians to write truthfully, Valencia addressed this subject in his criticisms of Cesare Baronio, the Sicilian cardinal who had raised doubts about the authenticity of the cult of Santiago, Spain’s patron saint, in his Annales Ecclesiastici (1588–1607) and again in his Roman Breviary (1602) with the suggestion that it rested ‘common belief ’ as opposed to irrefutable proof.25 Valencia responded with trenchant critique of Baronio’s methodo­ logy together with the suggestion that the Cardinal’s doubts about Santiago derived principally from the Cardinal’s opposition to Spanish rule in Naples. Baronio, he wrote, was so viscerally ‘opuesto a España’ (opposed to Spain) that his ‘voluntad apasionada’ (impassioned will) and ‘malignidad’ (malignity) coloured the Annales, so much so that they were more like a comic ‘burla’ (farce) than a work of history.26

Chile In view of Valencia’s insistence on the importance of truth in historical writing, when he finally began work on the history of Chile, he sought to avoid writing anything that might be accused of being a ‘fábula’, let alone a farce.27 Yet the task awaiting him was not easy, and complicated by the shortcomings of the two published works on the subject: Alonso de Ercilla’s verse history, La Araucana (1569–1589), which had managed to transform the battles between the Spaniards and the Araucanians into the Spanish equivalent of the Trojan  22 Cabrera de Córdoba, De historia, p. 28.  23 Garcilaso de la Vega, Historia General del Perú, aprobación.  24 Valencia, Obras completas, iv.  25 Elliot Van Liere, ‘Renaissance Chroniclers and the Apostolic Origins of the Spanish Church’, pp. 138–39. See also Rowe, Saint & Nation, pp. 43–44, and Zen, Baronio storico, pp. 279–86.  26 Valencia, Epistolario, letter of 22 June 1605 to Duke of Feria, p. 217.  27 The history in question had been originally consigned to Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, but Philip III transferred the assignment to Valencia. For the rivalry between Herrera y Valencia, see Kagan, Clio and the Crown, pp. 275–79. For use of the term ‘fábula’ in reference to spurious or untruthful histories relating to the Indies, see Cobarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española, p. 580.

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War, and Pedro de Oña’s Arauco Domado (1596), another verse history commissioned by the Viceroy of Peru, García Hurtado de Mendoza for the purpose of glorifying his exploits during his tenure as Chile’s military governor (1556–1561). In other words, Valencia would have to begin his ‘truthful’ history practically from scratch, relying principally on archival sources together with reliable eyewitness testimonies. He affirmed his interest in using these kinds of sources in a 1609 letter to the duke of Lerma: Porque yo deseo cumplir con las obligaciones de mi oficio y en todas maneras servir y agradar a V[uestra] A[alteza] y conforme a la misma razón del oficio de coronista, es necesario que yo escriba argumento de historia señalado por V. A. y que las cosas no sean colegidas de libros impresos solamente, ni de fama y relaciones vulgares, sino sacadas de descripciones, relaciones, y papeles auténticos. (Because I want to comply with the obligations of my office and to best to serve and please His Highness, and also in accordance with the requirements of the office of chronicler, I will necessarily write the argument of history his Highness desires, using materials, not taken from published books, nor hearsay, nor popular reports, but taken rather from descriptions, reports and authentic documents).28 Valencia’s archival research began in 1610 after he received special permission to visit the royal archives in Simancas and to make copies of relevant documents.29 As royal chronicler, he also had access to the papers stored in the Council of the Indies’ working archive, or ‘archivillo’, comprised of documents and reports yet to be transferred to Simancas for permanent storage. Valencia alluded to this research in a report he sent to the Council of the Indies in 1615 and where he explained that se me han entregado por vro mandado muchos papeles relaciones i cartas de los virreyes del Perú i de los governadores de Chile, de que he copiado i sacado en relación todo lo perteneciente a la parte de la historia q me esta encargada particularmente desde el año de 1598… (by your orders I have been given many papers, reports, and letters from the viceroys of Peru and the governors of Chile. I have copied and made summaries off all that is relevant to the part of the history

 28 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 1432, ‘Petition of Pedro de Valencia’ (18 March 1609), as cited in Villarreal Brasca, ‘La Hispania del Nuevo Mundo’, p. 75.  29 For this permission, see ‘Consulta del Comendador Mayor de León sobre la conveniencia de autorizar al cronista Pedro de Valencia el acceso a la documentación de Simancas’, Simancas, AGS, Estado: leg. 1494, no folio. According to a later report (Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 1493), Valencia was allowed to work in Simancas for two to three weeks so long as he was accompanied by a royal secretary.

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[of the Indies] I have been commissioned to write, especially starting in 1598…).30 As for eyewitness testimonies, he was in contact with Luis de Valdivia, a Jesuit priest who arrived in Madrid in 1610 after several years of service as the Crown’s official ‘visitor’ to Chile. Valencia also conducted interviews with Alonso González de Nájera and several veterans of the war in Chile, and maintained a regular correspondence with Hernando de Machado, a childhood friend from Zafra who, starting in 1609, served as a judge on the royal law court (audiencia) in Santiago de Chile.31 The information Valencia gleaned from these sources is difficult to reconstruct, but he is likely to have received conflicting impressions of the ongoing war in Chile. To begin with, he would have learned from various reports, including one prepared in 1607 by three Franciscan friars in Santiago, that Chile was in a state of crisis, its so-​called conquest or ‘pacification’ far from complete.32 Others indicated the war against the Araucanians and other native groups was far less heroic and far less triumphant than the one recounted by Ercilla and Oña. Of key importance here was a pamphlet published by Valdivia in 1610 that indicated that the Spanish soldiers in Chile had little interest in ‘pacification’, ideally a process centred on the foundation of towns, the promotion of agriculture, and the evangelization of local native groups. Rather, he suggested that the soldiers were basically adventurers whose brand of warfare was that of maloca, a term referring to surprise raids designed to destroy enemy goods and capture prisoners — ‘piezas’ in Spanish, principally young men and women — destined either for ‘personal service’ in Chile or for export to Peru and sale in the slave markets in the port of Callao. Valdivia also compared the Spanish army in Chile to a ‘fuego abrasador’ (raging fire) comprised of four different classes of soldiers: those who ‘desfloraba la india donzella, otro aduleraba la casada, otro hurtaba a los niños, y finalmente, el que los llevaba a vender fuera de alli, diziendo que era esclavos’ (deflowered young Indian girls, those who committed adultery with married Indian women, those who captured children, and finally the ones who took them [women and children] to be sold elsewhere, claiming they were slaves).33 The reports he received from the veterans were equally bleak. González de Nájera, for example, likened the war to a ‘caza y montería de fieras’ (wild beast hunt), and described the Spanish soldiers fighting it as ‘víboras … para los indios de Chile’ (vipers … for the Indians of Chile).34

 30 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 755, ‘Relación de Pedro de Valencia’ (13 January 1616).  31 For this correspondence, see Panigua Pérez and Viforcos Marinas, El Humanismo jurídico en las Indias.  32 For this report, see Oliveras Molina, La Provincia Franciscana de Chile de 1553 a 1700, p. 353.  33 Valdivia, Tratado, p. 4.  34 González de Nájera, Desengaño y reparo de la guerra de Chile, p. 452.

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Further complicating Valencia’s efforts to make sense of the war in Chile was a debate between various factions in Madrid over the direction that conflict should take. One favoured ‘defensive war’, an end to maloca and the enslavement of natives, and renewed efforts at pacification. The opposing faction opted for ‘offensive war’, essentially a continuation of the tactics already in place or what was also defined as a war of ‘blood and fire’. The debate ended momentarily in 1608 in a compromise measure that was reflected in a royal decree prohibiting the enslavement of all natives in Chile with the exception of those determined to be ‘en gran desobedencia a la Iglesia’ (greatly opposed to the Church). This decree, however, did little to alter what was happening in Chile — the war of ‘blood and fire’ continued. As for the debate over strategy, it flared up anew following Valdivia’s arrival in Madrid and the publication of his controversial pamphlet in 1610. Two years later Valdivia, assisted by Lerma, convinced Philip III to issue another cédula implementing a new policy of ‘defensive war’, a change in tactics that the Jesuit was empowered to oversee. However, it took Valdivia almost two years to return to Chile and, once there, he confronted a military governor and other officials who, refusing to follow his orders, continued their war of ‘blood and fire’. A frustrated Valdivia abandoned Chile in 1615, and five years later, in the face of continuing native resistance, the monarchy officially ended its failed policy of defensive war.35 Valencia never openly took sides in the debate over Chile, but his sympathies seemingly aligned with Valdivia and the proponents of defensive war. That of ‘blood and fire’ conflicted with his own moral values, creating doubts about whether he ought to continue writing the war’s history. It is difficult to determine when these doubts began, but they seemingly crystallized following his reading of two histories that he was asked to censor, and which taught him several crucial lessons about the ars historica.

Learning from History The first of these two histories was Fray Juan de Torquemada’s Monarquía Indiana, a book Valencia approved for publication in 1613. In addition to its extensive account of Aztec history and culture, the Monarquía included a history of the Spanish conquest of Mexico that Torquemada presented as a corrective to histories of the subject already in print, notably Francisco López de Gomara’s Historia General de las Indias (1st edn, 1552), and Part ii of Herrera y Tordesillas’s Historia General de los hechos de los castellanos…en las Indias (1605). Torquemada challenged the veracity of both accounts, suggesting that their authors relied too heavily on Spanish accounts (‘informaciones

 35 The debate over the direction of the war in Chile began in 1601. See Jara, Guerra y sociedad en Chile and Díaz Blanco, Razón de Estado y Buen Gobierno.

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de españoles’) and ignored contrasting versions of the conquest offered by various indigenous sources, including those gathered by Fray Bernadino de Sahagún and then housed in the archivillo of Council of the Indies. Valencia’s reaction to these criticisms is not recorded, but Torquemada’s insistence on the need to consult indigenous sources surely reminded him that the Spanish reports he was using might be equally biased and misleading. The second history was Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Historia General del Perú, a work whose publication Valencia endorsed in 1614. The lessons Valencia seemingly took away from Garcilaso were basically three. The first pertained to the idea of ‘perfect and legitimate history’, presumably the kind of history that Valencia aspired to write. According to Garcilaso, ‘la historia manda y obliga [a los historiadores] a escribir verdad, so pena de ser burladores de todo el mundo, y por ende infames’ (history requires and obliges [historians] to write only the truth, otherwise they will risk being universally regarded as frauds and consequently disgraceful).36 The second related to the importance of trustworthy sources. Garcilaso claimed to have written the Historia General because of the inadequacies of what López de Gomara and other historians had written about the Peru. Garcilaso also criticized Gomara because ‘escribió lejos de donde acaecieron estas cosas y la relación se la daban yentes y vinientes, le dijeron muchas cosas de las que pasaron, pero imperfectas’ (he wrote far from where events were taking place [in Peru] and on the basis of reports of people who were only briefly there. They told him many things that happened there, but did so imperfectly). Garcilaso consequently maintained that Gomara’s history was unreliable as it relied on sources that were ‘confusos’ (confused) and occasionally falsos (false),37 comments likely to have led Valencia to question the veracity of the reports about Chile he had previously gathered. Valencia’s third possible take-​away from Garcilaso’s history related directly to the history of Chile. Towards the end of the Historia General del Perú, Garcilaso recommended that the history of Chile could only be written by one of its ‘own sons’, meaning someone with first-​hand knowledge of the region’s geo­graphy, people, and events. That recommendation is one apt to have convinced Valencia these credentials were precisely those that he lacked.38 One can only speculate, but Valencia’s reading of these two histories, Garcilaso’s above all, acted as something akin to a catalyst that sparked doubts about his capacity to write Chile’s history. The chrono­logy is not altogether clear, but by 1615 Valencia had decided to abandon that history, much to the chagrin of the Council of the Indies, whose members threatened to withhold payment of his annual salary unless he supplied them with copies of drafts of

 36 Garcilaso, Historia General, ii. lib. 1, cap. 18.  37 Garcilaso, Historia General, ii. lib. 1, cap. 3; lib. 8, cap. 21; lib. 5, cap. 11.  38 Garcilaso, Historia General, ii. lib. 8, cap. 13.

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what he had written.39 Valencia, however, stood his ground, responding with a series of excuses in the hope that his salary as chronicler would still be paid.

‘Patriotic Self-​Censorship’ The documentation this standoff produced provides invaluable insights into Valencia’s decision to abandon the history of Chile. The excuses Valencia offered began with his suitability to serve as a royal chronicler. He observed that, ‘El ejercicio de él [that office] … requiere no sólo letras y estudios sino noticia i experiencia practica de negocios de paz i guerra i de los intentos i consejos, sospechas i malicias de los hombres’ (The exercise of that office … requires not only letters and study, but information and practical experience with the business of both peace and war, also with the motives, decisions, doubts, and evil intentions of men).40 With this statement, Valencia injected himself into a contemporary debate concerning the type of individual best suited to write history: men of letters, or men with experience in government and war. In his letter to Fray José de Sigüenza (see above), Valencia had ridiculed this debate earlier in his career, but he was now suggesting that only individuals with ‘experencia práctica’ (practical experience) should be entrusted with the writing of history and this credential was one that he lacked. Other excuses appeared in various petitions sent to the Council, all of which point to a dilemma that he found impossible to resolve. As noted above, Valencia subscribed to the notion of ‘historia perfecta e legítima’ (perfect and legitimate history), a commitment which, applied to the wars in Chile, would have obliged him to write a truthful account of everything, maloca included, that conflict entailed. On the other hand, Valencia understood that the office of royal chronicler demanded a different sort of narrative, one that defended the honour of the monarchy together with that of the ministers responsible for the Crown’s policies in Chile. Such was Valencia’s dilemma: to write as a chronicler? Or as a historian? The first demanded dissimulation; the second a more balanced, truthful narrative. Both entailed risks. The first required Valencia to forgo truth, evidently a sacrifice he was unwilling to make. The second posed other dangers, or, as he explained, the necessity ‘censurar las acciones i vidas de los príncipes y de sus ministros i otras personas grandes, reprehender i aun causar infamia a capitanes i soldados i a familias nobles, para en los siglos venidores’ (to censure the actions and lives of princes, their ministers, and other important individuals’, and then in ways that might ‘ruin

 39 How much of the history Valencia managed to write remains a mystery, as the originals are yet to be discovered. A later chronicler, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo (1558–1636), claimed to have used some of Valencia’s notes to write his Historia general de las continuadas guerras y difícil conquista del gran reino i provincias de Chile (1635).  40 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 752, ‘Memorial de Pedro de Valencia’ (no date).

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the reputation of captains, soldiers, and noble families for centuries to come).41 This last statement contains an oblique reference to the manner in which the Dutch, along with the English, had used Bartolomé de las Casas famous polemic, A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies of 1552 for purposes of anti-​Spanish propaganda. To be a historian or chronicler? To adhere to the truth or dissimulate? This dilemma is one that Valencia, together with other official chroniclers, could not escape. Spain’s first royal chronicler of the Indies, Juan López de Velasco, faced a similar problem when, in 1572, he was asked for a second opinion on the possible publication of Diego Palencia de Fernández’s Historia de Perú. Following the manu­script’s initial approval for publication, several eyewitnesses had come forward and questioned its veracity. As he contemplated his response, López de Velasco recognized that any history that dealt with ‘tiempos presentes’ (current events) was likely to ‘errar y ofender’ (damage and offend). He also understood that his work might prove ‘perjudicial’ (prejudicial) to the ‘honour and reputation of many individuals’ as well as the interests of the Crown. Rather than stick out his neck, López de Velasco elected to punt and sidestepped the issue by recommending that the final decision regarding publication should be entrusted to the king’s magistrates in Peru.42 On the surface, Valencia’s dilemma was similar to López de Velasco’s, but his response — to abandon the history of Chile — was quite different. Pressed for an explanation, Valencia informed the Council that ‘poco convenía dar mas noticia de aquella guerra de lo que [ya] esta escrito della … no es materia conveniente a su instituto, ni el podrá acabar consigo e ser pregonero de culpa agenas’ (it is not advisable to provide more information about the war [in Chile] than what is already written about it … it is not something I can do, nor even complete it, as it would require me to denounce the sins of others). None of this, he added, would be of ‘servicio para V[uestra] M[ajestad]’ (service to His Majesty).43 These last comments are particularly important, as they hark back to Valencia’s interpretation of the pro­logue of Inca Garcilaso’s Historia General del Perú. Garcilaso had acknowledged among the reasons he wrote that history was the opportunity to ‘celebrar (si no digna, al menos debidamente) las grandezas de los heroicos españoles que con su valor y ciencia militar ganaron para Dios, para su Rey y para sí’ (to celebrate … the great accomplishments of the heroic Spaniards who, with their courage and military expertise, acquired this rich Empire for God, for their King, and for themselves). And then, alluding to the holy temple described in 1 Kings 6. 18, Garcilaso suggested that these heroes:

 41 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 752, ‘Memorial de Pedro de Valencia’ (17 September 1616).  42 Brendecke, Imperio e información, pp. 435–37.  43 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 752, ‘Memorial’ (17 September 1616).

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cuyos nombres, dignos de cedro, viven en el libro de la vida y vivirán inmortales en la memoria de los mortales… [y también] premiar sus merecimientos con perpetua fama; por honrar su patria, cuya honra ilustre son ciudadanos y vecinos tan ilustres; y para ejemplo e imitación de la posteridad’ (whose names are worthy of being carved in cedar and entered into the book of life, to become immortal in the memory of men… [and] celebrated for their achievements with perpetual fame for the honour of their homeland; and as examples [worthy of] imitation for posterity).44 Such comments are likely to have confirmed Valencia’s realization that the war in Chile had produced few individuals whose accomplishments redounded to the honour of his beloved patria. He thus found yet another excuse to abandon the history, and occupy himself in other projects he deemed more useful for the ‘servicio de Dios’ (service of God).45 Better, therefore, to exercise prudence, and not to write anything, a position that reflected the advice that Polonius wisely offered Hamlet in the first act of Shakespeare’s famous play.

Conclusion Valencia’s reluctance to write Chile’s history offers an unusual and surprisingly well-​documented example of self-​censorship in early modern Europe. Underlying that decision was his deep-​seated notion of service to the monarchy and corresponding obligation to defend — or at the very least, do nothing to tarnish — the reputation of either the monarchy or the ‘Spanish nation’. He underscored the importance of that obligation in a 1605 letter to the duke of Feria by citing the Homeric phrase, ‘El más feliz agüero y buen consejo es defender la patria peleando’ (One omen is best, to fight for one’s country). Valencia’s decision also reflected his adherence to Cicero’s notion of history as lux veritatis.46 Otherwise, Valencia would have had to resort to dissimulation and avoid mention of, or at least diminish the importance of the sins committed by the Spanish soldiers in Chile. Dissimulation, however, smacked of Machiavellianism, a doctrine he endeavoured to avoid, and his reluctance to engage in it distinguished him from most other royal chroniclers, especially those of his contemporary and arch-​rival Antonio de Herrera. Upon learning that Valencia had abandoned the history of Chile, Herrera informed the Council of the Indies that ‘el cronista que se guía por los preceptos y reglas de sabio y prudente escritor, sabe y debe, sin apartarse de la verdad, honestar lo que puede causar escándalo y nota’ (the chronicler who is guided by wise

 44 Garcilaso, Historia General, i. prólogo.  45 Seville, AGI, IG, leg. 752, ‘Memorial’ (17 September 1616).  46 Valencia, Epistolario, p. 217. The phrase is from the Iliad, xii. 243.

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precepts and rules and who exercises prudence, knows how, and indeed should, without separating himself from the truth, excise that which might cause scandal and criticism). In addition, he suggested that a good historian has the responsibility to understand ‘de donde ha de comenzar la historia, que cosas se han de decir y cuales callar y que cada una tenga su lugar’ (when before starting a history, the things to write about and to omit).47 If Herrera was capable of writing that kind of history, Valencia was not. Complicating Valencia’s commitment to ‘perfect and legitimate history’ was his recognition of the dangers — imprisonment, exile, and in exceptionally grave cases of lesé majesté, execution — awaiting historians who wrote about recent events truthfully and without dissimulation. His contemporary, Cabrera de Córdoba had warned of such dangers in De Historia, a volume which emphasized that ‘el escribir las cosas de su tiempo tiene peligro y dificultad por la irritación de los ánimos que lleva aquí y ahí el amor de los suyos, el odio de los enemigos … por más que guarde igualdad y neutralidad’ (writing about the events of one’s own time is fraught with danger and difficulty and likely to irritate the spirits of the living … unless one maintains balance and neutrality).48 But as Valencia learned from the ongoing debate over Chile, ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’ were in short supply. That debate demanded prudence, a virtue central to Valencia’s neo-​stoical inclinations and one he exercised when asked to determine the truthfulness ‘en las cosas oscuras y que huyen de la claridad’ (of obscure things that are far from clear). Valencia wrote these words in his 1607 discourse on the ‘lead books’ of Granada, but they apply equally well to the war in Chile, another ‘thing’ that looked far from clear.49 In the end, Valencia’s neo-​stoicism, and his readiness to exercise prudence, pushed him towards self-​censorship and the decision to abandon the history of Chile. Had he done otherwise, it would have opened the door either to accusations of writing a history replete with ‘lisonjas y mentiras’ (flatteries and lies) or, at the other extreme, ‘malignidad o mala voluntad’ (evil intent and bad judgement). These extremes represented Valencia’s version of Homer’s Scylla and Charibdys. To avoid these temptations, Odysseus had himself tied to the mast of his ship and had his crew stuff their ears with wax. In contrast, Valencia protected himself with an act of self-​censorship. To reach that decision it is likely that Valencia, apart from Homer, had recourse to other classical writers, among them the second-​century Greek historian, Lucian, who suggested that ‘eulogy and censure will be careful and considered, free from slander, supported by evidence…; [otherwise] you will receive the same censure as Theopompus [a historian] who impeached nearly everybody in a quarrelsome spirit and a made a business of it … he was a prosecutor rather

 47 As cited in Díaz Blanco, Razón de Estado y Buen Gobierno, p. 103.  48 Cabrera de Córdoba, De historia, p. 73. See also Pasamar Alzuria, ‘Orígenes de la Historia del Presente’, pp. 9–16.  49 Valencia, Sobre el pergamino, p. 17.

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than a recorder of events’.50 Then too, Valencia might have recalled advice found in Horace’s Ars poetica: But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva’s will; such is your judgment, such your good sense. Yet if you ever write anything, let it enter the ears of some critical Maecius, and your father’s, and my own; then put your parchment in the closet and keep it back till the ninth year. What you have not published you can destroy; the word once sent forth can never come back.51 What’s certain is that many other historians, both before and after Valencia, heeded such advice. Precedents included Francesco Guicciardini, who waited twenty-​one years before ‘liberating’ and allowing publication of his famous history of Italy; Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who left instructions that his chronicle of the Emperor Charles V was not to be published until after the death of the all protagonists involved; Bartolomé de las Casas, who ordered his testators to wait forty years after his death before allowing publication of his Historia general del Nuevo Mundo; and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, author of the Guerra de Granada, a work finished in 1570 but only published in 1627. The book’s editor, Luis Tribaldos de Toledo, observed that Hurtado de Mendoza had determined not to publish the book during his lifetime since ‘todos los historiadores cuerdos y prudentes’ (all skilled and prudent historians) recognize the importance of delaying publication until after the deaths of ‘los de quien ha de tratar su narración’ (everyone who figures in the work).52 The difference between Hurtado de Mendoza, who completed his history and then deferred publication, and Valencia, is stark. Valencia abandoned his history for multiple reasons: love of country, adherence to the concept of perfect history, and belief in the importance of prudence. With hindsight, it is easy to understand his dilemma, and to sympathize with his plight. As a historian, Valencia was little more than a novice. He had accepted the twin offices of royal chronicler for reasons of economic necessity, and as he admitted later, that decision was a mistake. He would have much preferred a professorship at Salamanca, which would have enabled him to indulge in his beloved humanistic pursuits rather having to tangle with the chequered history of the Chilean war. But when finally faced with the prospect of writing that history, neo-​stoicism, leading towards self-​censorship, offered an escape.

 50 Lucian, ‘How to Write History’, p. 71.  51 Horace, Epistles. Satires. The Art of Poetry (385–90), p. 483.  52 Hurtado de Mendoza, Guerra de Granada, ‘al lector’.

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Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Seville, Archivo General de las Indias [AGI], Indiferente General, legajos [leg.] 752, 1432, 1493 Simancas, Archivo General de Simancas [AGS], Estado, legajo [leg.] 1494 Primary Sources Cabrera de Córdoba, Luis, De historia, para entenderla y escribirla (1611), ed. by Santiago Montero Díaz (Madrid: Instutito de Estudios Políticos, 1948) Cobarrubias, Sebastián de, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española (1611) (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1979) Fox Morcillo, Sebastián, Diálogo sobre la enseñanza de la historia (Sevilla, 1557), ed. by Antonio Cortijo Ocaña, (2011) , p. 25 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca, Historia General de Perú (Córdoba: Viuda de Andrés Barrera, 1617) González de Nájera, Alfonso, Desengaño y reparo de la guerra de Chile, in Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España, 48 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de Calero, 1866) Horace, Epistles. Satires. The Art of Poetry, trans. by Henry Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926) Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, Guerra de Granada, ed. by Luis Tribaldos de Toledo (Lisboa: Giraldo de la Viña, 1627) Lucian, ‘How to Write History’, in Lucian, vol. vi, trans. by K. Kilburn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959) Tribaldos de Toledo, Luis, Historia general de las continuadas guerras y difícil conquista del gran reino i provincias de Chile (1635), ed. by María Isabel Viforcos Marinas (León: Universidad de León, 2009) Valdivia, Luis de, Tratado de la importancia del medio que el Virrey propone, de cortar la guerra de Chile y hazerlo solamente defensiva (Madrid: n.p., 1610) Valencia, Pedro de, Obras Completas, ed. by Gaspar Moroco Gayo, 12 vols (León: Universidad de León, 1993–2016) —— , Sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada, ed. by Grace Magnier (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006) —— , Epistolario, ed. by Francisco Javier Fuente Fernández and Juan Francisco Domínguez (Madrid: Ediciones Clásicas, 2012)

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Secondary Works Brendecke, Arndt, Imperio e información. Funciones del saber en el dominio colonial español, trans. by Griselda Márisco (Madrid: Iberoamericana-​Vervuert, 2016) Cook, Philip, and Conrad Heilman, Censorship and Two Types of Self-​Censorship. LSE Choice Group working paper series, vi, no. 2. The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) (London School of Economics, London, 2010), Cortés Cortés, Fernando, ‘La población de Zafra en los siglos XVI y XVII’, Revista de Estudios Extremeños, 36.3 (1980), 525–32 Díaz Blanco, José Manuel, Razón de Estado y Buen Gobierno. La Guerra Defensiva y el imperialismo español en tiempos de Felipe III (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 2010) Elliot Van Liere, Katherine, ‘Renaissance Chroniclers and the Apostolic Origins of the Spanish Church’, in Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, ed. by Katherine Elliot Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 121–44 Fox Morcillo, Sebastián, Diálogo sobre la enseñanza de la historia (Sevilla, 1557), ed. by Antonio Cortijo Ocaña (2011) García Gutiérrez, Juan, Juan Carlos Rubio Masa, and Fernando Serrano Mangas, ‘Recuperación de un texto perdido de Pedro de Valencia’, El Humanismo Extremeño, 3 (1998), 429–44 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca, Historia General de Perú (Córdoba: Viuda de Andrés Barrera, 1617) Gómez Canseco, Luis, El humanismo después de 1600: Pedro de Valencia (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1993) Grafton, Anthony, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Herwig, Holger H., ‘Clio Deceived: Patriotic Self-​Censorship in Germany after the Great War’, in Forging the Collective Memory: Government and International Historians Through Two World Wars, ed. by Keith Wilson (Providence: Berghahn, 1996), pp. 87–127 Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego, Guerra de Granada, ed. by Luis Tribaldos de Toledo (Lisboa: Giraldo de la Viña, 1627) Jara, Álvaro, Guerra y sociedad en Chile (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 1971) Kagan, Richard L., Clio and the Crown: The Uses of History in Medi­eval and Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) —— , ‘Ante todo, nunca te mientas a tí mismo: Pedro de Valencia, la Historia de Chile y la autocensura’, Manuscrits. Revista de Historia Moderna, 35 (2017): 83–101 Magnier, Grace, Pedro de Valencia and the Catholic Apo­logists of the Expulsion of the Moriscos (Leiden: Brill, 2010)

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Martínez Martínez, Araceli, ‘Monarquía y Virtud: estudio iconográfico del fresco de la bóveda de la Cámara de la Reina Margarita de Austria en el palacio de El Pardo’, Archivo Español de Arte, 75 (2002), 283–91 Oliveras Molina, Luis, La Provincia Franciscana de Chile de 1553 a 1700 (Santiago de Chile: Editorial Universidad Católica, 1961) Paníagua Pérez, Jesús, ‘Pedro de Valencia, cronista e historiógrafo oficial de las Indias’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 53 (1996), 231–49 Paníagua Pérez, Jesús, and Maria Isabel Viforcos Marinas, El Humanismo jurídico en las Indias: Hernando Machado y su Memorial sobre la Guerra en Chile (Badajoz: Diputación de Badajoz, 1997) Pasamar Alzuria, Gonzalo. ‘Orígenes de la Historia del Presente: el modelo de las “historiae ipsius temporis” en los siglos XVI y XVII’, Tiempos Modernos. Revista Electrónica de Historia Moderna, 6.19 (2009), 1–31 Pew Research Council, ‘Self Censorship: How Often and Why’, Rowe, Erin K., Saint & Nation: Saint Teresa of Avila and Plural Identities in Early Modern Spain (College Park: Penn State Press, 2011) Sommerville, Johann P, ‘The “New Art of Lying”: Equivocation, Mental Reservation, and Casuistry’, in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 159–84 Villarreal Brasca, Amorina, ‘La Hispania del Nuevo Mundo. Historia indiana y dinámicas políticas en el reinado de Felipe III’, Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 75.1 (2018), 67–95 Zagorin, Perez, Ways of Lying, Dissimulation, Persecution and Conformity in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990) Zen, Stefano, Baronio storico: Contrariforma e crisi del metodo humanistico (Roma: Varioum, 1997)

Mobility and Encounter

Francisco García-​Serrano

Medi­eval Encounters Between Iberia, the Mediterranean, and Asia Myths and Realities Introduction In the pro­logue written in 2002 for the Spanish edition of Orientalism, Edward Said admitted that most of his theories did not apply to Spain, which constituted an exception to the European context of Orientalism. Moreover, mostly due to the lasting influence of the Islamic culture of al-​Andalus, Spain itself has been often perceived as oriental and exotic. Islam, an essential part of how we understand the Orient, far from being external, is a substantial and integral part of Spanish culture even today. Therefore, in Spain the Orient cannot be observed from the outside using values valid for other territories of western Europe;1 rather, its richness lies precisely in the fact that it was a crucible of cultures with a profound oriental tradition that has not been fully incorporated into the historical Master Narrative of the West.2 The Iberian medi­eval Peninsula subsequently suffered a double marginality in a Master Narrative that both ignored the medi­eval world in general as barbaric and ignorant and treated Spain in particular as a subaltern society alien to the high European cultures.3 A perception of Spain as exotic was highly visible in medi­eval narratives as well and was not fully contested until the thirteenth century with the advent of the mendicant orders and their new conception of spaces. This paper will argue that the mendicant orders changed old views and contributed to the creation of new spaces, both physically and metaphysically. The itinerant mendicant friars alienated themselves from society and travelled beyond the confines of the known world, leaving behind

 1 Said, Orientalismo, pp. 9–10.  2 Moore, ‘Medi­eval Europe in World History’, p. 565.  3 Moore, ‘Medi­eval Europe in World History’, p. 564. Francisco García-​Serrano ([email protected]) is Chair of Humanities and Professor of History at Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 181–196 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126184

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detailed accounts of other cultures that contributed to the creation of an incipient global dimension.4

Perceptions Beyond the Pyrenees Although Iberia was frequently visited by travellers, merchants, pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, and knights who participated in the Christian conquest of al-​Andalus, knowledge of and about the peninsula generally had a strong mythical hue and little to do with reality. The perception of Iberia as a utopian land was commonplace. If we consider the case of Peter the Venerable, the abbot of Cluny, who pointed out the cultural and religious singularity of Spain when he travelled there in 1142, we have an example of the shaping of a rather exotic and different interpretation of the Iberian Peninsula. Just as Edward Said would do over eight hundred years later, Peter grasped in his Book Against the Sect or Heresy of the Saracens the exceptional cultural and religious attributes of the peninsular inhabitants and spurred western Christians to participate in the crusades with his writings on Islam.5 These writings probably later influenced popes such as Innocent IV (1241–1254) to formalize the crusade in the Holy Land and to send embassies to the Mongols.6 The visit to Spain of the Cluniac abbot brought about a significant change in the European attitude towards Islam in trying to approach the Muslims rather than simply rejecting them, thereby fostering the subsequent interest among the mendicant orders in the conversion of Spanish Muslims.7 Overall, however, the events taking place in the Iberian Peninsula drew little interest in western European kingdoms and even chroniclers and scholars north of the Pyrenees were hardly successful in explaining the reality of Iberia. For instance, there seems to have been scarce knowledge about Spanish conditions when the mid-​twelfth-​century chronicler John of Hexham, referring to Lisbon Bishop Gilbert of Hastings, mentions that the latter preached in England in 1151 and ‘stirred up a great many to undertake an expedition to Spain, to attack and storm Seville’.8 Nothing much was said about the specific conditions beyond the request to venture to Spain and those who went there did so without knowledge of the facts.9 Likewise, Bishop Sicard of Cremona, praising the decisive victory against the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, stated in his Chronica Universalis (1213) that the salvation of the whole of Europe from the infidel was thanks to the kingdom of Castile, attributing mythical

 4 McClure, ‘The Franciscan Order’, p. 228.  5 Khanmohamadi, ‘In Light of Another’s World’, p. 30.  6 Hamilton, ‘Knowing the Enemy’, pp. 373–76.  7 Khanmohamadi, ‘In Light of Another’s World’, pp. 30–31.  8 The Chronicles of John and Richard of Hexham, trans. by Stevenson, p. 28.  9 Linehan, Spain, 1157–1300, p. 152.

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qualities to the peninsular monarchy of Alfonso VIII.10 Again, the chronicler provides few or no details about specific events beyond a general reference. Additionally, Richard of San Germano, who served as imperial chamberlain under Frederick II, in his Chronicle Regni Siciliae (1243), echoing the victories of the Castilian ‘cristianissimo rege’ Fernando III, who took the city of Córdoba, asserted that ‘Corduba, nobilissima Sarracenorum ciuita’ (Córdoba, the most noble city of the Saracens), was a great Muslim city, and together with other cities at the edge of Europe, such as Seville and Constantinople, was the most renowned, and yet distant and unknown.11 Thus, legendary characteristics were ascribed by the chroniclers to the lands, kingdoms, and cities of Spain; yet an effort for a true understanding of the political, cultural, and religious realities was lacking on the part of the chroniclers. Even the papacy was terribly inattentive to and rather unfamiliar with Iberian matters. Perhaps this was due to Fernando III’s persistent attempts to proclaim a separate Hispanic Crusade without papal consent. Much more concerned with Italian, French, and German imperial affairs, both Gregory IX (1227–1241) and Innocent IV were everything but enthusiastically engaged in the conquest of Andalusia, specifically the conquest of Seville in 1248, producing instead only mild congratulations on the part of the papacy.12

Orientalization of Iberia As we have seen, although the Iberian Peninsula had been present in the work of Greco-​Roman writers, in the Middle Ages a more vague and distorted knowledge of it prevailed. For example, Simon of Kéza, an educated cleric who travelled through Germany, France, and Italy and served as a chronicler in the court of Laszlo IV of Hungary, presents a perplexing portrait of the Spanish conquest of al-​Andalus that does not represent an accurate recreation of events or even the right chrono­logy. According to Simon’s Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum (Deeds of the Huns and the Hungarians), a somewhat fictionalized history written between 1282 and 1285, Attila the Hun sent a third of his army across the Pyrenees through Catalonia with the intention of attacking the sultan of Morocco, who, fleeing for his life, left the city of Seville and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into Africa. Thereafter, Attila’s victorious troops remained in Catalonia and settled there with exactly 330,032 men. Many of them were captains ‘qui Hunorum lingua spani vocabatur’ (which in the language of the Huns were known as Spani) and therefore those ‘Spani’ gave name to Hispania.13 So, according to Simon of Kéza, who was a creator

 10 Linehan, Spain, 1157–1300, p. 55.  11 Sancto Germano, Chronica, p. 191.  12 De Ayala Martínez, ‘Fernando III y la cruzada hispánica’, pp. 38–39, 44.  13 Simon, Deeds of the Hungarians, trans. by Veszprémy, i, 46–50.

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of identities for Hungarians, the first Spani or Spaniards were the captains who had mixed with the Catalan people, and thus were of Asian origin. He probably confused the Mongols with the Huns and was unaware that neither one of them reached Spain.

Land of Fantasy: Cockaygne While the chroniclers attempted to describe a reality in their historical accounts, they were probably influenced by literature dedicated to the realm of fantasy. Traditionally, far-​away lands were both idealized and feared. The places themselves were oftentimes portrayed as fabulous lands of milk and honey, earthly paradises where wealth, fruits, and animals were abundant and where the climate was benign and suitable for a blissful human existence. The inhabitants of these distant places, on the other hand, were seen as a threat, often portrayed as half human, half beast. In medi­eval literature and lore, the territories and waters beyond the familiar frontiers, especially west of the Mediterranean, were usually described as mysterious and far removed from reality. For example, in the mid-​fourteenth-​ century English poem Land of Cockaygne, probably composed in Ireland by a Franciscan friar to satirize the life of the monks, there was mention of a distant and exotic island that was excellent in its goodness and surpassed all other lands under the sky, even outdoing the celestial paradise. This perception grew in popularity as a much-​desired escape from the harsh realities of life. Although the various accounts were never certain of its location, ‘Cockaygne’ was generally thought to be either somewhere west of Spain or in western Iberia itself, which for the mentality of the time was similar to referring to a very remote place or to no man’s land.14 To be sure, this placement of Cockaygne in Iberia was linked to the classical tradition that since ancient times located ‘The Islands of the Blest’ beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, possibly in Madeira or the Canary Islands. Ancient authors such as Homer, Hesiod, Pliny, Seneca, Ptolemy, and even later Isidore of Seville mentioned these islands in their writings.15 There was a mental frontier in which the known world had restricted limitations but there was an intrinsic desire to reach mysterious lands as perhaps a transition to the afterlife, a tradition that was found in several civilizations including the Ancient Near East, India, China, and Japan.16 Again, the reality of the Iberian Peninsula was very little known to the Christian inhabitants of western and central Europe, hence allowing a fantastic image of a remote and exotic land to persist.

 14 Lochrie, Nowhere in the Middle Ages, p. 67.  15 Schulten, ‘Las islas de los Bienaventurados’, pp. 5–22; Martínez, ‘Las Islas de los Bienaventurados’, pp. 243–79.  16 Martínez, ‘Las Islas de los Bienaventurados’, pp. 245–46.

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Iberia and the Western Mediterranean Marginal to Islam Being far away from the Islamic centres of power such as Damascus and Baghdad, Iberia was also marginal for Muslim writers. For the Arabs, especially after the advent of Islam, the Indian Ocean was the main geo­graphical reference, as well as the focus of their commercial activity. As a consequence, Muslims tended to view the Mediterranean and other bodies of water in relation to the Indian Ocean and subsequently placed it on the borderline in geo­graphical treatises. Geo­graphers of tenth-​century Baghdad, such as al-​Mas’udi, habitually used their knowledge of the Indian Ocean as a reference for measuring and describing the Mediterranean, as noted by Christophe Picard.17 The main purpose was to create a geo­graphical narrative where the caliphate of Baghdad was the seat of power. The descriptions of wonders and discoveries in distant seas and lands were based on the akhbar (traditions) found among maritime and mercantile circles; but in contrast to the European narratives, the general purpose of these works was to present the Mediterranean basin as an imperial space dedicated to the expansion of jihad and therefore subservient to the caliphate. This narrative, far from a realistic representation and explicitly in favour of the caliphate, was aimed at an educated circle whose main readers were members of the caliphal chancery such as al-​Mas’udi and al-​Muqaddasi, who became the main authors of geo­graphical and historical works. Noteworthy is that, although they travelled extensively throughout the Islamic world, they never visited al-​Andalus and showed little or no interest in becoming familiar with it.18 Consequently, the Western Mediterranean and Spain remained remote and mostly in marginalized spaces for the Muslims as much as for Christians.19 While the Maghreb and al-​Andalus were by no means unknown — and there were specific references to the first Andalusian navy and to Muslim navigation in the Maghreb and al-​Andalus,20 as well as to the commercial opening of al-​Andalus and allusions to ceramics from Almeria — it remained nonetheless a far-​away land for the core of Dar-​al-​Islam. The Mediterranean and Spain were not the only latitudes that were neglected in Islamic narrative. Despite the extensive historio­graphy and geo­graphical production of Arab and Persian scholars dealing with Asia, Islamic knowledge of China and the Far East was also sporadic, ill-​informed, and full of loopholes and misconceptions. Traditionally, Arab historio­graphy has shown little concern for the history of peoples outside the Islamic world. This fact, together with the drastic fall in trade between the Islamic world and China at the end of the tenth century and the destruction of the commercial

 17 Picard, Sea of the Caliphs, p. 89.  18 Picard, Sea of the Caliphs, pp. 87–88.  19 Picard, Sea of the Caliphs, pp. 90–91.  20 Picard, Sea of the Caliphs, pp. 242–45, 248, 270–27.

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port of Siraf in the earthquake of 977, relegated the Arabs’ geo­graphical and historical interest in the Far East to the literary and fictional framework known as the genre of adab.21 For this reason, the Rihla, the travelogue of Ibn Battuta to China during the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) was, predictably, the first opportunity for the Arab/Muslim world after three centuries to renew contact with China. Thus, the unofficial writing of history — travel stories and rihla literature — did more to familiarize the Arabs with China than all the great scholarly works of history and geo­graphy that had been written earlier.22 These stories would eventually spread throughout the Hispanic Muslim world and enhance the knowledge that Iberian Christians had about the Far East on the subsequent age of discovery. Even though al-​Andalus, a Mediterranean land within Europe and linked to the East, was an essential part of Islam, for the Muslims it was secondary as they focused more on the Middle East and Asia. Unmistakably, Iberia was perceived as marginal and remote for both the Western Christian world and the Eastern Muslim world. It is worth mentioning, however, that while external knowledge about the peninsula may have been flawed because it was at the edge of both civilizations, this did not mean that culturally the inhabitants of Iberia, both in al-​Andalus and in the Christian kingdoms of the north, did not benefit from that marginality. In fact, neither of the two cultures were foreign to each other in Spain and much transmission of knowledge took place.23 The fruitful scholarly diffusion that took place in cities such as Córdoba, Toledo, Seville, and Granada, where books and scholarship were exchanged between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, added an invaluable dimension to the culture of the peninsula.24 Because Iberia was between East and West, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and an essential part of both classical and Muslim civilizations, it allowed its inhabitants to have a better knowledge of Africa and Asia. We can reason that Iberian scholars, north and south of the frontier, due to the influence of al-​Andalus, never fully lost a perception of the Far East and gained advantage in exploring new lands. In addition, the fact that religious movements, such as the mendicant friars who developed originally in the Mediterranean and arrived very early on in Spain, helped to generate mental spaces that reached beyond the known frontiers.

 21 Israeli, ‘Medi­eval Muslim Travelers to China’, p. 13.  22 Israeli, ‘Medi­eval Muslim Travelers to China’, p. 13.  23 Much has been written about convivencia; see the recent Abate, ed., Convivencia and Medi­eval Spain: Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick.  24 Gómez-​Rivas, ‘Interactions between North Africa and Spain: Medi­eval and Early Modern’, pp. 1–5.

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The Friars, the Mediterranean and Beyond If we consider the mendicant movement, although universal in scope, as a fundamentally Mediterranean phenomenon at its beginnings, then the role of the friars in fostering an early start of the first global era cannot be ignored.25 Arguably, the emergence of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century fostered a new way of seeing the other. This view created and devised a spatial way of perceiving and understanding the world that influenced the late medi­eval period. With their new approach to religious life, the mendicants contributed to a new ‘global’ historical understanding of the relationship between space, knowledge, and power by demonstrating that the geo­graphical archetypes that had prevailed until then over imagined worlds, objects, and landscapes, could include a greater diversity of spatial concepts beyond one’s own.26 In the vast space encompassing land and sea in and around the Mediterranean, diverse civilizations and religions interrelated since antiquity. In addition, exchange of ideas, political relations, and commercial interactions were a significant part of the western Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages.27 Like the merchants of Iberia and Italy, the friars were in close contact in the Mediterranean cities throughout the late medi­eval period.28 The friars, as an itinerant community, would soon reach lands far from southern Europe, but it was the Mediterranean world of cities and commerce where many languages were spoken at once, where ideas were traded, and where the three major monotheistic religions coexisted and competed with one another, that was where the preaching and missionizing role of the friars was initially fulfilled.29 The friars were able to create new mental spaces by not restricting themselves to a static religious life of contemplation as the Benedictine monks had done in the past. It is no surprise that the accounts written mainly by Franciscans and Dominicans, who travelled beyond Europe through Asia and reached the Far East, had a decisive influence on the spatial imagination and knowledge that Europeans had about the world from the thirteenth century onwards. It all culminated in the era of European exploration and expansion into other

 25 García-​Serrano, ‘Conclusion: The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon’, pp. 288–89.  26 McClure, The Franciscan Invention of the New World, p. 9.  27 García-​Serrano, ‘Conclusion: The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon’, pp. 274–76.  28 On the Mediterranean as a historical and intellectual construct see the essays in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. by Harris, especially Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, ‘Four Years of Corruption: A Response to Critics’, pp. 348–75; see also Aurell, ed., El Mediterráneo medi­eval y renacentista, espacio de mercados y de culturas; Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History; Abulafia, The Great Sea: The Mediterranean in History; and Mediterranean Urban Culture 1400–1700, ed. by Cowan.  29 See Arbel, ed., Intercultural Contacts in the Medi­eval Mediterranean; History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medi­eval Mediterranean, ed. by Montville; and O’Shea, Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medi­eval Mediterranean World.

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continents and influenced, for example, the perception of the Americas as both a new mental and geo­graphical space.30

Friars and Globalization: The Mendicant Invention of New Spaces It is well known that during the medi­eval commercial revolution, Latin merchants ventured into the Islamic lands of North Africa and the Levant and the friars missionized in far-​away lands to convert the so-​called infidels. Not surprisingly members of the two groups often travelled together. Friars and merchants introduced Western culture to far-​off lands and made Europeans aware of as yet little-​known civilizations. The Benedictine Matthew Paris described the spread of the friars as a worldwide event; of the Dominicans in particular he said: ‘the whole earth is their cell and the ocean is their cloister’.31 In order to achieve their task, the friars had to detach themselves from the old spatial and geo­graphical concepts that had prevailed until then. No longer confined to the space of the church or the monastery, through their discourse of poverty the Franciscans and Dominicans imagined another kind of space where they embraced poverty, free from property and rights. The radical implications of the Franciscan ideas about poverty, and to a lesser extend those of the Dominicans, led to the rejection of those who did not follow their strict rules.32 Nevertheless, some friars were not so rigorous in following their regulations and surely not willing to drift away from the powerful positions they occupied within the hierarchy of the Church as well as their connections with nobles and kings. The radical message of condemning wealth and advocating absolute poverty was seemingly mitigated when the mendicant friars were accommodated within the Church and reached the bishopric and even the Roman curia.

Reaching Out to the ‘Other’: Greek/Latin Controversy Francis’s own vision was clearly global, and his Regula vitae addressed the issue of friars who were inspired to become missionaries in distant lands. Francis demonstrated this global vision himself by making his own pilgrimage to the Holy Land and also validated his willingness to approach believers of other religions when he met with the Sultan.33 The mendicant expansion  30 McClure, The Franciscan Invention of the New World, p. 51.  31 Paris, Cronica Majora, ed. by Luard, as cited by Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy, p. 218.  32 See Wolf, The Poverty of Riches: St Francis of Assisi Reconsidered, pp. 91–92; and Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan, pp. 1–16.  33 Tolan, Saint Francis and the Sultan; Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, iv, ed. by Luard, p. 346.

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was successful, and by the early fourteenth century, several Franciscans were working on missions in Africa, the Middle East, India, and China. Between 1220 and 1240, the mendicant orders, in line with the earlier desires of Peter the Venerable, directed their characteristic missionary outreach to Muslims in al-​Andalus, North Africa, and the Levant, marking a significant shift by trying to convert rather than reject. The original desire to missionize amongst the Muslims, however, was hindered by general misconceptions regarding Islam and the East, not to mention the problems brought about by language barriers and by errors that plagued the translations used by early missionaries.34 For example, the most extensive medi­eval European description of the East in the early thirteenth century, Historia Orientalis, by Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre (1216–1227), was full of errors and flaws, and it was written from a strictly Latin Christian perspective, without any attempt to approach the other. The rumours and prejudices concerning the Muslim religion, the Eastern Christians and the Jews, would influence later accounts significantly and perpetuate misunderstandings.35 For Jacques de Vitry, the Suriani (Orthodox Greeks) occupied a conceptual boundary between Catholicism and Islam because they grew up among Muslims, spoke Arabic, and emulated Muslim social and religious customs.36 Thus, the Holy Land was a border not only in political terms between Islamic and Christian territories but also between deviant and right Christian practice.37 Not surprisingly, rejection from both parts developed as noted in Niccolò da Poggibonsi’s Libro d’Oltramare. The author was a Tuscan Franciscan who, in his description of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1345–1350, noticed that the Greeks hated Latins more than Muslims. He identified this animosity as the fundamental cause of their separation from Rome.38 The mendicant friars tried to get closer to the ‘other’ by learning Arabic and Hebrew languages. For example, the Dominican William of Tripoli learned Arabic, as his order required, and was eventually able to compose the Statu Saracenorum (On the State of the Saracens) in 1273, a text that theorizes that Muslims should be easy to convert due to the similarity of Islam and Christianity. For the first time, reasoned accounts of the various branches of Islam and explanations of its fundamental schism began to emerge among Latin writers.39 A similar approach was also manifesting itself among the mendicants of the Iberian Peninsula, especially in the Crown of Aragon. Here, mendicant intellectuals such as Ramón de Peñafort, Ramón Martín,

 34 See the articles by Coll for medi­eval language schools.  35 Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, p. 31.  36 Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, pp. 135, 141; Jotischky, ‘The Mendicants as Missionaries’, p. 89.  37 Von den Brincken, ‘Eastern Christianity’, p. 157.  38 Poggibonsi, Libro d’Oltramare, p. 148 (CCLVI).  39 Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, p. 31.

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and Ramón Llull promoted the establishment of language schools in order to train more effective missionaries able to preach in Arabic and Hebrew.40 These new linguistically informed mendicant writings influenced papal theory about non-​Christian peoples.41 Beginning with the pontificate of Gregory IX, the popes considered that Muslims had the same relationship to Christianity as schismatics and Jews.42 It is no coincidence that the popes who initiated mendicant missions in the Near East and the Mongols — Gregory himself and Innocent IV — were also those who reflected most deeply on the theoretical implications of the crusades and expressed willingness to reach an agreement with the infidels when feasible.43 Innocent IV developed a justification for the crusade from the right of Christianity to the ownership of certain goods and argued that Muslims were subject above all to the dominion of Christ and, therefore, to the authority of the pope.44 Thus, while the Latin West was convinced of its own superiority, it conceived a new responsibility to evangelize the rest of the world. Innocent IV used the mendicants as messengers to instruct both the Mongols in the Christian faith and to strengthen the weak papal presence in the East. In March 1245, he sent the Franciscan Dominic of Aragon to Armenia, commissioning him to obtain a confession of Armenian faith.45 Other such ambassadors included the Dominican André de Longjumeau, who took his missives to the Muslims of Syria, the Dominican Acelino of Cremona, who visited the Mongols unsuccessfully, and later the Franciscans Giovanni de Pian de Carpine and William Rubruck.46 At a time when religiosity was redefined, especially with the arrival of the mendicant orders, the friars hoped to accomplish with infidels and heretics — that is, with the ‘other’ — what they could not achieve among their own Christian people in a society immersed in a growing profit economy, as stated by Lester Little, where temptations were ever increasing.47 It is noteworthy that on this eastern border (the Holy Land), we find similarities with the frontier of the Iberian Peninsula. Evidently, in both places the friars had to deal with a conceptual, political, and religious demarcation between Christianity and Islam. The Suriani were comparable to the former Mozarabs of Spain: both were highly Arabized Christians, and occasionally deviated from their orthodox religions. Thus, the Middle East presented a

 40 See Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medi­eval Crown of Aragon, pp. 4, 29; and García-​Serrano, ‘Introduction’ in The Friars and their Influence in Medi­eval Spain.  41 Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels, pp. 30–31.  42 Lower, ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations in Eastern Christendom’, pp. 49–50.  43 Lower, ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations in Eastern Christendom’, p. 36.  44 Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States, p. 274 and Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels, pp. 36–45.  45 Cowe, ‘The Armenians in the Era of the Crusades 1050–1350’, p. 418.  46 Gil, En demanda del Gran Kan, pp. 89–96, 103–18.  47 Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy.

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scenario all too familiar to the Castilian and Aragonese friars who also ventured into the Holy Land, where they found martyrdom as they had in Spain and North Africa. Seven Franciscans were killed in 1269. In 1289, during the fall of Acre, seven friars died and four Aragonese friars were taken prisoner.48 Jerome of Catalonia, the first Latin bishop of Caffa (1318–1324), wrote that the Franciscan friars had been preaching for several decades in Morocco, India, as well as China, and that many risked their lives. According to his account, nine of them are said to have suffered martyrdom.49 The Muslim rulers were accustomed to the friars as envoys of kings and popes, and although the friars had permission to travel, they often needed special passports. It was not always easy to cross a territory or enter a city where they were required to pay taxes and tolls, a heavy burden for the friars who were not supposed to carry money. But even so, the friars persisted in their missions to Muslim lands.50 The situation of mendicants in those lands allowed them to infiltrate the court of the Khanate of the Golden Horde where they gained a good position, especially with Khan Özberg (1313–1341) who authorized the Franciscans to preach.51 Pope Benedict XII felt encouraged to send letters to Mongol queens and wives in the hope to gain the conversion of their husbands and sons.52 While there was great interest on the part of the papacy, and the Tartars initially seemed receptive to this initiative, the success in converting the Mongols was limited.

Conclusion Iberia and the Mediterranean benefited from the ‘invention’ of a new world and new spaces, and the awareness of that world was probably transmitted throughout a rapidly expanding network of mendicant convents. Let us not forget that Columbus was hosted in a Franciscan convent in La Rábida before his voyages of exploration and he was convinced that the Caribbean islands were an Asian archipelago.53 Certainly, just nearly a century after the foundation of the Dominicans and the Franciscans, the friars had already been engaged in a great missionary activity, spanning the European continent, North Africa, the Holy Land, the Near East, and the Far East all the way to India and China. Arguably we are talking about institutions that were predecessors, if not the creators, of the first global age. The Mediterranean character of these

 48 Jotischky, ‘The Mendicants as Missionaries’, p. 90; Atiya, Egypt and Aragon, p. 10.  49 Robson, The Franciscans in the Middle Ages, pp. 3–4, 108; Ryan, ‘Christian Wives of Mongol Khans’, pp. 292–93; Richard, La Papaute, pp. 157–60. López, ‘Fr. Jerónimo de Cataluña, obispo de Cafa (1318–1324)’, pp. 117–23.  50 Jotischky, ‘The Mendicants as Missionaries’, p. 91.  51 Ryan, The Spiritual Expansion, p. 418.  52 Ryan, The Spiritual Expansion, p. 93.  53 Weckmann, The Medi­eval Heritage of Mexico, pp. 14–15.

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orders is a crucial aspect of this process and, as I have previously argued, it was around the Mediterranean basin, where the three main monotheistic religions converged, that expansion and globalization started.54 No other men, with the exception of a few merchants, covered so much territory and encountered so many different cultures and religions. As pioneers in crossing frontiers, it was through their knowledge and accounts that the medi­eval West became more accurately aware of the ‘other’. On the Iberian Peninsula they were the forerunners in the advances of the so-​called Reconquista towards the south and they tried to preach among Christians as well as reach out to Muslims and Jews. While not always the case, a number of Iberian friars were engaged in the intellectual and theo­logical understanding of the ‘infidels’ and pagans. Arguably, a revision of the crucial role played by mendicant friars in the Middle Ages as they set the scene for a global expansion is needed. They certainly do not deserve to have such a marginal role in the understanding of global history.

 54 García-​Serrano, ‘Conclusion: The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon’, p. 288.

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Works Cited Primary Sources González de Clavijo, Ruy, Embajada a Tamorlán, ed. by Francisco López Estrada (Madrid: Castalia, 1999) The Chronicles of John and Richard of Hexham; Chronicle of Holyrood; Chronicle of Melrose; Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle; Documents respecting Canterbury and Winchester, trans. by Rev. J. Stevenson, Church Historians of England, 4. 1 (London: Seeleys, 1956) Paris, Matthew, Cronica majora, ed. by Henry Richards Luard (London: Longman, 1872–1883) Poggibonsi, Niccolò da, Libro d’Oltramare, 1346–1350. Testo di A. Bacchi della Lega riveduto e rannotato dal P. B Bagatti, Pubblicazione dello Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 2. 1 ( Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1945) Sancto Germano, Ryccardi de, Chronica (Bo­logna: Zanichelli, 1938) Simon de Kéza, Deeds of the Hungarians, trans. by László Veszprémy, Central Euro­ pean Medi­eval Texts, 1 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999) Secondary Works Abate, Mark T., ed., Convivencia and Medi­eval Spain: Essays in Honor of Thomas F. Glick (Cham: Springer, 2019) Abulafia, David, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) —— , ed., The Mediterranean in History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2016) Andrews, Frances, The Other Friars: The Carmelite, Augustinian, Sack, and Pied Friars in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015) Arbel, Benjamin, ed., Intercultural Contacts in the Medi­eval Mediterranean: Studies in Honour of David Jacoby (London: Cass, 1996) Atiya, Aziz Surya. Egypt and Aragon: Embassies and Diplomatic Correspondence between 1300 and 1330 A. D. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1938) Aurell i Cardona, Jaume, ed., El Mediterráneo medi­eval y renacentista, espacio de mer­ca­dos y de culturas (Pamplona: EUNSA, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 2002) Brodman, James William, Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-​Islamic Frontier (Philadelphia: University of Penn­ sylvania Press, 1986) Bruce, Scott G., Silence and Sign Language in Medi­eval Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition, c. 900–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Claramunt, Salvador, ‘Los viajeros y los viajes nexo de unión entre Oriente y Occidente’, Butlletí de la Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona, 43 (1992), 195–210

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Coll, José María, ‘Escuelas de lenguas orientales en los siglos XIII y XIV (Periodo raymundino)’, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, 17 (1944), 115–38 —— , ‘Escuelas de lenguas orientales en los siglos XIII y XIV (Periodo postraymundiano)’, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, 18 (1945), 59–89 —— , ‘Escuelas de lenguas orientales en los siglos XIII y XIV (Controversias y misiones a los judíos)’, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, 19 (1946), 217–40 Cowe, S. Peter, ‘The Armenians in the Era of the Crusades 1050–1350’, in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 5, Eastern Christianity, ed. by Michael Angold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 404–29 Dawson, Christopher, ed. The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: The Makers of Christendom (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955; rpt. Mission to Asia. Medi­eval Academy Reprints for Teaching, 8 Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992) de Ayala Martínez, Carlos, ‘Fernando III y la cruzada hispánica’, Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 42 (2017), 23–45 Donoso Jiménez, Isaac, ‘Viajeros y aventureros andalusíes en Asia oriental’, e-​ Humanista/IVITRA, 4 (2013), 257–65 García-​Serrano, Francisco, ‘Conclusion: The Mendicants as a Mediterranean Phenomenon’, Medi­eval Encounters, 18 (2012), 272–89 —— , ‘Entre la exclusión, la violencia y la integración: los mendicantes en la Baja Edad Media’, in Exclusión y disciplina social en la ciudad medi­eval europea, ed. by Jesús A. Solórzano Telechea, Jelle Haemers, and Roman Czaja (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2018), pp. 121–46 —— , ed., The Friars and Their Influence in Medi­eval Spain (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018) Gil, Juan, En demanda del Gran Kan: viajes a Mongolia en el siglo XIII (Madrid: Alianza, 1993) Gómez-​Rivas, Camilo, ‘Interaction between North Africa and Spain: Medi­ eval and Early Modern’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2018, [Retrieved 31 May 2019] Hamilton, Bernard, ‘Knowing the Enemy: Western Understanding of Islam at the Time of the Crusades’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 7.3 (1997), 373–87 History as Prelude: Muslims and Jews in the Medi­eval Mediterranean, ed. by Joseph V. Montville (Lanham: Lexington, 2011) Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) —— , ‘Four Years of Corruption: A Response to Critics’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. by Wendell V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 348–76 Israeli, Raphael, ‘Medi­eval Muslim Travelers to China’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 20 (2000), 313–21

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Jotischky, Andrew, [as A. T. Jotischky], ‘The Mendicants as Missionaries and Travellers in the Near East in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers 1050–1500, ed. by Rosamund Allen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 88–106 —— , Crusading and the Crusader States (London: Routledge, 2017) Khanmohamadi, Shirin A., In Light of Another’s Word: European Ethno­graphy in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) Lawrence, Clifford H., The Friars: The Impact of the Early Mendicant Movement on Western Society (New York: Longman, 1994) —— , Medi­eval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn (London: Longman, 2000) Linehan, Peter, Spain, 1157–1300: A Partible Inheritance, A History of Spain, 12 (Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2011) Little, Lester K., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medi­eval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) Lochrie, Karma, Nowhere in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) López, Atanasio, ‘Fr. Jerónimo de Cataluña, obispo de Cafa (1318–1324)’, Estudios Franciscanos, 3 (1909), 117–23 Lower, Michael, ‘Negotiating Interfaith Relations in Eastern Christendom: Pope Gregory IX, Bela IV of Hungary, and the Latin Empire’ Essays in Medi­eval Studies, 21.1 (2004), 49–62 MacEvitt, Christopher, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) Martínez, Marcos, ‘Las islas de los Bienaventurados: Historia de un mito en la literatura griega arcaica y clásica’, Cuadernos de filo­logía clásica: Estudios griegos e indoeuropeos, 9 (1999), 243–79 McClure, Julia, The Franciscan Invention of the New World (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) —— , ‘The Franciscan Order: Global History from the Margins’, Renaissance Studies, 33 (2019), 222–38 Mediterranean Urban Culture 1400–1700, ed. by Alexander Cowan (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000) Moore, Robert I., ‘Medi­eval Europe in World History’, in A Companion to the Medi­eval World, ed. by Carol Lansing and Edward English (Malden: Wiley-​ Blackwell, 2009), 561–80 Muldoon, James, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-​Christian World, 1250–1550 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) O’Shea, Stephen, Sea of Faith: Islam and Christianity in the Medi­eval Mediterranean World (New York: Walker & Company, 2006) Phillips, Kim M., ‘Travel, Writing, and the Global Middle Ages’, History Compass, 14 (2016), 81–92 Picard, Christophe, Sea of the Caliphs: The Mediterranean in the Medi­eval Islamic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018)

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Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. by Wendell V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Richard, Jean, ‘La papauté et les missions catholiques en Orient au moyen âge’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, 58 (1941), 248–66 —— , La papauté et les missions d’Orient au Moyen-​Âge (XIII–XIVème siècles) (Rome: Publications de l’École Française de Rome, 1977) Robson, Michael J. P., The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006) Roxburgh, David. ‘Ruy González de Clavijo’s Narrative of Courtly Life and Ceremony in Timur’s Samarqand, 1404’, in The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethno­ logy, and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700, ed. by Palmira Brummet (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp, 113–58 Rucquoi, Adeline, ‘Los franciscanos en el Reino de Castilla’, in VI Semana de Estudios Medi­evales: Nájera, 31 de Julio al 4 de Agosto (Logroño: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 1996), pp. 65–86 —— , ‘En quête de connaissances: Voyageurs espagnols au Moyen Âge’, in Sulle vie della cultura. Tempi, spazi, soggetti, scritture, ed. by Esterino Adami, Antonella Amatuzzi, and Laura Ramello (Torino: Neos Edizioni, 2017), pp. 13–26 Ryan, James D., ‘Christian Wives of Mongol Khans: Tartar Queens and Missionary Expectations in Asia’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 8 (1998), 411–21; repr. in The Spiritual Expansion of Medi­eval Latin Christendom: The Asian Missions, ed. by James D. Ryan (Burlington: Ashgate Variorum, 2013), pp. 285–95 Said, Edward, Orientalismo, trans. by María Luisa Fuentes (Barcelona: Debolsillo, 2002) Schulten, Adolf, ‘Las islas de los Bienaventurados’, Empúries: revista de món clássic i antiguitat tardana, 7 (1945), 5–22 Tolan, John V., Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-​ Muslim Encounter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. by John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, Garland Reference Library for the Humanities, 1899 (London: Routledge, 2013) Von den Brincken, Anna-​Dorothee, ‘Eastern Christianity’ in Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. by John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 157–60 Vose, Robin J. E., Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews in the Medi­eval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Weckmann, Luis, The Medi­eval Heritage of Mexico (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992) Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, The Poverty of Riches: St Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)

Roser Salicrú i Lluch

Intertwining Granada and North Africa New Evidence on Diplomatic Contacts, Naval Power, Mobility, and Family Ties in the Late Medi­eval Western Islamic Mediterranean

Considerable scholarship has devoted attention to the close interactions and influences between the two shores of the Western Islamic medi­eval Mediterranean. This tendency is not surprising, given that Islam conquered Iberian lands from the southern shore of the Straits of Gibraltar and the Almoravids and Almohads also penetrated Iberia from the south. Scholars have mainly approached these contacts within dar al-​Islam based on Arabic sources, which usually concern themselves with the Islamic elites of the governing, cultural, and intellectual spheres.1 Christian sources can also shed light, however, on certain aspects of the contacts between both sides of the Islamic Mediterranean that are not often reflected in Arabic sources, such as the diplomatic links between Islamic rulers and economic contacts. They can also disclose information on the daily life and movements of ordinary Muslims. Christian sources housed in the royal archives of the Crown of Aragon, in Barcelona, and the archives of the Kingdom of Valencia, in the city of Valencia, which are renowned for their quantity and variety, allow for extensive research on the contacts between the Christian and Islamic Western Mediterranean. These sources have been the basis of numerous mono­graphs. But the majority



* This essay is included in the framework of the research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of the Science, Innovation and Universities (MICIU) entitled ‘Movement and Mobility in the Medi­eval Mediterranean. People, terms and concepts’ (PGC2018–094502-​ B-​I00) and the research group consolidated by the Generalitat de Catalunya CAIMMed (‘The Crown of Aragon, Islam, and the Medi­eval Mediterranean World’ 2017 SGR 109).  1 See, for example, Arié, ‘Les échanges culturels entre le royaume nasride de Grenade’; Arié, ‘Les relations entre Grenade et la Berbérie’; Rodríguez, Las riberas nazarí y del Magreb, pp. 147–223. Roser Salicrú i Lluch ([email protected]) is Investigadora Científica (Senior Researcher) at the Milà i Fontanals Institution for Research in Humanities (IMF) of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC — Spanish Council for Scientific Research) in Barcelona, Spain. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 197–210 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126185

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of these works focus on the Christian-​Islamic relationships from the Christian point of view, without paying specific attention to the occasional pieces of evidence that Christian sources also provide about internal interactions between Muslims.2 In recent years, the in-​depth study of the medi­eval registers of a Valencian source known as Presentacions e confessions de captius (Presentations and confessions of captives) has provided interesting information on these internal contacts. The majority of the Presentacions registers kept in the Valencian archives refer to the early modern and modern periods, but three volumes from the fifteenth century survive as well.3 The first covers the period from 1409 to 1412;4 the next one covers 1419 to 1434, with a gap between 1424 and 1433,5 and the third runs from 1494 to 1497.6 These registers contain separate interrogations of Muslim captives as they arrived in Valencia. A royal officer, the bailiff-​general of the kingdom of Valencia, conducted these interrogations in order to establish whether the captives had been legally captured and could therefore be legally enslaved. The captives were questioned one by one, more or less systematically, about several routine facts: their name, age, birthplace, place of residence, occupation or trade, whether or not they were married, if they had children, if their parents were still alive, the circumstances of their capture, how long ago they had been captured, the name of their captor, and their journey from the moment they were captured to their appearance in Valencia. Depending on the situation and the circumstances of their capture, however, some questions could vary. Captives could have been asked, for example, about their participation in earlier pirate-​corsair actions; if they knew of pirate-​corsair ships being equipped and prepared in their homeland to be used later against Christians; about the number of passengers and the goods transported by the ships on which they had been travelling; or about the defensive structures or the number of inhabitants residing in localities where they were born or currently residing.

 2 See, for example, Giménez, La Corona de Aragón y Granada; Arribas, Intercambio de embajadas; Arribas, Las treguas entre Castilla y Granada; Masiá, La Corona de Aragón y los estados del norte de África; Masiá, Jaume II: Aragó, Granada i Marroc; Dufourcq, L’Espagne catalane et le Maghrib; Ferrer, La frontera amb l’Islam en el segle XIV; Ferrer, Organització i defensa d’un territori fronterer; López, La Corona de Aragón y el Magreb en el siglo XIV; Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó; Salicrú, Documents per a la història de Granada; Salicrú, El sultanato nazarí de Granada, Génova y la Corona de Aragón; Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient.  3 See, for the early modern period, Cortés, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos; Graullera, La esclavitud en Valencia en los siglos XVI y XVII.  4 València, Arxiu del Regne de València (ARV), Reial Cancelleria (RC), 626.  5 València, ARV, Batllia General (BG), 193.  6 València, ARV, BG, 194. I will only concentrate on the first two medi­eval registers, as the chrono­logy of the third one, written after the Castilian conquest of Granada in 1492, entails a very different contextualisation.

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The answers to these inquiries, as recorded in these volumes, give the Muslim captives a direct first-​person voice. They speak of their personal backgrounds and family ties in a very explicit way, making these records a window into their everyday lives and other aspects that are missing in other kind of sources. These medi­eval registers are by no means unknown to historians,7 but they have never been studied in depth from the Islamic point of view. Yet, as I have noted elsewhere, these sources provide an important opportunity for the study of social and economic relationships between the northern and southern Islamic shores of the Straits of Gibraltar.8 They also hold promise for the study of the professional backgrounds of the ordinary settlers of these lands9 who were captured by Christians when sailing, when crossing the Straits in Islamic ships, or in coastal raids into Islamic territories.10 I have also used these sources to highlight the characteristics of the men who handed over the captives to the Valencian authorities, and who were often merchants and slave dealers or pirates and direct captors of these human beings,11 and to discover the complexity of the lives and deconstructed identities of Islamic captives enslaved in Christian lands.12 The purpose of this essay is to show, with concrete examples, to what extent these Christian primary sources, combined with the information already scattered throughout the historio­graphy as well as in published historical sources of the period, can broaden our knowledge of certain political, social, and economic aspects of the medi­eval Western Mediterranean Islamic world that have gone virtually unnoticed because they are not addressed in most Arabic sources.13

Diplomatic Contacts and Islamic Naval Power As far as the internal diplomatic contacts between the Western Islamic powers are concerned, at least for the fifteenth century, Christian sources from the Crown of Aragon have been able to provide new evidence. The chancery registers of the royal archive keep a copy of all the correspondence issued by

 7 Cortés, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos; Hinojosa, ‘Confesiones y ventas de cautivos en la Valencia de 1409’; Hinojosa, ‘Tácticas de apresamiento de cautivos’; Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars, Marzal, ‘La esclavitud en Valencia durante la Baja Edad Media’.  8 Salicrú, ‘Fronteras que no son frontera: musulmanes a norte y sur del estrecho de Gibraltar’.  9 Salicrú, ‘Des êtres sans passé? La question du bagage professionnel des esclaves musulmans’.  10 Salicrú, ‘Luck and Contingency? Piracy, Human Booty and Human-​Trafficking’.  11 Salicrú, ‘¿Captores o mediadores? Dinámicas de aprovisionamiento y de introducción de los esclavos musulmanes’.  12 Salicrú, ‘Passats simples, passats complexos i ambivalències identitàries’.  13 I have previously drawn attention to this in Salicrú, ‘Desde la otra orilla: las fuentes cristianas catalanoaragonesas’, with regard to the ruling circles of the medi­eval Maghreb. Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó shows the extent to which Christian primary sources can be useful in clarifying the internal political history of Islamic sultanates.

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the monarchy, and occasionally the records reveal information about internal Islamic embassies that demonstrate a much deeper connection between Nasrid Granada, Marinid, Zayyanid, and Hafsid rulers than scholars relying exclusively on Arabic sources have considered.14 The ‘Marinid interventions’ in al-​Andalus and Nasrid Granada until the mid-​fourteenth century are quite well-​known.15 The Marinids were engaged in the ‘Battle for the Strait’ and Ibn al-​Khaṭīb reproduces countless examples of Nasrid-​Marinid diplomatic correspondence during the kingdoms of Yusuf I (1333–1354) and Muhammad V (1354–1359, 1362–1391) of Granada.16 From the mid-fourteenth century, the kingdom of Fes was usually included in the truces between Granada, Castile, and the Crown of Aragon.17 Around 1413, Yusuf III (1408–1417) was involved in a civil war between the Marinids;18 in 1432, a relative of the Marinid king participated in a Granadan civil war;19 and in 1441 Muhammad IX (1419–1427, 1429/30–1431/32, 1432–1445, 1447–1450, 1450–1453) of Granada tried to mediate between the king of Fes and the king of Portugal for the restitution of Ceuta in exchange for the release of a captive Portuguese infante (prince).20 The Zayyanids also make an appearance in these records: in 1421, Catalan-​Aragonese Christian sources attest the imprisonment in Almeria — and flight to Castile and the Crown of Aragon — of the prince Yusuf of Tlemcen, son of the Zayyanid ruler Abu Tashfin II (1388–1393). Queen Mary of Aragon asked the rulers of Tunis and Bejaia to help Prince Yusuf come back to Tlemcen and regain the Zayyanid throne,21 while in 1427 King Alfonso the Magnanimous (1416–1458) issued a safe-​conduct and recommended to the Hafsid and Zayyanid rulers a score of Nasrid knights who had been expelled from Granada for political reasons.22 Finally, in the fifteenth century, diplomatic contacts between Granada and the Hafsids were

 14 See, for this purpose, Salicrú, ‘Granada and Its International Contacts’, pp. 140–46.  15 Viguera, ‘La intervención de los benimerines en al-​Andalus’; Manzano, La intervención de los benimerines en la Península Ibérica.  16 O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade; Gaspar, Correspondencia diplomática entre Granada y Fez; Arié, ‘Les relations entre Grenade et la Berbérie’, pp. 34–37, 38–39; Arié, L’Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides, pp. 109, 117–18; Al-​Abbadi, El reino de Granada en la época de Muhammad V.  17 Arribas, Las treguas entre Castilla y Granada; López de Coca, ‘El reino de Granada: ¿un vasallo musulmán?’.  18 Moral, ‘El Diwan de Yusuf III y el sitio de Gibraltar’; Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, pp. 44, 78–79.  19 García de Santa María, Crónica de Don Juan II de Castilla, ii, 366.  20 López de Coca, ‘Castilla, Granada y la tregua de 1443’, p. 306.  21 Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (ACA), Cancelleria (C), registre (reg.) 3261, fols 1v–2r, 11v–12r, 12r–v. (3, 11 and 12 June 1421, Tortosa and Sant Mateu); Salicrú, ed., Documents per a la història de Granada, docs. 81, 82 and 83. See Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, pp. 178–79 for contextualization.  22 Barcelona, ACA, C, reg. 2789, fols 125v–26r, 127r. (6 and 9 October 1427, Valencia); Salicrú, ed., Documents per a la història de Granada, docs. 163 and 164 (see Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, pp. 235–42 for context).

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more intense than between Granada and the other North African rulers. Embassies and occasional exchange of presents may be documented as early as 1413–1414, 1421, 1463–1464, and 1488.23 However, chancery records from the Crown of Aragon provide evidence of other diplomatic exchanges, contacts, and embassies in 1413, 1423, 1425, 1426, 1427–1429, 1431, and 1436–1438. The dethroned king of Granada, Muhammad IX, went into exile in Tunis, along with many Granadan political dissidents. On other occasions, the Hafsid Abu Faris (1394–1434) sent combatants and supplies to Granada; and there were even occasional links between the Hafsid and Nasrid pirates and corsairs.24 In a more indirect way, interrogations of Muslim captives in Valencia can offer additional information on these matters. In February 1424, for example, the thirty-​year-​old Mahomat ben Mahomat of Tunis, who was an orphan, widower, and had a daughter who lived with his sister in Tunis, explained that two years before his capture he had moved from Tunis to Granada on board of one of the two Islamic vessels that the king of Tunis sent with his messengers to the king of Granada.25 In another case from 1434, the thirty-​year-​old sailor Çuleymen Benamar asserted that he moved from his hometown of Bejaia to the kingdom of Granada, where he now resided with his wife from Málaga, ‘con passà lo rey Squerdo de Bogia en Granada’ (when the Left-​Handed king [of Granada] came back from Bejaia to Granada).26 As noted above, Muhammad IX of Granada, known as the Left-​Handed king, had gone into exile in Tunis, after having been dethroned by Muhammad VIII (1417–1419, 1427–1430), ‘the Little’, in January 1427. In June 1429 the Left-​Handed King Muhammad was still in Tunis, but by mid-​October 1429 he was already back in Granada.27 According to the Castilian chronicles, he embarked for Granada in Oran, after a long journey by land across the African coast.28 However, the captive’s statement points to Bejaia as the starting point of Muhammad IX’s naval trip back to Granada. A deeper exploration of the Presentacions e confessions de captius will doubtlessly shed further light on the nature of diplomatic contacts between western medi­eval Islamic rulers, making it evident that they were more frequent and intense than scholars have previously suspected. The captives also explain in great detail the circumstances of their capture, which allows us to clearly distinguish between the men captured in pirate ships and those taken on other sorts of sea craft. On the one hand, the records give information about many Muslim vessels that were captured while navigating or moving within dar al-​Islam for trading purposes. These records reveal a  23 Brunschvig, La Berbérie Orientale sous les Hafsides, i, 216, 228, 262, 276.  24 Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, pp. 87, 186, 200–01, 235–42, 272, 326–27, 350, 352–55.  25 València, ARV, BG, 193, fol. 115r–v. Interrogation dated 15 February 1424.  26 València, ARV, BG, 193, fol. 211r–v. Interrogation dated 14 July 1434.  27 López de Coca, ‘Noticias sobre el Reino Nazarí de Granada en una fuente florentina’, p. 135.  28 García de Santa María, Crónica de Don Juan II de Castilla, ii, 30. For further contextualization, see especially Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, pp. 213–56 and 242–43.

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pattern: innumerable small crafts frequently made cabotage and short-​range trips to satisfy the local need for trading goods between the shores of the Straits of Gibraltar or across the African coast. These boats were so small that very often they only transported four or five people, including the crew and occasional passengers travelling for personal, family, or work-​related reasons. They set sail from a particular port, loaded with a specific cargo, which was then sold in another port with the profits from the sale reinvested in a different product to be taken back home. These trips were usually short and restricted to the Nasrid or North African coast and mainly crossed the Straits of Gibraltar. Almost without exception, the boats carried food staples such as cereals, fish, oil, and salt, as well as wood, timber, and coal, or local products such as pottery from Málaga.29 Beyond a glimpse into the small-​scale trade practices around the Straits, the captives provide plentiful details of the Islamic pirate ships in which they were sailing when they were seized. For the most part, these were medium-​ sized vessels described variously as galiotes de moros (Muslim galliots), llenys, and brigantines. But the records also mention galleys, or even ‘large galleys’, like the seventeen-​bench galera grossa de moros (large Muslim galley) that in 1410 was captured near Palermo. This galley had been outfitted in Bona, and 130 crewmen were seized, conducted to Valencia, and interrogated by the bailiff-​general.30 The most impressive and noteworthy of the pirates mentioned in these records is probably the corsair Yusuf of Almeria, whose nickname evolved gradually from ‘the Holy Man’ or ‘the Holy Moor’ to ‘the Wicked Moor’, ‘the Moorish Dog’ or ‘the Damned [to Eternal Suffering] Moor’. He terrified the Mediterranean coasts of the Crown of Aragon and Castile in the third decade of the fifteenth century, and his rise and fall can be followed using both Arabic and Christian sources. His case provides evidence of activity by both the Granadan and North African shipyards and the close collaboration between the Granadan and Hafsid rulers, as well as their subjects, in the preparation of Yusuf ’s great fleet. According to the Christian sources, it was rumoured that Yusuf had nine ​oared ships (both galleys and galliots) anchored in Granada, that he went to Bejaia and Tunis to get nine more, and that he was capable of mobilizing about 2000 combatants to attack Christian lands. According to the Arabic sources, Yusuf of Almeria (Yusuf al-​Mudayyan) approached the king of Granada, Muhammad IX, and gained his trust due to the holy reputation he enjoyed; thus, under royal protection, he gained

 29 See Salicrú, ‘Fronteras que no son frontera: musulmanes a norte y sur del estrecho de Gibraltar’, especially the final table, based on the data available in València, ARV, RC, 626 and València, ARV, BG, 193.  30 València, ARV, RC, 626, fols 60r–69r. Interrogation of eighty-​seven captives dated 24 and 25 September 1410; and València, ARV, RC, 626, fols 75r–83r. Interrogation of forty-​three captives, dated 7 October 1410.

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control of the sultanate’s shipyards and recruited Muslims from North Africa as combatants for the Holy War.31 As a consequence of his actions and his resulting fame, the figure of this Muslim corsair is controversial in both Christian and Islamic lands. Indeed, trying to distinguish between rumour and fact to reconstruct his personal trajectory is no easy task. However, once again the contemporary Presentacions e confessions de captius shed some light on the subject. In 1424, through the interrogations of the captives arriving in Valencia, we meet different Muslims who, while explaining the circumstances of their own capture, bear witness to the movements and actions of Iuçef, moro cossari de Almeria (Yusuf, Muslim corsair from Almeria). Moreover, the captives attest, indirectly, Yusuf ’s official links with ‘the captain’ of Almeria and his arrival at Bejaia.32 The numerous and continuous mentions of (private) Islamic trading and pirate vessels that arise in the Presentacions i confessions de captius require deeper analysis. The Presentacions confirm that very often not only Muslim traders but also Muslim rulers hired Christian ships for commercial uses.33 Yet they also provide evidence of Islamic naval power, and especially that Islamic rulers had their own vessels and did not use Christian ships on all occasions. The Presentacions shed light on the existence of several ships and galleys belonging to them, and on those ships’ specific use for diplomatic purposes as well as for war. In fact, examples of Muslim ships, fleets, and naval behaviour are widespread and would need a more conscious and systematic analysis. At least from the mid-fourteenth century onwards, for example, treaties between Granada and the Crown of Aragon included the mutual commitment to provide four or five galleys to the ally.34 When Muhammad IX of Granada was in Tunis, he was in charge of a Hafsid squad.35 He then regained the throne with the help of a Hafsid fleet.36 And on 23 June 1433, a major part

 31 Cf. Díaz, ‘Problemas marítimos de Valencia a fines de la Edad Media’, pp. 169–79; Charouiti, ‘Edición y estudio del Kitab Yunnat al-​Rida de Ibn Asim’, pp. 112–13; Charouiti, ‘Nuevos datos sobre los últimos nasríes’, pp. 472–73; Vallvé, ‘Cosas que pasaron’, pp. 254–55; Salicrú, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, pp. 184–88 and 209–12.  32 València, ARV, BG, 193.  33 Examples of the hiring and use of trading Catalan and Genoese ships by Muslim traders and rulers are plentiful. For example, Çaet Atzamori, a thirty-​five-​year-​old sailor from Azemmour (kingdom of Fes), moved in the summer of 1422 from Azemmour to Málaga in a Castilian ship that the king of Granada (Muhammad IX the Left-​Handed) had hired for Tunis (València, ARV, BG, 193, fol. 112v. Interrogation dated 15 February 1424). The 1413 capture in Tunis of a Genoese vessel carrying goods of merchants and of the king of Granada, Yusuf III, by the nobleman Rodrigo de Luna (captain of Benedict XIII’s papal fleet) is one of the better documented examples (for extended information, see Fossati, ‘Il processo contro Rodrigo de Luna’).  34 Cf. Salicrú, ‘La treva de 1418 amb Granada’, p. 1012 n. 62 (treaties of 1377, 1382, 1392, 1405 and 1418); reed. in Salicrú, ‘La tregua de 1418 con Granada’, p. 188 n. 61.  35 Brunschvig, La Berbérie Orientale sous les Hafsides, i, 231.  36 López de Coca, ‘Noticias sobre el Reino Nazarí de Granada en una fuente florentina’, p. 135.

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of the forty-​one captives interrogated in Valencia were free Muslims who had been forcefully recruited by order of the king of Bejaia.37 Scholars presumed frequently that there was virtually no evidence of Islamic naval power in the western Mediterranean. They maintained merely that it was certainly significantly weaker than the naval power of the region’s various Christian powers. The new information collected here illustrates the value of gathering together and comparing the dispersed evidence in order to question these ingrained assumptions regarding this supposed dearth of source material and the extent of Islamic naval capabilities.

Mobility and Family Ties The aforesaid commercial navigation pattern of small boats making frequent cabotage and short-​range trips confirms what has long been suspected about the intense economic links within the Islamic Western Mediterranean. When we focus on the personal lives of common people travelling on board these small vessels, however, the strong interactions between Granada and North Africa surface unexpectedly in the sources. A prosopo­graphic and micro-​historical approach to the backgrounds of the hundreds of Muslim captives that arrived in Valencia reveals their extreme mobility as well as a pattern of repeated temporary and permanent voluntary migrations and family ties across the Straits of Gibraltar. The evidence is significant and cannot be coincidental, because pirates and seamen — necessarily accustomed to moving around the Western Islamic Mediterranean area — were only a minority of the Muslims interrogated.38 As the cases mentioned thus far demonstrate,39 almost every life journey of the interrogated captives provides evidence of unforced mobility as well as links and family ties abroad. Pending a published edition and study of these texts as a corpus,40 the best way to illustrate the extent to which common Muslims from both sides of the Straits were connected is simply to present one of the numerous examples — chosen, again, from dozens of possibilities — and to probe into the backgrounds of the skipper and eight passengers of  37 València, ARV, BG, 193, fols 144r–53r.  38 Among the 187 captives presented and interrogated in the first register of the Presentacions e confessions de captius (1409–1412), about 150 declared their occupation, and only around 15 per cent said they were seamen. Almost a quarter of the captives claimed to engage in agricultural work. Overall, the records reveal about fifty different occupations among the captives (see Salicrú, ‘Des êtres sans passé? La question du bagage professionnel des esclaves musulmans’, pp. 130–33).  39 Mahomat ben Mahomat moved from Tunis to Almería; Çuleymen Benamar of Bejaia moved to the kingdom of Granada and established himself in Málaga, where he married a woman from that city; Çaet Atzamori moved from Azemmour (kingdom of Fes) to Málaga (see above).  40 I am working on the transcription of the two registers referenced in this essay in order to publish and analyse them more systematically.

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an Islamic ship that in July 1434 was captured when travelling from Badis to Málaga loaded with wheat.41 1. Mandil Benayet: Thirty-​five years old. From Arcila (Fes). With a wife and five children (four sons, one daughter) in Arcila. After living two and a half years in Granada, he came back to Arcila for six months. He was travelling back to Málaga to serve the king of Granada (with two horses, swords and oval shields bought in Arcila) when he was seized. He was a ‘man of horse’. 2. Çaet Benmahomat, qui és lor (who is dark skinned): Twenty-​four years old. From Bejaia. Parents dead, no wife, no children. One year before the seizure, he had moved from Bejaia to Granada ‘to pass his life’, travelling on board one of the ships of the king of Bejaia that transported a present for the king of Granada. He went from Málaga to Badis as a crewmember of the captured ship. He was a bastaix (porter) and sailor. 3. Çuleymen Benamar: Thirty years old. From Bejaia. He had moved to the kingdom of Granada, where he was now living, when Muhammad IX, ‘the Left-​Handed’, king of Granada, returned to Granada from his exile in Tunis and regained the throne of the Nasrid kingdom (1429). Çuleymen was living in Málaga, his wife’s home city. He had been travelling from Málaga to Badis in the captured ship to buy wheat to celebrate his wedding. The wheat was loaded in the captured ship. He was a sailor. 4. Abdulaziz Benabdulaziz: Thirty years old. From Granada. His father was deceased and his mother was still alive, living in Granada. While in Málaga, he had heard about the ship that was leaving from Málaga to Badis and he enrolled as a member of its crew. He was a labourer, gardener, and farmer. 5. Ayet Benmahaluf: Twenty-​three years old. When he was asked where he was from, he simply answered that his father was from Tedelis (Tlemcen) and his mother from Málaga. His father had emigrated to Málaga, where he married. He was born in Málaga and lived there all his life. His parents were deceased. He had a wife in Málaga. 6. Mahomat Benabdalla: Thirty years old. From Morocco42 (kingdom of Fes). Parents dead, no wife, no children. He was a studiant e aprenia de morisch (student and was learning Arabic). He had come on board the captured ship travelling from Badis to Málaga to go to Granada a apendre de letra (to learn [to read and write] Arabic).  41 València, ARV, BG, 193, fols 210r–12v. Interrogation dated 14 July 1434. See also Salicrú, ‘Fronteras que no son frontera: musulmanes a norte y sur del estrecho de Gibraltar’, pp. 269–71. Badis was a medi­eval port on the Mediterranean Moroccan coast, known in Spanish as Vélez de la Gomera.  42 I quote the captives’ origins or their birth-​places according to their own answers in the interrogations.

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7. Mahomat Benalacen: Fifty years old. From Morocco (kingdom of Fes). Parents deceased. He had been living in Málaga, where his wife was from, for twenty years. He was a ‘man of horse’. 8. Çayt Benmahomat: Thirty years old. From Morocco (kingdom of Fes). He had moved to Tangier four years earlier, and he had been in Granada for the past years ‘to keep begging and asking for alms in the name of God’ in the Nasrid sultanate. He was captured when coming back to his birthplace in a vessel travelling from Málaga to Tangier. He was an eremite.

The skipper himself, Mançor Ateneçi, was from Tunis and he was living in Málaga, his wife’s home city.

These life journeys and backgrounds demonstrate that these Muslim men, or some of their ancestors, had moved regularly between the two shores of the Straits of Gibraltar or changed their place of residence from one to the other. In this case, the men in question fell into captivity, but up until that moment they had been sailing and travelling across the Straits without fear. The risk of being captured by Christians did not prevent them their mobility. One after the other, the interrogations registered in the Presentacions e confessions de captius bear witness to this fact. Therefore, it is not at all coincidental that all eight captives and the skipper of the boat in which they were travelling had one foot on each side of dar al-​Islam.

Conclusions These examples of the intensity and regularity of the movements and free migrations between the Nasrid sultanate of Granada and the various polities of North Africa expand the picture that up until now has focused almost exclusively on the better-​known movement and mobility of the Islamic elites. These records show that, at least during the fifteenth century, for social, professional, and family reasons, as well as simply because they wanted to change or improve their life, common Muslim people crossed and moved around in spite of the dangers that they could come across along the Christian-​Muslim maritime frontier. The heartbeat of the sea was much more intense than it has been previously possible to prove in detail, and the interactions and influences between the populations of the northern and southern shores of the Western Islamic Mediterranean were also closer than previously suspected. Christian sources can efficiently complement our knowledge of certain aspects of the Western Islamic medi­eval Mediterranean that Arabic sources are not always able to provide, including diplomatic activity between various western Mediterranean Islamic powers, mercantile contacts between Muslims across the Straits of Gibraltar, and Muslim piratic activity against Christian lands. In brief, they shed light on Islamic naval power. This evidence also bears witness to the effective, functional, and operative integration of the different

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lands of the Western Islamic Mediterranean. Despite their increasing weakness and receding influence in the area at the expense of Christian expansion, Granadan and North African populations were still truly intertwined. For them, in fact, in the mid-​fifteenth century dar al-​Islam was not just a label, but a real and active entanglement.

Works Cited Manu­scripts and Archival Sources Barcelona, Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó [ACA], Cancelleria [C] València, Arxiu del Regne de València [ARV], Reial Cancelleria [RC], Batllia General [BG] Primary Sources García de Santa María, Álvaro, Crónica de Don Juan II de Castilla (1420–1434) (Madrid: Colección de Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España, 1891) Masiá de Ros, Ángeles, Jaume II: Aragó, Granada i Marroc. Aportació documental (Barcelona: CSIC, 1989) Salicrú i Lluch, Roser, ed., Documents per a la història de Granada del regnat d’Alfons el Magnànim (1416–1458) (Barcelona: IMF-​CSIC, 1999) Secondary Works Al-​Abbadi, Ahmad Mujtar, El reino de Granada en la época de Muhammad V (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1973) Arié, Rachel, ‘Les relations entre Grenade et la Berbérie au XIVe siècle’, in Orientalia hispanica sive studia F.M. Pareja octogenario dicata. Arabica-​Islamica, ed. by J. M. Barral (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 33–44 —— , L’Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides: 1232–1492. Réimpression suivie d’une postface et d’une mise à jour par l’auteur (Paris: De Boccard, 1990) —— , ‘Les échanges culturels entre le royaume nasride de Grenade et les pays musulmans de la Méditerranée’, Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino, 6 (1992), 185–201 Arribas Palau, Mariano, Las treguas entre Castilla y Granada firmadas por Fernando I de Aragón (Tétouan: Centro de Estudios Marroquíes, Editora Marroquí, 1956) —— , Intercambio de embajadas entre Abu Said Utman III de Marruecos y Fernando I de Aragón (Tétouan: Editora Marroquí, 1976) Blumenthal, Debra, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-​Century Valencia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) Brunschvig, Robert, La Berbérie Orientale sous les Hafsides. Des origines à la fin du xve. siècle (Paris: Publications de l’Institut d’Études Orientales d’Alger, Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient Adrien-​Maisonneuve, 1982)

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Charouiti Hasnaoui, Milouda, ‘Edición y estudio del Kitab Yunnat al-​Rida de Ibn Asim’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1988) —— , ‘Nuevos datos sobre los últimos nasríes extraídos de una fuente árabe: Yunnat al-​Rida de Ibn Asim’, Al-​Qantara, 14.2 (1993), 469–77 Cortés Alonso, Vicenta, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Católicos (1479–1516) (València: Publicaciones del Archivo Municipal, 1964) Coulon, Damien, Barcelone et le grand commerce d’Orient au Moyen Âge: un siècle de relations avec l’Égypte et la Syrie-​Palestine (ca. 1330–ca. 1430) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez-​Institut Europeu de la Mediterrània, 2004) Díaz Borrás, Andrés, ‘Problemas marítimos de Valencia a fines de la Edad Media: el corso, la piratería y el cautiverio en su incidencia sobre la dinámica económica. 1400–1480’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universitat de València, 1987) Dufourcq, Charles-​Emmanuel, L’Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux xiiie et xive siècles. De la bataille de Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) à l’avènement du sultan mérinide Abou-​l-​Hasan (1331) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966) Ferrer i Mallol, Maria Teresa, La frontera amb l’Islam en el segle xiv: cristians i sarraïns al País Valencià (Barcelona: IMF-​CSIC, 1988) —— , Organització i defensa d’un territori fronterer: la governació d’Oriola en el segle xiv (Barcelona: IMF-​CSIC, 1990) Fossati Raiteri, Silvana, ‘Il processo contro Rodrigo de Luna per l’atto di pirateria ai danni di una nave genovese nel 1414’, in Atti del I Congresso Storico Liguria– Catalogna (Bordighera: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 1974), pp. 387–96 Gaspar y Remiro, Mariano, Correspondencia diplomática entre Granada y Fez (siglo XIV). Extractos de la Raihanat al-​kuttab de Lisan al-​din Ibn al-​Jatib al-​Andalusi (Granada: [s.n.], 1916) Giménez Soler, Andrés, La Corona de Aragón y Granada. Historia de las relaciones entre ambos reinos (Barcelona: Imprenta de la Casa Provincial de Caridad, 1908) Graullera Sanz, Vicente, La esclavitud en Valencia en los siglos XVI y XVII (València: CSIC, 1978) Hinojosa Montalvo, José, ‘Confesiones y ventas de cautivos en la Valencia de 1409’, Ligarzas, 3 (1971), 113–27 —— , ‘Tácticas de apresamiento de cautivos y su distribución en el mercado valenciano (1410–1434)’, Qüestions valencianes, 1 (1979), 5–41 López de Coca Castañer, José-​Enrique, ‘Noticias sobre el Reino Nazarí de Granada en una fuente florentina: el Diario de Luca di Maso degli Albizzi (1429–1430)’, in Presencia italiana en Andalucía. Siglos xiv–xvii. Actas del I Coloquio Hispano-​ Italiano, coord. by Alberto Boscolo and José Hernández Palomo (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-​Americanos, 1985), pp. 131–37 —— , ‘Castilla, Granada y la tregua de 1443’, in Estudios de Historia Medi­eval. Home­ naje a Luis Suárez (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1991), pp. 310–13 —— , ‘El reino de Granada: ¿un vasallo musulmán?’, in Fundamentos medi­evales de los particularismos hispánicos (Congreso de Estudios Medi­evales. 9. 2003. León) (Ávila: Fundación Sánchez Albornoz, 2005), pp. 313–46

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López Pérez, María Dolores, La Corona de Aragón y el Magreb en el siglo XIV (1331–1410) (Barcelona: IMF-​CSIC, 1995) Manzano Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel, La intervención de los benimerines en la Península Ibérica (Madrid: CSIC, 1992) Marzal Palacios, Francisco-​Javier (2006), ‘La esclavitud en Valencia durante la Baja Edad Media (1375–1425)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universitat de València, 2006 ) Masiá de Ros, Ángeles, La Corona de Aragón y los estados del norte de África. Política de Jaime II y Alfonso IV en Egipto, Ifriquía y Tremecén (Barcelona: Instituto Español de Estudios Mediterráneos, 1951) Moral Molina, Celia del, ‘El Diwan de Yusuf III y el sitio de Gibraltar’, in Homenaje al Prof. Darío Cabanelas Rodríguez, O.F.M., con motivo de su LXX aniversario (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1987), II, pp. 79–96 O’Callaghan, Joseph F., The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Strait (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) Rodríguez Gómez, María Dolores, Las riberas nazarí y del Magreb (siglos XIII–XV). Intercambios económicos y culturales (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2000) Salicrú i Lluch, Roser, El sultanat de Granada i la Corona d’Aragó, 1410–1458 (Barcelona: IMF-​CSIC, Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1998) —— , El sultanato nazarí de Granada, Génova y la Corona de Aragón (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2007) —— , ‘La treva de 1418 amb Granada: la recuperació de la tradició catalano­ aragonesa’, Anuario de Estudios Medi­evales, 27.2 (1997), 989–1019 (trans. ‘La tregua de 1418 con Granada: la recuperación de la tradición catalanoaragonesa’ in Salicrú, El sultanato nazarí de Granada, Génova y la Corona de Aragón (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2007), pp. 159–208) —— , ‘Desde la otra orilla: las fuentes cristianas catalanoaragonesas y los círculos de poder del Islam occidental bajo-​medi­eval’, in Biografías magrebíes. Identidades y grupos religiosos, sociales y políticos en el Magreb medi­eval, ed. by Mohammed Méouak (Madrid: CSIC, 2012), pp. 389–415 —— , ‘Luck and Contingency? Piracy, Human Booty and Human-​Trafficking’, in Seeraub im Mittelmeeraum: Piraterie, Korsarentum und maritime Gewalt von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit, ed. by Nilolas Jaspert and Sebastian Kolditz (Konstanz: Wilhelm Fink, 2013), pp. 349–62 —— , ‘Des êtres sans passé? La question du bagage professionnel des esclaves musulmans dans la Méditerranée au bas Moyen Âge’, Rives méditerranéennes, 53 (2016), 125–38 —— , ‘¿Captores o mediadores? Dinámicas de aprovisionamiento y de introducción de los esclavos musulmanes’, in Los negocios de la esclavitud. Tratantes y mercados de esclavos en el Atlántico Ibérico, siglos XV–XVIII, ed. by Rafael M. Pérez García, Manuel F. Fernández Chaves, and José Luis Belmonte Postigo (Sevilla: Universidad, 2018), pp. 49–69 —— , ‘Fronteras que no son frontera: musulmanes a norte y sur del estrecho de Gibraltar en el siglo XV’, Vegueta, 18 (2018), 257–77

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—— , ‘Passats simples, passats complexos i ambivalències identitàries. Les trajectòries d’esclaus musulmans a la Corona d’Aragó del segle XV com a estudi de cas’, in Ser y vivir esclavo. Identidad, aculturación y agency (mundos mediterráneos y atlánticos, siglos XIII–​XVIII), ed. by Fabienne P. Guillén and Roser Salicrú i Lluch (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2021), pp. 93–110 —— , ‘Granada and Its International Contacts’, in The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada between East and West (Thirteenth to Fifteenth Centuries), ed. by Adela Fábregas (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 124–52 Vallvé, Joaquín, ‘Cosas que pasaron en el reino de Granada hacia 1448’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 189.2 (1992), 251–60 Viguera Molins, María Jesús, ‘La intervención de los benimerines en Al-​Andalus’, in Las Relaciones de la Península Ibérica con el Magreb (siglos XIII–XVI). Actas del Coloquio (Madrid, 17–18 diciembre de 1987), ed. by Mercedes García-​Arenal and María Jesús Viguera Molins (Madrid: CSIC, Instituto Hispano-​Árabe de Cultura, 1988), pp. 237–47

Theresa Earenfight

An Infanta Travels Catalina of Aragon, 1485–1501

In A King Travels, an erudite and elegantly written description of the celebratory play of ceremonies and banquets at the theatrically staged dramas that welcomed the king, Teofilo Ruiz does more than simply describe the king’s formal entry into towns and cities in medi­eval and early modern Spain.1 He interweaves personality and art into a cultural history of how the sixteenth-​ century Spanish kings used public display to celebrate celebrity, charisma, and political power. On these road trips through Spain, the king brought his wife, and a few steps behind them rode their children. This essay looks at one family member who travelled with the king — Infanta Catalina, youngest daughter of Queen Isabel of Castile (b. 1451, r. 1474–1506) and King Fernando of Aragón (b. 1452, r. 1479–1516).2 From her birth in 1485 until 1501 when she left Spain for England to marry Prince Arthur Tudor, heir to the English Crown, Catalina was on the road, travelling with her siblings and her mother (and sometimes father), along with dozens of women and men who fed, clothed, educated, and pampered her. An attentive child, she learned vital lessons in queenship from her mother as the family moved with Spanish armies who fought the Muslim ruler of Granada. She grew up in towns near battlefields, listening to news reports of her mother at the head of armies, and was only seven years old in 1492 when her parents captured Granada. After the city was captured, she spent long periods of time in Granada surrounded by art, architecture, fabrics, and fashion that would come to be deeply embedded in everything she did. She was both an observer and a consumer of an array of cultural influences — Mudéjar and Gothic, Christian and Muslim — in the towns she visited and at the court of her parents who relished the mix of styles even as they conquered the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. For Catalina,  1 Ruiz, A King Travels.  2 For context on the family’s perambulations, see Liss, Isabel the Queen and Rumeu de Armas, Itinerario de los Reyes Católicos. Mattingly’s bio­graphy, Catherine of Aragon, has been updated by Tremlett, Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen. Theresa Earenfight ([email protected]) is Professor of History at Seattle University. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 211–225 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126186

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the act of travel was a way to experience the world that shaped her aesthetic taste and created meaningful social practices that accompanied her when she left her family in Castile to marry the Tudor prince Arthur. The English who greeted her in London in November 1501 called her Ladie Kateryne of Espayn, to mark her as a foreign-​born bride who brought to England her Spanish accent, household, possessions, culinary tastes, and seemingly exotic customs.3 This transformation affected her profoundly. Her change of name marked a very personal change of identity that kings never (or rarely) experience. When a man inherits a realm, he does not need to learn a new language or change his name. Only if he gains a realm by conquest does he need to move and consider his foreignness to his subjects.4 During the long voyage across the Bay of Biscay to Plymouth, and then over land to London, the infanta Catalina was transformed into Catherine, Princess of Wales, bride of an English prince. As the family moved around, Catalina and her four siblings — Juan, Isabel, Juana, and María — formed an essential part of a tradition of ostentatious processions that solidified royal political authority. Like the spectacle of gems, rich brocades, and military weapons at the festivities of a royal entry, Isabel and Fernando publicly displayed their children as the physical embodiment of the wealth of the realm. But the royal children were more than glittery objects; they were an extension of kingly hegemony. They were the future; they were symbolic promises of dynastic stability and prosperity. But the royal processions benefited more than just Isabel’s and Fernando’s ambitions. Catalina received an important education in queenship as she watched her parents interact with their subjects and convoke the regional assemblies of nobles and townspeople. For fifteen years she travelled throughout the Spanish countryside, staying in royal towns and military camps, processing into Medina del Campo, Alcalá de Henares, Barcelona, Córdoba, numerous small towns and religious sites, and ultimately to Granada. Some places mattered more than others: Arévalo, where her grandmother lived; Guadalupe, her spiritual home; Seville, site of many family gatherings; and Granada, where she soaked up both the sun and Islamicate culture. Amid all the commotion, however, it is not easy to spot Catalina. Whereas sixteenth-​century chroniclers gave rich and vivid details of a royal entry, most of the chronicles for the period 1485–1501 are thin on ceremony and thick with details on wars and regional unrest. Chroniclers Fernando de Pulgar, Diego de Valera, and Andrés Bernáldez reveal the interplay of personalities at court, but they rarely mention the infantas.5 Catalina’s eldest sister, Isabel, and brother, Juan, are often named while the other infantas are identified only when they

 3 The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. by Kipling.  4 Hamilton and Proctor-​Tiffany, ‘Women and the Circulation of Material Culture’.  5 Pulgar, Crónica, ed. by Carriazo; Valera, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos; and Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo.

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get betrothed, married, or widowed. This was not wilful neglect. Catalina was very young and spent much of her time in the nursery. With four siblings ahead of her in the succession, she was a distant witness to the momentous events of the wars against Granada, the onset of the Inquisition, the westward sea voyages of Columbus. Most often, we see her and her sister María as they watch their siblings leave home to marry, start families, and, in the case of Isabel and Juan, die young. Catalina is mentioned only twice: at the celebrations for her betrothal to Prince Arthur in 1489, and when she left Spain to marry him in 1501. But even that trip did not generate much comment, at least not in the royal records (local records may well reveal more substantial details). This essay can only provide a glimpse, a visteza, but it tells an important story of what an infanta might learn about queenship by paying attention to the landscape, the culture of the towns, and the people of late medi­eval Spain.6 Chroniclers reveal a court constantly on the move, a ‘travelling city’ that attracted great lords, diplomats, bureaucrats, warriors, lawyers, Church officials, and the whole infrastructure of people who cooked, cleaned, served, dressed, undressed, tutored, and tended to the royal family.7 The war against Granada until 1492 placed extraordinary demands on the family. Fernando and Isabel sometimes had to leave their children at another court with their wet nurses, tutors, confessors, and attendants. It was an exhausting way to live. Catalina celebrated sixteen birthdays in Spain in at least ten different places: Alcalá de Henares, Aranjuez, Barcelona, Baza, Córdoba, Granada, Madrid, Seville, Tortosa, and Zaragoza. From the household accounts of Isabel’s treasurer, Gonzalo de Baeza, we can calculate the economic costs the daily life on the road. We can tally up the costs of the public display in yards of velvet and silk, lengths of silk grosgrain hair ribbons, hundreds of rabbit pelts, precious gems, and the salaries of the attendants who accompanied the royal family: a procession of sweaty mules slowly making their way from Murcia to Valladolid in 1488 cost a hefty 90,226 maravedíes.8 Beyond the written descriptions of what she wore and what was in the mule packs, museums, churches, and town buildings still contain some of the physical objects that Catalina would have seen as she travelled. Two of them reveal her public personality: a heraldic badge and a portrait of her by Juan de Flandes. Two others speak to her more personal side: a napkin embroidered in Spanish-​stitch style, and a pair of cork-​soled platform shoes (‘chapines’). These sources reveal that Catalina carried around Spain and then brought to England not only tangible objects but also a complex array of Spanish  6 Val Valdivieso, ‘¿Hacia el fin de la itinerancia? Isabel I de Castilla’.  7 Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 296.  8 Cuentas de Gonzalo Baeza, ed. by Torre and Torre [hereafter, Cuentas], i, 238. In 1492, it cost 206,886 maravedíes to move Juan, Maria and Catalina, plus Juana’s officials and their wives, Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, ii, 21–22. A maravedí was originally a silver or gold coin, akin to the gold dinar, with a value in 1.91 grams of silver in 1303. By 1500, the maravedí was only a unit of account that did not circulate, Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain, p. xvii.

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cosmopolitan customs and viewpoints that complicate notions of nation and identity. Catalina’s blended identity was shaped by geo­graphy — the mountains of the north to those of the south, and the inland and coastal cities. It is a significant sign of her identity that after having lived in Granada for over two years she adopted the pomegranate as her personal emblem. This ancient symbol of fertility and regeneration, which in the Christian Church is a sign of Christ’s resurrection, symbolized the promise of heirs. After her marriage to Arthur, she merged it with the Tudor rose, as in, for example, a small cast-​pewter badge, no more than one and a half inches high (Figure 12.1). The badge, showing the Tudor rose and Catalina’s pomegranate emblem Figure 12.1. Livery Badge, Tudor Rose & dimidiated (combined so that only half Pomegranate, early sixteenth century. of each is visible), was worn by members London: Museum of London. of Catalina’s household in England as a ID no. 82.255/5. marker of identity and of affiliation with her personally.9 This badge probably either dates to the time of Catalina’s marriage to Arthur (1501) or to her subsequent marriage to Henry (1509), and it was a vivid, constant reminder to those closest to her that she was, and always would be, a child of Spain. Catalina’s travels began shortly after her birth on 15 December 1485 at Alcalá de Henares.10 As the fifth child and a girl, the political importance of her birth was not as momentous as that of her brother, Juan. Still, it was the Christmas season and the family stayed at court and celebrated her birth with banquets and gift-​giving. She was swaddled in Breton linen and dressed in green and white velvet dresses with gold lace for her baptism, and her maid, Elena de Carmona was paid 11,100 maravedíes for her service (for comparison, the bishop of Palencia who baptized Catalina received 3650 maravedíes).11 Fernando left soon after to wage war with Nasrid leader of Granada while the family spent the winter of 1486 in the north. Isabel took the children to her birthplace, Madrigal, where the royal residences blended Romanesque, Gothic, and Mudéjar styles. They then moved on to Arévalo, a small town of

 9 Johnston, ‘Catherine of Aragon’s Pomegranate Revisited’.  10 Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 235; and Ruiz, A King Travels, pp. 298–304.  11 Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, i, 115–16.

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tremendous symbolic importance. Steeped in the legends of ancient Iberians, the Visigoths, and the Christian victory at Las Navas de Tolosa, the town was also where the queen’s mother, Isabel of Portugal, lived. This gave the queen a moment to spend time with her mother, show off her new baby daughter, and use the occasion to show her children how to serve personally their parents. It was a brief sojourn, however. In the spring, Isabel went to the royal monastery of Guadalupe with all the children, but because they arrived during Lent, there were no royal entry festivities. After Easter, they turned southward to be closer to Fernando. On 11 June, they were in Córdoba to celebrate Fernando’s victory over Mohammed XII of Granada with a solemn procession in which Queen Isabel and infanta Isabel processed on foot from the cathedral to the church of Santiago. The chroniclers do not say exactly where Catalina would have been in all this, but at six months of age it is doubtful that she would have been active in the ceremonies.12 The queen then moved on to Illora, Granada, and Moclín, but again, the chronicles are silent on the whereabouts of the young children until late June when Isabel and the children stopped at Córdoba. She dropped off Juan, María, and Catalina at Jaén while she and Fernando went north to Santiago de Compostela. In late autumn, the family reunited in Salamanca and Avila and spent the winter at Alcalá de Henares.13 What does a royal toddler need for a road trip? Amid records of the expenses for red silk, green wool, and black sateen for smocks, tunics, shifts, and shirts, Baeza includes payment for 3 rods of navy blue [‘naval’] for napkins [‘pañizuelos de cuchillos’].14 This napkin (Figure 12.2) made from linen with inserted bands of woven linen and silk, is embellished with red silk embroidery depicting lions and castles, bordered by narrow floral bands. The embroidery, known as Spanish blackstitch, is sewn to make a reversible pattern, suitable for table linen and often with an inserted band like this one, which makes reference to the heraldic devices of Catalina’s heartland, Castile and León. A small napkin such as this — and there are many of them noted in Baeza’s accounts — would have either been tucked in the luggage packs, used perhaps on the road, or been on the tables at the royal castles along the route. This napkin, however, signifies more than intricate stitchery on fine linen. Spanish blackstitch embroidery, long known to be a popular sixteenth-​century import into England, has been credibly dated to Catalina’s arrival in 1501.15 Embroidery of this type travelled with the infanta on her voyage across the Bay of Biscay and wound up on the cuffs and collars of the fashionable men and women at the Tudor court.

 12 Pulgar, Crónica, ed. by Carriazo, ii, 226.  13 Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 236–41.  14 Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, i, 157–58.  15 Cabrera Lafuente, ‘Los tejidos como Patrimonio: investigación y exposición’ and ‘Proyecto Marie S.-​Curie “Interwoven”: investigación sobre el coleccionismo y exposició de tejidos relacionados con España en el Victoria and Albert Museum de Londres’.

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Figure 12.2. Napkin, linen with inserted bands of woven linen and silk, red silk em­broidery in Spanish-​stitch style depicting lions and castles, bordered by narrow floral bands, c. 1500s, Spanish. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, ID# 234–1880.

The next few years were slightly more settled. In March 1487, Isabel was with all the children in Córdoba while Fernando waged war in Málaga. In early April, the queen left Catalina and María nestled safely in Montoro while she and infanta Isabel went to Málaga for a siege that lasted until 18 August. In mid-​November Fernando, Isabel, and infante Juan went to Zaragoza to convene the Corts. The entire family celebrated the Christmas holidays there and stayed until mid-​February 1488. The family was in Murcia by May and in Valladolid at Christmas. From Baeza’s accounts of the purchases for Catalina that year we can imagine her learning how to walk using a small cart for guidance (‘mostrarse anda la ynfante’). Royal tailors fashioned her clothing into a mixture of styles: a green satin dress in the Morisco style (sayo morisco), a purple velvet Portuguese-​style skirt, and an ermine-​lined red silk mantilla.16 In March 1489, Isabel and the children travelled to Arévalo and Guadalupe on their way to Valladolid for meetings with the pope and an embassy of French nobles. But these dignitaries mattered little to Catalina, then aged three. The main event for her was her first public ceremony on 30 March to celebrate the Treaty of Medina del Campo, her formal betrothal to two-​year-​old Prince Arthur, son of King Henry VII of England. Festivities to celebrate betrothals

 16 Pulgar, Crónica, ed. by Carriazo, ii, 341–60, quote on p. 359; Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, i, 203–06, 256–58; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 241–47.

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were vital to the ceremony of the dynastic continuity of monarchy, but it is difficult to know how much Catalina realized what was going on and may not have realized yet that she was the future Princess of Wales. All she knew was that she was opulently dressed and that her mother held her up for all to see.17 The chroniclers tell us that Valladolid was filled for days with costly dancing, bullfights, mock battles, and banquets, and the English ambassadors report to Henry VII that ‘on the 22nd and 25th jousts and bull fights were held in their honour’.18 In April, after the parties were over, Isabel and the children went to Arévalo and Guadalupe on the way to Córdoba; in May the queen and the children were in Jaén and Úbeda, and from mid-​June to December, she and infanta Isabel went to the camp at Baza, leaving behind the rest of the children. Catalina spent her fourth birthday at Baza and, with the rest of family, went to Seville on 30 December.19 In 1490, the entire family was mostly in Seville, with forays into Ejica, and from at least Easter to December. For five-​year-​old Catalina, the highlight would have been two weeks of public festivities in May to celebrate the upcoming wedding of infanta Isabel and Afonso of Portugal. Bernáldez briefly comments on the lavish and expensive banquets (‘muy grandes fiestas e torneos e grandes alegrías [...] muy grandes gastos’) that lasted fifteen days, at which it Catalina may have worn her first hooped skirt (verdugo) made of green silk with a green brocaded underskirt.20 On at least two occasions, in July and September, Fernando and Isabel left the children in Seville with their attendants (not named) to attend to business in Córdoba.21 The family stayed in the south in 1491, mostly in Seville (until April), Zubia, and Baza. During these periods, Catalina can be seen on the road with a small court of her own; women who were bound to her by ties of service and friendship and who combined sewing, embroidery, spinning, and weaving with intellectual pursuits. Catalina received a rigorous education from tutors carefully selected and compensated by her mother.22 Andrés de Miranda, a Dominican at the monastery of Santo Domingo (Burgos) and Beatriz Galindo (la Latina) worked with two Italian humanists, the brothers Antonio and Alessandro Geraldini (maestro de las ynfantes). Catalina, now six, would have noted the sombre tone of life at court as they welcomed sadly the return of infanta Isabel, widowed only six months after her wedding. As war with Granada accelerated, the children were once again left in a safe place when Fernando

 17 Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 249.  18 Calendar of State Papers, Spain, ed. by Bergenroth, i, 20–26.  19 Pulgar, Crónica, ed. by Carriazo, ii, 363, 418; Ruiz, A King Travels, pp. 305–07; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 247–53, 321.  20 Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo,, pp. 215–15; Baeza, Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, i, 381–83.  21 Pulgar, Crónica, ed. by Carriazo, ii, 437–44; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 253–55.  22 Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, ii, 120, 125, 206, 263, 340, 378, 420–22, 455, 653. See also Earenfight, ‘Regarding Catherine of Aragon’.

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and Isabel set up camp at Santa Fé, outside Granada, in September. During the final push to win the war, the infantas stayed in nearby Zubia, but they knew that danger was nearby. A candle in their mother’s bedchamber started a fire that engulfed the entire camp and sent the queen and her infanta Isabel outside in their nightgowns. By November, the war was over and the victory celebrations began in January 1492. Catalina missed the official public surrender but probably took part in the solemn entry into the city. She was in Granada or Santa Fé until May, but chroniclers do not note her presence in the fortified palatine city known as the Alhambra. The labyrinthine city was her first taste of Muslim art and architecture unmediated by Christian influence. In March 1492, the family settled in Barcelona but chroniclers do not include Catalina among those of the royal family who attended the public reception on 21 April 1493 of Columbus after his return to Spain.23 The knowledge, if not the sight, of her mother waging war must have been an impressive lesson in queenship for Catalina, more vivid than anything her tutor Alessandro Geraldini could assign. Queen Isabel was praised widely by chroniclers and ambassadors for her work organizing provisions, supervising the supply lines, and staying so close to Fernando throughout the fighting. It was not a surprise to Bernáldez that Catalina, as queen of England in 1513, followed her mother’s example by organizing and provisioning the English troops who defeated the Scots and killed the Scottish king at the Battle of Flodden.24 The royal family spent 1494 and 1495 moving often: Valladolid, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Madrid, Tordesillas, Segovia, Guadalajara, Burgos, Cavia (Burgos), Almazan (Soria), Romanos (Aragón), Caspe (Aragón), Xerte (Baix Ebre), and Tortosa (Baix Ebre).25 At around this time, Isabel and Fernando commissioned the Netherlandish painter Juan de Flandes to paint Catalina. This exquisite painting (Figure 12.3) is perhaps the earliest depiction of infanta Catalina, painted when she was between eleven and thirteen years old.26 It is quite small (12 in. × 8 in.) and strikingly intimate. The rosebud she holds in her right hand tightly closed, barely revealing red petals, signifying that she is a mere bud of a girl, a virgin. The three leaves on the rosebud stem suggest the trinity and symbolize piety. The painter rendered Catalina with delicate pink lips, a straight long nose, and perfectly clear skin — the sign of an unblemished soul. Her face is solemn and modestly direct; her blue-​grey eyes are neither downcast nor evasive. Her golden-​red hair is neatly pulled off her face and coiled around grosgrain ribbons, a style typical of the Mediterranean.

 23 Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo, p. 223; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 255–63, 282–86, 324–27, 353.  24 Earenfight, ‘Raising Infanta Catalina de Aragón To Be Catherine, Queen of England’; Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo, pp. 659–62; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 256–58.  25 Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 354–62.  26 Bermejo, Juan de Flandes, pp. 264–74.

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Figure 12.3. Juan de Flandes, ‘A Spanish Princess’, c. 1496. Oil on panel, 31.5 × 21.2 cm, inv.# 141. Madrid: Museo Thyssen-​Bornemisza.

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This portrait was not intended to depict Catalina as she was; rather, its purpose was to convey an idea of her to a very particular audience.27 On 15 August 1495, a ceremony at Woodstock formalized their betrothal and this painting was probably intended to show her off to her future father-​in-​law, Henry VII.28 Juan de Flandes used fashion in his portrait of Catalina to convey an alluring Spanishness, knowing this would appeal to the international ambitions of the young Tudor dynasty. Her modest off-​white cotton/wool/linen dress with gathers at the sleeves and the neckline reveals a hint of breasts. The dress, a hábito (shift), was worn indoors or as an undergarment, and suggests home and familial intimacy.29 The appliqued borders on her shirt collar and set-​in sleeves are decorated with an Islamicate pattern of blackstitch embroidery. King Henry VII would see in this portrait a highly desirable diplomatic prize for two royal families jockeying for political advantage. The painting, redolent of potential power in a fresh, youthful girl, a mere bud, a virgin brimming with fecundity and the promise of children, sent a clear political message: this is a Spanish princess who knows how to be attractive to an English prince. Catalina spent the next four years travelling less but saying goodbye to her siblings as, one by one, they left home to marry. In August 1496, the family was in Laredo to bid farewell to infanta Juana, who departed Spain for Flanders to marry Philip of Burgundy and then left for Valencia de Alcantará to say goodbye to her sister Isabel who travelled to Portugal to marry King Manuel.30 The family gathered again in 1497 in Burgos for Juan’s wedding on 18 March and in Medina del Campo when he died on 4 October.31 Most of 1498 was spent in Zaragoza and Alcalá de Henares, 1499 and 1500 in Seville and Granada, where in late April, she bid farewell to her sister María — her constant companion since birth — on her departure to marry Manuel of Portugal.32 Catalina’s own turn came in 1501 as she prepared for her departure from Granada on 21 May for her own wedding. She was not alone: her escort across Spain included roughly sixty people, including the archbishop of Santiago, the bishops of Mallorca, Osma, and Salamanca; court officials and their wives, Alessandro Geraldini, her personal attendant Doña Elvira Manuel with her husband Manrique Manuel, and a staff that included chamberlain, steward, butler, marshal, laundresses, cooks, and bakers. Catalina de Montoya, Inés de Vanegas, and María de Salazar accompanied her to London and stayed on after the wedding. Chroniclers list the names of the most prominent people,

Hand and others, Michel Sittow. Memorials of King Henry the Seventh, ed. by Gairdner, pp. 349–51. Bernis Madrazo, Indumentaria medi­eval, pp. 35–53. Fernández de Córdova Miralles, La Corte de Isabel, p. 321; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 365–68. Fernández de Córdova Miralles, La Corte de Isabel, p. 307; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 366–68; Ruiz, A King Travels, pp. 307–12.  32 Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo, p. 393; Liss, Isabel the Queen, pp. 368–75.  27  28  29  30  31

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Figure 12.4. Chapines, c. 1550–1650, silk and metal, Italian. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession # 2009.300.1449a,b.

but Baeza’s accounts reveal so much more. Throughout 1500 and 1501, his accounts are thick with descriptions of luxurious fabrics for clothing for Catalina and as payment to the women and men at court. Page after page lists an astounding array of Spanish fashion — black velvet skirts, red silk verdugos, silk bands for the waist, sateen bonnets, leather gloves, linen shirts and shifts, embroidered linen for the table napkins and bed sheets, hundreds of yards of hair ribbons, and dozens of velvet stockings. Amid the ordinary excess of a royal wardrobe are an extraordinary number of shoes. In 1500 and 1501, her shoemakers, Diego de Madrid and Diego de Valencia, crafted fifty-​one pairs of borçeguies (soft leather buskins that came up over her ankles) and sixty-​eight pairs of black servillas (leather slippers). Her baggage also included chapines, like these at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Figure 12.4), a regal variant of shoes that were a staple of Mediterranean societies, sturdy and very handy to keep skirts from dragging through the muck of medi­eval streets.33 Catalina’s were probably covered in velvet and intricate embroidery such as those made for her in 1497: ‘doze pares de chapines de Valencia para las dichas infantes, les seys dellos de vna mano en alto, e los otros seys de tres dedos en alto, a 175 cada par, vnos dellos, que montan 1.990’ (twelve pairs of chapines from Valencia for the infantas [María and Catalina], six of them one hand high and the other six three fingers high, at 175 [maravedíes] each, some of them more, totalling 1990 [maravedíes]).34 As the royal procession moved northward, Catalina would have kicked off her chapines and put on the borçeguies as she journeyed to places both familiar and important to her: Toledo, Guadalupe, Medina del Campo,

 33 Semmelhack, ‘Above the Rest’.  34 Cuentas, ed. by Torre and Torre, ii, 368–80.

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Valladolid, Santiago de Compostela, and finally, La Coruña.35 The sojourn in Guadalupe monastery was a sentimental farewell to a town she knew well. The monastery in Guadalupe, a blend of architectural styles with a fourteenth/ fifteenth-​century church and cloister built in the Mudéjar style. She would have stayed at the Hospedería Real and visited the shrine of the virgin before she continued her journey northward. The last leg of her trip was a zigzag from La Coruña to the Bay of Biscay and back again. Thunderstorms and rough seas made the voyage perilous, and made her ill, so they turned back. She recovered, the weather improved, and they tried again on 27 September, landing at Plymouth on 2 October.36 For the second time in her life, Catalina was front and centre in a royal ceremony. But this time she was a young woman, not a toddler, and she was in London rather than Valladolid. The trip took weeks, and at every stop along the way across southern England she was met with a festive banquet. And this time, the observers left a very detailed record of her entry into London. She was fêted with a massive outpouring of celebration: six separate pageants, tableaux vivants, mock battles, and masques on themes of the Christian virtue and matrimonial honour of the bride and bridegroom. London was decorated with tapestries that depicted both the castles and lions of Spain and the portcullis and roses of the Tudor family. At the London Bridge pageant in honour of her namesake St Katherine, the herald proclaimed ‘the trust and affeccion’, the performers noted that her marriage, her ‘honorur temporall’, was the dynastic result of the Anglo-​Spanish alliance. In order to balance out the two powers, St Katherine shared the stage with the British St Ursula.37 But the English noticed how exotic Catalina looked. Her attire attracted comment almost immediately. Her Spanishness, apparent in the visual elements of her style, signified foreignness, an exotic southern sensibility that startled, even shocked, the English who noted her ‘the straunge diversitie of raiment of the countreth of Hispayne’.38 She wore clothing that she brought from Spain: ‘riche apparell’ and hats with ribbons (‘a litill hatte fashounyd like a cardinalles hatte of a praty brede with a lase of golde’) on her auburn hair. At her wedding on 14 November, the author remarked that Catalina was dressed ‘aftir their countray maner’, in a white satin gown, cinched at her ‘wast and myddill’ with ‘certain rownde hopys’.39 Her hooped skirt is a reference to another distinctively Spanish fashion item that Catalina brought to the Tudor court, the verdugo, known in English as the farthingale.

 35 Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo, pp. 394–95; Liss, Isabel the Queen, p. 381.  36 Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Gómez-​Moreno and Carriazo, pp. 394.  37 The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. by Kipling, pp. 37, 43; Anglo, ‘The London Pageants for the Reception of Katharine of Aragon’.  38 The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. by Kipling, p. 32.  39 The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. by Kipling, p. 43.

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Through marriage, the Spanish infanta Catalina was transformed into Ladie Kateryne, Princess of Wales. She and Arthur travelled to the new home at Castle Ludlow, Wales, and four months later, Arthur’s death left her a widow. She spent seven lonely years until 1509 when she married Arthur’s younger brother, Henry. She travelled with him around England and to France, bore him a daughter who succeeded him, and endured his rejection of her. She lived as queen of England for nearly three decades. She learned English and assimilated to the customs of her new home, but she remained Spanish at heart. The Spain she saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched in her childhood as she travelled across Spain fashioned her identity and shaped her intellect and her understanding of her place in the world. Her aesthetic taste matured into meaningful social practices that are evident throughout her life, not just in Spain, but in England, too. Her shoes and style of dress were both cross-​cultural phenomena and tools of cultural exchange that captured the awe of, and pleasure in, ‘Spanysshe’ splendour. The taste for exotic chapines soon diminished in England, however.40 In 1513, Nicolo Di Favri of Treviso, an ambassador attached to the Venetian Embassy in London, said of English women that ‘their stockings are black and their shoes doubly soled, of various colours, but no one wears “choppines”, as they are not in use in England’.41 Nevertheless, Catalina wore chapines until she died. An inventory of her possessions taken on 14 February 1536, just a few weeks after her death, noted seven pairs of shoes ‘of the Spanysshe fashion, corked and garnysshid with golde’.42 More than simply a sensuous pleasure to wear or fashion statement, her chapines marked her as Spanish. Her cork-​ soled shoes, crafted in Valencia and Madrid and covered in a luxurious fabric and garnished with gold trim, were the visual reminders of her childhood in Medina del Campo and Granada. Together with her chapines and her verdugos, Catalina wore her Spanish identity up to the very end of her life.

 40 Rublack, Dressing Up, p. 166.  41 Letter to Francesco Gradenigo, son-​in-​law of Venetian ambassador, Andrea Badoer: ‘Venice: February 1513’, in Calendar of State Papers […] in the Archives of Venice, ed. by Brown, ii, 88–94.  42 ‘Inventory of the Wardrobe, Plate, etc. of Katherine of Arragon, at Baynard’s Castle’, ed. by Nichols, p. 39.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Bernáldez, Andrés, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. by Manuel Gómez-​Moreno and Juan de Mata Carriazo (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1962) Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 1, 1485–1509, ed. by Gustav A. Bergenroth (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1862). British History Online, https://www.british-​history.ac.uk/cal-​state-​papers/spain/vol. 1 Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 2, 1509–1519, ed. by Rawdon Brown (London: HMSO, 1867). British History Online, https://www.british-​history.ac.uk/cal-​state-​papers/venice/vol. 2 Cuentas de Gonzalo Baeza, tesorero de Isabel la Católica, ed. by Antonio de la Torre and E. A. de la Torre, 2 vols (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1955) Fuensalida, Gutierre Gómez de, Correspondencia de Gutierrez Gomez de Fuensalida, ed. by Duke of Berwick and Alba (Madrid: [s.n.] 1907) ‘Inventory of the Wardrobe, Plate, etc. of Katherine of Arragon, at Baynard’s Castle’, ed. by John Gough Nichols, The Camden Miscellany, iii (London: Camden Society, 1855) Memorials of King Henry the Seventh, ed. by James Gairdner (London: Longman, 1858) Pulgar, Fernando de, Crónica del los Señores Reyes Católicos, ed. by Juan de Mata Carriazo with introduction by Manuel González Jiménez and Gonzal Pontón, 2 vols (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2008) The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne, ed. by Gordon Kipling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) Valera, Diego de, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos (Madrid: Molina, 1927) Secondary Works Anglo, Sydney, ‘The London Pageants for the Reception of Katharine of Aragon: November 1501’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26.1–2 (1963), 53–89 Bermejo, Elisa, Juan de Flandes (Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1962) Bernis Madrazo, Carmen, Indumentaria medi­eval Española (Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1965) Cabrera Lafuente, Ana, ‘Los tejidos como Patrimonio: investigación y exposición’, Bienes culturales: Revista del Instituto del Patrimonio Histórico Español, 5 (2005), 5–19 —— , ‘Proyecto Marie S.-​Curie “Interwoven”: investigación sobre el coleccionismo y exposició de tejidos relacionados con España en el Victoria and Albert Museum de Londres’, in 1 Coloquio de Investigadores en Tèxtil y Moda (Terrassa:

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Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil, 2018), pp. 71–75. Published online:

Hamilton, Tracy Chapman, and Mariah Proctor-​Tiffany, ‘Women and the Circulation of Material Culture: Crossing Boundaries and Connecting Spaces’ in Moving Women, Moving Objects (400–1500), ed. by Mariah Proctor-​Tiffany and Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 1–12 Earenfight, Theresa, ‘Regarding Catherine of Aragon’, in Scholars and Poets Talk about Queenship, ed. by Carole Levin and Christine Stewart-​Nuñez (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 137–57 —— , ‘Raising Infanta Catalina de Aragón To Be Catherine, Queen of England’, Anuario de Estudios Medi­evales, 46.1 (2016), 417–43 —— , ‘The Shoes of an Infanta: Bringing the Sensuous, not Sensible, “Spanish Style” of Catherine of Aragon to Tudor England’, in Moving Women, Moving Objects (400–1500), ed. by Mariah Proctor-​Tiffany and Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 287–311 Fernández de Códrova Miralles, Álvaro, La Corte de Isabel I: Ritos y ceremonias de una reina 1474–1504 (Madrid: Dykinson, 2002) Hand, John Oliver, and Greta Koppel with Till-​Holger Borchert, Anu Mänd, Ariane van Suchtelen, and Matthias Weniger, Michel Sittow: Estonian Painter at the Courts of Renaissance Europe (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2018) Johnston, Hope, ‘Catherine of Aragon’s Pomegranate Revisited’, Transactions of the Cambridge Biblio­graphic Society, 13.2 (2005), 153–73 Liss, Peggy, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) Martí, Javier, ‘An Overview of Medi­eval Pottery Production in Spain Between the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, Medi­eval Ceramics, 18 (1994), 3–7 Martz, Linda, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) Mattingly, Garrett, Catherine of Aragon (Boston: Little Brown, 1941) Ruiz, Teofilo, A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Late Medi­eval and Early Modern Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) Rublack, Ulinka, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Rumeu de Armas, Antonio, Itinerario de los Reyes Católicos, 1474–1516 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1974) Semmelhack, Elizabeth, ‘Above the Rest: Chopines as Trans-​Mediterranean Fashion’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 14 (2013), 120–42 Tremlett, Giles, Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen (London: Faber and Faber, 2010) Val Valdivieso, María Isabel del, ‘¿Hacia el fin de la itinerancia? Isabel I de Castilla’, e-​Spania (2009)

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Afterword In mid-​October 2018, a large international group of scholars gathered at UCLA for three days of meetings, papers, and discussion. Entitled Iberia, the Mediterranean, & the World in the Medi­eval & Early Modern Periods, and selflessly and lovingly organized by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, Zrinka Stahlujak, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, this conference was sponsored and hosted by UCLA’s Center for Medi­eval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS), the Executive Vice-​Chancellor Scott Waugh, the Department of History, the Deans of Humanities and Social Sciences, the LAMAR Initiative, and the Dorothy and Robert Wellman Chair in Medi­eval History. At the CMRS, Karen E. Burgess, Alexandra Wadman, Brett Landenberger, Benay Furtivo, and Heather Sottong went to extraordinary efforts and displayed heroic levels of both generosity and bonhomie to make the conference a model for scholarly meetings. I had the privilege and great pleasure of reading the pre-​circulated papers, of attending all the sections, and of having the opportunity to speak directly to all the participants. Thanks to the kindness of the organizers, I was able to enjoy all the benefits of this remarkable scholarly gathering without formally being part of the conference, writing a paper, or performing in any way. It was pure enjoyment. The event was one of the most satisfying scholarly meetings I have ever attended. The high quality and engaging presentations, the opportunity to re-​encounter old and new friends, and to thank all the participants personally for their contributions to my scholarly career and life represented a unique and most welcome opportunity. I learned a great deal from every single paper and from the discussions that followed each of the panels. Far more importantly, I learned with pleasure. The organizers thoughtfully brought together different generational cohorts, methodo­logical approaches, and a wide range of themes. Most of the papers opened new vistas on questions of identity in the late medi­eval and early modern Iberian world. Their welcome emphasis on new methodo­logical approaches to the issue provided a lens through which to see the evolving and complex connections between emerging Iberian/trans­atlantic/Mediterranean identities and historical developments. Above all, this impressive gathering of scholars provided insights into, and discussions of, the overlapping histories Teofilo F. Ruiz ([email protected]) is Distinguished Research Professor of History (Emeritus) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000–1700, ed. by Thomas W. Barton, Marie A. Kelleher, and Antonio M. Zaldívar, CURSOR 42 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022) pp. 227–229 10.1484/M.CURSOR-EB.5.126187

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of Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the world in the medi­eval and early modern periods. Since the papers were pre-​circulated and then discussed rather than simply read to a listening audience, the lively exchanges that followed every panel offered a unique opportunity to bring new knowledge to the fore and to examine the presenters’ findings and interpretations from diverse disciplinary perspectives. All of this took place in and open and nurturing scholarly environment. Over my long academic career, my work has borrowed from other scholars, and most of them were in attendance. I have depended on them and on other colleagues’ kindness in correcting and improving my own work. Far more valuable, I have had the great gift of their support and friendship. From the early 1970s until today, I have benefited, and continue to benefit, from the insights of others, such that my own work has regularly been inspired and informed by the research and publications of my students, of friends, old and new, and of colleagues. My scholarly work has always been a collaborative enterprise in which the contributions of others have consistently been far more important than my own. That two collections were published as a result of the 2018 conference is, I hope, a worthy contribution to the scholarly community. That these volumes are being dedicated to the memories of, respectively, the late and much missed Sir J. H. Elliott (the present volume) and Olivia Remie Constable (“Iberia, the Mediterranean and the Larger World,” dossier in the journal Pedralbes) is very satisfying to all of us who took part in the conference. Remie Constable was a distinguished scholar of medi­eval Iberia and the Mediterranean, a nurturing teacher, and a very special human being. Her death, coming as it did too early for her and for us, has left an enduring sense of loss. She may not have been at this conference, but her work, her spirit, and her friendship were with us throughout. Sir J. H. Elliott, for his part, has long been and remains the angel tutelar of all late medi­eval and early modern historians of Iberia. His luminous work, boundless generosity, keen critical eye, and commitment to historical discovery have inspired all of us. I, like many others, owe most of my academic career to John Elliott’s generosity and profound scholarly understanding of the past. I am also one of many whose well-​being owes much to John’s and Lady Oonah’s generous hospitality at Princeton and Oxford. His kindness and his attentiveness to others have made the fields of late medi­eval and early modern Spanish history a brotherhood of Elliott fans and admirers. At the conference, we sought to keep faith with both of these scholars’ dedication to writing history as truthfully as humanly possible, to their emphasis on critical assessment of the documentary evidence, and to their steadfast desire to make some rational sense of the past. Regardless of how critically we read the evidence or how much we qualify what we try to uncover, we are bound, as Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Joyce Appleby once wrote, ‘to tell the truth about history’.1  1 See their Telling the Truth About History (New York: Norton, 1994).

af t e rwo rd

This search for veracity in our research is now more critical than ever. In 2018, we feared that the replacement of facts with lies in this country and elsewhere in political discourse might soon threaten the very core of democratic institutions; the reality, until welcome changes in January 2021, turned out to be much worse. We worried then that political corruption, greed, misuses of power, and disregard for the challenges of climate change and global inequity represented a threat to our freedom and to the lives of our children and grandchildren; that threat, though it has abated somewhat, has only become more pressing as we enter the third decade of this new century. There are many ways in which we can resist the onslaught of misrepresentations and the corruption of historical processes themselves. We can embrace direct political action. We can vote and contribute to those who we hope will change the course of American and global politics. But we can also resist through conscientious practice of our profession. Joseph O’Callaghan’s concluding remarks in a recent book are an example of how scholars can intervene in political discourse; how they can tell the truth about history.2 In our works, we can (and we must) be sensitive to the displacement of peoples, to difference, to the plight of impoverished populations driven to migrate because of climatic change, war, and violence. We can also renew our commitment to a historical practice in which, as Walter Benjamin wrote, the task of the historian is ‘to brush history against the grain’.3 I hope that this October 2018 conference and the essays in this volume contribute, however modestly, to the pursuit of historical truth and to our common commitment to scholarship so that, in our own way, we will have collectively taken up the task that Benjamin identified for us. A brief concluding note is, I fear, necessary. As this book was going into production, we learned of Sir John H Elliott’s death on 10 March 2022. This book, dedicated to him posthumously, only reaffirms the unique role he played and continues to play in our lives and the discipline. I will always be grateful.

 2 Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Alfonso X: Law and Justice in Thirteenth-​Century Castile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), pp. 252–56.  3 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. by Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968), p. 257.

229

Index

Abbeville: 44 Abenxabat, Yhuda, almojarife of Seville: 32 Abū ‘Amr al-Dānī: 82 Abu Faris, Hafsid ruler: 201 Abū Isḥaq: 85 Abū l’Rabī‘: 81 Abu Tashfin III, Zayyanid ruler: 200 Abulafia, Samuel Halevi: 32 Acelino of Cremona: 190 Acre: 191 Afonso, Prince of Portugal: 217 al-Mas’udi: 185 al-Muqaddasi: 185 al-Mustanṣir bi-Llāh, Fatimid caliph: 78, 81 al-Qifṭī: 79 Álava: 49 Albizone, Ildeperto, Pisan magnate: 78, 80 Alcalá de Henares: 212–15, 220 Alcántara: 110 Alcuin, De orthographia: 132–33 Alfonso V the Magnanimous, King of Aragon: 200 Alfonso VIII the Noble, King of Castile: 41, 64, 113–14, 183 chancery of: 123, 128 Alfonso IX, King of León and Galicia: 41 Alfonso X the Learned, King of Castile and León: 23, 27, 42, 44, 123, 144 Cortes of: 56

Estoria de Espanna: 142 and Jewish community: 131 Siete partidas: 129–30 Alfonso XI, King of Castile and León: 32–33 Algarve: 128 ‘Alī b. Mujāhid, emir of Denia death of: 84 as diplomatic hostage: 76, 78 and jihād, maritime: 77 and legitimation of rule: 13, 82–85 and literary legitimation: 83–84 and personal identity: 13, 77–79 statecraft of: 80–82 Almazan: 218 Almeira: 200, 203 Almodis, Countess of Barcelona: 80–81 Althusius, Johannes: 140 Amat, Bernard: 80 Ambrose, Father: 101 Amor, Pedro, shipmaster of Santander: 45 Amsterdam: 93, 97, 99, 102 Annius of Viterbo, Antiquitates: 150 Antioch: 109 Aragon (general): 142 archives of: 197, 199–200 chancery of: 128, 130, 134, 199–200 and Granadan capture: 15, 198–99, 201–07, 211–15 and Jews, forced conversion of: 24–25

2 32

i n dex

Justicia of: 145, 152 see also Catalina (Catherine) of Aragon; and individual rulers Aragón, Fernando de, archbishop of Zaragoza: 145 Aranjuez: 213 Arcila: 205 Ardenbourg: 48 Arévalo: 32, 212, 214, 216 Arévalo, Rodrigo Sánchez de, Compendiosa historia hispanica: 142 Argensola, Bartolomé Leonardo de: 145–46 Aristotle: 99 Arras: 44 Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: 211–14, 216–17, 223 Asturias de Santillana: 43 Ateneçi, Mançor: 206 Attila the Hun: 183 Avila: 215 Avilés: 41–42, 50 Azmar, Peré: 107 Badis: 205 Badouin, François: 139–40 De institutione historiae universae: 146 Baeza, Gonzolo de, Aragonese treasurer: 213, 215–16, 221 Baghdad: 185 Bailleul: 44 Ballesteros, Inés, wife of Pedro of Valencia: 159 Barcelona: 77, 80–81, 143, 150, 212–13, 218 archives of: 197 University of: 142 Usatges of: 128

Baronio, Cesare: 152 Annales Ecclesiastici: 166 Roman Breviary: 166 Barreiros, Gaspar: 150 Bartolus of Sassoferrato: 64 Basel, Council of (1433–1438): 142 Bayona: 41–42, 50 Bayonne: 45–47 Baza: 213, 217 Bazin de Bezons, Louis: 91, 94 Becanus, Goropius: 150 Bejaia: 200–05 Benabdalla, Mahomat: 205 Benalacen, Mahomat: 206 Benamar, Çuleymen: 201, 205 Benayet, Mandil: 205 Benedict XII, pope: 191 Benmahomat, Çaet: 205 Benmahomat, Çayt: 206 Bermeo: 42, 45–46 Bernáldez, Andrés: 212, 217–18 Berto, Roger de, of Bardi company: 45 Betanzas: 41–42 Beuter, Pedro Antonio: 144 Biarritz: 47, 93 Bilbao: 42, 44, 49–50 Blancas, Jerónimo: 145, 151–52 Blasco de Lanuza, Vicencio: 151–52 Bodin, Jean: 139–40, 149–50 Bona: 202 Bordeaux: 46, 93–95, 97–98, 100, 102–03 Botero, Giovanni: 140 Bristol: 45 Bruges, as trading hub: 12, 44–45, 48–49 Brutus: 148 Burgos: 218, 220 Cortes of: 57 as trading hub: 43–44, 46, 48–49

index

Cabrera de Córdoba, Luis: 139 De historia, para entenderla y escribirla: 165, 174 Cádiz: 45 Caen: 44 Cairo: 115 Calça, Francesc, De Catalonia liber primus: 145 Callao: 168 Cambray: 44 Camões, Luis de, Os Lusíadas: 149 Cano, Melchor: 140, 149–50 Carbonell, Pere Miquel: 143 Carmona, Elena de, maid of Catalina of Aragon: 214 Cartagena, Alonso de: 144 Casas, Bartolomé de las A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies: 172 Historia general del Nuevo Mundo: 175 Caspe: 218 Castile (general): 142, 164 Civil War: 47 see also chancery, royal, of Castile; Madrigal, Cortes of; Seville; town-ports; and individual rulers Castle Ludlow, Wales: 223 Castrillo, Alonso del: 142 Castro Urdiales: 41–43, 45–47 Catalina (Catherine) of Aragon: 15 Arthur Tudor, marriage to: 211–14, 216–17, 220, 222–23 chapines of: 213, 221, 221, 223 clothing of: 214–17, 219, 220–22 in English court: 16, 215, 222–23 Henry VIII of England, marriage to: 214, 223 and heraldic badge: 213–14, 214 napkin of: 213, 215, 216 portrait of: 213, 218, 219, 220

travels in England: 222 travels in Iberia: 211–22 Catherine of Aragon see Catalina of Aragon Cavia: 218 Cedeira: 42 censorship, self: 14 definition of: 157–58 and Pedro de Valencia: 15, 157, 163, 169–75 Ceuta: 200 chancery, Castilian royal, vernacular writing in categories of documents in: 126 clerical influence on: 125–26 comparison to other chanceries: 128, 130, 133–34 and identity, political and sociocultural: 14, 123, 129–31 and Jewish sensibilities: 131 and the Reconquista of Andalucía: 14, 123–31, 134 and sociolinguistic and cultural factors: 14, 123, 131–34 Charles II, King of Spain: 117, 148 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain: 142, 144, 151, 175 as Universal Monarch: 107–10, 112–13 Chile, conquest of: 15, 166–75 China: 185–86, 191 Cicero: 147–48, 165–66, 173 Cleirac, Étienne, Usages and Customs of the Sea (Us et coustumes de la mer) on bills of exchange: 13, 96–103 biography: 97–98 as forger: 102 on insurance, marine: 96, 101 on Jews: 13, 96–102 publication of: 95 Clement VI, pope: 32

23 3

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i n dex

Codex Calixtinus: 40 Coimbra: 92 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste: 100 Columbus, Christopher: 191, 218 Commines: 44 Commynes, Philippe de: 148 Constable, Olivia Remie: 17 Constantinople: 115, 183 conversion, forced see under Jews; Muslims in Iberia Córdoba: 128, 159, 183, 212–13, 215–17 scholars in: 186 synagogue in: 32 Cortes: 55–58; see also under Alfonso X; Burgos; Jerez; Madrid; Madrigal; Palencia; Toledo; Tomar; Valladolid; Zamora Cortés, Hernán: 148 Costa, Juan: 142 crusades: 39, 182, 190 Albigensian: 94 and encubertismo: 13 First: 114 by Hidden King: 107–08 Third: 113–14 Cruz, Francisco de la: 110 Cuenca: 128 Dagobert I, Frankish king: 96 Damascus: 185 Dante Alighieri: 101 Davanzati, Bernardo: 99 David, biblical king: 109–10 Debo, Pedro, agent for Catocho company: 45 Denia: 13, 76–85 Díaz, Diego, dean of Seville cathedral: 29

Díaz del Castillo, Bernal: 14, 148 Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España: 148 Dinis I, King of Portugal: 128, 134 Dominic of Aragon: 190 Douai: 44 Eanes de Zurara, Gomes: 143 Edward I, King of England: 44, 46 Edward III, King of England: 47 Edward the ‘Black Prince’ of England: 47 Éjica: 217 Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II of England: 41 Eleanor of England, wife of Alfonso VIII of Castile: 41 Elizabeth I, Queen of England: 151 Elliott, Sir J.H.: 9, 17 encubertismo (Hidden One): 13–14 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, as Universal Monarch: 107–10, 112–13 and ‘counter-monarchs’: 110–12 definition of: 107 Fernando, Cardinal-Infante as Universal Monarch: 113, 115–16 Fernando II of Aragon as Universal Monarch: 107–08 Philip II of Spain as Universal Monarch: 108–10, 112–14, 118 Philip III of Spain as Universal Monarch: 113 Philip IV of Spain as Universal Monarch: 113, 116–17 Enrique II Trastámara, King of Castile and León: 26–28, 33, 47 Enrique IV (Henry), King of Castile and León: 43, 159 Enriquez, Enrique: 30

index

Erasmus, Desiderius: 147, 149 Ercilla, Alonso de, Araucana: 149, 166, 168 Évora: 92 exchange, bills of see under Cleirac, Étienne

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor: 183 Froissart, Jean: 148 Fuenterrabía: 41–43, 45, 47, 49 Furió Ceriol, Fadrique, Concejo y consejeros: 140–41

Favri, Nicolo Di, of Treviso, Venetian ambassador: 223 Fernando, Cardinal-Infante, as Universal Monarch: 113, 115–16 Fernando I, King of Aragon: 141, 146 Fernando II the Catholic, King of Aragon: 211–15 travels of: 212–15, 217–18 as Universal Monarch: 107–08, 118 Fernando I, King of León: 79 Fernando II, King of León and Galicia: 41 Fernando III, King of Castile and León: 27, 42, 183 chancery of: 123, 125–29 and Liber iudicorum: 129–30 Ferrández, Benito, chaplain of Seville cathedral: 28 Ferrol: 42 Fes: 200, 205–06 Flodden, Battle of (1513): 218 Fontainebleau, Edict of (1685): 91 Fox Morcillo, Sebastián: 139–40, 147, 150, 165 De Historiae institutione dialogus: 141 De regno regisque institutione: 109 Franchi de Conestaggio, Girolamo, Storia de la guerre de la Germania inferior: 163 Francis I, King of France: 108 Francis, saint, Regula vitae: 188

Gaguin, Robert: 147 Galindo, Beatriz: 217 García, Diego, chancellor of Fernando III of Castile: 132–33 García de Santa María, Alfonso: 142 Anacephaleosis: 143 Garcilaso de la Vega, Inca: 166 Historia General del Perú: 157, 170, 172–73 Garibay, Esteban de: 143, 151 Compendio historial: 144 Garzoni, Tomaso, Piazza universale: 139 Gattinara, Mercurino di, chancellor of Emperor Charles V: 108, 112 Genoa, as trading hub: 12, 49 Geraldini, Alessandro: 217–18, 220 Geraldino, Antonio: 217 Ghent: 44 Gilbert of Hastings, Bishop of Lisbon: 182 Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan: 142, 175 Goa: 92 Godfrey of Bouillon, Defender of the Holy Sepulchre: 114 Goes, Damião: 144 Golden Horde, Khanate of: 191 González de Nájera, Alonso: 168 Gracián, Baltasar: 14, 147 Granada: 80, 150, 166, 174, 211–13, 220, 223 Alhambra: 218

23 5

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i n dex

conquest of (1492): 107, 198–207, 211–15, 217 and Muslim captives: 15, 198–99, 201–07 Nasrid: 200–02, 206, 211, 214 pogrom of (1066): 85 scholars in: 186 see also individual rulers Gregory IX, pope: 183, 190 Guadalajara: 218 Guadalajara y Xavier, Marcos de, Memorable expulsión y iustissimo destierro de los moriscos de España: 114–16 Guadalupe: 212, 215–16, 221 Guardiola, Juan Benito, friar, Antigüedad y nobleza de Cataluña: 145 Guetaria: 41, 45–47 Guicciardini, Francesco: 149, 175 Guipúzcoa: 44, 46–47, 49 Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders: 48

Hesiod: 184 Homer: 174, 184 Horace, Ars poetica: 175 Hugo, Bishop of Operto: 40 Huguenots: 91 humanist historians and Americas, expansion to: 14, 144, 148 and archives, establishment of: 142–43 and ars historica: 139–40, 142–43, 146, 169 and heroic feats: 14, 141, 144–45 and patria, love of: 145–47 and religious history: 151–52 and scarcity of Spanish history books: 141–42, 145–47 and truth, historical: 140, 148–52, 165–67, 170 Hundred Years’ War: 46 Hurtado of Mendoza, García, Viceroy of Peru: 167 Guerra de Granada: 175

Hamburg: 93 Harfleur: 45 Ḥasan, son of Mujāhid: 78–79, 83 Henry II, King of England: 41 Henry VII, King of England: 217, 220 Henry VIII, King of England: 151, 214, 223 Henry II, King of France: 91–92 Hermandad de la Marina de Castilla (de las Marismas): 45–47 Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio de: 160, 173–74 Historia General de los hechos de hos castellanos…en las Indias: 169

Ibn Abī ‘Āmir, ruler of Valencia: 83 Ibn al-Khaṭīb: 75–76, 83, 200 Ibn Arqam: 81 Ibn Battuta, Rihla: 186 Ibn Garsiyya, Risāla: 84 Ibn Hud, ruler of Zaragoza: 84 Ibn Sīda: 81, 84 Ilbra: 215 India: 191 Indies, Council of: 160, 165, 167, 170, 172–73 Innocent IV, pope: 182–83, 190 Inquisition: 92–94, 111–12, 163–64 Isabel, Doña (of Seville): 30 Isabel I, Queen of Castile and León: 43, 118, 125, 142, 211 travels of: 212–13, 215–18

index

Isabel of Aragon, wife of Afonso of Portugal and Manuel I of Portugal: 212–13 marriages: 217, 220 Isidore of Seville: 152, 184 Jacques of Vitry, Bishop of Acre, Historia Orientalis: 189 Jaén: 215, 217 Jaén, Alonso de: 107 James, saint, apostle (Santiago): 152, 166 Jazzār al-Saraqusṭī: 84–85 Jerez, Cortes of: 42 Jerome of Catalonia, Bishop of Caffa: 191 Jerusalem capture of, in First Crusade: 114 recovery of: 108–10, 112, 114–15 Jews: 189, 192 and bills of exchange: 13, 96–103 and conversion, forced: 12, 24–25, 91–93, 102 and desecration of host: 101–02 and donations of property: 31–34 and France, settling in: 92–98 and Inquisition: 92–94 judería of Seville: 24–25, 27, 30, 32–34 and Lisbon massacre (1506): 92 and marine insurance: 96, 101 as New Christians in Europe: 92–103 and Portugal, refuge in: 92 as royal officers: 26 synagogues in Seville: 25, 31–34 taxation of: 26, 33, 61–62, 92 and Villadiego: 131 Jiménez de Rada, Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo: 132–33

João I, King of Portugal: 118, 150 Joachim of Fiore: 114, 117 John I, King of Castile and León: 68 John II, King of Castile and León: 56, 62, 66 John IV, Duke of Brittany: 47 John of Hexham: 182 Joseph ibn Naghrila: 85 Juan, Prince of Asturias and Girona: 212–16, 220 Juan de Austria, Don: 149 Juan de Flandes, painter: 213, 218, 219, 220 Juana, wife of Philip I of Castle, Duke of Burgundy: 212, 220 Juana Manuel, wife of Enrique II of Castile and León: 28 Julius Caesar: 148 Katherine, saint: 222 knights, urban (caballeros de cuantia; caballeros ciudadanos): 25–26, 30 La Coruña: 41–43, 45, 49–50, 222 La Guardia: 41–42 La Popelinière, Alexandre Le Riche de: 145 La Rábida: 191 La Rochelle: 44 Land of Cockaygne: 184 Langemark: 44 Laredo: 41–43, 45–47, 49–50, 220 Las Navas de Tolosa: 114, 128, 182, 214 Last World Emperor tradition see encubertismo Laszlo IV, King of Hungary: 183 Lateran Council, Fourth (1215): 97 León, Lucrecia de: 111–12

23 7

2 38

i n dex

Leonor of Castile, wife of Edward I of England: 44 Lepanto: 110, 149 Lequeitio: 42, 45 Lerma, duke of: 113, 163, 165, 167, 169 Les Encartaciones: 49 Liber iudicorum (Fuero juzgo): 129–30 Libourne, treaty of (1366): 47 Lille: 44 Lima: 111 Lincoln: 44 Lipsius, Justus: 140 De politica: 161 Lisbon: 39, 93, 143 Inquisition in: 92, 94 Logroño: 48 London: 212, 220, 222–23 as trading hub: 12, 45, 49 Lope de Vega, Jerusalén conquistada: 113–14 Llull, Ramón: 190 Longjumeau, André de: 190 Lopes, Fernão: 150 López de Cañete, Cristóbal, Compendio de los pronosticos y baticinios antiguos y modernos: 116–17 López de Gomara, Francisco, Historial General de las Indias: 169–70 López de Pisuerga, Martín, Archbishop of Toledo: 132–33 López de Velasco, Juan: 172 Loyola, Ignatius de: 159 Lucian: 174 Luna, Álvaro de, privado of John II of Castile and León: 57, 64, 66 Lyon: 98

Machado, Hernando de: 168 Machiavelli, Niccolò: 149, 164, 173 Madrid: 93–94, 111, 157, 159–60, 162–63, 165, 168–69, 213, 223 Cortes of: 57, 60, 62 Madrid, Diego de, shoemaker to Catalina of Aragon: 221 Madrigal, Cortes of: 12, 57–58 and abuses in taxes: 58–68 and confiscatory taxation: 63–65, 67 and restoration of monarch’s authority: 65–67 Mahomat ben Mahomat: 201 Majorca: 45, 80, 128 Málaga: 201–02, 205–06, 216 Mallorca: 45, 220 Mameranus, Nicholas, Carmen gratulatorium: 109, 112 Manuel I, King of Portugal: 220 Manuel, Elvira, Doña, attendant to Catalina of Aragon: 220 Manuel, Manrique: 220 Manuel, Pedro de Deza: 110 Margarit, Joan, Paralipomenon Hispaniae: 143 María, sister of Catalina of Aragon: 212–13, 215, 220 Maria de Santa Domingo, Sor, Dominican beata: 108 Mariana, Juan de: 150, 152 Historia general de España: 145 Marillac, Michel de: 100 Marmolejo, Alfonso Fernández del: 30 Martín, Ramón: 189 Martínez, Diego, cathedral prior of Seville: 29 Martínez, Ferran, Archdeacon of Écija: 12 anti-Jewish preaching: 25, 29, 33

index

and Hospital of St Martha: 23–24, 29–30, 33–34 as Seville cathedral administrator: 28–30 Martire, Petrus: 144 Mary, Queen of Aragon: 200 Mary I, Queen of England: 109 Mary, Virgin: 152 Medina del Campo: 48, 212, 218, 220–21, 223 Treaty of: 216 mendicant movement missionary work of: 189–92 and new spaces, invention of: 181–82, 187–92 Mexico: 148, 169 Miranda, Andrés de, Dominican monk: 217 Moclín: 215 Moheb, Isaac: 32 Mondoñedo: 41 Mongols: 182–84, 190–91 Montaigne, Michel de: 147 Montano, Benito Arias: 159, 163 Montoro: 216 Montoya, Catalina de: 220 Montpellier: 44 Montreuil: 44 Morales, Ambrosio de: 141, 143 Antigüedades de las ciudades de España: 146 Morocco: 183, 191, 205–06 Motrico: 41, 46–47 Mozarabs: 190 Muhammad V, King of Granada: 200 Muhamad VIII, King of Granada: 201 Muhammad IX the Left-Handed, King of Granada: 200–02, 205, 215

Mu‘izz al-Dawla, son of ‘Alī b. Mujāhid: 84 Mujāhid, emir of Denia: 76, 78, 82–83 Murcia: 213, 216 Muslims in Iberia: 33, 142, 181–83 and conversion, forced: 91, 102 and dar al-Islam: 185, 197, 202, 206–07 Hafsids: 200–03 historiography, Arab: 185–86 interrogation of: 15, 198–99, 201–07 as marginalized in Arab world: 185–86 Marinids: 200 mendicant missions to: 189–92 mobility of: 204–07 as moriscos: 110, 112–16, 161 mosques of Seville: 23 Nasrids: 200–02, 206, 211 naval vessels of: 201–04 pirates: 202–03, 206 scholars: 186 as slaves/captives: 25, 198–99, 201–07 taxation of: 62 Zayyanids: 200 Nájera: 48 Navarre: 128, 133, 144 Navarrete: 48 Nebrija, Antonio de: 124–25, 143–44 Nebrija, Sancho de: 143–44 New Granada: 165 Noya: 41–42 Nuñez de Guzmān, Ramiro: 142 Núñez Saraiba, Juan: 93 Nürnberg Memorbuch: 32

239

240

i n dex

Olivares, Count-Duke of: 93 Oña, Pedro de, Arauco Domado: 167–68 Ondárroa: 42 Oran: 201 Ortelius, Abraham: 152 Osma: 220 Oviedo: 41 Özberg, Khan of Golden Horde: 191 Padrón: 42 Páez de Castro, Juan: 143 Palencia, Alonso de: 142 Palencia, Cortes of: 57 Palencia de Fernández, Diego, Historia de Perú: 172 Palermo: 202 Palma: 45 Pantano, Giovanni: 140 Paris, Matthew: 101, 188 Parthenay: 44 Pasquier, Étienne: 150 Patrizzi, Francesco: 140 Pedro I, King of Castile and León: 26, 32, 47 Peñafort, Ramón de: 189 Pérez, Domingo (of Santander): 43 Pérez, Domingo (of Seville): 23 Pérez, Pedro, prebendary of Seville cathedral: 24 Pérez de Guzmān, Fernán, Generaciones y semblanzas: 141 Pérez de Pámanes, Pero (of Santander): 43 Peru: 111, 144, 157, 167–68, 170, 172 Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny: 189 Book Against the Sect or Heresy of the Saracens: 182 Philip I, King of Castile, Duke of Burgundy: 220

Philip II, Duke of Burgundy: 48 Philip II Augustus, King of France: 96, 113 Philip V the Tall, King of France: 96 Philip VI of Valois, King of France: 46 Philip II, King of Spain and Portugal: 143, 148, 165 and ‘counter-monarchs’: 110–12 marriage to Mary I of England: 109 and moriscos: 110, 112–16 as Universal Monarch: 108–10, 112–14, 118 Philip III, King of Spain and Por­ tugal: 15, 145, 157, 160, 162, 169 as Universal Monarch: 113 Philip IV, King of Spain, as Universal Monarch: 113, 116–17 Pian de Carpine, Giovanni de: 190 Pichón, Yuçaf: 27 Piedrola, Migeul de: 111–12 Pisa: 77–78, 80 Plato: 162 Plencia: 42 Pliny: 184 Plutarch: 147 Plymouth: 222 Poggibonsi, Niccolò da, Libro d’Oltramare: 189 Pole, Reginald, Archbishop of Canterbury, cardinal: 109–10 Pontevedra: 41–42 Poperinge: 44 Portocarrero, Alfonso Fernández: 27, 29 Portugalete: 42 Presentacions e confessions de captius: 198–99, 201–03 Provence: 44 pseudo-Methodius: 117 Ptolemy: 184

index

Pujades, Jeroni, Crónica universal del Principado de Cataluña: 146 Pujol, Joan: 149 Pulgar, Fernando de: 212 Pulgar, Hernando del: 143 Quevedo, Francisco de: 93, 147 Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona: 80 Reims: 44 Ribadeneyra, Pedro de, Historia eclesiástica del cisma del reino de Inglaterra: 151 Ribadeo: 41–42 Richard I Lion-heart, King of England: 113–14 Richard of San Germano, Chronicle Regni Siciliae: 183 Robertello, Francesco: 140 Rocroi: 117 Rodrigues, Diogo: 94 Romanos: 218 Rouen: 44 Rubruck, William: 190 Sahagún, Bernadino de, Fray: 170 Saint Omer: 44 Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria: 113 Salamanca: 144, 159, 175, 215, 220 Salazar, Juan de, Política española: 115–16 Salazar, María de: 220 Salonica: 93 Sambuccus, Joannes: 140 San Pedro, Lorenzo de, Diálogo llamado philippino: 110 San Sebastián: 41–42, 44–47, 49–50 San Vicente de la Barquera: 41, 43, 45, 50

Sancho, Abbot of Santander, Bishop-elect of Toledo: 43 Sancho VI the Wise, King of Navarre: 41 Sanders, Nicholas: 151 Sandoval y Rojas, Bernardo, Inquisitor General: 163 Sandwich: 45 Santa Fé: 218 Santa María de Ortigueira: 42 Santa María de Valbuena: 128 Santander: 41–46, 49–50 Santiago, Chile: 168 Santiago de Compostela: 39, 41, 182, 215, 220–21 Santo Domingo de Silos: 128 Sarasquo, Esteban de: 45 Saul, biblical king: 111 Schottus, Andreas, Hispaniae illustratae: 152 Sebastian I, King of Portugal: 110, 118 Segovia: 48, 218 Seneca: 184 Seville: 159, 212–13, 217, 220 Alcázar: 24 cathedral of: 23–24, 27 canonries: 26 donations to: 28–29 El Libro Blanco: 29 properties of: 28–29 Christian conquest of (1248): 32, 42, 182–83 and Hospital of St Martha: 23–25 Jews in: 12, 24–34 and knights, urban: 25–26, 30 mosques of: 23, 30, 32 scholars in: 186 and trade: 45, 48 urban landscape and charitable contributions: 12, 25–34 Shakespeare, William: 173

2 41

242

i n dex

Sicard, Bishop of Cremona, Chronica Universalis: 182–83 Siete partidas: 129–30 Sigüenza, José de, Fray: 162, 171 Simancas: 143, 167 Simon of Kéza, Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum: 183–84 Sluys: 45 Smith, Adam: 99 Sobrarbe: 152 Solomon, biblical king: 109 Soria: 48 Soria, Juan de, chancellor of Fernando III of Castile: 125, 132–33 Chronica latina regum Castellae: 133 Southampton: 45 Suárez de Figueroa, Cristóbal: 139 Suárez de Figueroa, García: 160 Suriani: 189–90 Talavera: 128 Tangier: 206 Tatars: 191 taxation abuses in: 58–68 alcabalas (sales taxes): 58, 60 and Castilian fiscal system, development of: 55–57 confiscatory: 63–65, 67 and Cortes of Madrigal: 12, 57–68 diezmos y aduanas (import taxes): 43–44, 61 and Islamic states: 83 and Jews: 26, 33, 61–62, 92 monedos (extraordinary levy): 58–62 pedido (distribution levy): 57–59, 62

portazgos (domestic tolls): 63–64, 66 servicio (extraordinary levy): 57–58 and sumptuary ordinance: 62 tercias (ecclesiastical tithe): 58 and town-ports: 42–43 and urban knights: 25–26 Tenorio, Alfonso Jofré, admiral: 29 Tenorio, Elvira: 29 Toledo: 141, 221 Cortes of: 57, 60, 62 and Inquisition: 93 in prophecies: 111–12 scholars in: 186 synagogue ‘El Tránsito’: 32 and trade: 48 Toledo, Francisco de, Viceroy of Peru: 144 Tomar, Cortes of (1581): 110 Torella, Jerónimo, ‘De Rege Valentino’: 107–08 Torquemada, Juan de, Fray, Monarquía Indiana: 169–70 Torre, Felipe de la, Institución de un rey cristiano: 109 Tortosa: 213, 218 Toulouse: 94 Tournai: 44 town-ports: 12, 39 and Castilian Civil War: 47 and economic privileges: 42–43 foundation of, and royal charters: 40–42, 44 and Hundred Years’ War: 46–47, 50 and maritimization of peninsular North: 43–50 Trasmiera: 49 Trento: 152 Tribaldos de Toledo, Luis: 175

index

Tribunal del Alcázar: 33 Tunis: 200–03, 205–06 Twelve Years’ Truce: 93 Úbeda: 217 Ucello, Paolo: 101 Universal Monarchy see encubertismo Urbino: 101 Ursula, saint: 222 Vaca de Castro, Pedro, Archbishop of Seville: 163 Valdés, Alfonso de, Latin Secretary of Emperor Charles V: 108, 112 Valdiva, Luis de: 168 Valencia: 116, 128, 143, 223 archives of: 197 and Jews, forced conversion of: 24, 34 and Muslim captives: 15, 198–99, 201–07 and trade: 45 Valencia, Diego de, shoemaker to Catalina of Aragon: 221 Valencia, Pedro de biography of: 158–59 on Chile, history of: 166–75 Consideraciones…acerca las enfermedades y salud del reino: 164 Discurso contra la ociosidad: 163 Discurso sobre el pergamino y láminas de Granada: 163 and relaciones geográficas: 165 as royal chronicler: 159–65 and self-censorship: 15, 157, 163, 169–75 Valencia de Alcantará: 220 Valera, Diego de: 64, 212 Valla, Lorenzo: 141–42, 146

Valladolid: 213, 216–218, 222 Cortes of: 57 Santa María church: 128 and trade: 48 Vanega, Inés de: 220 Vasseus, Ioannes: 144 Velasco, Juan Fernández de: 160 Velázquez de Acevedo, Juan: 147 Venice, as trading hub: 12, 44, 49 Verzosa, Juan: 148 Viciana, Martín de: 150 Crónica de Valencia: 144 Viladamor, Antoni: 143, 150 Història general de Catalunya: 144–46 Villadiego: 131 Villani, Giovanni: 96, 101–02 Viperano, Giovanni Antonio: 140 Vitoria: 45 Viveiro: 41–42 Vives, Juan Luis: 150–52 De ratione dicendi: 140 De tradendis disciplinis: 140 William of Tripoli, Statu Saracenorum: 189 Winchelsea: 46–47 Wolf, Johannes: 140 Woodstock: 220 Xerte: 218 Ximénez de Rada, Rodrigo, De rebus Hispaniae: 143 Yprès: 44 Yuçaf de Écija (el Levi): 31–32 Yusuf I, King of Granada: 200 Yusuf III, King of Granada: 200 Yusuf of Almeria, corsair (Yusuf al-Mudayyan): 202–03 Yusuf of Tlemcen, prince: 200

243

244

i n dex

Zafra: 158–59, 161, 168 Zamora, Cortes of: 57, 62 Zaragoza: 143, 151–52, 213, 216, 220 Zubia: 217–18 Zurita, Jerónimo: 14, 142–43, 145, 150–51 Anales de las Corona de Aragón: 144

CURSOR MUNDI

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Titles in Series Chris Jones, Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and its Rulers in Late-Medieval France (2007) Simha Goldin, The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom (2008) Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Patrick Geary, and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk (2008) William G. Walker, ‘Paradise Lost’ and Republican Tradition from Aristotle to Machiavelli (2009) Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Material Restoration: A Fragment from EleventhCentury Echternach in a Nineteenth-Century Parisian Codex (2010) Saints and their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe (c.1000–1200), ed. by Haki Antonsson and Ildar Garipzanov (2010) Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, ed. by Sharon E. J. Gerstel and Robert S. Nelson (2011) ‘This Earthly Stage’: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. by Brett D. Hirsch and Christopher Wortham (2011)

Alan J. Fletcher, The Presence of Medieval English Literature: Studies at the Interface of History, Author, and Text in a Selection of Middle English Literary Landmarks (2012) Vehicles of Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture, ed. by Robert Wisnovsky, Faith Wallis, Jamie C. Fumo, and Carlos Fraenkel (2012) Claudio Moreschini, Hermes Christianus: The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and Chris­tian Thought (2012) The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World, ed. by Maijastina Kahlos (2012) Barbara Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–1585) (2012) Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Directions in Renaissance Ethics, c.1350 – c.1650, ed. by David A. Lines and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (2013) Luigi Andrea Berto, The Political and Social Vocabulary of John the Deacon’s ‘Istoria Veneticorum’ (2013) Writing Down the Myths, ed. by Joseph Falaky Nagy (2013) Charles Russell Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England (2013) Wendy J. Turner, Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medi­eval England (2013) Tanya S. Lenz, Dreams, Medicine, and Literary Practice: Exploring the Western Literary Tradition Through Chaucer (2013) Viking Archaeology in Iceland: Mosfell Archaeological Project, ed. by Davide Zori and Jesse Byock (2014) Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient (2015) Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The Myth of Republicanism in Renaissance Italy (2015) The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections, ed by Nancy M. Frelick (2016) Ilan Shoval, King John’s Delegation to the Almohad Court (1212): Medieval Interreligious Interactions and Modern Historiography (2016) Ksenia Bonch Reeves, Visions of Unity After the Visigoths: Early Iberian Latin Chronicles and the Mediterranean World (2016) Ersie C. Burke, The Greeks of Venice, 1498–1600: Immigration, Settlement, and Integration (2016)

Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. by Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire (2017) Writing History in Medieval Poland: Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the Chronica Polo­norum, ed by Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński (2017) Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond: New Perspectives on his Poetry and In­fluence, ed. by James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres (2018) James L. Smith, Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture: Case Studies from Twelfth-Century Monasticism (2018) Visions of North in Premodern Europe, ed. by Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum (2018) Temporality and Mediality in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. by Christian Kiening and Martina Stercken (2018) Andreas Vesalius and the ‘Fabrica’ in the Age of Printing: Art, Anatomy, and Printing in the Italian Renaissance, ed. by Rinaldo Fernando Canalis and Massimo Ciavolella (2018) Text, Transmission, and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, 1000–1500, ed. by Carrie Griffin and Emer Purcell (2018) Mythical Ancestry in World Cultures, 1400–1800, ed. by Sara Trevisan (2018) Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Premodern World: European and Middle Eastern Cul­tures, from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. by Costanza Gislon Dopfel, Alessandra Foscati, and Charles Burnett (2019) Geoffrey Symcox, Jerusalem in the Alps: The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy (2019) Disease and Disability in Medieval and Early Modern Art and Literature, ed. by Rinaldo F. Canalis and Massimo Ciavolella (2021) Victorine Restoration: Essays on Hugh of St Victor, Richard of St Victor, and Thomas Gallus, ed. by Robert J. Porwoll and David Allison Orsbon (2021) Order into Action: How Large-Scale Concepts of World Order Determine Practices in the Premodern World, ed. by Klaus Oschema and Christoph Mauntel (2022)

In Preparation Visions of Medieval History in North America and Europe: Studies on Cultural Identity and Power, ed. by Courtney M. Booker, Hans Hummer, and

Dana M. Polanichka