Order and Chivalry: Knighthood and Citizenship in Late Medieval Castile (The Middle Ages Series) 0812242122, 9780812242126

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O R D E R A N D C H I VA L R Y

THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

OR DER A ND CH I VA L RY K NIGHTHOOD A ND CITIZENSHIP IN L ATE MEDIEVA L C ASTILE

Jesús D. Rodríguez-Velasco

t ran sl at e d by

Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson

universit y o f pe n n sylvania press phil ade l ph ia  oxford

Publication of this volume was aided by a grant from the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities Simultaneously contracted in Spanish with Ediciones Akal, Madrid, as Ciudadanía, soberanía monárquica y caballería: Poética del orden de caballería English edition copyright © 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rodríguez Velasco, Jesús D. Order and chivalry : knighhood and citizenship in late medieval Castile / Jesús D. Rodríguez-Velasco ; translated by Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson. p. cm. — (The Middle Ages Series) 978-0-8122-4212-6 (hardcover : acid-free paper) “Simultaneously contracted in Spanish with Ediciones Akal, Madrid, as Ciudadanía, soberania monárquica y caballeria: Poética del orden de caballeria.” Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Knights and knighthood—Spain—Castile—History. 2. Social classes—Spain— Castile—History. 3. Feudalism—Spain—Castile—History. 4. Chivalry—Spain Castile. 5. Castile (Spain)—Social conditions. 6. Castile (Spain)—History, Military. CR5819.R636 2010 940.1—dc22 2009046017

Je dédie ce livre à Aurélie Vialette

Hier—das meint diese Stadt die von dir und der Wolke regiert wird von ihren Abenden her. —Paul Celan

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contents

1

Introduction

One. Ritual as a Strategy for Chivalric Creation 15 Two. Poetics of Fraternity 46 Three. The Presence of the Confraternity 84 Four. The Order of the Sash 118 Five. Rewriting the Order 160 Six. Poetics of the Chivalric Emblem 199 Conclusions

228

Notes 234 Bibliography 267 Index

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Acknowledgments 291

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Introduction Poetics of the Ordo

This investigation arises from the question of how a social class is created. Such an inquiry belongs in an exceedingly complex territory where it is necessary to parse the diversity of voices that participate in this creation as well as the interests that motivate each of these voices. It is difficult to determine whether a social class is the object of a creation, or the subject of that creation. One of the aims of this study is to probe this difference by examining the various forces and voices that created the chivalric class. Chivalry is an integral principle of Western politics, society, and morality. It encompasses the framework of moral and political categories that underpin interpersonal networks as well as relationships between genders or between institutions throughout Western culture—categories that have ramifications in everyday Western vocabulary, such as loyalty, gallantry, adventure, friendship, civil life, and honor. Some of its ramifications are also among the most questionable of Western political, military, and moral categories: crusade, reconquest, gender inequality, and social asymmetry. Nevertheless, knighthood subsumes all these concepts, as if this class in a permanent state of creation—a perennially inchoate poetics—were the ideal laboratory for the incorporation of all these ideas into discourse. The most cogent argument for the social and political worth of the chivalric class is the fascinating strategy that it represents: the creation of knighthood is a process that transforms disorderly violence into institutionally regulated violence, and sets a structure that buttresses the civic values of a peaceful society. This study also seeks to ascertain how this political transformation of civilian life took place during the advent of modernity. This research is a radical departure from my previous work on chivalry. In it, I endeavor to overstep the traditional debate on chivalry presented in my 1996 book, El debate sobre la caballería en el siglo XV (The Debate Regarding Chivalry in the Fifteenth Century). I will venture into a scarcely studied field that is fundamental to understand the construction of modern structures of

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power. The present study will focus on how certain bourgeois groups that accrued a growing economic importance set up new spheres of power by invoking and reinventing discourses on chivalry. It will also examine the genealogy of the bourgeois voice and its process of institutionalization as it came to dominate urban centers and became one of the central powers of the imperium. This genealogy will reveal how rising bourgeois groups deployed their strategies by producing manuscripts, both public and private, and building an archive that they sought to control. These documents reveal how these bourgeois groups express their newly acquired voice, how they display their bodies and occupy the urban space, and how they manifest this, as a new expression of power, before the king, thereby creating a modification in the realm of monarchical sovereignty. The main objects of inquiry in this book are certain documents and their creators, who set forth the rules for others to follow. These texts resemble the law without being the law. They are mostly private documents that unveil the relationship between the group of human beings they interpellate and a particular class, or ordo. Each of these documents constitutes, implicitly, a poetics of the ordo. The poetics of the ordo, or poetics of the order, is the textual enactment that will lead to the creation, construction, and configuration of a social class.1 In the Middle Ages there were no social classes per se—or at least none that were consonant with the notion of social class that arose in the West following the revolutionary periods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An ordo is the basic concept used in the Middle Ages to designate a self-contained social group with a well-defined sociopolitical role. An ordo is also known as an estate; indeed, in medieval Spanish the term estado is more frequently used than orden.2 Nevertheless, the concept of ordo that will be used in this book differs from the exact concept of ordo often theorized during the Middle Ages. The aim of this book is not to build a particular theory of ordo, and, likewise, it is not a research on Medieval theories of ordo. Therefore, there will be little accord between the concept of ordo with which we will work in this study and the one engaged by Georges Duby in his classic Les trois ordres (1973) or, more recently, by Francesco Maiolo in Medieval Sovereignty (2007), where he analyzes the theoretical, political, and legal aspects of ordo in the Italian fourteenth century—taking Marsile of Padua and Bartolo of Sassoferrato as a point of departure. This book explores pragmatic theories on how an ordo is created, instead of advancing an already codified theory to which it must conform on a conceptual level.

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It is necessary to reassess the notion of social class, since the shift between social class and ordo plays an implicit yet critical role in this book. An ordo is predicated on its own containment, following the theological hierarchical principle that engendered it—the Celestial hierarchy by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite—and was adopted by feudalism later on. This principle informs the familiar medieval aphorism that dictated that every man must remain in his estate. An ordo is not a description of any given or ideal society, but rather a topology of society, a theory of its limits and frontiers. It not only delineates what belongs to the subject, but also what is beyond its reach. A social class, on the other hand, is dialectical and comparative; incessantly questioning its own limits or even the assumption that it is a container that can be socially defined. The key focus of this study is the displacement between ordo and class. In the documents studied here the poetics of the ordo questions whether it is a social container with defined limits, thereby forcing it into a dialectic. There inheres in this dialectic an unbounded respect toward the concept of order and, consequently, toward the segregation of a society divided into orders. It would be difficult to find a text or other cultural object that proposes the dissolution of society’s orders—or of the social model based on the concept of order. Any social dialectic articulated around the poetics of the ordo has order itself as its referent: class, category, and structure are not subject to destruction or deconstruction. Neither does the poetics of the order seek to advance an alternative social system to that of the ordo, or of the state. Rather, its inquiry attempts to read between the folds of the existing system. The dialectics of order is not exterior, but interior to the very concept of order. The reason for this respect of a system of order as a social model, lies in the ways in which the concept of ordo is used as a compass to seek peace. Peace and order are in a reciprocal relationship: any form of peace is order and order is fundamental for any form of peace. Peace is at the root of medieval political theology, owing to the wide influence of Augustinian thought throughout the entire Middle Ages and beyond. It is perhaps the concept that most clearly illustrates political theology: existence—the act of being—in any possible domain, is depicted in Augustinian theory as politics, as civilian life. Civilian life is thereby underwritten by a typology of nine categories of peace that range from the particular (inner peace) to the most general (eternal peace).3 Heavenly Jerusalem and earthly Jerusalem—the city of God and the city of men—are mutual projections of each other: earthly Jerusalem is modeled after the heavenly version, but the population of heavenly Jerusalem depends on the actions of earthly beings. Giorgio Agamben has expressed this idea in a phrase that echoes Augustinian politics and metaphysics: “Politics therefore

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appears as the truly fundamental structure of Western metaphysics insofar as it occupies the threshold on which the relation between the living and the logos is realized.”4 In this case, the threshold is the Augustinian concept of peace defined as order. Originally, the ordo was like a contract allowing pacification. In medieval vocabulary, peace is etymologically related to the idea of pact: it is a negotiation toward a degree of stability derived from a shared acknowledgment of political, social, and power relations.5 Saint Augustine expresses the relation of dependency between social peace and order as follows: Pax animae irrationalis, ordinata requies appetitionum. Pax animae rationalis, ordinata cognitionis actionisque consensio. Pax corporis et animae, ordinata vita et salus animantis. Pax hominis mortalis et Dei, ordinata in fide sub aeterna lege oboedientia. Pax hominum, ordinata concordia. Pax domus, ordinata imperandi atque oboediendi concordia cohabitantium. Pax civitatis, ordinata imperandi atque oboediendi concordia civium. Pax caelestis civitatis, ordinatissima et concordissima societas fruendi Deo et invicem in Deo. Pax omnium rerum, tranquillitas ordinis. Ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua cuique loca tribuens dispositio. [The peace of the irrational soul is the harmonious repose of the appetites, and that of the rational soul, the harmony of knowledge and action. The peace of body and soul is the well-ordered and harmonious life and health of the living creature. Peace between man and God is the well-ordered obedience of faith to eternal law. Peace between man and man is well-ordered concord. Domestic peace is the well-ordered concord between those of the family who rule and those who obey. Civil peace is a similar concord among the citizens. The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquility of order. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place. (690)] 6 The poetics of the ordo is one of the doors leading to the house of power where peace and ordo are negotiated, thus becoming power. Model and system, the ordo is also a pact, a work to restore the idea of peace in all its typological and social breadth in the domains of the political and the metaphysical. Throughout this book, the metaphor of power as space, and more concretely—

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following thus the Augustinian typology of peace spaces—as a lodging, a house, a chamber, a room, and a city, is crucial. Thus this research will delve into those spaces: the rooms of negotiation, the courts, the royal chamber, the practice of the space, and the city (both inside and outside its walls). By means of the poetics of ordo, I will explore the social, political, and, above all, the jurisdictional interactions within civil and urban spaces, where knightly confraternities establish their relation to monarchical sovereignty.

Chivalric Fable This relationship between peace and order is essential to an understanding of the role of chivalry as a laboratory for social change. Medieval knighthood rises amid the tempestuous fog of groups who engaged in recalcitrant violence. It succeeds in incorporating itself into institutions of peace before it ultimately consolidates these very institutions. That is, chivalry emerges from a system of institutional violence to become a substantial component in a discourse of peace. The creation of chivalry takes place within the category of nobility and, during its first two centuries, chivalry’s regulation bifurcates into ecclesiastic stipulations and the norms of a fledgling monarchy.7 The stigma of the organization of a social class, or ordo, between ecclesiastical power and monarchical power will remain with knighthood throughout its history and will place it at the center of power dynamics: shifts in which the acquisition of judicial, jurisdictional, political, and cultural power is negotiated and settled into practice. Within dynamics of power the documents and alliances studied here advance new theses on knighthood as a vehicle for the transformation of authority, especially urban and monarchical jurisdiction and sovereignty. How is chivalry used to achieve these ends? The answer is what this book refers to as the “chivalric fable.” The chivalric fable is the process through which chivalry becomes a political, juridical, and intellectual tool. The hermeneutic principle of this process is partially rooted in Richard Rorty’s concept of social hope.8 The chivalric fable conveys the hope that through a series of diversely codified political and moral acts, the subject can achieve social recognition and assume jurisdictional authority. The fable, an Aristotelian concept after all, is a rhetorical device and a literary structure. Literary structure is the most prevalent form in the theoretical construction of knighthood. A theoretical articulation through literature may posit courtly life as the construction of a space of cultural cooperation where nobles and clerics come together—and where performances are staged

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based on all manner of narratives, particularly those with a literary or musical element. The theoretical efficiency of the literary narrative is essential to rhetoric and poetic theory, from its inception, by way of affectum—emotions, or the several forms of catharsis. Rorty has reiterated this aspect; according to him, literary construction aids the articulation of dialectical experiences— comparative descriptions of the world and “language games”—in a way that the abstract forms of theory or philosophy cannot, since it is based on the relationship between theory and human emotions.9 In the case of knighthood, these emotions, catharses, or affects are related to some of the fundamental themes of the chivalric framework: anagogic and tropologic salvation through actions, love, and friendship. The chivalric fable was originally staged by clerical voices in the space of the court. The fable is woven around a fairly simple, but highly effective narrative structure. The plot (or rhetorical argumentum) usually involves a character who lacks name or fame and can only bear a blank coat of arms— with no heraldic signs. Either this character occupies a dubious or unknown position in his lineage, or his lineage has declined.10 In the fable he may earn a name, distinction, heraldic signs, fame, and status within the structure of power through an individual display of virtue dictated by a theoretically articulated chivalric model. This denouement of the fable renders social hope explicit. These texts articulate a chivalric model that frequently assumes the structure of a pedagogical fable to secure theoretical depth, as the narrative pauses to allow a qualified individual to posit this theory to the protagonist. A salient example is Lancelot, perhaps the most universal of medieval knights, whose chivalric model is based on the education that he receives from the Lady of the Lake, just as his kindred are exiled.11 In another example, the Valencian novel Tirant lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell (published in 1490), Tirant, traveling to the courts that will knight him, is delayed so that a hermit who had once been a noble knight can instruct him. In their meeting and subsequent interaction, Tirant and the hermit are both separated from society: the former because he is yet to become someone (although he will later become the megaduke of the Byzantine Empire, and nearly the emperor), and the latter because he has decided not to be someone, after abandoning chivalric life.12 This pedagogic fable is similar to the one depicted in its sources, Ramon Llull’s treatise Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria (1279–1283) and the thirteenth-century romance Guillem de Vàroic.13 There are multiple chivalric models engendered by this pedagogic fable. Among the many examples I could mention are Merlin’s education of King Arthur; Don Juan

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Manuel’s hermit knight; Zifar and his two sons, Garfín and Roboán, in the Libro del cavallero Zifar (ca. 1330); or, in the same work, the relatively unique case of Zifar’s enlightenment after meeting Ribaldo, a popular, non-noble and nonchivalric character who becomes the “caballero Amigo” (Sir Friend) and “conde Amigo” (Count Friend).14 The fable launches several crucial transformations. The most relevant of these changes occurs when the meaning of chivalric virtue is fixed or when the model that the knight must follow is constructed. The order of discourse can change in the secondary pedagogical fable, incorporated into the larger fable, once a concrete social hope is advanced. Hence, it is in the process of defining a social hope that the discourse of chivalry is reformulated.15 The chivalric fable, however, comprises a much more complex problem. It answers the question of how knighthood may be used productively. This question addresses the theoretical problem of how a chivalric fable comes to life in all its political, social, and pedagogical angles; as well as the pragmatic one of how it may transform a concrete order. It is in the establishment of this direct relationship between the theory and the praxis of knighthood where the sway of chivalric order as a social hope is settled. What, exactly, constitutes this social hope? How does it manifest itself? The discourse on knighthood rendered at the heart of the fable is reformulated upon the sphere of social hope. This social hope is a discursive act, a performance in which individuals or groups (chivalric orders or urban knighthood congregations, for instance) synthesize their depiction of the sociopolitical benefits of chivalry.16 Social hope is thus manifold. It entails the consolidation of a collective well-being and of possible aspirations reserved by, and for, particular segments of society. Chivalry as we know it takes shape around the eleventh century and the pedagogical and ritualistic model that frames it is oriented toward the creation of controls for social violence. Clerical voices that appropriate and dominate the discourse on chivalry center it in the social ambit of nobility. This is a nobility regulated by Christian law and designed to benefit other social groups. The aspiration, or hope, that is created for them is that of salvation. This anagogic hope, however, has a significant tropological element: from this moment forward, knighthood will evolve not as the fearsome social class that it was but as the defender of the weak, the most generous and courteous class. This model gave rise to others, including the idea of courtly generosity (largitas or largesce in the medieval vocabulary), dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as well the representation of the court as schola, an educational institution with a political angle.17

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Chivalry is a political and social apparatus (dispositif) where every locus of action or cultural practice is theoretically defined. This notion may be elucidated by Clifford Geertz’s adaptation of Weber’s concept of culture, which proposes that since man “is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of laws but an interpretive one in search of meaning.”18 These webs of significance—the whole semiotic, spatial universe, the articulation of a voice, modes of representation, and systems of relationships—are cultural operations that make it possible to construct both social and private hope. It is therefore fitting to delve into the cultural conditions that led to the construction of social hope through chivalry. The analysis of this chivalric social hope reveals that not only are these hopes plural, but they also form complex constellations. Because of the social hope that sustains it, an ordo is an apparatus that can be useful to many structures and discourses of power. Different classes or centers of power can invoke the social hope of chivalry to demand different and even mutually exclusive privileges. King Alfonso XI’s reasons for creating a discourse on chivalry are quite distinct from those of Don Juan Manuel, yet both dispute the hope that chivalry could entail for the social and political life of Castilian ricos hombres (high nobility), caballeros hidalgos (noble knights), or caballeros villanos (bourgeois knights, non-nobles who lived mainly in the cities). A distinction is often made between the discourse of chivalry and the discourse of nobility—or between clerical discourse and that of lay nobility—but this distinction is a delusion of historiography derived from the tendency of nineteenth-century scientific logic to polarize branches of traditions. What the genealogy of knighthood shows us is not that there are two branches of chivalric social hope, but that chivalry constantly develops and incorporates innovative discourses and orders. The poetics of the ordo is an attempt to understand the specific creative and institutional processes that reconfigured chivalry in the liminal space between theory and practice. This process deploys a strong juridical language that constitutes a particular and dialectic expression of a public hope by inserting the institution in a dialogue between pedagogy and narrative that is at the core of the chivalric fable.

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The Texts The didactic nature of medieval literature is always emphasized. The term “medieval literature” itself encompasses textual forms that are clearly beyond what modern traditions deem to be literature—especially after the eighteenth century.19 Medieval literary didacticism includes narrative texts, poetry, and dramas yet also large compilations of philosophical, theological, political, and juridical texts, among others. It is not unusual to find chapters devoted to the Siete Partidas, for example, in medieval literary anthologies. Nonetheless, the concept of didacticism is ill suited to the vastness of what we usually refer to as “medieval literature.” Didacticism is based on the transmission of a series of relatively stable codes, where every textual resource available is engaged. This hinders our appreciation of the complexity of the textual and intellectual production of the Middle Ages. The problem of didacticism has been addressed by Julian Weiss in The “Mester de Clerecía”: Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-Century Castile, where he concludes that to speak of didactic medieval literature and textual production in general is to undermine the originality of medieval intellectual contributions. Although the weight of tradition is extraordinary, especially when it comes to the rhetorical artifacts at play, the culture of the late Middle Ages was innovative on politics, law, moral relations, and tropological models—even more than anagogic models. Hence I never use the concept of didacticism (assuming it is indeed a concept) or marshal the concept of ideology. I argue that the originality of medieval texts lies in their theoretical reach and in their relentless, permanently inchoate drive to elude ideology and focus on inquiry. The notion that medieval texts are highly theoretical aids the study of texts on knighthood. They are even independent of other textual, literary, and rhetorical texts, as each chivalric text advances a theory on knighthood, on its role in the social, political, and moral universe—and on the path to salvation. Chivalry is theory, and that’s why the embedding of a pedagogical fable within the chivalry fable is of absolute essence. Chivalric theory permeates all the texts on knighthood and produces interactions between them that have not been sufficiently studied. This book will delve into many of them. The most striking example is the historiographic narration of the knightly investiture of Alfonso XI of Castile, as it enacts the chivalric and monarchical theory introduced in a chanson de geste—the Mocedades de Rodrigo—later incorporated into the Crónica de Castilla. This process of interaction is crucial to the creation of chivalric theory and is a constant

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quest to shape diverse cultural discourses. Knighthood is prominently theoretical, so I will also address the interaction among theoretical texts. Although my main sources are the regulations of chivalric institutions, these cannot be read without taking into account the textual and imaginary models that interact with them on a theoretical level.

Dynamics and Forms Knighthood traditionally resides in the diffuse space of adventure and displacements across the physical and mystical frontiers of the kingdom and between the concepts of monarchy and social order. Medieval courts were also adventurous; they were in constant movement and, instead of itinerant, in this book I cast them as nomadic institutions. Even court members were so variable that they were impossible to name. The cleric Walter Map, a government official under the English king Henry II Plantagenet, stated in his book about the court, De nugis curialium (probably written before 1189), that the members of the court were in permanent mutation and that “hodie sumus una multitudo, cras erimus alia” (“to-day we are one number, to-morrow we shall be a different one”).20 This constant shifting is an integral part of the permanent mythology of knighthood. Whenever possible, this book will avoid such indeterminacy to analyze both chivalric citizenship and monarchical sovereignty. It will define, as precisely as possible, what constitutes these spaces, movements, and objects in which the poetics of the chivalric order is enacted. It will engage in a series of methodological considerations regarding the dynamics of power and how they are manifested. Dynamics of power are the processes by which potential and kinetic energies vie for the creation of spaces to negotiate the organization and control of jurisdictions. The metaphors of potential and kinetic energies point to the two central themes of this book: the planning of movement and the creation of networks (as elements of a potential dynamics) and their enactment in spaces in and out of city walls (as elements of a kinetic dynamics). It will examine three actors: the king who seeks the consolidation of central jurisdiction based on monarchical imperium (the ruling principle of modern absolutisms); the nobility, which strives to preserve its jurisdictional privileges vis-à-vis monarchical authority, based on feudal or lordship traditions; and the rising bourgeoisie, which tries to secure participation in the institutions erected by and within monarchical sovereignty.

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A significant portion of this investigation is devoted to the examination of procedures for the assertion of power. There are two main expressions, or signifiers, of power: a documental aesthetics and the production of presence. Documental aesthetics refers to all the formal and formally regulated procedures, generally through legislation and legislative practice, articulated in the realm of the “dead voice” (that is, in authorized writing) to create what thirteenth-century procedural law designates as an “authentic person.”21 Production of presence—a termed coined by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht—implies methods of metonymic creation of resources whose physical appearance interferes with cognitive processes in such a way that the signifier itself becomes an epistemological barrier for the signified. Instead of an interpretation or a hermeneutical cycle, the production of presence evokes another presence—or another absence. From a rhetorical point of view, the enacted presence is a metonymy, instead of a metaphor or an allegory.22 In this study, the production of presence involves books, urban spaces, manifestations of the physical strength of certain forms of citizenship, or material and heraldic signs, among others. The production of these elements will be key to our understanding of the poetics of the order. Each of the six chapters of this book is devoted to the poetics of the chivalric ordo in knighthood’s development and transformation throughout the kingdom of Castile and León. Most studies on chivalry have an ample scope and tend to discuss medieval chivalry in general. The Middle Ages, however, constitute an impregnable period. To address it as a whole while discussing chivalry is to omit a number of issues that require a genealogical perspective rather than a historical approach. In fact, this study conceives of itself as a chapter in a genealogy of chivalry. The chronological expanse covered will be relatively brief—approximately the period between 1300 and 1350—that is, the reign of Alfonso XI of Castile and León. Nonetheless, since most of the problems associated with chivalry during this period arose between the end of the twelfth century and the end of the thirteenth, this earlier period will be our inevitable frame of reference. Likewise, certain political issues regarding urban chivalry and monarchical power, as well as the transformations of chivalry between 1300 and 1350, regarding urban chivalry as well as monarchic power, only come to the fore in later periods and we will also take those into account. Chapter 1 delves into rituals of chivalric incorporation and into the political, juridical, and cultural apparatus articulated through these rituals. This chapter begins with the first Castilian rituals, which take place in the twelfth century, and covers the various issuances of new ones until the mid-fourteenth

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century. The analysis of these rituals will evince the political strategies present in the various theses of entry into knighthood. The reign of Alfonso XI of Castile began with a regency council who governed on behalf of the king. In an attempt to negotiate a degree of power and to secure protection from the regency council and other high-nobility authorities, several Castilian cities organized a “Hermandad de Caballeros” (Brotherhood of Knights) in 1315. This brotherhood produced a document that details rules for its assertion of power, titled Cuaderno de la Hermandad de Caballeros (Manual of the Brotherhood of Knights). Chapter 2 analyzes this Cuaderno as a method of regulation of chivalric structures and citizenship within its jurisdictional spheres. The Hermandad of 1315 comprised a network of cities linked by knighthood. Urban chivalry launched other initiatives, however, that endeavored to set the location of its power within the city. Chapter 3 analyzes such congregations in the city of Burgos, specifically the Cofradía de caballeros de Santa María de Gamonal and the Cofradía de caballeros de Santiago (Confraternities of the Knights of Santa María de Gamonal and of Santiago). This chapter will show how the sway over urban space is asserted and the projection of chivalric citizenship positioned vis-à-vis monarchic sovereignty. These unique confraternities were not led by knights from the noble classes but by the caballería villana, or urban bourgeois knights. The king’s creation of chivalric orders arose simultaneously during this period. The great royal prerogative—which for many years provided a vindication for monarchical authority and absolutism—had resided in the capacity to create nobility, gradually effacing the limits of theological nobility. The king had used knightly investiture initially as a method for the creation of nobility. This bond between monarchical power and knighthood was indeed the lion’s share of royal sovereignty. The importance of the king’s creation of chivalric orders and its relationship to the knightly organizations of different origin is best apprehended in this context. The first noble chivalric order of monarchical origin in Europe is the Order of the Sash, created and organized by King Alfonso XI of Castile. Chapters 4 and 5 analyze this order through extant documents, particularly its regulatory manuscripts. Chapter 6 addresses the external markings that established chivalric presence in both space and time: heraldic emblems. The vast majority of knightly narratives and regulations center around the production of a seal—the chivalric emblem—generally studied from a functional or descriptive perspective. This chapter identifies the political strategies that advance the poetics of the emblem to show how each one proposes its own version. This chapter, like

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Chapter 1, exceeds the chronological scope defined for this study, since the apparatus of the emblem, just like that of the ritual, is of an archetypal nature that defies geography as well as history. The conclusions of the book will elucidate the numerous questions that still arise out of the theses developed by my research, underscoring one in particular: the relevance of this poetics of the chivalric order to the construction of the political structures of modernity.

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chapter one

Ritual as a Strategy for Chivalric Creation

A configuration of gestures, actions, and statements that follow a determined order, a ritual is also an apparatus that advances specific hierarchies of power.1 Rituals establish relations of power and construct their own concept of authority through ceremonial events. Rituals and their creation define the systems of domination and subjection of an institution, a society, or any other collective entity.2 The construction of rituals probes how authority is the result of agreements by human beings or is imposed upon them. Power relations result from a complex process of negotiation in the late Middle Ages that substantiated the demarcation and control of jurisdictions—the twofold space, territorial and political, where laws are issued and enforced. The analysis of ritual elucidates the criteria that create an institution, as well as the poetics of the subject that gives life to the institution through incorporation—as his body becomes part of a political body or a particular society. Ritual is the gateway into a given jurisdiction and a way to negotiate authority: it compels the subject to adopt a certain identity through the explicit, public, and spatial acceptance of the norms that regulate an institution or collectivity. As a rite of passage, a ritual takes place upon a single physical body and transforms it into a political subject pursuant to a legal and political regime. As an apparatus, ritual is the enactment of an invisible transformation using visible and audible elements (either perceivable or conceptual), in which an individual becomes a different political and juridical subject; a transformation discernible during a carefully crafted time and space. A ritual also leaves a discernible, charismatic marker of transformation. The process is generally framed within what Carl Schmitt termed political theology, or the idea that the constitutive elements of modern politics are but secularized versions of theological models.3 Ritual, which reveals the imper-

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ceptible, also modifies the subject’s body—typically through costume, scars, or other manifestations of pleasure or pain. These markings serve to distinguish the subject from others: a recognition (quite literally, a re-cognition) of his place in social stratification. Ritual is articulated in both the plane of the imperceptible (often linked to a theological realm) and the perceptible (the sociopolitical sphere). The ritual of chivalric investiture presents a specific problem that is sui generis, since the invisible politico-theological transformation of the subject also creates a new social class. Chivalric investiture impacts not only the individual who is knighted, then, but also the whole order, or ordo, to which he now belongs. It is necessary to analyze the link between chivalry and its rituals of initiation to unveil the issues of power and subjection framing the creation and evolution of chivalry—and its role in jurisdictional transformation. Most medievalists who have focused on chivalry have endeavored to describe these diverse rituals, both religious and secular, and nearly all have depicted them as the result of a preestablished tradition that accurately enacts events in the social life of knights and their relation to the monarch and the clerical state. I approach the matter from a radically different perspective, arguing that rituals of knighting should be studied as an attempt to represent established hierarchies that constantly reveals its inability to reorder social and political life around chivalry. Invoking Castile as a model, I posit that the proliferation of different forms of chivalric ritual in a variety of texts—of different genres and social origins—issues many definitions of the concept of power. The Castilian model also illustrates how relations of subjection are negotiated in the monarchic political model. In the present chapter, I consider the procedures that create and critique a social class: knighthood, or the chivalric order. Throughout history, chivalry has been used to manipulate relations of power. Chivalry has also served to fashion theories on lineages, political systems, and civil and moral life. Written texts—or writing and reading—are, according to Emmanuel Lévinas, methods of being (11–12). Hence, they require their interlocutors to situate themselves on a different plane from that of external events. Texts about rituals rarely establish direct relation with concrete events, and when they do, this relation only frames a more general reflection. These texts theorize on the political and theological displacement that ceremonies produce. Although I may occasionally link ceremonies with specific events and problems, my main concern is how rituals theorize this displacement. Medieval Castile is unique in significant ways. While we can date the

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creation and configuration of aristocratic chivalry in almost all of Europe at around 1100 (Flori, L’idéologie du glaive; L’essor de la chevalerie), Castilian chivalric discourse, particularly texts on the regulation of chivalry, arise between a century and a century and a half later. The aristocratic chivalry of Castile originates in the Cortes of Alfonso VIII of Castile (r. 1158–1214) and that of Alfonso X of Castile and León (r. 1252–1282) and fulfills a specific need—to establish a monarchic political model marked by the monarch’s acquisition of central jurisdiction and the limitation of nobiliary jurisdiction, whether clerical or secular. Throughout the acquisition of this central monarchic sovereignty, or imperium, the creation and regulation of knighthood has a critical role. It is through chivalry that the monarch redefines the nobility that surrounds him. In the new monarchic model, chivalry is configured to create a new sociopolitical identity for the nobility with an innovative angle: it will be the king who reserves the right to create this new social category. In this chapter, I will show how this notion changes as monarchs and nobles deploy the chivalric apparatus in social spaces that bear no direct relation with traditional aristocratic or dynastic categories. A king stands in an apparently contradictory position with respect to chivalric practices and rites of entry. This contradiction is generally resolved through the assertion of a fundamental element of monarchic power: the king’s legal independence, as established in Roman law by the principle of rex legibus solutus (literally, “the king is not subject to the law”). When this principle is questioned, as is the case upon the publication of the various editions of the Siete Partidas, the monarch must resolve this contradiction through the invocation of his unique theological bonds.4 Thus, to acquire central jurisdiction, the king begins a process predicated in part on his independence from civil law and his ability to deploy theological resources. This central jurisdiction grants him control over civil legislation. In Castile, this appropriation takes place over a period of time that likely comprises the reigns of Alfonso VIII and Alfonso X, as well as that of Fernando III, the first to rule both Castile and León (1199–1252, king of Castile from 1217 and of León from 1230). Judging by the juridical manuscripts of the period, the political need to create monarchic legislation begins with Alfonso VIII, who is likely the author of the project that would later become the Fuero Real first promulgated in 1254 by Alfonso X. Both the Fuero Real and the other legislative works redacted also by Alfonso in the thirteenth century (the Espéculo and the Siete Partidas) provide for the king’s appropriation of the jurisdictional sphere, allowing the king to limit or vacate any local and aristocratic legal regulations that interfered with his centralized power.

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This jurisdictional control also affected clerical power. The king manifested his will to take gradual control of ecclesiastical legislation, a process that culminated in the redaction of Partidas 1 (Primera Partida), a promulgation of Church and canon law issued from the monarchic jurisdiction. Moreover, the process by which a monarch obtains his independence with respect to the powers of the clergy implies a laicization of the kingdom as a whole. Within this process of laicization, the two most important social groups are knights and lettered royal officials. The Siete Partidas even refer to the latter group as knights while the Partidas 2 maintains that “la sabiduría de los derechos es otra manera de cauallería con que se quebrantan los atreuimientos e se endereçan los tuertos” [“the wisdom of the law is another kind of knighthood, by means of which boldness is crushed, and wrongs are righted”] (2.10.3). The analysis of texts on rituals of knighting elucidates how the monarch attains jurisdictional domination as well as independence. The texts studied in this chapter have very different origins yet are produced during the period in which the king gains the authority to adjudicate: from the beginning of the thirteenth century to the middle of the fourteenth century. I will pay particular attention to texts produced in the first half of the fourteenth century. Texts from this period unveil a genealogy of the chivalric social class, the institutions it comprises, and their varied practices and configurations. In fact, these texts are dissimilar in terms of the authority they claim. Some are poetic, giving rise to literary traditions of a moral and political order. They impose their presence on well-defined social spheres, affecting mainly the royal space and retinue itself, dominated by lay and clerical nobility. Others appear as historical narratives that recast epic themes like those of the Cid to theorize the formation of the kingdom of Castile and León as well as its monarchic and chivalric models. The texts address the need to challenge the social order, questioning the notion of royal imperium. Finally, other texts issue from royal legislative authority, intent on modifying the political and social structure of the kingdom. The particularities of each text will be noted in due course. The genealogy of this social order’s creation cannot be traced along a chronological or teleological line leading to an objective. It should be seen as an unstructured interaction, a series of dialectical experiences in which each text offers a substantial redefinition of the problem it addresses. Again, every ritual is an apparatus, a discursive strategy for the definition of power relations as negotiations of territorial and political jurisdiction. The corpus of texts on rituals of chivalric investiture of medieval Castile is relatively small, especially when compared with texts produced in other European political contexts—notably the kingdoms of France and England

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or the Holy Roman Empire. Compounding this difficulty, the Castilian texts that mention rituals of knighting are not always very specific. It is therefore important to focus on the precise vocabulary that they employ and to analyze it closely. The texts studied in this chapter conjure very diverse formulas. For instance, ceñir la espada [“to gird on one’s sword”], in the Cantar de Mio Cid (Poem of the Cid ) and the Libro de Alexandre (Book of Alexander)—both written during the reign of Alfonso VIII. We also find cingulum militiæ accingere [“to gird the military sash”] in Latin texts from the same period and hacer caballero [“to make one a knight”] in Castilian chronicles such as the Estoria de España (History of Spain) from the reign of Alfonso X or the Valeriana Chronicle, redacted and printed in 1481. Nonetheless, all these references clearly depict some form of ephemeral ceremony, a performative moment in which a particular speech act gives rise to the transformation of a political subject: someone who was previously not considered a knight becomes one and acquires a series of privileges, social distinction, and fiscal exemptions. Many texts offer a relatively explicit description of a ritual of chivalric investiture. The Book of Alexander is a poetic piece, written in the context of Alfonso VIII’s Cortes and using clerical meters—along the parameters of the mester de clerecía, which the poem briefly theorizes in its second stanza. It is based on texts in Latin (the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon) and French (the Roman d’Alexandre).5 The poem summarizes a specific chivalric ritual. The Book of Alexander does not depict it as the objective practice of a custom, but rather as an enactment of the will of the hero. The poet relishes in the description of the arms that have been crafted for Alexander, and marvels at the ferocity of his horse, Bucephalus, before describing the ceremony from an intimate perspective: El infant fue venido por las armas prender, mas, como fue de seso e de buen connoçer, antes quiso a Dios una oraçión fer. e, com’era costumbre, sus donos ofreçer. “Señor—dixo—que tienes el mundo en poder, a qui çielo y tierra deven obedesçer, Tú guía mi fazienda sit cae en plazer, que pueda lo que asmo por mí acabeçer. “Tú da en estas armas, Señor, tu bendiçión,

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que pueda fer con ellas atal defunçïón, qualque nunca fue fecha en esta difinçión, porque saque a Greçia de grant tribulaçión.” Quand la oraçión ovo el infant acabada, enclinó los ynojos e besó en la grada, desent alçós un poco e çiñós la espada; es día dixo Greçia que era arribada. Ante que se moviesse el infant del logar, armó más de quinientos de omnes de prestar; a todos dio adobos muy graves de preçiar, ca todos eran tales que lo querrién pechar. Cavalgó su cavallo e salió al trebejo; el cavallo con él fazié gozo sobejo; viniénlo sobre sí veer cada conçejo, dizién todos: “Criador nos ha dado consejo.” [The prince came to take up arms, But, as he was sensible and wise, He first chose to pray to God, And, as custom dictated, to offer his allegiance. “My Lord,” he said, “who has all the world in his power, Whom heaven and earth must obey, Guide my actions if it pleases you, So that I might accomplish my objective. “Give these arms, my Lord, your blessing, So that with them I may carry out such annihilation As has never been accomplished in this world, So that I might rescue Greece from great trouble.” Once the prince concluded his prayer, He kneeled down and kissed the step, And then stood up and girded his sword; This was the day when Greece claimed to have arrived.

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Before the prince moved from that place, He armed more than five hundred deserving men; To all of them he gave armor of serious value, Since all were men who would offer something in return. He mounted his horse and rode out to show his equestrian skill; He managed with his horse to thrill those present; People came from every city and town to see him, And everyone said: “The Creator has come to our aid.”] (Cañas Murillo, Libro de Alexandre, 159)6 Alexander does not follow any specific type of ceremony and the poem’s description does not make it possible to compare it to other ceremonies found in historical narratives. It is extraordinarily generic. The only ceremonial detail that might be gleaned from these verses is the prayer and the petition of the benedictio ensis, or blessing of the sword, in a prayer to God by the aspiring knight himself.7 The most notable aspect of this ceremony is not that Alexander takes up arms himself, but that it is he, not a cleric, who solicits the blessing of the sword. This gesture asserts independence from both secular authority (i.e., the nobility) and lettered clerics, as the poet reiterates throughout his verses.8 The ceremony culminates when Alexander girds on his sword and, immediately afterward, arms five hundred knights. This last act is the one instance that appears to be linked to some type of custom, or consuetudo, as seen in verse 120d: “e, com’era costumbre, sus donos ofreçer” [“and, as custom dictated, to offer his allegiance”]. Finally, the prince engages in a display of horsemanship to the surprise of the inhabitants of the cities (“cada conçejo” [“every city and town”]). The sphere of action of this ceremony is broad—it subsumes three different societal states: independence from the clergy, dominance over nobility, and admiration from the citizenry. This display before the three societal estates serves to underpin the creation of the figure of an independent and dominant monarch, unencumbered by either lineage or intellectual and theological authorities. Indeed, neither members of the aristocracy nor the clergy may participate in this performance except as spectators. Investiture is a promise of action or reform. The narrative of investiture is essential to the Book of Alexander, to the extent that, as Amaia Arizaleta has argued, it supersedes the coronation itself (La translation, 245–46).9 To the motifs identified by Arizaleta, we might add another: in this scene of chivalric investiture, the poem pointedly questions Alexander’s legitimacy, generating a

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serious crisis of identity. Just a few verses earlier, the poem cast doubt on the belief that Alexander is the legitimate son of Philip II of Macedon and even remarks on the fact that, by pushing him off a tower, Alexander has murdered Nectanebo—the Egyptian man who was supposed to be his true biological father. As a result, Alexander’s right to inherit the throne of Macedon through the conventional avenue of patrilineal descent is challenged, and it is only his own heroic and chivalric virtue that earns him the throne.10 The articulation of the chivalric fable is crucial here. The poem inserts the promise of chivalric action as the protagonist is facing an impasse with respect to traditional structures of power. The proposed solution is the renovation of these structures and the transformation of the historical conditions that frame this crisis. The chivalric fable is imbued with meaning by its insertion into a pedagogical fable in which the chivalric hero receives technical knowledge. In the case of Alexander, the pedagogical fable is binary, and in both cases provided by Aristotle. On one hand, Aristotle has trained Alexander as if he were a cleric, offering him knowledge rooted in the liberal arts. Later, with respect to Alexander’s patrilineal identity crisis, Aristotle has endowed his student with historical knowledge that allows the chivalric hero to recapture territory as well as his political and economic independence. Within the fictional timeframe of the poem, Greece was mired in a period of powerlessness and was straining under the fiscal pressure imposed by the Persian Empire.11 Alexander’s assertion of independence through knighthood mirrors the Greek will for independence from to the Persian Empire and its recovery of territorial and political jurisdiction. In terms of the textual tradition, Alexander’s knighting ceremony constitutes a distortion of the best-known ceremonies and those best established by ecclesiastical discourse. It also stands as a fragmentation of those ceremonies best known through chivalric narrative discourse, frequently transmitted in Latin and French texts. But it is also possible that both the distortion and the fragmentation of existing knighting ceremonies are the rule rather than the exception in the case of textual representations of such ceremonies. This is perhaps best examined from a perspective recently suggested by Philippe Buc. Buc focuses on ceremony and ritual during the Early Middle Ages, but his formulation is also valid for a phenomenon such as chivalry, which exists mainly through the later medieval period. According to Buc, due to their prominence, rituals afford us only a problematic glimpse into medieval political culture. He affirms that “they were too momentous for their depictions not to be highly crafted” (Dangers of Ritual, 9). Therefore, the unpolished quality of most written accounts of knighting ceremonies from medieval Castile is per-

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plexing. These written accounts variously depict the passage into knighthood, but many are also allusive, fragmentary, and somewhat disconcerting. Perhaps because the rituals in question are so well known that it does not seem necessary to describe them in detail, or perhaps because they lack the ceremonial importance generally ascribed to them—especially when compared to French, German, and Latin clerical sources. The problem deepens when a ceremony is richly described, although this happens only infrequently. For the purposes of this discussion, it can be circumscribed to a very brief period of time: between the Partidas 2.21 (around 1260) to the knighting ceremony of Alfonso XI (held in 1332). There are a few other examples from the same period: that of the powerful Castilian noble Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348), who deals with this issue in his Libro del cavallero et del escudero (Book of the Knight and the Squire; 1326–1327) and in the Libro de las tres razones (Book of the Three Reasons; ca. 1337); the Cantar de las mocedades de Rodrigo (Song of Rodrigo’s Youth; ca. 1370); and the case of the double investiture of Roboán in the Libro del cavallero Zifar (Book of the Knight Zifar; ca. 1330).12 I will undertake an analysis of these texts later in this chapter. To speak of chivalric investiture, Latin authors from Castile always use an essentially inscrutable expression: cingulum militiæ accingere, to put on the military sash. This “military sash” is an accessory associated with the republican and imperial eras of Rome. It was a sign of distinction and consisted of a thin golden sash wrapped around the soldier’s waist, adorned along the front with fringe made of the same material. This military sash was no longer worn during the Middle Ages, and therefore not issued to new knights. In its Roman context, the expression cingulum militiæ accingere refers to the entry of a soldier into the ordo equitum, the most distinguished group in the Roman cavalry. This, as Claude Nicolet has demonstrated, constitutes an ordo in itself. Nicolet’s study is even more interesting in that it reveals a fundamental tension between entry into the ordo equitum and the obtaining of noble rank within the Roman republic (Nicolet, L’ordre equestre à l’époque républicaine ).13 The situation is akin to that in medieval texts on monarchic power: the king who invests the knight also confers noble rank upon him. This monarchic prerogative is the keystone of the significant sociopolitical transformations beginning to take place at the start of the fourteenth century. It can be argued that the use of the expression cingulum militiæ accingere during the medieval period was metaphoric. It is more likely, however, that it is the expression preferred by those who worked in chancery Latin and among those who had, at the same time, advanced juridical, historical, and

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theological knowledge. The specific places within Castile where we find this expression reveal a cultural setting of this sort. The anonymous author of the Historia Roderici (History of Rodrigo; ca. 1147) employs it in a very specific way: “Hunc autem Rodericum Didaci Santius, rex tocius Castelle et dominator Hyspaniæ, diligenter nutriuit et cingulum militie eidem cinxit” [“That Sancho, king of all Castile and ruler of Hispania, raised up Rodrigo Díaz with all his love and put the military sash on him”]. (Martínez Díez et al., Historia latina de Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar 54).14 The language here is not neutral. It deploys terms and expressions that belong to imperial chancery Latin, and the Latinate institutions of the empire of Justinian and Theodosius. King Sancho, who knights the Cid, is here referred to as “king of all Castile,” a phrase that enjoys a semantic confluence with the Imperium Totius Hispaniae [“Empire of All Hispania”] formula coined by Alfonso VI (1040–1109, self-proclaimed Imperator Totius Hispaniae in 1070) and made to take on greater prominence during the reign of Alfonso VII (r.1126–1157, referred to as imperator from the beginning of his reign), the same period during which the History of Rodrigo was composed. The bishop and historian Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada (1170–1247) makes use of the cingulum militiæ accingere formula when speaking of the knighting of Conrad III Hohenstaufen (1173–1196), son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1122–1190), and likewise that of Alfonso IX of León (1171–1230), both carried out by Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1188 in the city of Carrión de los Condes: Mortuo rege Fernando successit ei eius filius Aldefonsus. Hic fuit homo pius, strenuus et benignus, set susurronum vicissitudine mutabatur; et a consobrino suo Aldefonso rege Castelle et Sancio rege Portugalie infestatus circa primordia regni sui uenit ad rege Castelle, et in curia Carrionis accintus ab eo cingulo militari, manum eius fuit in plena curia osculatus; et in eadem curia rex Castelle nobilis Aldefonsus Conradum filium Frederici imperatoris Romani accinxit similiter cingulo militari. [With the death of King Fernando (II of León), his son Alfonso (IX of León) succeeded him to the throne. He was a pious, strong, and good man, but he was much altered by the vicissitudes of events and was attacked by his cousin Alfonso, the king of Castile, and Sancho, the king of Portugal. Near the beginning of his reign he went to the king of Castile, and in the curia of Carrión he had the

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military sash put on him by this same king and he kissed his hand in front of the full curia; and in that same curia the noble Alfonso, king of Castile, similarly put the military sash on Conrad, the son of Frederick, the Roman emperor.] (Jiménez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniæ, 246) Thus, in both cases of chivalric investiture, the Latin scribe employs the cingulum militiæ accingere formula. The cingulum militiæ accingere formula seems to have no directly comprehensible meaning in Spanish, if we are to judge based on how it is translated within the Estoria de España, composed in the scriptorium of Alfonso X. There is a certain degree of anxiety in the manner in which this translation is produced. The translators do not seem to think that the reference to the military sash is self-explanatory, so in each case they add a supplement to reinforce its meaning. While they maintain the archaeological substratum of the expression that they have inherited, they incorporate another, more modern one that may reveal a good deal about the ritual act that is taking place: (Alfonso IX de León) fue guerreado de su primo don Alffonsso, rey de Castiella, et de don Sancho, rey de Portogal, çerca de los comienços de su regno. Et ueno estonçes el rey don Alffonsso de Castiella a Carrion a cortes que fizo y; et cinxo alli este rey don Alffonsso de Castiella la çinta de caualleria a don Alffonsso rey de Leon, su primo cormano, et armol alli et fizol cauallero; onde esse rey don Alffonsso de Leon beso alli la mano a don Alffonsso rey de Castiella ante todos, la corte llena. Et en essa misma corte otrossi esse noble rey don Alffonsso de Castiella çinxo la çinta de caualleria et su espada a don Corrado fijo de don Fradric emperador de Roma et fizol cauallero. [(King Alfonso IX of León) went to war with his cousin Alfonso, king of Castile, and Sancho, the king of Portugal, near the beginning of his reign. At that time, King Alfonso of Castile arrived in Carrión to preside over his Cortes; and there King Alfonso of Castile put the sash of chivalry on King Alfonso of León, his first cousin, and there armed him and made him a knight; at which point King Alfonso of León kissed the hand of King Alfonso of Castile in front of everyone at the full Cortes. And at this same Cortes the noble King Alfonso of Castile girded the sash of chivalry and his sword on Conrad, the son of Frederick the Emperor of Rome and made him

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a knight.] (Menéndez Pidal, Primera Crónica General de España, 666–67; emphasis mine) The act of chivalric investiture that the Latin text narrates seems to be much more focused on the presence of Conrad than that of Alfonso. In both cases, the ceremony expresses in its entirety an act of domination, but it is of a totally distinct nature. The domination of Conrad by Alfonso is related to the political alliance being sealed on this occasion, namely the matrimonial alliance between the son of the emperor and the daughter of the king. The knighting of Conrad by Alfonso sets into practice an imperial ritual, derived from the very terminology of the Roman Empire. In the expressive re-elaboration that makes up the Castilian version of this narration, Castilian historians must translate not only the formula’s signifier, but also its referent. The ceremony, as well as the mode in which it is expressed, seems foreign, like something that shares the provenance of the person knighted. The concision in the expression of the ceremony is also surprising. Research devoted to medieval rituals spells out the process by which the texts that narrate these ceremonies not only reproduce them in great detail, but also state their meaning, giving rise to the theological and political traditions of ritual hermeneutics. Both characteristics are absent in this narrative. This absence explains why, upon narrating the dramatization of seignorial domination and of the imposition of the Castilian over the Leonese, the historian contents himself with a reference to the knighting of Alfonso IX of León. The crucial detail is the kiss of the hand that Alfonso of León sees himself obliged to give Alfonso of Castile in the presence of the entire Cortes (Rodríguez-Velasco, “El Cid y la investidura caballeresca”). This act of corporal subjugation, the body inclining itself in the traditional act of accepting one’s lower place within a hierarchy of power (as opposed to the relation of relative equality implied by a kiss on the lips), amid the full Cortes is a powerful sign of the manner in which social actors during the late medieval period worked to reorganize hierarchies of national power within the Iberian Peninsula and in line with Castilian imperial projects. Alberto Montaner has accurately suggested that the expression cingulum militiæ cingere refers to the action of having the sword girded. In its late medieval Castilian context, the Roman military weapon has disappeared from the field of the formula’s referent, and it seems to have been substituted by a weapon not only fundamental for armed confrontations but also for chivalric distinction. For Montaner, the epic formula “que en buena ora cinxó espada” [“who in a good hour girded on his sword”] applied to the Cid is a clear

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example of such a reference, and should be read as “en buen momento fue armado caballero” [“at a good time was knighted”] (“Prologo” cxvli).15 Montaner maintains the use of this formula in the History of Rodrigo and the Historia de rebus Hispaniæ (History of Hispanic Matters). Finally, along the same lines, in the Poem of the Cid, it is clearly associated with the reign of Alfonso VIII and emerges from Cistercian textual and intellectual models through texts authored by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, such as Liber ad milites templi de laude novæ militæ (In Praise of the New Knighthood). Both theses—the notion that Rodrigo and the Cid were first redacted during the era of Alfonso VIII (the period in which I believe that we should situate the beginning of the monarchy’s interest in the institution of chivalry) as well as the idea that Saint Bernard and the Cistercians exerted their influence—seem acceptable (Rodríguez-Velasco, “Vida y estirpe de Colada y Tizón”). It may not turn out equally acceptable, however, that both theses should be supported by a study of the formula in question. It is so vague, so universal, so commonly employed by both lay and ecclesiastical authors, at least since Theodosius, that it would be difficult to identify it with one concrete source or influence. It is possible to situate it within a specific time period, as it appears at precisely the moment that we have been discussing, but even with regard to its application to the militia Christi, the expression can just as easily be attributed to Saint Augustine as to Saint Bernard, since the former uses the expression cingulum militiæ Christianæ in his Epistula 151 and in other places. I do not argue here that such influence does or does not inform the verbal formula. What I do wish to underscore, however, is that such influence does not give us sufficient motive to ascribe a given meaning to the expression and to situate it, unavoidably, within a concrete series of temporal and intellectual paradigms. A discussion focused on this apparently minimal detail leads me to a series of conclusions about the precise manner in which Hispano-Latin sources narrate the knighting ritual during the reign of Alfonso VIII—when there was no specific form of regulation of either aristocratic knighthood or its ritual systems, and its translation into Castilian was carried out in the scriptorium of Alfonso X, at a time when a form of such regulation has already been formulated. The first of these conclusions recognizes that it is impossible for clerical authors working in Latin to frame the knighting ritual in accordance with a form of expression contemporary to the political act that they must describe. They instead recast a form of imperial language that corresponds to a hierarchy significantly different from the event that they are narrating. Thus, the verbal formula effectively creates the event, and in so doing casts the monarch as imperator. This imperial frame for the ritual act of chivalric investiture

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indicates a displacement of the modes by which hierarchy and the concept of dominion are organized within these texts. Also projected upon them is the double image of the Imperium Totius Hispaniae based on Castilian centrality, as well as its profession of legitimacy through the Holy Roman Empire. The second conclusion acknowledges that it would be impossible for these clerics to render a verbatim translation of the Latin verbal formula and that it would need to be supplemented with more contemporary vocabulary rather than classical language. In the divergence between the imperial and Castilian expressive forms, the greatest transformation of European chivalry is forged in the form of a systematic legal code: Alfonso’s Partidas 2.21. The promulgation of laws within this code provokes a crisis with respect to chivalric investiture. This crisis leads to a small series of responses with more precise descriptions, not only of chivalric investiture, but also of the symbolism of the entire knighting ceremony in all its theological (or de-theologized) and political breadth. Hence, what was no more than an accident within the unstable universe of chivalry becomes a central element for debate as a result of the Partidas. The Partidas, in effect, are the only expression of ritual that legally constitute “good ritual”— according to the expression coined by Philippe Buc—by becoming an integral part of the legal code, revoking all the other laws and rendering other rituals as dysfunctional or “bad” ones. It is in this sense that it can be said that the Partidas constitute an invention of chivalry. Of course chivalry, in all its possible expressions, existed before the redaction of the Partidas, yet all the legal discourse revolving around chivalry had been essentially casuistic and localized. In the end, the institution of chivalry lacked both definition and rules according to which it might be interpreted. As evidenced by the work of María Isabel Pérez de Tudela y Velasco (Infanzones y caballeros), Carmela Pescador (“La caballería popular”), and Concepción Quintanilla Raso (Nobleza y caballería), among others, the great difficulty for the study of Castilian chivalry resides precisely in the fact that prior to the second half of the thirteenth century, there was no systematic definition of chivalry itself (Rodríguez-Velasco, “Invención y consecuencias de la caballería”). Furthermore, when such a definition is produced in the work of Alfonso X, the change is so radical that it ends up disorienting readers accustomed to consulting local legal codes (fueros), cartularies, and other legal and political documents. The Partidas do not merely invent or reinvent chivalry, they also mandate an alteration in how one might study knighthood itself. In fact, the Partidas do not introduce a transformation of knighthood, but rather a transformation in the manner in which chivalry was conceived of

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and discussed; they introduce a definitive debate in the universe of chivalry. It is in this sense erroneous to assert that the Partidas imposed a massive legal transformation with regard to matters associated with knighthood, even as it is also misleading to argue that they did not.16 The wholesale transformation of chivalric discourse is a theme that is too broad to be dealt with adequately in the present book. I have traced this transformation in various earlier studies (“De oficio a estado,” El debate, and “Invención”), and Georges Martin has advanced very similar arguments (“Control regio de la violencia nobiliaria”). The main idea is that in the thirteenth century, chivalric discourse is, above all, a discourse of the growing political power of the monarchy, a political theory in which the king seizes the political and juridical core of power.17 Chivalry constitutes one of the politico-juridical forms by which the nobility might be subjected to the central jurisdiction and it implies the construction of a social class that is furnished with systems of horizontal solidarity. The institution of chivalry is not just an autonomous social construct, but also a natural alliance. Knighthood is not only pursuant to title 21 of the Second Partidas; rather, it is necessary to read it in relation to the concept of nature and of natural bonds as they are laid out in title  of the Fourth Partidas. The theory of knighthood developed in the Partidas entails reorganization of nobility and of new forms of subjection to the king.18 These new forms of subjection are based squarely on the incorporation of the idea of natural bonds: the knight, vested by the king, acquires an indissoluble natural bond with him—a bond that is directly translated from the hierarchical bonds of divine origin and theological interpretation. Laws 13–16 of Partidas 2.21 cover the entire ceremonial process of chivalric investiture, from the moment in which the squire is prepared to receive knighthood until his sword is ungirded, with the legislator conferring all the political and institutional significance upon each gesture and movement. These four laws synthetize the entirety of chivalric knowledge and inscribe it within a theater of memory that culminates with the pain and the physical marking produced by the ritual slap—the final element in the elaboration of this ritual. The entire process adopts a sacramental form of purification, affirmation, and progressive patronage throughout the roughly twenty-four hours in which the ritual takes place. The process begins with a bath, then the head is washed, the clothes are selected, and the vigil and prayer are performed (law 13). After this, the family member contracted by the new knight is presented to his patron (law 16). The knighting and the girding of the sword take place next (law 14), followed by the patron ungirding the new knight’s sword (law 15).

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By means of the ritual, the new knight develops bonds. His internal, imperceptible transformation manifests itself through the different processes in which the knight subjects himself to different entities whose hierarchical station supersedes that to which he must submit. The first of all these trials is a subjective transformation, as he must meditate on his new station and enter into direct contact with God, without any ecclesiastical mediation, while he is physically cleansed and participates in the vigil. The knight will immediately acquire three more bonds. The first is of a horizontal nature and binds him, through the idea of “brotherhood” (law 14), to the rest of his comrades, with whom he establishes ties of solidarity. The other two are vertical bonds. The first is the one that develops between him and the person who knights him, and the second is between him and the person who ungirds his sword, thereby becoming his guarantor. His subjection with regard to the person who knights him is fundamental insofar as chivalry is later described as a natural bond.19 With regard to the bond associated with the patron, it is so important that law 16 details the obligations that the new knight has just contracted with the former. Law 16 concludes with a pedagogical flourish, advising squires awaiting investiture to pay particular attention to the choice of their patron: “Et por ende los caualleros noueles, pues que tan grand debdo han con los que les descinnen las espadas, deuen catar ante que la fecho vengan quien son aquellos a quien han de rogar que sean sus padrinos pora descennirgelas” [“Wherefore new knights, since they are so indebted to those who ungird their swords should, before the deed is performed, very carefully consider who those persons are whom they request to act as their godfathers by ungirding them”] (Craddock and RodríguezVelasco). The consequences of this process of acquiring bonds are crucial in the description of the structures of power and the equilibrium of powers that are produced within them. The laws allow us to dissect the organization of the social class the knight joins through this ritual and the type of relation that this class establishes with the sociopolitical ambit in which it is forged. This political structure includes the subject’s reflection on his own identity, and it can be considered as a form of “technology of the subject.” The law excludes all types of intermediation during this phase of the ritual, as it is the individual who must contemplate the theological-political conditions of his new status. It is about a process in which the subject discovers or becomes aware of his own conditions within the sociopolitical system and of the transformation that is operating within him. According to the law (Partidas 2.21.13), this selfreflection takes place during a vigil in which the time normally reserved for

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sleep is employed for a specific and ritual hygiene of the body that allows for the emergence of the new subject. It is in this series of modifications to the body and spirit of the knight-to-be that the creation of social class takes place, thereby integrating him into the horizontal and vertical structure previously mentioned. On another level, this horizontal and vertical relationship founded on the creation of the chivalric subject represents the means by which the coordinates of chivalry are established—that is, the localization in political space of the very social category or ordo (which I also refer to as class). These coordinates are a strategy that enables the delimitation of chivalry within a concrete form of power relations. This localization defines how the agents that participate in the creation of social class reach mutual balance. A horizontal relationship impresses the idea of solidarity and friendship upon the knights, establishing a sense of sociopolitical equality independent of one’s dynastic origin. A vertical relationship provides two great pillars that serve to sustain chivalry. The first is the king who grants knighthood and in territorial terms transfers the concept of ordo from its theological origin. The second pillar secures the intimate relationship between the individual knight and his patron or teacher. The political, moral, and educational situation here assigns to the social class a precise mission to which these two pillars have a metonymic relation. Chivalry is not a social class liberated from all collective obligation. The key to the creation of this social class manifests itself here, therefore, in the plane of action and political defense of the monarch and that of moral action in agreement with certain educational criteria detailed in Partidas 2.21.20. The fact that this ceremonial protocol formalizes these bonds should be viewed in light of the absence of any law, before the Partidas, with respect to the type of bond formed through the act of chivalric investiture. Alfonso X, however, could not allow such an important relationship to emerge without describing it. Title 24 of the Fourth Partidas, which deals with alliances, stipulates that nature is the most important bond among men, thereby translating and codifying hierarchical relations formerly associated with theology: Naturaleza tanto quiere dezir como debdo que han los omes unos con otros por alguna derecha razon en se amar e en se querer bien. E el departimento que ha entre natura e naturaleza es este: ca natura es una virtud que faze ser todas las cosas en aquel estado que Dios las ordeno; naturaleza es cosa que semeja a la natura e que ayuda a ser e mantener todo lo que desciende della.

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[Natural relationship means an obligation that compels men to love and cherish one another for a just reason. There is a distinction between nature and natural relationship: nature is a force which causes everything to remain in the condition directed by the bond of God; natural relationship is something which resembles nature and allows for the existence and preservation of everything derived from it.] (4.24.1) Among these obligations, chivalry features prominently: Diez maneras pusieron los sabios antiguos de naturaleza. La primera, e la mejor, es la que han los omes a su señor natural, porque tan bien ellos como aquellos de cuyo linaje descienden, nascieron e fueron raygados e son en la tierra onde es el señor. La segunda es la que aviene por vasallaje. La tercera por criança. La quarta por cavalleria. La quinta por casamiento. La sexta por heredamiento. La setena por sacarlo de captivo o por librarlo de muerte o deshonrra. La octava por aforramiento de que non rescibe precio el que lo aforra. La novena por tornarlo christiano. La dezena por morança de diez años que faga en la tierra maguer sea natural de otra. [The wise men of ancient times established ten kinds of natural obligation. The first, and most important is the relation which men sustain towards their natural lord, because they, as well as those from whom they are descended, were born and settled, and exist in the country of their said lord; the second is derived from vassalage; the third, that which arises through nurture; the fourth, springs from knighthood; the fifth, marriage; the sixth, from inheritance; the seventh, from rescue from captivity or liberation from death or dishonor; the eighth, from emancipation, for which the party who granted it received no reward; the ninth, arises through becoming a Christian; the tenth, through a residence of ten years in a country, although the party may be a native of another.] (4.24.2)20 The list is ordered hierarchically, as is customary in Alfonsine texts. The incorporation of chivalry within the list of natural bonds represents an innovation of the Partidas with respect to the Espéculo, Alfonso’s earlier systematic legal work, which only considered six types of natural bonds (Rodríguez-Velasco, “De oficio a estado”; “Invención”). Within the context of this innovation,

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Alfonso gives chivalry a prominent place. In this way, Alfonso does not only incorporate chivalry into political and juridical discourse; he also configures it as one of the principal means by which a theological hierarchy is translated into positive law. The reasons for the production of this innovation reside in the strategies defined by ritual, that is, by the way in which this apparatus determines power relations. This apparatus is a way of transforming the structure of the kingdom, as it gives rise to a social class that is defined by the power of the monarch to construct all categories of the nobility. Critiques of this power, which proliferate throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, point out that the king is violating a natural right by essentially creating nobles by fiat during knighting ceremonies. The argument is predicated on the notion that it is on strictly theological grounds, and without any supplementary political aspect, that the existence of the nobility is justified. The differentiation between the theological and the political issues from the work of Bolognese jurist Bartolo of Sassoferrato (1314–1357), who distinguishes between theological nobility and civil and political nobility. This differentiation, as well as the debate surrounding it—which would endure for almost two hundred years and eventually become a criteria for the formation of the modern state—provides clear evidence of the strength of the thesis presented by Alfonso X in the process of creating chivalry, its rituals, and its relation to natural bonds. The strength of these theories and the presence of the chivalric ordo throughout Europe facilitate a dialogue that generally takes the form of a debate. This debate does not have as its ultimate goal a critique of the particular elements of the ritual, but these elements offer theoretical alternatives to regal sovereignty and the central jurisdiction of the monarchy. The first is the case of Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348), a member of the high nobility and nephew of Alfonso X. Don Juan Manuel begins his textual activities more or less at the moment at which King Alfonso XI (1311–1350) comes of age in 1325 and assumes the throne. Don Juan Manuel has contributed to the tutoring of the young king and even served as regent; after 1325, however, he begins to distance himself from the politics set out by the monarch. The greater part of Don Juan Manuel’s written work is indeed guided by these personal political motivations. They do not dismiss, however, the theoretical and political importance of this magnate’s complex work, namely, that if he learns to write—in an inchoate sense—it is precisely to be able to develop theories regarding power relations. Don Juan Manuel’s Libro de la caballería (Book of Chivalry), in fact, written in 1325 and no longer extant, contained a rereading (most likely critical) of title 21 of the Second Partidas Judging by

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the summary of this work included in his Libro de los estados (Book of States) (1330), this book would have been a compendium on chivalry based squarely on Alfonsine law.21 The only reference Don Juan Manuel makes to a knighting ceremony is in the Libro del cavallero et del escudero, a work directly influenced by the Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria (Book of the Order of Chivalry), composed between 1279 and 1283 by Mallorcan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232–1316). Llull’s work causes a fundamental turn away from Don Juan Manuel’s previous positions, particularly regarding knightly investiture. The knighting ceremony that Llull describes is much more complex than the one devised by Alfonso, since apart from describing the gestures and movements of the ceremony, Llull also specifies the mode in which mass should be conducted and the type of sermon that should be delivered. According to Llull, the cavayler spiritual [spiritual knight] plays a fundamental role in this ceremony, while the secular role is reduced to the participation of he who conducts the ceremony, without the participation of a patron (197–200). The symbolism of arms that Llull develops is also decidedly religious, rendering the knight a bearer of a series of theological and political values (201–6), while Alfonso explicitly distances clerics from all chivalric ceremonies and from chivalry itself.22 Finally, Llull’s Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria fits within the broader Llulian project (De arte inveniendi veritatis, (The Art of Finding the Truth), which develops a logical and philosophical system of tropology and anagogy.23 This system forms the axis around which Llull’s notion of chivalry revolves and serves as the ultimate source for the creation of truth. Llulian discourse is based on theology and philosophy and is thus inseparable from a concern with the production of truth. When Don Juan Manuel opts for the production of theological and philosophical truth within an explicitly Llulian framework, as opposed to the production of legal truth as framed by Alfonso, it is because he wishes to pose a specific question: how would it be possible to create a new political framework that supersedes the construction of sovereignty designed by the juridical model of central monarchic jurisdiction. He engages chivalry to explore the theological bonds of the nobility, steering away from the Alfonsine proposition to create a uniquely political or civil nobility. Llulian influence in Don Juan Manuel is not only evident in the reproduction of the chivalric fable and its relation to the pedagogical fable (e.g., the hermit teacher, the book in which both read). We also see it in its own content, in the symbolisms and figures used by the Castilian noble, as well as in his knowledge about nature. The symbols and figures depict the arms of the knight as traces or marks of a theological mission. As established by Llull,

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who is in dialogue with the chivalric French literature of the Arthurian cycle known as the Vulgate, the achievement of knighthood resides in a transformation of the candidate’s body by its vestments. This external modification of the body is, however, a process that may alter the soul. Each of the pieces of the knight’s armor provides the body with means of defense or attack, but these amount to no more than a visible representation of the invisible process that is taking place: the pieces of armor are the theological virtues that dress the soul, and the sword mirrors the Christian cross. Knowledge of Nature, not unlike knowledge of natural relations, is an apparatus or strategy whereby a body of knowledge is mystically transmitted to a knight who aligns himself with an estate and officium of theological origin. Don Juan Manuel’s reading is a strategy to separate the knight, or the noble, from the sort of subjection Alfonso imposes. This apparatus defines a power relationship that does not surpass the realm of the perceivable and therefore cannot be controlled either juridically or jurisdictionally. For Don Juan Manuel, the knighting ritual is also a sacramental act that emulates priestly ordination. As such, it does not define a social construction, but rather a holy office within a theological hierarchy. It bears remembering that his doctrine of the three orders and their sacramental aspects derives from a reading of the angelic hierarchy developed by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 500 c.e.). The elderly knight (now a hermit) who educates the squire in Juan Manuel’s book describes the investiture ceremony in a straightforward manner, as a way in which all bonds and systems of subjection and dominion are effectively eliminated: “la cavalleria a mester que sea y el sennor que da la cavalleria et el cavallero que la reçibe et la espada con que se faze. Et asi es la cavalleria conplida, ca todas las otras cosas que se y fazen son por bendiçiones et por aposturas et onras” [“chivalry requires that the lord who performs the knighting and the knight himself be present along with the sword with which the act is performed. Thus is chivalry fulfilled, and all else that takes place during the ceremony is meant to accrue blessings, adornments, and honors”] (Cinco tratados, 13).24 The sobriety of the Libro del cavallero et del escudero (Book of the Knight and the Squire) shatters the Alfonsine ceremonial system and its corresponding juridical and political significance. Don Juan Manuel is mainly concerned with what might be termed a “clean” transmission: he who is a knight bestows knighthood upon one who is not, given that “este estado non puede aver ninguno por si sy otri non ge lo da” [“one cannot have this estate by his own will if someone else does not bestow it upon him”] (Cinco tratados, 13). In this conveyance of knightly status, however, the Book of the Knight and the Squire

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does not offer any explicit form of domination by the one who performs the knighting over the one who is knighted. Over his nearly twenty-five-year writing career, Don Juan Manuel did not always hold the same opinion on the topics he wrote about. It seems reasonable to assume, for example, that in his no-longer-extant Book of Chivalry he accepted, albeit nominally, Alfonsine theories of chivalry. He soon reconsidered his position, however, as he sought increased independence for the nobility vis-à-vis central sovereignty and jurisdiction that the monarchy sought to establish. Between one ritual and the other, between that of Alfonso and that of Don Juan Manuel, a subject liberation movement is articulated, although in this case it is a noble subject, a rico hombre that hopes to safeguard his jurisdictional and political rights before a growing monarchic power. Don Juan Manuel is a noble who not only considers himself to be the king’s peer, but also sees himself as the only legitimate member of the royal genealogy who might still wear the crown.25 A few years after having composed the greater part of his work on political theory (likely soon after 1335), Don Juan Manuel returns to the subject of chivalry in the Libro de las tres razones (Book of the Three Reasons). Here Don Juan Manuel distinctly observes the political turn that chivalry is taking through the efforts of Alfonso XI. For this king, as for his great-grandfather Alfonso X, chivalry can be wielded as a constitutional and institutional tool to dominate the nobility and consolidate monarchic power. It is this project that Don Juan Manuel aims to control while never acknowledging the king’s right to knight him. In fact, Alfonso XI requests this right of Don Juan Manuel, along with other members of the high nobility in 1332. During his coronation ceremonies, Alfonso XI asked that all nobles allow themselves to be knighted by his hand and that they accept the system of subjection that such a ceremony imposed. Most nobles acquiesced, but Don Juan Manuel refused. He even went so far as to break the natural bond of vassalage that he had with Alfonso XI. In the Book of the Three Reasons. Don Juan Manuel explains the reasons why he cannot be knighted yet is able to knight others. This idea contradicts the principle that he advanced in the Book of the Knight and the Squire, which states that only knights can grant knighthood. His revised thinking amounts to a fracturing of chivalric rituals: he does not simplify them as he does in the Book of the Knight and the Squire; instead he completely erases them. Don Juan Manuel thus denies the potential universality of investiture, illustrating at least one case in which it cannot be applied. This exception constitutes the will to create a crisis of the law itself.

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The debate surrounding chivalric investiture directly affects the highest ranks of the kingdom’s hierarchy. Historical documents frequently point out that as many nobles as commoners rejected knightly investiture.26 These considerations are systematically accompanied by a description of the king’s program to transform the institution of chivalry. From another perspective, the construction of chivalry is also frequently accompanied by a description of its decadence. It refers to an alleged lack of rigor throughout texts that debate chivalry in both secular and clerical spheres, as it was invented and formalized both morally and legally to fulfill complex processes of social and political transformation by juridical, civil, and canonical means. There is no other monarch in Castile and León who has more faith than Alfonso XI in the possibility of reordering his relationship with the nobility through chivalry. Don Juan Manuel radically differed from this position and is one of the nobles who disquieted the king (and the cities, as we will see later). Paradoxically enough, the knighting ceremony of Alfonso XI, perhaps the most well known of all Castile’s investiture ceremonies, does not aim to knight the king himself.27 It should be read as the acquisition of a right and a state through which he may legally order the nobility by way of an investiture legally issued by his own hand. Not having been previously knighted himself, however, Alfonso would not have been able to knight the long list of nobles, among them powerful and ricos hombres, who are mentioned in the Crónica de Alfonso XI (Chronicle of Alfonso XI).28 Knightly investiture imposes a dialectic between dependence and independence in the discourse on chivalry. It is a dialectic of domination that fractures the fixed hierarchy that the chivalric structure and its artifacts may impose on the double plane of knowledge (studium) and power (imperium). It is exceedingly interesting that this dialectic of domination appears much more explicitly in a poetic work composed around 1370 and known as the Cantar de Rodrigo (Song of Rodrigo), or Las mocedades de Rodrigo. Through the use of poetic language and its capacity to be disseminated and to influence society, the depiction of Alfonso XI’s chivalric investiture is set forth in literary form, with the corresponding allegorical values, as was designed and narrated in the chronicles of the period. The Song of Rodrigo is a central text of the medieval Castilian canon that revolves around the character of the Cid and the assertion of his role as an independent vassal—although not a rebel vassal, as some scholars have claimed (Funes and Tenenbaum, Mocedades).29 Modern scholars have paid insufficient attention to the role of this work in the formation of the legend of the Cid, perhaps because the poem has been consistently isolated from the codicological and textual context in which it was transmit-

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ted, a longer historical piece known as Crónica de Castilla o del Campeador (Chronicle of Castile or of the Cid).30 To understand the poem’s place in fourteenth-century Castile, it would be necessary to ascertain the significance of a work that subsumes notions of political and feudal independence with a Castilian chronicle on the subject of the Cid. Considering the manuscript itself and its time and place of production, such an inquiry would shed light on the broader jurisdictional matters that concern the present chapter. The Song of Rodrigo highlights a scene in which the Cid convinces King Fernando I (ca. 1010–1065) that he should emulate the former’s own independence. The text underscores here the issue of independence, immediately followed by instructions for the performance of coronation and chivalric investiture ceremonies: Et quando lo sopo Rodrigo, caualgo muy priuado. Entre dia & noche a Çamora es llegado al rrey se omillo. & nol beso la mano Dixo “Rey mucho me plaze por que non so tu uassallo Rey fasta que no te armasses non deujas tener Reynado Ca non esperas palmada de moro njn de christiano. Mas ve velar al padron de Santiago quando oyeres la missa Armate con tu mano et tu te ciñe la espada con tu mano & tu desciñe como de cabo [fol 196rb] e tu te sey el padrino et tu te sey el afijado Et llamate cauallero del padron de santiago E seryas tu mj señor Et mandarias el tu Reynado. [And when Rodrigo heard this, He rode off as fast as he could. In one single night he arrived at Zamora; He knelt down, but he did not kiss the king’s hand.

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He said, “My king, this greatly pleases me, Because I am not your vassal. My king, until you are knighted, You shall not have a kingdom. Do not receive a hand from Muslim Or Christian, But go observe the vigil of arms in honor of Saint James. When you have heard mass, Knight yourself with your own hand, And gird on your sword In the same manner, and then Ungird it afterward. You will be your own godfather, And you will be your own godchild; Call yourself a knight of Saint James, And you will be my lord, And you will rule your kingdom.]31 The enormous littera notabilior (in red, with a height of four lines, in the Paris ms) punctuates a verbal formula that is simultaneously imperative and reflexive. The ármate [“knight yourself ”] formula is the maximum expression of independence and at the core of King Ferdinand I’s dual acquisition. On one hand, by knighting himself following the ritual described in this text, Ferdinand acquires all the legitimacy of monarchic sovereignty, given that the ritual does not require him to form any bonds with an investor or patron who would ungird his sword. The second acquisition, the vassalage of the Cid, functions as a mythological reinforcement. In this act, the Cid, supreme figure of nobiliary independence from the monarchy, also becomes a vassal of a monarch who recognizes his version of power. By securing the vassalage of the Cid, who has previously refused to kiss the royal hand, he in turn secures that of all the high nobility and adds it to the increasing sphere of monarchic jurisdictional power.32 The ceremony that the Cid describes has its foundation in the political issue raised in the corresponding section of Partidas 2.21. As declared by the Cid, chivalric investiture cannot be avoided; it is compulsory. This notion echoes the institutional rigor of the Partidas, which stipulates that the king’s coronation should follow his investiture. The compulsory nature of the ritual allows the monarch to construct the ordo, since he is the source and origin of

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this social class. The ordo descends from the king; it is an extension of his own body. In Fernando’s case, however, it is necessary to modify the ritual to prevent the king from demanding fealty in ways that limit his independence. As the passage demonstrates, the ceremonial process of debt acquisition (in summary, girding on the sword, receiving a symbolic blow on the neck, and ungirding the sword) is decisive for the Cid. He wants to accept the good ritual, the legal ritual. Contrary to Don Juan Manuel, he is not interested in eliminating or deconstructing the ritual; he accepts its order and its political and juridical consequences. All he proposes is a substitution of subjects, or better yet a multiplication of the subject: it is the king who must adopt all the political personae who participate in the ceremonial process of investiture and accept as primary his natural bond with the apostle Saint James, patron of Spain. Although Leonardo Funes and Felipe Tenenbaum have attempted to date the composition of the Song of Rodrigo to a period prior to 1300, it is difficult to disengage it from the chivalric project of Alfonso XI, at least on this aspect.33 On the other hand, the determined influence of the Partidas could even lead us to date this part of the work (if not the primitive poem in its entirety) to around 1340 or later. Even the date of initial redaction proposed by Alan Deyermond—around 1360—seems perfectly plausible (Epic Poetry and the Clergy).34 The specific date of the poem’s composition is not as important as how historical poetry engages political theory, and how an awareness of the two genres is constructed through the ceremonies. It is, ultimately, a language game—the linguistic and logical context where a particular semantics makes sense and is performed by the instances before whom an utterance has been produced. We can, therefore, keep in mind that the ceremony—the ideation and development of the apparatus—is in essence a semiotic investigation of the constituents that order themselves for its functioning. In this sense, the Song of Rodrigo constitutes an unusual epic text in which theories and forms of political independence are articulated according to legal documents whose vigor is either recent or soon to be enforced.35 Within Alfonso XI’s literary circle, and in his knighting ceremony, the value of ritual is called into question, or at least submitted to very different theses. We find the most salient example in the Libro del cavallero Zifar. The Libro del cavallero Zifar is a prose narrative first redacted sometime around 1330. It narrates Zifar’s recovery of the monarchic state from which he descends. This loss and recovery mirrors the loss and recovery of his own family—his wife, Grima, and his two sons, Garfín and Roboán.37 Once he

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has accomplished this recovery, through anagnorisis, the narrative focuses on the moral education that he provides his two sons, achieving a connection between the chivalric and pedagogical fable, the two genres that together form the theoretical structure for chivalry in the Zifar. The book also narrates the double knighting of Roboán, which poses political questions meriting further examination. Roboán’s first knighting takes place as the result of the acknowledgment between Zifar (now recognized as the “Knight of God”) and his two sons. The ceremony is not explicitly described: “el rey los resçibio por sus vasallos, e fizolos caualleros con muy grandes alegrias segund el uso de la tierra” [“the king received them as his vassals, and he very happily made them knights according to the usages of the land”] (BNF Esp. MS 36, f. 72v). One of the manuscripts of this work, which may be dated near 1468 and currently found in the French national library (BNF Esp. MS 36), has close to three hundred miniatures in addition to the text. One of them, located on folio 72v, provides a graphic representation of the knighting ceremony, but the image does not correspond to any textual description of knightly investiture in Castilian. In this image, Roboán and Garfín are kneeling before their father, while he taps their shoulders with the tip of his sword. It is likely that the miniaturists—who were not part of any Peninsular workshop—did not have access to any textual version of the ceremony and depicted a popular image from their country of origin (likely somewhere in central Europe). It is in the second knighting ceremony, when the emperor of Trygrida (also known as the “Emperor Who Does Not Smile”) knights Roboán, that the latter offers an explanation of the ritual by which his father has transformed him into a knight: Preguntole el enperador de commo le fezieron cauallero, e el dixo que touo vigilia en la eglesia de Santa Maria vna noche en pie, que nunca se asentara, e otro dia en la mañana, que fuera y el rey a oyr misa, e la misa dicha que llegara el rey al altar e quel diera vna pescoçada, e quel çiño el espada, e que gela desçiño su hermano mayor. [The emperor asked him how he had been knighted, and he said that he held a vigil in the Church of Saint Mary for an entire night on his feet and never sat down, and the following day, in the morning, the king went there to hear mass. Once mass was over, the king went to the altar and gave him a blow to the neck and girded his

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sword, and then his older brother ungirded it.] (Wagner, El libro del cauallero Zifar, 440)

Except for certain changes in order, this knighting ceremony is based on the section of the Partidas 1 have mentioned above. For the emperor of Trygrida, who doubts whether it is opportune to knight Roboán a second time, the description of the ceremony definitively convinces him to do so: “Agora vos digo, dixo el enperador, que puede resçebir otra caualleria de mi, ca grant departimiento ha de la costunbre de su tierra a la nuestra” [“‘Now I say to you,’ said the emperor, ‘that he can be knighted again by me, as there is a great difference between the customs of his land and ours’”] (Wagner, El libro del cauallero Zifar, 440). The difference in ceremonial forms is not the only argument that the emperor employs to justify a new investiture. It is, however, the ultimate argument, summing up all others. The argument that the emperor submits appears precisely as he first manifests his desire to make Roboán a knight and his doubts regarding a second knighting ceremony. It is this argument that allows us to investigate the issue of the definition of relations and conflicts of power among which chivalry is given birth:

“Señor,” dixo el infante, “¿que es lo que pierde el cauallero sy de otro mayor cauallero puede resçebir otra caualleria?” “Yo vos lo dire,” dixo el enperador, “que non puede ser, por el vno contra el otro, quel non estudiese mal, pues caualleria auia resçebido del.” “¿E non vedes vos, dixo el infante, que nunca yo he ser contra el rey mi padre, nin contra vos por el, ca el non me lo mandarie nin me lo consejaria que yo fallesçiese en lo que fazer deuiese?” “Bien lo creo,” dixo el enperador, “mas ay otra cosa mas graue a que ternian los omes oio: que pues dos cauallerias auia resçebido, que feziese por dos caualleros.” “E çertas,” dixo el infante, “bien se puede fazer esto, con la merçed de Dios, ca queriendo ome tomar a Dios por su conpañero en los sus fechos, fazer puede por dos caualleros, e mas, con la su ayuda.” [“Sir,” said the prince, “what does a knight lose in being knighted again by some greater knight?” “I will tell you,” replied the emperor,

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“that it cannot be done by one knight to oppose the other, he cannot act against one of his knighters on behalf of the other one and be without blame, since he had been knighted by him.” “And do you not see,” said the prince, “that I will never oppose my father, nor will I act against you on his behalf, because he would not order me, nor would he advise me to fail to do what I am obligated to do?” “I believe so,” said the emperor, “but there is a more serious matter that we should be aware of: if a man is knighted twice, he should act as two knights.” “Clearly,” replied the prince, “this can be done, with the mercy of God, because if a man wishes to take God as his companion in his actions he can do deeds as two knights, and even more, with His help.” “You should receive knighthood from your father and no other man.”] (Wagner, El libro del cauallero Zifar, 439) Roboán’s answer is an affirmation of the loyalty he owes his father and natural lord. It is also a confirmation of the hierarchies to which the principles of natura and naturaleza are bound, as defined by Alfonso X in Partidas 4.24. The subjective and objective loyalties of the chivalric individual (father, lord, God) are above the solemnities of admission into knighthood. While the first are necessary, the investiture is totally contingent and can even be reduplicated. Family bonds, as interpreted by the individual, cannot be similarly modified. The ceremony imposes a formal difference but does not amend the political contracts previously established by natural relations. The ceremony indicates a manifestation of affect, amor: the joy of the father upon recovering his sons and that of the Emperor Who Does Not Smile at finding Roboán—affect that is also political yet precedes the ceremony and could exist in its absence. The political thesis posited in the dialogue between the emperor and Roboán concerns two different spheres of medieval power relations. It is the dialectic of natural bonds taking shape in the concrete space between familial and political bonds. We find several specific examples of this dialectic in the political events of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Castile, such as the rebellion of Sancho IV against his father, Alfonso X, which resulted in the latter’s loss of the throne. The knighting ceremony plays a crucial role in this case, since Sancho refuses to be knighted by his brother Fernando, as King Alfonso had ordered. Jaume I, the king of Aragon, advised Sancho to be knighted by none other than his father (“que predades cavalleria de vostre padre e no d’otro homne”), but the king does not knight Sancho.38 A similar case of political and familial conflict dealing with chivalric investiture is that of the “denaturation” of Don Juan Manuel regarding Alfonso XI.

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In light of these events and their concrete reality, the Zifar proposes a different dialogue, issuing from what might be described as au-dessus du réalisme (in Lévinas terms). The dialogue between the emperor and Roboán specifies a particular hierarchy of subjection that places chivalry beneath familial bonds. This is indeed an important thesis on the political limitations of chivalric investiture, whereby the transformation of the candidate at the time of the knighting ritual does not alter this subject’s affect toward his lineage. The ritual does not influence “vertical love,” an expression of the lineage’s genealogical hierarchy, or “horizontal love,” a manifestation of generational solidarity. These cannot be erased or restricted in their expression. The chivalric subject is modified, but not alienated from his history, his memory, or the contracted relationships that precede his admission into knighthood. This thesis counters sacramental theses, such as that of Alfonso X, Llull, or Don Juan Manuel, particularly the latter, where the knight who enters an ordo becomes a distinct subject (not unlike the ordination of the clergy) and must abandon all memory of his previous life. The permanence of the chivalric subject’s individual affects, grounded in his history, memory, and lineage, is secure within the political discourse of the knightly corporations that concern both the nobility and the bourgeoisie. This chapter’s examination of the knighthood ritual allows the formulation of an important question: how is it possible to create a political and juridical apparatus designed to facilitate the construction of an ordo? This inquiry unveils myriad strategies and theses on the repercussions of the knighting ritual. Medieval Castilian writers, working from very different textual spaces, or perhaps exploring their own textual spaces in search of the best vantage point from which to view the problem, explore different theses on power relations, on domination, and on subjection that derive from each ceremonial proposal and knightly investiture. Ultimately, the construction of the ordo is the creation of a social and political category. Regarding its form as well as its presence and mission within society, this category is crucial and has continued to be crucial since its creation. The creation of knighthood and chivalry through ritual, through this interior and exterior transformation of the chivalric subject, is also the creation of a subjectivity, an identity that has—throughout history and into the present—a political and moral mission of key manifestations in Western civic and moral relations. The importance of this category explains the complex, extensive, and extraordinarily varied system of critiques and debates surrounding the creation of mechanisms of power and knowledge relative to chivalry. These critiques

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are frequently based on the enactment of a language game, of a “final vocabulary” (Rorty) that inserts into political tradition a manner of speaking about chivalry and about its political and juridical problems. On other occasions, the apparatus goes beyond setting a form of expression and advances a complete hermeneutics of rituals and their related forms. In any case, this is one of the manifestations of the poetics of order, of the variations texts invoke to configure a power base underpinned by the concepts of sovereignty, domination, and subjection. These poetics of chivalric order have a specific importance. They question nobility as a theological-political category. It is the hypostasis of theological nobility in civic nobility. While the former is uncreated and permanent, chivalry allows for a foundation of nobility, imposes a fundamental variation in the order of existence in society, and opens alternatives to the transformation of forms of dominion within the kingdom and, subsequently, within the state. The chapters that follow will examine this scarcely studied dimension of chivalry that is fully integrated into a process of transformation manifested through a dialectic between nobility and bourgeoisie. As I will show, chivalry offers a privileged vantage point from which to explore this dialectic.

chapter two

Poetics of Fraternity

This chapter focuses on the rarely studied political space where citizen groups advance their own forms of incorporation and governance to secure participation in a network of power structures. These urban groups sought to express themselves as a constituent part of a social class, or ordo, and operate within the framework of a social category that was hitherto reserved for the creation of nobility. These groups aim to interfere in the construction of the ordo known as chivalry. The intervention of these urban groups within the sphere of chivalry offers a new perspective on the poetics of order and valuable insight on how this social class is reconfigured by the individuals and groups who wish to belong to it. For its inquiry on this social dynamic, this chapter relies on entirely different data from those in the previous chapter: transcripts of citizens’ petitions in Cortes meetings. These transcripts reveal voices—or the collective voice of a social group in formation—in an inchoate moment and reveal not only what these voices say and how they express it but the difficulties in articulating themselves in public, in finding resonance within the political sphere that secures sovereignty. While considering this testimony, it is important to notice the developmental process and the motivations underlying these voices. Throughout this learning process, urban knights, who belong in large measure to the bourgeoisie, although nobles also participated to a lesser extent, as they transform themselves into a collective voice. Throughout this process, which manifests itself as a kind of chivalric apprenticeship, urban knights found themselves pitted against the empire of an official system of expression that was held together by the same clerics who were in charge of transcribing, on most occasions, the testimony given by urban knights. The objective of the clerical transcription of a citizen knight’s official petition was to present an accurate account, but it also adapted the petition to the hieratical forms of

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juridical aesthetics. In the discrepancy between the original content and the imposed content, clerical form is a dialectics of power that influenced the development of urban chivalric groups. It is enormously difficult to isolate the original agency encoded within the testimony of urban knights. Among many reasons, it is difficult because documents themselves feature a vocabulary that often makes it unclear to whom the knights allude. It is necessary to be cognizant of how this vocabulary is being read and whether it becomes a gateway to a political and juridical space. Some of these doors lead to a conception of the space of the city as a sociopolitical rather than simply spatiophysical referent; they highlight the civic, political, and human dimension of the urban sphere within which the knights giving testimony operated. Another way of referring to this space is to speak of its heterotopic dimension. I will refer to this dimension by means of the Latin word civitas, which points to the city as a space that cannot be localized at one specific point, but that imposes its political presence as a builder of otherness with respect to the governmental rigor imposed by the sovereign power. As we will see, the space itself of the heterotopia in which civitas is manifested is the ordenamiento (court record, ordinance), the book in which voice is articulated. The portability of the ordenamiento, its textual mouvance, and the ordering and use of its cartularies are some of the expressions associated with this civic heterotopia that transcend time and place. It is thus necessary to study these texts as a heterotopic project of the civitas. Correlative to civitas is urbs. If civitas is the term that indicates the civil and political life of citizens (closely corresponding to the abstract Greek concept of polis), urbs is its material presence, the construction of its space, its engineering, as well as the concrete human and physical practice of those. This is the second crucial aspect of this inquiry, and to understand it adequately, I will examine how civil chivalric groups reinvent themselves around an urban space. This does not imply an irreconcilable difference between these two concepts, as I will show in my analysis of practical social organization within the urbs in Chapter 3. Here, I will analyze the questions raised by a cuaderno produced in Castile in 1315, to constitute a “hermandad de caballeros hidalgos y villanos” (brotherhood of noble and urban knights). This regulatory text, the Cuaderno de la Hermandad, defines the hermandad or brotherhood, as a fraternity of urban knights who belonged to the nobility, or hidalgos, and the non-noble urban class, or villanos. This document is also essentially a dislocation of urban chivalry, an expression of civitas outside the space of urbs, given its participation in the processes whereby sovereign power is constructed and even preserved.

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The Cuaderno de la Hermandad was written within the political context of a regency council, a proceeding that effectively put into a state of suspension the personal sovereignty of the king while, paradoxically, aiming to protect it. The monarch in 1315 was Alfonso XI, a minor at the time of the council. The main participants in the regency council were María de Molina (1265–1321)— who was Alfonso’s grandmother and a perennial member of the council from birth—and two tutors elected from among the most conspicuous members of the highest Castilian nobility, the ricos hombres. These ricos hombres were the same high nobility that consistently resisted any attempt to construct a central jurisdiction embodied by the physical and political person of the monarch. The hermandad emerged in the middle of this crisis as an associative method for participation in the collective process of sovereignty and, by extension, of the Castilian monarchy itself. The high nobility therefore introduced an exception to sovereignty. The hermandad established itself as a group that might provide its members protection and its twenty-five rules, or articles, addressed the exceptional nature of this ordo. The Cuaderno issued an odd political dimension in the construction of the chivalric ordo. The hermandad was an attempt to surmount the borders of the social class (the ordo) that enabled the group to participate in the political sphere of a sovereignty in crisis. Through the horizontal discourse of chivalry, the heterotopic practice of civitas imposed a voice and an authority within the political space of the royal courts, which served as the politico-juridical institution in which sovereignty was resolved. Having considered the host of circumstances associated with the Cuaderno and the regency council to which it responded, I am able to delve into a series of crucial problems related to modes of transformation of the monarchy and the modern state. These problems revolve around the inhabitants of fortified villages and cities, as well as the processes through which urban knights expressed their will to constitute an active part of the sovereign power. The key aspects I will address are: (1) the examination of vocabulary, with the goal of clarifying the social identity of interlocutors claiming their agency; (2) the specific problems presented by the institution of the Cortes as a space in which sovereignty is resolved, as well as its strategies of entry; and (3) the criteria of association and the poetics of fraternity in the process of the construction of civil life. Finally, I will analyze the textual strategies for the creation of this voice and its heterotopic expression based on a close reading of the Cuaderno. I will trace the poetics of the ordo set in motion on behalf of those individuals and groups who are ultimately subjects of the ordo. The point of such an analysis is to understand the mechanisms of a strategy of self-perception—or

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of the creation of a phenomenon—and of the formation of the perception of political experience, a process to which the Cuaderno offers privileged access. The social structure of the group that concerns me is not well defined and I will provide some background on its history and nomenclature. I will refer to this group as citizen knights or urban knights. This is a generic denomination that includes bourgeois knights and hidalgos. The bourgeois knights descended from urban militias whose traditional role had been to protect borders. Primary sources from medieval Castile refer to these knights in various ways: caballeros villanos (from the villas or cities), concejiles (linked to concejos or urban governments), pardos (the color of their uniforms was brown or pardo), ruanos (from the ruas or city streets), and so on. These were individuals and groups whose families exercised this military function, but who had seen their role limited as the cities became progressively more secure due to the mobility of the border. These knights, however, continued to keep arms and horses, since they were required to display them at the king’s request. They maintained the character of urban knights, but their defensive role had given way to a role in production, generally in commerce and agriculture. The knights of the lesser nobility, the hidalgos, were still noble knights. They were those referred to, in title 21 of the second Partidas, as the “compaña de hombres nobles” (organization of noblemen) by which chivalry is defined. However the lesser nobility (hidalguía) as a particular category of the nobility was relatively amorphous in the fourteenth century. Hidalgos (from fijo de algo, or “son of something”) were nobles, but after the fifteenth century they became slightly stigmatized, since they were no longer linked to the theological nobility, but rather to a nobility that was politically constituted through chivalry.1 Hidalguía is a liminal state, and therefore relates well to chivalry. Chivalry and hidalguía operate in the same interstice where nobility and nonnobility bifurcate. To be a knight and a member of the hidalguía is a way of facing the nobility, of being in its presence, with a definite precedent. Chivalry and hidalguía are in the presence of theological nobility yet resolutely outside of its sphere. While villano and hidalgo knights shared a general state of liminality, their separation was, nonetheless, crucial. Each group had a very different perception of the liminality that they shared, and they negotiated their relations with nobility differently. The Cuaderno comprises both groups yet subsequent chivalric institutions practice a definitive separation of these two chivalric categories. The terminology for the separation of these two categories is often prob-

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lematic. Sources that refer to social divisions within the city speak of knights, hombres buenos (good men), and hidalgos, above all. The hombres buenos are occasionally on the same level as the knights. This means that in terms of social hierarchy, neither the hombres buenos nor the knights can be confused with the hidalgos. It is also quite common for the hidalgos to be referred to as knights, and in such cases those knights who are not hidalgos are simply referred to as “los de la ciudad” [“those from the city”]. Not all the hombres buenos are knights “from the city,” even though all the knights of the cities seem to have been hombres buenos. Likewise, not all knights are hidalgos, although all hidalgos could have been considered knights.2 This all might seem to be a case of semantics, however it is fundamental to orient oneself within the framework of the juridical sources—in particular, the fueros, or local law codes, laws, and the cuadernos de peticiones de cortes (petition logs of the Cortes). Even with all these caveats, the analytical terrain is far from stable. A sole denomination may not correspond to a single referent. Even though a certain degree of precision can be achieved, the terms used by scribes and lawyers are occasionally ambiguous. Their ambiguity may issue from the triviality of these terms, which is to say from the lack of precision required when the interpretation of the law is not in doubt. Sometimes, however, the interpretation of the law, as that of the most clearly political texts, is very evidently in danger. It is in these cases that scribes and lawyers offer more detailed descriptions. But these examples are rare. Before the fourteenth century there is not a single one. Before Don Juan Manuel made a distinction between nonnoble defenders (“omnes de cauallo”) and noble defenders (“caualleros”) in his Libro de los estados, chapter 91, such clarification had been unnecessary. There are various explanations, but one of them is that the context of a reference sufficed to identify the type of knight intended. Alfonso X does not develop a true distinction either.3 He legally defines the knight as an hidalgo who has passed through a certain ritual and who lives according to certain rules, all of which form part of Partidas 2.21, in which chivalry is defined as an “organization of noblemen” (compaña de hombres nobles). Alfonso legally creates chivalry and gives an unprecedented meaning; its heuristic power is such that all previous differentiation becomes unnecessary. The titles dedicated to war seldom mention knights, but when they do, medieval interpreters of the law (or their readers) recognized it as a process of linguistic disambiguation: a knight is always a noble knight. In any case, the titles on war in the Siete Partidas—all those after Partidas 2.21, which is devoted to chivalry—are focused on military leaders, who are studied on a case-by-case basis and are situated within their respective spaces of power. The

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participants in war are neither nobles nor non-nobles, nor do they receive any further qualification. If they are not leaders or knights, paladins, commanders, members of elite forces, marauders, or other officials, they are referred to simply as those who participate in war, whoever they might be. Don Juan Manuel, nonetheless, finds it necessary to make a distinction with respect to chivalric vocabulary and its referents. The capacity for social transformation that chivalry places into the hands of the monarchy turns out to be traumatic for him as member of the high nobility with certain jurisdictional privileges to defend. Don Juan Manuel could not halt the growing presence of chivalric culture in the Iberian Peninsula, although he attempted to adapt to this culture by elaborating theories that sought to control the influence that chivalry might have over its own political and juridical universe—especially keeping in mind that the monarch under whose crown he lived, Alfonso XI, took particular interest in the powerful control of the social structure that this chivalric class offered. Don Juan Manuel flatly refused to be knighted by Alfonso XI yet wrote extensively concerning the relationship between chivalry and monarchical sovereignty and the different noble categories, as well as the significance of chivalry within them. Although he was a recognized warrior with expert knowledge of the most modern and effective military techniques, both with respect to the Christian kingdoms as well as those in use within al-Andalus, he chose never to write a military treatise of any sort.4 He only began to write exclusively about the values of chivalry and their significance in the political sphere, not in the military, in 1325 (at age forty-three). It is also when Alfonso XI reached maturity and when some of the chivalric interests that informed Alfonso’s politics began to be favored. It is in 1325, in fact, that Alfonso XI sent to Pope Clement V a letter requesting the adjudication of the territories appropriated from the Templars beginning in 1322, as it was his intention to form a new chivalric order on those lands (“pro creando ibidem novo ordine militari”).5 Within the city, there was a certain confluence between nobles and nonnobles, even though the number of villanos was generally higher than that of the hidalgos.6 The reason for this is the close relation that the non-noble militias had with the constitution of the cities. The transformation of the cities and the resulting relation with the militias occurred primarily after the tenth century. Carmela Pescador’s “La caballería popular,” which studies non-noble militia in León and Castile, explains in some detail the complex processes by which these militias were formed, as well as the different considerations they received by fueros and other legal documents. Pescador’s work explains the fear and hope that this group inspired in local authorities: fear of the power they could

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exercise and their increasing wealth, and the hope that the same power and wealth could be sufficiently harnessed so they could become a social category with important political as well as military functions, especially from the point of view of Castilian monarchs from Alfonso VI (r. 1065–1109) onward.7 The citizen militias accrued privilege after the eleventh century and their growth was undeterred until the reign of Alfonso VIII (r. 1158–1214). The examination of works dedicated to specific geographic spaces, such as the Council of Alba de Tormes, the extremely important city of Cuenca, the city of Jaén, the city of Soria, and above all the city of Burgos, irrefutably shows to what extent the citizen militia acquires, from the twelfth century on (especially at the start of the fourteenth century), a decisive presence within the system of local power.8 It is at this time that the phrase hombres buenos y caballeros becomes the subject of a discourse on objective power within city boundaries. Carmela Pescador speculated on the relation between the formation of the citizen militias in the cities of León and Castile and the formation of similar social categories in other European spaces. For Pescador it is important not to consider this Peninsular social class as exceptional within the broader European context.9 Pescador is right to suggest that the popular militia was not a Leonese or Castilian rarity. On the contrary, studies of different European regions show that this class, with characteristics very similar to those in the Iberian Peninsula, also developed along with European cities as they engaged in repopulation and urban reorganization. In fact, the citizen militia was the main agent of repopulation in European cities during the late Middle Ages, which is why it achieved such power and sowed such fear among the governing noble classes. With respect to the Italian Peninsula, the classic works of Gaetano Salvemini, which seek out a clearly bourgeois form of chivalry, are complemented by Hagen Keller’s much more clearly feudal perspective (Keller, “Militia” and “Adel, Rittertum und Ritterstand”; Salvemini, Magnati e popolani in Firenze). These two positions, in reality, turn out to be reconcilable through the studies of Franco Cardini (Guerre di Primavera, Alle radici della cavalleria, L’acciar de’ cavalieri) and Stefano Gasparri (I milites cittadini).10 Cardini is more interested in the noble chivalric class, while Gasparri discusses in great detail the role of the urban militia populares. Groups of knights certainly occupied a specific physical space within city walls. This was the case not only in Italian cities or in the cities of León and Castile, but it also seems to have been a constant element with respect to demographic distribution and urban development in European cities as a whole. The case of Nîmes or of Marseilles, as Martin Aurell has shown, was in fact quite similar. In Nîmes, knights occupied the city’s historical

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center and in particular the old Roman amphitheater, as well as the towers of the gates to the city. These spaces happened to be anthroponymous, given that the military groups and their families adopted as surnames the space that they occupied within the interior of the village. The popular military groups, the milites of the textual sources, appear to have been associated with relatively fixed and unchangeable urban spaces, which render the militia itself a city space. There is a fundamental difference, however, between the Italian, German, or Southern French (namely, Occitan) cities and the cities of Castile and León in relation to their evolution with respect to the weight of the militia. The turres of Florence, the walled zones within the gates, are the space of the societas. The tower is synonymous with, or rather a metonymy of the societas militum, or the institution upon which knightly power was based. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, these Florentine societates militum acquired an extremely important share of local power. This power grew to the extent that by mid thirteenth century its presence within the city is fully dismantled. Around 1256, in fact, the definitive abolition of the Florentine societates militum was proclaimed. In the south of France a similarly confrontational situation developed with respect to the presence and sociopolitical violence of the citizen milites. “À l’orée du XIIIe siècle cette situation contraste avec la période précédente où les milites tiraient profit de leurs tours, de leurs portes fortifiées et de leur enceinte pour s’affirmer dans la vie municipale” [“The situation at the beginning of the thirteenth century contrasts with that of preceding century, during which the milites derived profit from their towers, their fortified gates, and their compound and were thus able to assert themselves within public life”] (Aurell, “La chevalerie urbaine” 78). The abolition of these militia groups as organizations of power, whether they were institutionalized, as in the case of Florence, or not, happened through the destruction of their space, the turres. It is much more than a symbolic element. The societates militum and the citizen militias in general were fully linked to their own spaces. Transforming the citizen space, constructing or deconstructing urban spaces, presumes an argument of transformation of social structures (Lefebvre, La production de l’espace; Soja, Postmodern Geographies).11 Christine de Pizan’s constructing the cité des dames is only a literary manifestation of the intimate relationship that existed between urban organization and its sociopolitical counterpart. We find this same intimate relationship in many Castilian cities. In cities like Burgos or Cuenca, chivalric groups also met in a specific framework of streets, a framework that occupied a central place in the groups’ ceremonies of cooperation and representation.

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While in a significant portion of southern Europe, chivalric organizations found their physical and institutional space dismantled over the first half of the thirteenth century, in Castilian cities the opposite was occurring. As Pescador has demonstrated (and others after her), urban military groups progressively concentrated, consolidated, and reclaimed their urban power within the framework of new forms of documentation that allowed their collective voice to be heard. This process began in the second half of the thirteenth century and continued until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when they reached their absolute apogee. The most notable examples of this process, while they are by no means unique or isolated, are the organizations and institutions that began to be founded at the end of the thirteenth century and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the Societies of Santa María de Gamonal and Santiago in Burgos; the Cabildo de Caballeros Guisados de Caballo in Cuenca; the societies of Caballeros Cuantiosos de Jaén; and various other groups in other cities. Along with these organizations, it is necessary above all to read the petitions that the cities’ procurators made at meetings of the royal Cortes. In general terms, these petitions allow us to examine the processes by which citizen organizations sought out a space of expression within the ensemble of expressive delegation and limitation that makes up the Cortes. In a more specific sense, they grant us unprecedented access to networks of local power and to the social structure of the bourgeoisie and hidalguía, which constituted the most favored urban classes and were the most active in the exercise of local power. It is also fundamental to develop an adequate understanding of the circumstances by which these processes occurred, mainly because the royal courts were a political and juridical institution that was still quite new at the beginning of the fourteenth century (it was barely a century old) and had been very rarely employed by monarchs. It is principally within these courts, however, that the urban knights manifested their newly found voice and where their poetics of order was configured. According to José Manuel Pérez-Prendes’s principal argument (Cortes de Castilla), the Cortes executed the liberty of the monarch, as much de jure as de facto, in relation to his subjects. As Pérez-Prendes puts it, the Cortes were the “the king’s governing organ, directed and controlled by him” and not an “organ that limited [the king’s] sovereignty by virtue of a juridical structure that establishes it as such” (Cortes de Castilla, 55). His thesis contradicts the theory of Julio Valdeón, who sees in the Cortes an instrument meant to control, above all, royal politics (“Las cortes castellanas”; “Las cortes medievales”).

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The workings of the courts have been abundantly studied, from the openly polemical works (from a theoretical perspective) just mentioned to the more descriptive works of Evelyn Procter and Joseph O’Callaghan, which explain the habitual workings of the Cortes, both in internal or juridical terms and with respect to their sociopolitical relations with the exterior (Procter, Curia and Cortes; O’Callaghan, The Cortes of Castile-León). The polemic surrounding the juridico-political character of the Cortes is impossible to understand from an exclusively binary standpoint. The Cortes cannot be considered exclusively as an organ of the king’s government controlled by the king himself. We see in them, rather, the way in which the king introduces a multitude of proposals within the legislative context of the court that are followed by a multitude of decisions. The ordenamientos of the Cortes, however, cannot be read as isolated pieces. If we were to do so, we would conclude only that they present a series of voices (those of the procuradores) that request or even demand something, and a more powerful voice (that of the king) that either grants or denies it. Such a reading leads us to a seriously impoverished perception of the process as a whole. The court logs, or cuadernos, are in fact a constant spiral of power negotiation. Some cuadernos persistently refer to other previous ones, or to other instruments of a juridical character designed and granted by the king. The procuradores were not satisfied with making a petition to obtain affirmation or denial; in the event of a denial, the successive cuadernos are adamant in this respect, converting it into a recognition of all the procuradores. Some urban groups in power, such as brotherhoods and well-established organizations, were specifically formed following some of those petitions. Thus, the Cortes fundamentally constituted the space in which the tension among the different power groups was lived, acted out, or performed. They were the place in which the relationship of power among established social groups (the clerics, the high nobility, and, above all, the king) and other emergent groups—which were principally the urban elites constituted by hombres buenos y caballeros—was called into question. It is quite possible that this tension, that moment in which voices were redistributed and the exercise of power negotiated, is seen more clearly in some of the records generated in courts that were not presided over by the king, but rather by a regency council. These records reveal the extent to which the voice of the bourgeoisie could even call into question the legitimacy of the regents and tutors, or of the regency council as a whole, and how the bourgeois corporation of caballeros y hombres buenos is asserting a new discourse of authority in the political and legislative labors of the regency council. The Hermandad of 1315, to which we

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will soon turn our attention, is perhaps one of the most evident signs of this movement. Reading the cuadernos in a series allows us to understand the processes by which different procuradores went about constructing a voice for the bourgeoisie. Teófilo Ruiz has shown irrefutably that Castilian bourgeois structures (councils or fraternities, among others) did not presuppose any particular type of democratic manifestation of municipal liberty or autonomy in the exercise of power. He also showed that the kings—especially those from Alfonso X to Alfonso XI (in whom we are most keenly interested in the present chapter)— utilized those spaces of municipal power as an instrument for the consolidation of monarchical control with respect to, above all, the high nobility of ricos hombres (Ruiz, “The Transformation”; Sociedad).12 The perspective on the Cortes that it is now opportune to introduce has to do, precisely, with the way in which the celebration and convocation of the Cortes and their written manifestation influenced this mode of control. They accomplished this in a way that compelled urban groups to constitute themselves heterotopically through networks of delocalized cities to correspond with the nomadic nature of the Cortes. This observation will help us to understand the raison d’être of the Hermandad of 1315, as well as other expressions of the urban knights in cuadernos, from orders to depositions to complaints. The Cortes, which were as much as an instrument by which the monarch explored his jurisdiction as they were a tool for exercising it, were itinerant during the Middle Ages. This means that monarchs did not tend to convene Cortes always in the same place, but rather they held them in different centers, generally urban ones, although at times they were also convened in rural settings) throughout the territory of Castile and León. This permanent displacement represents a double mouvance. It sets in motion not the only the court, but also the documents it issues. Similarly, it sets in motion all those requests that various groups wished to address in court. The notion of itinerancy admittedly does not give the most accurate account of the problem. It is in fact more appropriate to consider the court in terms of its perpetually nomadic character. Itinerancy (from the Latin iter, “journey”) suggests that the Cortes made stops on a determined path, that they were in the process of going from one point to another, that they were en route. In reality, however, displacement is itself a form of political discourse whose goal is not progress along a route or course, but rather the creation of the space. We can consider the Cortes as part of a politics of nomadism: having politically and jurisdictionally exploited a given center, the Cortes displaced themselves to exploit another, and without having submitted them-

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selves to the circumstances of a specific path or map. In lieu of following a map, the Cortes created one. This creation is manifested in the seriality of the Cortes just as it is presented in the manuscript tomes that contain cuadernos and ordenamientos. The political and juridical force of this procedure was extreme. It multiplied the body of the king throughout the whole of the political geography. At each one of the settings the king’s body exercised its jurisdiction through the activity of juridical resolution by means of the implementation of the central legal body, and then produced a document in which the new regulation was set for its use there and in other cities. The nomadic courts gave rise to another centripetal movement: their documents emerge from each meeting to be used in all the political geography of the kingdom. The body of the king always represents the center of gravity of the kingdom’s jurisdiction, and this is manifested through the production and diffusion of these documents. The citizen group or institution that participated in the Cortes had to be prepared to incorporate itself into the nomadic politics of the latter. The representatives of each city were its procuradores. These were the figures who had to seek out the Cortes and displace themselves, regardless of where they may be held, to participate in them. Through this act of displacement, the city procuradores provided both their physical and documental body to the court process, the latter represented by the cuaderno of petitions that expressed their voice within the Cortes. In the case of the Cuaderno de la Hermandad, its presenters were the procuradores of the city of Burgos, who wished to have their petitions sewn into the ordenamiento produced on the occasion of the Cortes so that these petitions might be granted and validated. It is in this act of binding these cuadernos together that sovereignty manifests itself in the space of the court. Thus, every petitioning group had to displace itself to reach the site of the court, abandoning its own physical space or urbs. Within the lexicon of medicine, heterotopia is the displacement of an organ or part of an organ with respect to its normal location in the human body. It is exactly this process that the royal courts imposed: the organs had to abandon their functional niches to seek the place where sovereignty was exercised. It is here that the Hermandad of 1315 showed itself to be quite original, functioning as a kind of medicine for the circumstance. The Hermandad was a civitas, a civil and political entity that effectively overcame the problem of displacement through the creation of a horizontal network that occupied as much geographic space as possible. In the textual analysis I will show how this space came to be occupied, and how the Hermandad expanded to create

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a network of urban centers. If a heterotopic entity is, according to Foucault’s metaphor, a ship adrift in the middle of the ocean (“Des espaces autres”), the Hermandad constituted a veritable fleet. The functioning of this fleet was based on strategies of chivalric solidarity. Its originality resided in the fact that the proposal that the Hermandad carried to the royal courts did not define any internal hierarchy: it designated neither a master nor any other type of vertical structure. The displacement that it sought was the moment in which the contract was validated through the incorporation of the signatures of the regency council, which had convened the court, and it was sewn into the resulting ordenamiento. In some way, these strategies of chivalric solidarity enter the space of sovereignty yet remain, at the same time, outside of it. The relationship of exteriority preserves the meaning of the Hermandad, but it is also one of the reasons for its fungibility. The manner in which the chivalric civitas operated outside of the vertical hierarchy while seeking to participate in the space of sovereignty had relevant consequences. Perhaps the first and most important of these was the search for a way to speak about chivalry that was different from that which tended to be used in monarchical discourse; in this search, chivalry aimed to abandon its condition as an object of regulation to elaborate on its own conditions of possibility, its own rules, its own and subjective system of control (RodríguezVelasco, El debate). The voices of the knights themselves, for example, whether nobles or of bourgeois extraction, seem to have wanted to explore this possibility. One could try to explore, in fact, a poetics of chivalric order just as it was practiced in the realm of the urban knights, independently of its links to nobility, and exploring its political ties based on the idea of fraternity. The poetics of knightly fraternity are very closely related to the poetics of fraternity in the scope of bourgeois alliances of the Middle Ages and the societies of protection and mutual assistance. The majority of the bourgeois organizations, with the exception of the societates militum previously mentioned, were constituted as fraternities, confraternities, or chapters of artisanal or trade guilds. The definition of these groups by Antonello Mattone is perfect: “a universitas, an association of individuals with the same statutes, the same rules, the same saints, the same aid organization” (“Corporazioni, gremi e artigianato,” 21). In almost all European cities—throughout the kingdoms of France, the Italian domains, the Holy Roman Empire, Flanders in particular, and elsewhere—the guilds consolidate a large part of municipal activity and organize the urban space around them effectively.13

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In cities like Bologna or Naples, as well as in others such as the Castilian city of Ávila, the gremial and artisanal fraternities form their statutes based on their interaction with the ecclesiastical centers of power, be they the cathedral chapter or the neighborhood parishes. The Bolognese confraternities of Santa Maria della Vita and of Santa Maria della Morte, founded respectively in 1260 and 1336, received their statutes either from the parish church or from a Dominican convent, because of the preaching of Venturino of Bergamo (Fanti, Confraternite e città, 1–60; 61–173). In the city of Naples, during the times of Charles of Anjou (1266–1285) and Charles II (1285–1309) and then during the Aragonese period at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the gremial and artisanal guilds, like that of Santa Marta, also presumed a reorganization of the urban space in function of the processional ceremonies of the different times of the year or of certain happenings related to the guild itself. The statutes and the processional system were based on ecclesiastical rites (Vitolo and Di Meglio, Napoli angioino-aragonese, 147–209). The entire organizing process of these guilds was dependent on the religious and liturgical calendar and submitted to it as a political form of theological organization. In the city of Ávila, for example, the Chapter of San Benito was organized as a fraternity in which the artisanal and guild bourgeoisie established direct relations with the cathedral chapter and with the three Benedictine reformist groups (the Cluniacs, the Cistercians, and the Premonstratensians); their statutes and related documentation were handled by the ecclesiastical entities (Sobrino Chomón, Documentos and Documentación medieval). It would be misguided to argue that these congregations lacked any political element. The Italian guilds and some of the confraternities founded in the city of Seville, for example, had so much political force by the end of the fifteenth century that they ended up being dominated by sectors of the nobility that needed to assert their political presence during the development of the city. The most striking aspect of such fraternities is that their poetics are clearly linked with political theology; they composed their statutes with ecclesiastical rigor and rhetoric, employing church calendars and adopting the ecclesiastical organization of time, its hierarchical vocabulary, and, in the end, its doctrine. The organizations of lay knights were radically separated from the dominant form of bourgeois association. They expressed their political will through textual strategies and apparatuses that passed for chivalric discourse, for juridical ethics and discourse, as well as urbanism and the practice of the urban space. These fraternities should be understood as a desperate search to construct a voice, and the documental modes of articulating this voice, to submit it to the juridico-political space of the courts.

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The bibliography on knightly fraternities in Castile is sufficiently abundant, beginning with the older works of Julio Puyol y Alonso, and then later the various analyses of C. González Mínguez, Antonio Álvarez de Morales, Julio Valdeón Baruque, Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, and Manuel Fernando Ladero (above all regarding the fifteenth-century Hermandad).14 On the other hand, these were not the only social movements of bourgeois confraternity. The different fraternal movements that arose in the middle and the end of the fifteenth century, such as Galician irmandiños and Levantine germanías, all accompany a process of vindication that some have considered revolutionary. All of them, like the previous groups mentioned, are founded in a semantics of fraternity that promises to yield significant analytical fruit. As Eloy Benito Ruano and Álvarez de Morales have pointed out, the denominations of fraternity are as nonspecific and unsystematic as many other terms found in medieval sources. Their meaning depends on context for the construction of discourse. The term hermandad subsumes many diverse alliances that may lack any common link, thereby setting in motion a series of semantic resources that tended to localize the corporation itself. Brotherhood, fraternity, confraternity—hermandad, cofradía, confraternidad—all these nouns point to the same roots, frater and germanus, wherein a horizontal relationship is manifested. The semantics of fraternity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries cannot be addressed (even by the members themselves) without acknowledging its significance within horizontal associative medieval systems. The fratres of medieval institutions configure spaces in which this horizontality does not imply an absence of hierarchy, even though it is manifested above all through the chapter or the rule of the statutes of the institution itself. Verticality does not inhere in the physical individual, but rather in the juridical person created by the contractual movement organized according to written regulation. This is how conventual or monastic rule functions among monks, or among the double rule—military and monastic—of the friars of the military orders. The fact that interurban fraternities, formed by city procuradores working on behalf of their various citizens, adopted these semantics indicates the necessity to examine how this horizontal and statutory structure refers to itself, and the way in which these poetics were elaborated. The first fraternities of which the logs and ordenamientos account for are the Generales of 1282, in support of King Sancho IV against his father Alfonso X, and those of 1295. In the first of these, the expression carta fraternitatis is used, which later was substituted by the expression hermandad (Álvarez de Morales, Las hermandades, 40–41). Antonio Álvarez de Morales describes in great detail the general features of these fraternities, as well as their constitu-

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tion and the systems of representation it advances. Those of 1295 were formed upon the death of Sancho IV, and they confirm María de Molina as regent while Fernando IV was a minor (1285–1312, reigned after 1295) in the Cortes of Valladolid of 1295. Article 12 of the Cuaderno de Cortes de Valladolid de 1295 reads in part: “Otrossi las hermandades que fizieron los delas uillas de nuestros regnos de Castiella e de Leon e de Gallizia, e de Estremadura e del arçobispado de Toledo otorgamos las e confirmamos las asi como las fizieron” [“With respect to the fraternities formed by citizens of the cities in our realms of Castile, León, and Galicia, and of Extremadura and the archbishopric of Toledo, we authorize and confirm them as formed”] (Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y Castilla, 1: 132). On many occasions during the reign of Fernando IV, these brotherhoods were also confirmed, with some modifications in their norms, as both Álvarez de Morales (Las hermandades, 43–49) and González Mínguez (Contribución) have pointed out. González Mínguez identifies up to ten letters of fraternity between 1295 and 1300 that established coalitions between cities; to these he adds the publication of a new letter (written on a folded broadside sheet of paper according to the norms of the chancery letter) that describes a fraternity created in 1296 in the area of Álava and La Rioja (Contribución ).15 All those are brief letters in which cities and towns express their will to protect themselves from desafueros, which is to say, from the interruption of their local legal codes by foreign agents, in the midst of a recrudescent civil war that lasted until 1304. The desafuero is, technically, the violation of the local charters and privileges of a given city, which is to say, its legal regime. Most significant in this chain of letters is an explicit will to oppose the violence of nobles by means of a system of defense based on the law and juridical proceedings. This manner of using the force of the law to oppose the physical violence of the so-called “feudal evil-doers” (malhechores feudales) is key to the expressive modes of citizen groups, who, nonetheless, also possessed the military means to engage in violent resistance. For these groups, the future of their presence in the monarchical courts was, precisely, the rise of language and juridical aesthetics, the integration or displacement toward the political space defined by the law and their participation in it through the investment of their collective voice and documents. The Hermandad of 1315 is, to my mind, the most interesting and explicit of all of them, and it is probably the one that develops an important poetics of order with the most clarity. In these poetics there is a specific event that brought about the necessity to construct the fraternity. In the version offered by the Cuaderno de la Hermandad, a conflict is mentioned that separates the high nobility of the local governing powers from those who these sources call

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hidalgo knights and good men (hombres buenos) of the cities. The high nobility is the traditionally jurisdictional nobility that possesses lordships and that postulates a clear jurisdictional division of the kingdom. The king’s tutors, who with María de Molina formed the regency council, divided up, quite precisely, the jurisdiction of the kingdom, which limited the citizen powers’ capacity for action (Sánchez-Arcilla Bernal, Alfonso XI). The Cuaderno presents the Hermandad as a society of mutual aid meant to protect itself from this circumstance in a way that unites police control, educative structures, and juridical violence. In the first moments of this conflict, the hidalgo knights and the bourgeoisie seemed to have looked to group themselves independently from each other. Perhaps around 1285 the Confraternity of Santa María de Gamonal was created in Burgos with the goal of concentrating the power of economically powerful merchant families, expressing thus their will to emerge as political subjects. The Confraternity of Santa María de Gamonal—that “de los mercaderes” [“of the merchants”] as it became known later (Pardo de Guevara y Valdés, “Introducción”)—possesses a constituent rule. The versions of the code of Santa María de Gamonal conserved in the National Library in Madrid (MS 22.257, MS 22.258), however, date from the fifteenth century, even though the confraternity traces its foundation and its rule to 1285 and seems clearly to have taken its cue from the codex of the Cathedral of Burgos that contains the rules, lists, and portraits of the confraternity of the knights of Santiago de Burgos, which we discuss further on. The makeup of this confraternity is exclusively bourgeois, and its rule speaks explicitly of the privileged social class (whose identification was often ambiguous and imprecise) of hombres buenos, which in summarized accounts could be considered the class composed of members of the bourgeoisie who, for the most part, possessed the means and elements of representation of the urban knights, and who, with their growing economic power, aspired as well to a certain administrative power, something that, in effect, they succeeded in achieving from the fourteenth century on. The specifically hidalgo fraternities, “que ffizieron los ffidalgos apartada mientre” [“that the hidalgos created by themselves”] in Valladolid (1299?) (Cortes, 1: 164), whose statutes are said to have been amended without giving a determined date, in the Castilian cities of Torquemada and Villa Velasco, seem somewhat imprecise, although they were clearly in force on some occasions. Of this fraternity of hidalgo knights there does not seem to be any notice other than the one that gives the Ordenamiento of the Cortes of Carrión of 1317. Both seem to be directed at substantiating a concrete aspiration that frequently appears in the court orders during the minorities of Fernando IV and

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Alfonso XI and that consists of the allocation of one or more (up to sixteen) knights, both hidalgos and bourgeois, “para consejar e servir a mi e a la Reyna mi madre e al infante don Enrique mio tio e mio tutor” [“to advise and serve me and the queen my mother and Prince Enrique my uncle and tutor”] (Cortes, 1: 164). Even though this company and council are linked, above all, to the cities, after 1315 and in 1317 the hidalgo knights begin to join, and in 1317 there is a specific reference to one of the knights who serves as a tutor (ayo) for the minor king, Alfonso XI.16 From early on, the knights adopted the form of a juridically established and defended political alliance. This is the clear sense of the important cuaderno that we must now analyze more closely. Bound as an addition to the record of the courts of Burgos of 1315, the rubric denominates it as follows: “Cuaderno de la hermandad que los caballeros hijosdalgo y hombres buenos de los reinos de Castilla, Leon, Toledo y las Extremaduras hicieron para defenderse de los tuertos y daños que les causasen los tutores durante la menor edad de D. Alfonso XI , aprobado en las Cortes de Burgos, celebradas en la era MCCCLIII” [“Cuaderno of the fraternity of the hidalgo and hombres buenos knights of the kingdoms of Castile, León, Toledo and the Extremaduras, constructed to defend said fraternity from the offenses and injuries that the royal tutors might cause them during the minority of Alfonso XI, approved in the Court of Burgos, celebrated in the era of 1353 (=1315)”] (Cortes, 1: 247–72). This cuaderno is the first document in which the institutional confraternization between these two categories of knights is established, for which are recognized specific rules and oaths on the part of the queen regent, the king’s tutors (the princes Juan and Pedro), and the ricos hombres. The Cuaderno de la Hermandad, as well as the fraternity itself, can be deemed a part of the juridical practice of a poetics of order. The distribution of the Cuaderno, as well as its redaction, reveals an urgent desire to reorder the lay chivalry so as to establish relations of power that might allow them to contest the high nobility (Cortes, 1: 285, 31). This fact is unusual, together with the weight of the political crisis and of the historical circumstances mentioned throughout this chapter. The Cuaderno is a realization on the part of the urban knights that their political function, as citizens and representatives of a civitas, corresponds to a civil and political life that transcends the specific localization of the urbs. Against this specific localization, the hermandad distributed itself throughout a great number of cities that cover the historical domains of the kingdom of Castile and León, from the extremaduras (i.e., the old borders— extremadura is the term which was used to mean “border” in the vocabulary of the war of reconquest) to the kingdom of Toledo, all of Castile, and all of

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León; all the jurisdictional domains in which the high Castilian nobility still claimed jurisdictional power. The so-called chivalric imaginary was introduced in full form within this project through an attempt to fashion a juridico-political application of the chivalric fable (with its pedagogical subfable included), in which the knights of different social backgrounds attempted to construct for themselves a public hope whose tendency toward institutionalization was contractually manifested in the Cortes. The public hope of chivalry was, in this context, the possibility of contributing to the objective regency of the kingdom while maintaining control of municipal power. What the public hope of chivalry proposes is the incorporation of a bourgeois lifestyle into public life, and not a specific function. There is no idealism in this position. Likewise, I do not posit this as a dramatic revolution. The problem that I am posing is, from the start, strictly jurisdictional. The writing of the Cuaderno is documentary, and its juridical formulas are clearly oriented toward the obtaining of a voice of authority, or in the procedural language of the time, the achievement of an “authentic person” (Partidas 3.18). The phrase “sepan quantos este quaderno vieren” [“may all those who see this cuaderno know”] that opens the Cuaderno, situates it in the linguistic sphere of a growing chancery style that both the knights and hombres buenos wished to adopt, and whose rules are set forward, with all the formulary models placed at the disposition of its end users, in Partidas 3.18. One of the major theses of this documentary writing is the secularization of the chancery universe that is proposed in this cuaderno. While the great majority of chancery documents were redacted by literate clerics, citizens often claimed in the Cortes their right to gain authority as literate laymen representing the cities. The Cuaderno de la Hermandad is far from being an independent documentary piece. It comes bound within the Cuaderno de las Cortes de Burgos de 1315, whose thirty-first article confirms, promulgates and therefore gives juridical life to the Cuaderno: “Otrossi vos otorgamos e uos conffirmamos la hermandat que en estas cortes ffiziestes todos los ffijos dalgo e los delas çibdades e villas de todo el sennorio de nuestro sennor el Rey en la manera quela ffiziestes” [“We authorize and confirm, and in the manner in which you formed it, the fraternity that you, all the hidalgos and men from the cities and villages within the territory of our lord the king, formed in this court”] (Cortes 1: 285, 31). The only significant formal difference between the constitutional log and the cuadernos that confirms it is the sacred invocation or protocol with which all court cuadernos begin: “En el nombre de Dios Amen” [“In the name of God, Amen”] or similar formulas. These formulas serve to sacralize the ju-

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ridical moment. Such sacralization is absent in the Cuaderno de la Hermandad and is only manifested in the individual attitudes of those who sign at the instant in which they do so (Cortes, 1: 261–72). The dependence of this cuaderno on court cuadernos was permanent, marked by an enormous degree of anxiety, given that the hermandad repeatedly requested that the Cuaderno be confirmed in successive Cortes during Alfonso’s minority. These petitions took place in Carrión in 1317 (Cortes, 1: 311, 28); in Medina del Campo in 1318 with reticent response from the council of regency (Cortes, 1: 332, 9); and in 1325, in Valladolid, although Alfonso, by this point king, clearly excludes from his confirmation the cuadernos for the hermandad “Otrossi les otorgo los quadernios que les dio el rey don Ffernando mio padre en las cortes que el ffizo, aquellos que non fablan de hermandades” [“I authorize the cuadernos given to my father, the king Don Fernando, in the Cortes he held, with the exception of those that speak of fraternities”] (Cortes, 1: 388, 40). Unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain direct access to the original version of this cuaderno of twelve paper folios sewn into the cuaderno of twenty parchment folios corresponding to the Cortes of Burgos. The location of the original (or originals) is unknown, and I have also been unable to locate the copies mentioned by academic editors in their magnificent work of 1861. It is from this 1861 edition that I have obtained all the material that I have with respect to the Cuaderno, plus some eighteenth-century copies. It would be inappropriate to speak about the material differences between both logs, or to theorize about the multicolored plaits from which were hung, at the time, the wax seals of the royal chancery. Independently of its formal characteristics, the institution adopts, for its writing, an aesthetics very close to that of the cuadernos themselves, and in such a way that petition and concession or rejection are alternated. In the case of the cuadernos, this alternation is produced in each article, while in the Cuaderno de la Hermandad the petition consists of twenty-five articles that are conceded and sworn to in their entirety. Their order is initiated with a prologue, a primeramente, followed by the formula otrosí for each petition—a formula derived from the juridical Latin alterum si. The Cuaderno begins with an affirmation of the poetics of fraternity, followed by an introduction, the twenty-five regulatory articles of the fraternity, and ends with the signatures of the members and procuradores of the fraternity and the oaths taken by both the members of the brotherhood and procuradores and the regent and the tutors. The hidalgo and villano knights express their will to attenuate “los muchos males e dannos e agrauiamientos que auemos rreçebidos ffasta aqui delos omnes poderosos” [“the many evils, and harms,

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and ruthlessness that we have suffered until now from powerful men”]. In the end, their stated goal is that “todos abenida miente ponemos e ffazemos tal pleyto e tal postura e tal hermandat que nos amemos e nos queramos bien los vnos alos otros e que seamos todos en vno de un coraçon e de vna voluntat para guardar sennorio e seruiçio del Rey e de todos sus derechos que a e deue auer, e para guarda de nuestros cuerpos e delo que auemos e de todos nuestros fueros e ffranquezas e libertades e buenos vsos e costunbres e cartas e quadernos que auemos todos e cada vno de nos” [“we all by our own and shared will, hereby oath, and express the right, and promulgate, and create a fraternity so that we should love and esteem one another, and that we should all be of one heart and of one will to protect and serve the king and all the rights that he has and should have, and to protect our bodily persons and our possessions, as well as our laws, exemptions, privileges, liberties, customs, letters, and court logs that each and every one of us has”] (Cortes, 1: 248).17 The initial criterion for this juridico-political defense, for the preservation of the exercise of power in the interior of the cities and, after all, for the preservation of the civitas as well as “de todos e cada vno de nos,” is a poetics of fraternity. Fundamental to the ordo, then, is the common expression of fraternal love, presented through the horizontality that is pointed out in the community: to be “of one heart” and “of one will” and to “love one another” according to the Christian notion of love toward the neighbor. This theory of a power group that is based on love is not self-explanatory. It is, nevertheless, a fundamental philosophy in the constitution of ordo and of the fraternity. In what strategy of power can this theory be found? It could be proposed as the secularization of a theological concept, following the known thesis of Carl Schmitt. This love, then, would be a hypostasis of caritas and the eleventh commandment in which Christian synthesis is substantiated. How is the process of secularization manifested? How do these texts make sense of it? Love is a bond that does not require a special localization and that can be extended liberally in the common space designated by the ordo. Love, as the Cuaderno points out, is the desire of group unification and is extended as much as the group itself is extended. The signatories of the Cuaderno also signed this will of love. Love is, then, a juridical concept of political rationality. According to Partidas 4.10.10 “el verdadero amor passa todos los debdos” [“true love overrides all (legal) bonds”] (Martin, “Le mot pour les dire”; Heusch, La philosophie de l’amour and Les fondements juridiques de l’amitié), which means that the acceptance or expression of this feeling is superior to whatever other bond (debdo) of those that are manifested in the translation of natural law to political law.

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Partidas 4.27.4 speaks in particular of the love of friendship, that is to say, the horizontal love in the aforementioned point of the Cuaderno. It is about a love that “segund la costumbre de España . . . pusieron antiguamente los fijos dalgo entre si, que non se deuen desonrrar, nin fazer mal vnos a otros” [“according to the custom of Spain . . . persons nobly born agreed among themselves that they must not dishonor nor do injury to one another”]. Similarly, this love of friendship can disappear from among the natives of a land, “quando alguno dellos es manifiestamente enemigo della [de la tierra] o del señor que la ha de gobernar e mantener en justicia” [“when any of them becomes the open enemy of his country, or of the lord whose duty it is to govern it and maintain justice within its limits”] (Partidas 4.27.7). If love of friendship is the glue that holds together the horizontal order, its sense, however, is found beyond this horizontality in the system that is superstructurally ordered: the land—a prenational conception of the nation—and, above all, the sovereign. It is these superstructural elements that allow the survival of love. Without them, the horizontality itself would also cease to exist. Contractual love consolidates the group through feelings whose juridical conditions link the “fijos dalgo” to the chivalric nobility. The law expresses it with infinite clarity, but at the same time it is not inventing the link. On one hand, it designs it as a custom, a consuetude, a use whose juridical value is recognized (Partidas 1.2.1–3). Only the nobles can situate themselves within a discourse of love with valid contractual weight in the political space. Love ties more than whatever other “bond,” and the acquisition of political bonds corresponds to this category. On the other hand, this idea also belongs to so-called court literature, which is the chivalric and noble literature that developed in all of Europe since the beginning of the twelfth century.18 In it, the capacity to love itself is exclusive to the nobility, while the rest of the estates (ordines) have a link with the eroticism that is tied only to the capacity to reproduce. In Alfonsine discourse, a third element is incorporated that plays the role of theoretical language: the inclusion, within the juridical code, of Aristotle’s Ethics. The first philosophy of fraternity, along with it its constitutive strategy, is predicated upon this complex framework regarding the political philosophy of love. The strategy is twofold. On one hand, upon writing a love contract into its institutional document, the Hermandad is also situating itself in the double horizontal and vertical alliance that relates to the nobility and the sovereign respectively. The Hermandad is therefore including itself in the space in which the resolution of political objectives takes place, that is sovereignty. On the other hand, the Hermandad is representing itself as a chivalric congregation

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that functions in line with the referential network of court culture, a network that is linked to that which I am here calling the public hope of chivalry and that is constructed through chivalric fables.19 The Cuaderno de la Hermandad is divided into twenty-five articles or claims on behalf of its knights. The main part deals with points on which the Hermandad expresses its fears concerning the material absurdities and juridico-political arbitrariness of the nobles and tutors that participate in the council of regency. The fraternity unites against these absurdities and arbitrariness and seeks to establish a regimen of law that might allow its members, as a political collective recognized by the regent power (and the king as a last resort), to participate in the power sphere as a means of control of the regents and tutors. The first and second articles, for example, request the right of the Hermandad to challenge the power of the tutors, even the regent, in case either one of them caused physical or material harm to any member of the fraternity through the violation of fueros and derechos (rights). In such a case, the Hermandad would reserve the right to make these damages known to legally constituted officials, which in Castilian society were the royal land merinos (administrators) and the alcaldes (mayors). Their intention was to be able to demand their rights and even force the loss of position for the tutor who committed an injustice and did not correct or remedy it according to the fueros and rights defended by the officials of justice. The Hermandad did not only establish rights and privileges to defend itself from the exterior. Some of the points of the Cuaderno de la Hermandad sought consolidation of the fraternity itself. In this search for consolidation of its principles of solidarity is, perhaps, where we best perceive the fraternity’s desire for institutionalization. We could take, for example, articles 3 and 4, in which the penal consequences are prevented in case “alguno o algunos delos que ssomos en esta hermandat ffizieren tuerto a algunos delos que ssomos en ella” [“any of us in this fraternity should commit some injury to other members”] (Cortes, 1: 250), while at the same time they establish a regime of protection on behalf of the Hermandad, not only for its members but also for the territories, municipalities, or local powers toward which the fraternity plans to extend its influence: Otrossi ponemos tal pleyto e tal postura entre nos que omme ffidalgo desta hermandat que non mate nin mande matar por ssi nin por otre a omme ffidalgo nin cauallero nin omme delos que moran en las villas desta hermandat e de ssus pueblos ssin le ffazer tal cosa por quel deua matar con derecho, e quando querella ouieren del por

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cosa quel aya ffecho tal commo esta que dicha es, que gelo enbie dezir o lo enbie desaffiar o menaçar ante conçeiera miente, e quel non pueda matar nin ffazer mal ffasta nueue dias ssi ffuere delos ffijos dalgo que moran en las villas, et ssi ffuere delos otros delas villas quel non maten nin le ffagan matar ffasta doze dias. [We stipulate and agree that no hidalgo of this fraternity may, by himself or through another, kill or order killed any other hidalgo, knight, or man dwelling in the towns or villages of this fraternity unless such a killing is justified by lawful right; and should one wish to lodge a complaint against someone for something that he has done or said, that person must be informed of this or challenged, and if he is a hidalgo living in one of the towns he may not be killed nor harmed for a period of nine days; and if he is a non-noble living in one of the towns he may not be killed for twelve days] (251) The Hermandad presents itself as a guarantor of official discourse and as a cohesive group that functions with the same legal regime as that developed to protect itself from the exterior. It also organizes itself as a specific power group that not only calls for the resolution of the problems that may surface from within, but that also anticipates the possibility of implementing “alcalles desta hermandad” [“mayors of this fraternity”] (251), or in other words officials created to resolve the conflicts produced both within the Hermandad and in its territories. In the construction of this power group, “la justiçia e la hermandat” [“law enforcement and the fraternity”] (251), that is to say, the group of justice administration officials and the officials of the Hermandad itself, would essentially function as a seamless judicial and police body. This group would keep watch not only for the protection of the group as such, but also as guarantor of the differences of social class within the group itself. The separation of classes and the configuration of the group as a system of solidarity among those same classes produce a fascinating tension between more seigneurial forms of identification within more immovable states and a modernity derived from the hybridization of the group and establishment of official powers (mayors or justices) that are not necessarily tied to any of those estates. The Hermandad constructs itself in these parts of the Cuaderno in the first person with respect to the administration of violence: “e ssi otro delos que non sson desta hermandat matare o mandare matar a alguno o algunos delos que ssomos enella sinon commo dicho es, que todos los dela hermandat o los que y acaesçieren quel matemos por ello e le derribemos las cassas e le astrague-

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mos todo quanto ouiere con las justiçias del Rey” [“and if those who are not members of this fraternity should murder or order the murder of any of those of us who are members (unless as stipulated), then all those of us within the fraternity or those who are present shall kill that person, destroy his houses, and raze as much as is permitted by the king’s justices”] (251–52). The expression “con las justiçias del Rey” [“by the king’s justices”] must be underscored. The plural indicates both the laws and physical instruments of the laws. It is in this declaration of institutional alliance and coalition with sovereignty and the idea of “justice” where the juridical and political violence with which the fraternity seeks to equip itself is manifested. The definition Carl Schmitt gives of the sovereign is this: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Political Theology, 5). The expression has a double significance: it is the sovereign who decides what case can be considered an exception, and it is also the sovereign who decides how it is necessary to act in case of a state of exception. The second sense is a correlative of the first. The capacity of the Hermandad to self-regulate the exercise of violence “con las justicias del Rey” is given at the precise moment in which “el Rey” only exists through the council of regency. Given this, the political body of the monarch is held in a state of suspension; it is, in effect, divided into a varying number of natural bodies until the natural body of the monarch reaches the age at which he can receive the political body. It is in the context of this state of suspension that the fraternity invokes, therefore, a proportional allotment of the king’s political body with the justicias through which he might act and legitimate himself. The fraternity proposes to participate in a sovereign activity, consisting of determining that all attacks on the fraternity itself constitute a state of exception or emergency to which it must rightfully respond through violence. The strategy of protection and institutional violence is again twofold. The way in which the fraternity situates itself in the liminal and displaced space to which I have alluded on various occasions allows for the two-sidedness of this strategy. On one hand, the expression presupposes the existence of a kind of external shell for the fraternity, making it concrete, providing it with content, or presenting it as continent as it designates those who are in its interior by the exclusion of “los que non sson desta hermandat” [“those who are not members of this fraternity”]. On the other hand, it situates the fraternity within that space of sovereignty in which states of emergency are decided and reacted to. That is the strategic space in which the institution and its direct participation in negotiations of power are created.

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In the expression of the series of articles contained in the fraternity’s constitutional document, its formation as administrator of institutional violence in case of exception seems, at the same time, a strategy to go much farther. One could consider that “los que non sson desta hermandat” are other urban knights who have not signed the document, those who remain outside of the network that is the civitas at this crucial moment of incorporation into the sovereign process. And that is, of course, totally correct. But it is not the only thing. The following articles demonstrate that the control that the fraternity seeks, once the legitimacy to act is obtained “con las justicias del Rey,” is over those that belong to the high noble class of ricos hombres: Otrosi si algun inffante o rrico omme o otro alguno fiziere mal o tomare algo delo ssuyo a alguno o algunos delos desta hermandat ssin ffuero e sin derecho, que el querellosos quelo vaya mostrar al alcalle dela hermandat de la merindat o dela comarca do esto acaesçiere, e el alcalle que llame luego al meryno del Rey o a los officiales delas villas o dela comarca do esto acesçiere, e que vayan luego affrontar al inffante o al rrico onbre quelo ffizo que gello desffaga luego. [If some baron, rico hombre, or anyone else should commit some injury or take something belonging to someone belonging to this fraternity without the authority of a fuero or right, then the plaintiff must present it before the mayor of the fraternity or of the region where the offense has occurred, and the mayor will then call the king’s administrator or the officials of the cities or the region where the offense has occurred, and these will then go to confront the baron or rico hombre who committed the offense so that he may then set matters right.] (253) In the event, however, that the baron (infante) or rico hombre should reject this official juridical reparation, the fraternity reserves the right of first-person action, as a punitive group or police body, thereby directly exercising institutional violence: “e que pendremos al inffante o al rric omme e le tomemos todo quanto le ffallaremos ffasta en quantia del danno que ffiziere, e lo entreguemos al querelloso que el danno ouiere rresçebido con los merynos o con los offiçiales del Rey que se y acaesçieren” [“we may apprehend the baron or rico hombre and take from him all that we may find in the amount of the damages, and we may hand this over to the plaintiff in the presence of the admin-

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istrators and the royal officials who may be there”] (253). The action over the person and belongings of the rico hombre cannot reach the degree of brutality that was previously expressed. This limit, and the necessity to involve royal officials, reveals how the very creation of the group is limited within the space of sovereign power: by recognizing class differences and the superstructural character of the high nobility. The Cuaderno de la Hermandad progressively constructs the conduct of the fraternity in the way lay chivalric orders will do afterward, as we will see in the chapters devoted to the Order of the Sash. An example of the group’s consolidation is the imposition of fines for those who fail to attend its meetings of solidarity, a move that presumes a rupture in its bases of power: “Et todos los que ssomos dela hermandat que ffueren llamados que sseamos para ayudar esto sso pena de diez mill mr. a cada conçejo que non enbiare y, e de mill mr. a cada vno delos ffijos dalgo que y non ffueren seyendo llamados como dicho es, et estos mr. desta postura que sean para aquellos que y ffueremos” [“And all those of us who are members of the fraternity that are called to help in this [confrontation with the infante or rico hombre] but do not show shall be assessed a penalty of ten thousand maravedíes for each conçejo who would not sent, and each of the hidalgos who are called but do not show shall be fined one thousand maravedíes, and these maravedíes shall go to those who attend”] (254). In this case, the rupture of solidarity is particularly serious because it is broken with respect to the noble classes that it is intended to protect. The idea that the members of the fraternity could not participate in these expressions of solidarity would not only put in danger the institution (by placing its integrity in doubt), but it would also call into question the negotiation of loyalties of the participants. The Hermandad places itself as a system of control and surveillance of the triumvirate composed by the regent (queen María de Molina) and two tutors (princes Juan and Pedro)—the council of regency. This body of control and vigilance is perhaps a mere multiple of three, but even so, it is significant within the creation of theological-political mechanisms: twelve knights—half hidalgos and half villanos—are designated to accompany and control the regent and the tutors. The Cuaderno could not be more specific in this respect. Otrosi ordenamos que anden doze cauallerso e omes buenos, los seys delos ffijos dalgo e los seys delos caualleros e ommes buenos delas villas, con el Rey e con los tutores desta manera: los dos con el Rey e con la Reyna, e los dos con el inffante don Iuan, e los otros dos con el inffante don Pero, e estos seys caualleros e ommes buenos

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que anden con ellos la meatad del anno e los otros seys caualleros e ommes buenos la otra meatad del anno. Et estos que andudieren con el Rey e con cada vno delos tutores por este tiempo sobredicho ssegund dicho es que ssean el vno de los ffijos dalgo e el otro de las villas, porque quando algunas cosas desafforadas ffizieren en la tierra que aquellos aquien las ffizieren quelo enbien mostrar a estos caualleros e ommes buenos. Et ellos quelo muestren alos tutores e los affruenten quelo ffagan emendar e desffazer. Et de commo gelo mostraren e lo ellos cunplieren que tomen testimonios de escriuanos publicos por quelo ellos puedan mostrar alos alcalles e alos dela hermandat, porque sse cunplan e se ffagan estas cosas ssobredichas e cada vna dellas ssegund que en este quaderno se contiene. Et a estos queles paguen la costa alos ffijos dalgo los ffijos dalgo delas comarcas donde cada vnos dellos ffueren, et alos delas villas queles paguen la costa los delas villas cada vnos alos de ssus comarcas. [We order that twelve knights—six of them hidalgos and six knights and good men from the cities—shall accompany the king and his tutors in this manner: two with the king and queen, two with the prince Don Juan, and the other two with the prince Don Pedro. These six knights and good men will accompany them for half of the year, and the other six knights and good men the other half. And those that accompany the king and each of the tutors for this aforementioned time shall be evenly divided between hidalgos and non-noble knights, because when something unlawful is committed within the land those to whom it was done should be able to present their case to these knights and good men. And these shall present the matter to the tutors and insist that they remedy and undo the wrong. And they need to collect testimony from public scribes that they presented the matters to the tutors and that these finished the deed, so that they may show them to the mayors and the members of the fraternity, so that the things contained in this cuaderno are carried out in the way in which they are set down. And the costs of these hidalgos will be paid by the hidalgos from the regions from which they come, and the costs of those knights from the cities will be paid by those from their region.] (257–58) This control and surveillance of the body of regency is, in my understanding, among the most original. It is probably based on the king’s mesnadero knights,

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who are those who guard his body.20 This oversight group had already been proposed during the minority of Fernando IV, and it was resuscitated for this occasion. Through the cuaderno of the Cortes of Carrión, redacted in 1317, its functioning is called into question, upon revealing that some of the designated knights failed to attend the group meeting without specifying any reasons. But in the Cortes themselves we already know that the king was accompanied by a knight in charge of his protection and education (ayo). The members of the Hermandad solicited clarification on the matter, however, desiring to maintain their presence “para seruir e consejar al rey” [“to serve and advise the king”], as their cuaderno proposes. The text on the question of the ayo and the knights is oriented in this way: Primera mientre a lo que [los miembros de la Hermandad] nos pedieron que el cauallero que diemos por ayo a nuestros ssennor el Rey, que ande con el de cada dia, et sinon podier o non quisiere andar con el de cada dia, que nos que pongamos y otro cauallero que ssea para ello, que ande conel de cada dia et que lo guarde et lo castigue et lo acostunbre muy bien. Et otrossi que anden conel rey caualleros delos ffijos dalgo e caualleros ffijos dalgo e omes bonos delos delas çibdades e delas uillas aquellos que entendiermos los tutores que cunpliran para ello, e que guarden al Rey de cada dia et que el cauallero ayo del Rey et los otros caualleros e omnes buenos, quelos pongamos y los tutores et que ssean y connusco en ponerlos rricos omnes e caualleros e omes buenos delas cibdades e delas uillas aquellos quela hermandat diere para ello. [First, regarding what the members of the fraternity asked of us with respect to the nobleman assigned to the ayo of our lord the king, he must accompany him every day, and if he cannot or will not do so, then we shall put another nobleman in his place who will accompany him every day and guard him and advise him and inform him very well. Furthermore there must also be noblemen, hidalgos, and good men from the cities and villages that accompany the king, those that we the tutors considered the best to do it; and may they guard him every day, and may the nobleman serving as his ayo, and the other noblemen and good men that we the tutors shall place there remain there with us from among the ricos hombres and knights and good men from the cities and villages that the fraternity may provide for such service.] (300)

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Thus, in this case, the fraternity wants to keep an eye not only on the tutors and the regent but also on the body of the king and the education that he is receiving from the ayo, given that the ayo is the knight who carries the educative responsibility, converting himself into a living and mobile speculum principis. The definition of Partidas 2.7.3 can seem restrictive, but the figure of the ayo is a key piece in the construction of the chivalric subject and is part of the pedagogical fable that is inserted into the chivalric one. The literature explores these figures, as in the case of Don Juan Manuel in some of his works, like Patronio in El Conde Lucanor or Julio in the Libro de los estados; Ribaldo in the Zifar or Governal in the Franco-Germanic legend of Tristan have an identical function. In all these works, and in others that could be mentioned, the ayo is a knight and forms the knight, thereby creating the illusion of a seamless union in the horizontal structure of chivalry and, through it, the simulacrum of a political and ethical continuity within the chivalric group. In the juridical aesthetics of the legal ordinance, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The voice that speaks is a nos (we) who identifies the council of regency in full. On occasions, however, that nos that is the majestic voice of power is not enough, as Brechtian as this might seem, and this is how a yo (I) that articulates correct answers becomes independent. This is what happens in the answer of the council of regency upon the petition of the fraternity, where the voice of the regent queen will take responsibility: A esto respondemos que este cauallero que diemos por ayo del Rey que gelo diemos con conseio de don Johan Nunnez e de otros omnes buenos, por que entendiemos que es cauallero bueno e para ello, e quando este non le seruiesse como conpliese por non querer o por non poder, nos cataremos otro tal que sea para ello con acuerdo de rricos omnes e de caualleros e omnes buenos que llamaremos para ello. Et yo la Reyna donna Maria digo mas, que quando la abenençia ffue ffecha en Palaçiellos e me dieron la criança del Rey todos los dela tierra, que yo que dy arrahenes al infante don Iohan por que el ffuesse mas siguro, e que ffue y puesto entonçe que los caualleros e omnes buenos de las uillas que ouyessen a andar con el Rey, que yo quelos tomasse quales entendiesse que eran para ello, e de quien yo ffiasse por que yo podiesse guardar lo que prometi et sobre que dy las arrahenes, ssinon que me ffagan quitar las arrahenes e que pongan y quales quisieren.

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[To this we respond that the nobleman that we provide to serve as ayo to the king shall be selected in light of the counsel of Don Juan Núñez and other good men, because we understand that he is a good nobleman and suited for this; and should this ayo fail to carry out his duties because he will not or cannot do so, we will consider another suitable person with the agreement of the ricos hombres men, knights, and the good men that we will call for this. And I, Queen Mary, say more, that when the agreement was struck in Palaçiellos and all those of the land gave to me the duty of raising the king, I provided the prince Don Juan with a security fund so that he might be more secure; and that it was there established that I would select from among the knights and good men of the cities who might best be suited to accompany the king based on my understanding of whom I might trust so that I might keep my promise; and I gave away those funds to secure this arrangement, unless it shall happen that they return me the funds, and install whomever they please.] (300–301) The queen, speaking in the first person, is the one who claims her right to elect the knights who will accompany not only the king but herself as well, the person to whom the care of the young king had originally been entrusted. The citizenry’s need to establish an institution of control over the council of regency gave rise to a movement in which the reciprocal anxiety to control the groups of power that were being formed around education, protection, and counsel of the minor king is revealed. This does not have to do solely, perhaps not even principally, with the issue of protecting the body of the regent, but rather with the issue of protecting the king’s political body. This was especially so after the incorporation of the two estates (both noble and bourgeois defenders) that participated, de jure and de facto, in the administrative tasks of the kingdom into the body of regency. Nevertheless, the reactionary process of the tutors of the high nobility overshadowed these two estates. The fraternity as a police body of power presumes a fundamental theory about the role of chivalry in the space of the government of the kingdom, a theory that would be perpetuated during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the reconstruction of monarchic-chivalric politics. In this case the knights of this police body, or body of control, did not have a resolutive or executive capacity, except that which was placed in messengers or, rather, in trustees, in living memory of the content of the fueros and rights that protected both the hidalgo knights and the citizen or bourgeois knights. This presup-

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poses a particularly sophisticated form of institutionalization that placed upon this specific group the capacity of juridical interpretation through comparison between the acts and knowledge of the law. The nonexecutive characteristics of this group of attendants should be read in conjunction with the aspirations of the fraternity to obtain charges as officials of the king, both in political administration and in justice (merinos and alcaldes) as in the sphere of public faith and other notarial labors. From the moment of its creation, the Hermandad expressed this desire. In the 1317 Cortes of Carrión, the members of the fraternity asked to manage their own chancery and contribute to its secularization, eliminating clerics from this occupation, for which they argued impeccably as a service to facilitate the application of penal monarchical law: que en la cançelleria e en las notarias e en los sseellos e en los otros offiçios que pertenesçien ala chançelleria, que non y andudiese clerigo que touiesse offiçio e que tirassemos ende los clerigos que agora y andauan, e aquellos aquien diessemos los offiçios que sean legos e tales que ssean para ello e que sean dela hermandat, por que ssy en el offiçio algun yerro ffeziessen, que el Rey e nos podamos tomar alos sus cuerpos e a todo lo que ouyeren, lo que non podemos ffazer alos perlados nin alos otros clerigos. . . . Et ssi nos o qual quier denos non quissiessemos tirar los offiçios alos clerigos que agora andan en la chançelleria et en los offiçios della o conssientiessemos que y andudiessen daqui adelante, que perdiessemos la tutoria e que non fuessemos mas tutores o tutor dende adelante. [may no cleric serve in the drafting of letters, in the notaries, in the seals, and in other offices that pertain to the chancery, and may we dismiss any clerics that now carry out such duties, and those to whom we might give these offices should be of the laity, suited for such work, and members of the fraternity, because if in their work they should commit some error, then we and the king might take from them all that they have, something that we cannot do to prelates nor to other clerics. . . . And if we should not wish to dismiss the clerics that now work in the chancery and in its various offices from those offices, or if we allow that they work there in the future, then may we lose the tutory and the right to serve as tutor or tutors from that time forward.] (301)

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The negative answer was argued through the principle of the centrality of royal jurisdiction, according to which the king is the only resulting instance of power to name officials. Similar petitions were produced in Valladolid in 1322. In all the court logs prior to 1315, on the other hand, it seems to be a given that numerous merinos and mayors (alcaldes) are members of the Hermandad. In some cases (such as in Carrión in 1317), in fact, it was necessary to regulate particularly for those hidalgos and good men who did not belong to the fraternity (Cortes, 1: 315). The Hermandad, through its desire to form part of the administration of royal jurisdiction, seems to have been one of the principals responsible for the process of laicization of the groups of officials. This juridical project is already found in Partidas 2.9, within a process of political secularization launched by Alfonso X. But the juridical offices continued to be administered by individuals with university training, who were invariably clerics. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Alfonso XI was the monarch who configured in a more provocative way a new social category composed of the learned laymen for the support of his monarchical project. Between the two, the Hermandad seems to have been the hinge upon which the door to the secularization of the monarchy and its institutions was opened. The forging of a public hope from these groups of knights could seem not very adventurous or chivalric and, in the end, too official and administrative. Nonetheless, it does not seem to have more chivalric aspirations beyond a jurisdictional or executive position in the exercise of power. Not everyone can reach the limit of chivalric fables composed in the sphere of literary fiction created as a form of education of the chivalric class: the cases of Tirant lo Blanc, the eponymous protagonist in Joanot Martorell’s novel published in Valencia in 1490, and of Esplandián, in Las sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo (d. 1505), the councilman and bourgeois knight from Medina del Campo, are extreme, as they carry their heroes to the doors of the Byzantine Empire after it had fallen under Ottoman control in 1453. Most surprising, perhaps, is that the impulse of this aspiration or public chivalric hope came to be because of the fuel supplied by “los de las villas” [“those of the cities”] with the participation, in this case, of the hidalgo knights. In the next chapter, we will see these bourgeois knights portrayed with all their accoutrements and emblems, but already occupying, in full right, these administrative posts, and resolving, in the city of Burgos, the apparent fracture between arms and the arts. In the last articles of the Cuaderno de la Hermandad, the document’s ra-

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tionality and the obligations assumed by those who swore to uphold it are bolstered, with respect to the regime within the kingdom and the sovereignty of the king as well as regarding the treatment of people arriving from abroad. This interest in both sides of the border suggests a will to overcome local barriers and expand power into all aspects of government and political control of the kingdom. The mercantile and military interests of the social classes allied with the Hermandad underscore this desire. As we will see upon examining the Knights of the Sash in Chapters 4 and 5, the position of the chivalric institution with respect to the interior and exterior of the kingdom is part of a process of institutionalization destined to consolidate the value of the monarchy, but, in the case of the Hermandad, impressing upon it changes that come from the political demands of the middle and upper-middle classes, stemming from the nobility as much as from the bourgeoisie. One of the fundamental aspects of all processes of institutionalization is the reestablishment of encounters and meetings about control of the institution itself, as addressed in the nineteenth article of the Cuaderno. The meetings of the fraternity are scheduled twice a year, before the sacred festivals, in spring (during Lent, before Holy Week) and in fall (around the day of Saint Martin, before Christmas).21 The constitution of the Hermandad is not a ritual act. Unlike the chivalric ritual, this congregation is based on the oath of the contract. The sacralization formula pursuant to the cuadernos and other public instruments (the labarum in the case of the privilegio rodado, for example) is no longer there, and the entire sacrament is secured by its content, on behalf of its signatories. The terms “sacrament” and “swearing” seem to have been synonymous at least during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the oath is sworn before God by touching the Gospels “con las manos corporales” [“with bodily hands”]. The first of the oaths corresponds to the “ffijos dalgo,” who then appear with their names, surnames, and titles of origin;22 the following ones, arranged by city of origin, are the “ffijos dalgo e caualleros e omnes buenos procuradores de las çibdades e villa” [“hidalgos and knights and good men ministers of the cities and towns”]: “E porque esto ssea ffirme e estable para ssienpre todos los desta hermandat ssobredicha pedimos merçet a nuestro ssenor el Rey e alos dichos ssus tutores que nos lo jurasen e nos lo mandasen guardar e ssellar con ssus ssellos de çera colgados, et rrogamos aestos escriuanos publicos que estauan presentes quelo ssignasen con ssus ssignos en testimonio de verdat” [“And so that this may be forever firm and stable, all members of the aforementioned fraternity beg mercy of our lord the king and of his tutors that they pledge the oath and order it guarded and seal it with their wax seals, and we pray to these

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public scribes who were present that they should sign it with their signs in testimony of the truth”] (Cortes 1: 271). This is in fact what takes place, without any added steps of any sort, “quito de chançelleria e de tabla e ssin vistas” [“exempt from chancery, customs, and without trial”] (271). The Cuaderno de la Hermandad is not a court cuaderno. It is a piece quita de cancillería, attached to a cuaderno, transcribed by order of the three members of the regency council, who approved its content. Ferrán Pérez and Fernando Miguélez served as witnesses and placed their respective signatures, as scribe and notary, “por mandamientos delos dichos tutores e a pedimiento delos caualleros ffijos dalgo e delos ffijos dalgo e caualleros e ommes buenos procuradores delas cibdades e villas” [“by order of the aforementioned tutors and by the requests of the hidalgo knights, the hidalgos, knights, and good men ministers of the cities and towns”] of the fraternity. There is no record of how many copies of this cuaderno were salvaged, although academic editors mention up to four dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. No trace of the Hermandad remains in effect after Alfonso XI ended his minority in 1325. The Copilación de las leyes del reyno (Compilation of the Laws of the Kingdom, 1484) does not include anything on the subject, nor does the better part of the several codices with resolutions that began to be compiled during the reigns of Juan I (r. 1379–1390) and, above all, Enrique III (r. 1379–1406). Until the redaction of the Copilación, these documents formed the largest legal corpus systematically produced in Castile and León. The validity of the fraternity shines with its own light between 1315 and 1325. Almost all the chivalric organizations contemporary to the fraternity are supported either by a regal regulation—as is in the case of the secular chivalric orders—or by a papal legislation that recognized the suitability of a monastic regulation for a military group. This was the case with the Christian military orders and those of the Reconquest. When compared to all of those, the Hermandad is a completely original initiative. Although the Cuaderno remained recognized, sworn, and therefore promulgated by the regent, María de Molina, and by the tutors, the princes Don Juan and Don Pedro (which amounts to a regal promulgation), the efficient cause of it was a group of knights. It was they, and not a central power with legislative and jurisdictional privileges, who supported the poetic charge of this cuaderno and of the fraternity that was based on it. This group was, furthermore, to a certain extent unique and irreproducible: these knights crossed, upon proposing the constitution of their fraternity, the borders of ordo, of social class, and of political statute in a way that would be odd in the sphere of chivalric or military orders. Thus, we may advance a first thesis positing that the constitution of an ordo,

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like that of the Hermandad, situates us in an important dialectic of ordines. The Hermandad is an exceedingly modern and eclectic ordo, that simultaneously integrated aspirations of a political, economic, administrative, coercive, and even educational character—and all of this crossing de facto and de jure barriers of ordines and preestablished social classes or estates. Thus, the statutes of the fraternity organized a public hope that was extraordinarily original and that, grounding itself primarily on discourses and semantic or functional supports of chivalry (from which its membership emerged), aimed to efface the borders of a seigneurial and monarchical social division. Furthermore, this questioning arose from the fraternity itself, which enriched constitutional problems with theoretical expression and practice of power. The fraternity thereby placed on the political and juridical scene the necessity to redefine the relationship between order and estate, between a traditional social division of feudal origins, based on both secular and clerical categories of nobility and their confrontation with new knowledge and new political, economic, and administrative functions. The issue in question here is not the mere recognition of certain class rights on behalf of a booming bourgeoisie—the fraternity could have a clearly bourgeois or, to put it better, civic impulse—but a more complex transformation that incorporates certain noble categories, that aims to reduce the power of other noble categories, and that also energetically exhibits its theory on administrative secularization that should become the responsibility of the fraternity itself, that is to say, of hidalgo knights and citizens in general. All of that rewriting in the different cuadernos throughout the ten years it was viable—a constant pulse to establish the Hermandad’s areas of power—situates this viability amid an obsessive inchoateness that requires permanent validations of its primitive cuaderno or its particular functions, and even its extension. The constitution of the Hermandad entails a discourse of power that can be abbreviated in the name chivalry. The Hermandad not only wanted to constitute itself as an association, institution, or confraternity, but it also wanted to do it from the perspective of the discourse on chivalry: beyond their sociopolitical and economic differences, hidalgos and bourgeoisie recognized each other mutually in chivalry. That recognition was so decisive that it was unnecessary to define chivalry itself or the meaning of life as a knight. Similarly, they did not seek precise signs of distinction or representation to the exterior either. Therefore, the power of this fraternity, that which gave it meaning, emerged from a type of consciousness or rather a class will that had not been heard before in such a clear way. The fact that the bourgeoisie, on one hand, and the hidalgos or the members of a more extensive noble class without jurisdictional

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power, on the other, decided to meet in the common denomination of chivalry is, at the same time, a strategy and a creative act. It is a strategy because it invokes a concept recently regulated by Alfonso X that carried enormous cultural prestige in all of Europe. It is a creation because it presumes a poetics of new chivalric order, in which neither ritual, nor investiture, nor any other type of prerequisite for entry in the ordo are implied. The oath shares the character of a juridical speech act: it is like notarially recognizing the fit between the signing of the contract and the physical person who has carried it out. On the other hand, it is about an oath that does not part the seas of power; on the contrary, it was requested by the knights of the fraternity themselves and finished by linking itself to the regency council, which invoked the same expressions as the signing knights. This indicates that the ordo of chivalry can function also as a theory to organize a new political power. For Alfonso X, years before the foundation of the Hermandad, just as for Don Juan Manuel, who wrote more than a decade after the organization’s creation, it was necessary to separate noble knights from their bourgeois counterparts. Both authors conjure a theory of power in which the social division based on ordines or estates is not only functional but also has to remain a permanent model. Nonetheless, this is only one expression of an extensive and intense debate on chivalry. In a genealogy of chivalry that takes this debate into account, the theory proposed by the fraternity takes fundamental prominence, as it takes the chivalric ordo as a public hope to transform government structures, social structures, and, above all, power relations, all through the insertion of the fraternity in this political space. The Hermandad represents, perhaps, an ephemeral project. Later royal secular orders would be prone to a concrete separation of hidalgo knights and bourgeois knights. The fraternity’s signatories themselves would participate in this separation project. They tried to set the monarchy on chivalric political models that would allow for the transformations to be exercised in the relations of power between the nobility and the objective exercise of the government. The bourgeois knights never lost their instinct of confraternity, however, which would lead to successive creations or constitutions of many other guilds of bourgeois knights, like the Confraternidad de Caballeros de Santiago de Burgos, the Caballeros Cuantiosos de Jaén, and the Cabildo de Caballeros Guisados de Caballo de Cuenca, to mention only the most prominent. After the mid-fourteenth century such organizations sought to be acknowledged with the same marks of recognition as noble knights and, in groups with increasingly strong bonds and structures, also sought collective ennoblement, arguing that membership in an ordo allowed them to be referred to as knights.

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The Hermandad provides a good example of an attempt that in the Middle Ages was rare but crucial to the social transformations that led to early modernity. It proposed a document of construction and transformation of the civitas and their participation in sovereignty, the movement through which a political space was obtained for these groups that originated from a heterotopic displacement. The Cuaderno de la Hermandad is the first-person grammatical expression of a totally innovative political and juridical person that, unlike the geographical movements of the space of sovereignty, offered a form of alliance among numerous cities that constituted the territory. Thus introducing the idea of a network to a nomadic political theory. This questioning of the construction of political space aimed to privilege the civitas—that model of life formed in the ordo of chivalry through the liminal junction of hidalgos and bourgeoisie—as one of the voices upon which central jurisdiction and sovereignty are formed. This civitas proposes a secular theory, wherein institutional control predominates, both in the physical and juridical senses. The poetics of ordo is, according to the theory of citizen chivalry, a poetics of fraternity, a creation of support structures that interfere with the vertical negotiations of monarchical sovereignty.

chapter three

The Presence of the Confraternity

The poetics of the ordo requires the production of its presence and its location. It must create itself as a phenomenon for the construction of a social class. More than a legal or constitutional entity, a social class is the aesthetic and localizable manifestation of a group, the physical expression of its existence. The ordo reinvents itself to create rules that will render it perceptible. The goal is to create a distinct space, to define the structures in which the ordo can be manifested. I refer to this production of presence as the urbs. Urbs here is a physical manifestation; the entire strategic system conceived by a social group to manifest its theory of power. The production of presence and localization is a crucial element of the poetics of the chivalric ordo—not as a network, but as a place one must reach, and in which the social class is present. If the fraternity was a consolidation of the ordo through the formation of a network of power that encompassed the cities around which it was displaced, in the function of the nomadic nature of the institution of the Cortes, I will now survey how certain inhabitants of a city (Burgos, in this case) organized their chivalric confraternities to create this ordo in a close relationship with the intramural space. The production of presence as a form of the poetics of the ordo is, in this case, the creation of institutions that are not displaced toward the exterior but blend both civil and urban life in a given space. This localization is, in essence, a way to redefine the space in which all power relations take place. Unlike the network of cities of the Hermandad of 1315 and its heterotopic political industry, urban confraternities proposed a definite space in which the monarchy could reside. Two closely related media will be the focus of my analysis of these issues. The first are the manuscripts that make up the text and image of the constitution of the group; the second is the ordination of urban space.

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The idea of understanding the political and legal consequences of a production of presence stemming from the relation between one or more manuscript books and urban space may seem odd at first glance. It is useful to stress the importance of the metonymic character of the book and the type of book created for the urbs. I will center the analysis on the institution of a confraternity of urban knights—the Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos—in the Castilian city of Burgos, paying close attention to the constituent manuscript, the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos (Book of the Knights of the Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos). I will also consider another confraternity in the same city, possibly created earlier, but whose process of renovation was inspired by the presence of the knights of the Cofradía de Santiago and included the creation of its own constitutional manuscript. This second confraternity is the Cofradía de Santa María de Gamonal (Our Lady of Gamonal). In the previous chapter I discussed a drive of the Hermandad of 1315 to establish a poetics of the ordo that could be manifested in the sphere of the civitas—the model of daily life in its most delocalized aspect, as a network rather than a node. In the case of Burgos, I refer specifically to the urban node, to the process of localization and syntopy of the definition of power. Syntopy here refers to the need for a space where a given theory of power can be manifest. The urbs as syntopy is the creation of a limited space, invoked by its producers in such a way that access to the space implies access to this strategy of practical authority. This leads us to an exploration of definitions and a theory of power that are specific to the present book. In it power is not a system of creation and control of jurisdictions as much as the claim of the participation of the urbs in the administration of monarchical jurisdiction. The urbs is proposed as one of the accommodations, one of the chambers of the enormous jurisdictional house of the monarchy. Confraternities created an alliance as well as the space in which it was enacted, establishing thus a seamless link between the two. This is key to one of the main arguments the cities brought before the king in the meeting of the Cortes, regarding the possibility of controlling the city archive in the interior of the urbs on behalf of those who formed the collective. Chapter 2 explored this argument, along with the laicization of the city archives. These confraternities are the lay collective nominated as reorganizers and caretakers of the archive. It is important to understand why the city is constructed as an artifact to trace the genealogy of the urbs and its main transformations. How does the city, modified and configured by confraternities of urban, non-noble knights, establish its thesis to differentiate itself from the traditional models of the

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medieval city? I will describe the construction of the city space just as it is represented in the confraternities’ books. To establish this matter, however, there are two others that come first. To this end, these questions must be considered: Who composed the manuscripts of the confraternities? And what do they contain or how are they organized? The collectives that undertook this production of presence called themselves confraternities. The denomination under which the group was ordained is part of the poetics of the fraternity and the processes of association discussed earlier. There are, nonetheless, particularities that I will now address. One of the few scholars of the Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos considers that the group belongs to an initiative for the creation of urban confraternities “lacking, in all cases, any political content.”1 Nevertheless, these confraternities manifested a great institutional will, with very precise rules about who might join and what position they might hold in urban society. The confraternities spoke of the possession of wealth in specific amounts and established close family networks through a complete register of names, similar to those of the noble lines, and all within the frame of chivalric discourse. If we accepted the thesis that these groups lacked political significance, the situation would appear at least very original, or perhaps paradoxical. On the contrary, the constitution of these books advances a strong thesis about the unity and sociopolitical representation of an important bourgeois group, posited to the world using a full-fledged noble discourse, or the discourse of that social category that traditionally shares the kingdom’s rule along with the monarch. Most urban confraternities, founded or simply brought together through the earlier Middle Ages, have this political character. The works of Cabañas and Jara Fuente on the Castilian city of Cuenca; of Pérez-Prendes on the Andalusian city of Jaén; Torres Fontes on Murcia; Monsalvo Antón on Alba de Tormes (Salamanca); Diago Hernando on Soria; and of course, those of Teófilo Ruiz on Burgos—all of them Castilian cities—clearly show that the organizations of urban knights and the concejiles in fora, chapters, local authorities, groups, confraternities, or any other corporative form, were oriented toward the achievement of social and political rights and privileges.2 Urban knights also repeatedly solicited from the king authority to administer their own archive and to designate their own public lawyers. This petition is not usually analyzed in the bibliography, but it is a central argument for the configuration of the urban space as a legitimate site of power. The claim for control of the archive and the naming of its scholars was an effort to control its voice, in light of a monarchical prerogative to name public notaries to transcribe court testimony. These petitions appear in many forms,

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and all seem to refer to the promise made by Alfonso XI as he took control of the kingdom in 1325: that he would have among his officials the “omnes buenos de las mis ciudades e villas e logares,” with the hope that “con ningun rrey non lo pasaron meior que lo passarán conmigo” [“‘good men of my cities, towns and localities,’” with the hope that “‘with no king they will be better off than they will be with me’”].3 The petitions for control of the archive, for civic participation of each region or city in its administration and the laicization of the archive were reiterated in the Cortes of Madrid of 1329 and 1339, Burgos of 1338 and 1345, and Alcalá de Henares of 1348. The petition would be submitted to most of the Cortes. There remains, without doubt, ample research pending on this aspect, given that each petition and each royal response reveals the enormous tension involved in the incorporation of the citizen-lawyers into the administration of monarchical justice. Alfonso XI had special interest in regulating this participation “ca por esto se pierde la jurediçion de las mis ciudades e villas e enajenase la mi justicia” [“since because of this the jurisdiction of my cities and villages is lost and this alienates my justice”].4 Along with these prerogatives, all these groups were motivated by a great struggle for control of the taxes. These popular urban elites—or rather, bourgeoisie—were constituted by groups that were economically strong inside of the urban space. For the most part they dealt with storekeepers and producers of raw and finished materials. They often utilized a chivalric discourse and the means of representation with which they became exempt from monarchical imposition. Studies on the royal taxing procedures by Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada for the period from 1252 to 1369, from Alfonso X (r. 1252–1282) to Pedro I of Castile (r. 1350–1369), show to what extent the dialectic between royal taxing practices and groups of power could be rendered into one of the key reforms of power in this period. Ladero Quesada investigates, based on the scarce documentary foundation that exists, the confrontation between the transformations of the models of monarchical sovereignty and the resistance of the different power groups to the reorganization of the kingdom’s tax codes.5 In his voluminous work Las rentas del rey, Francisco J. Hernández reorganizes this tax code from an even more empirical perspective, exploring in minute detail the ledgers and how they are related to the demands of power of the groups—both lay and ecclesiastical, or popular and aristocratic.6 Citizen knights formed an important part of the local authorities, congregations, confraternities, or general societates. They were considered to be fee-issuing knights (caballeros de cuantía) since, being of humble origins, they possessed a certain amount of funds with which they could maintain arms and horses. The taxation power of the king gravitated around them. This taxation

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has two particularly onerous angles: the pechos, or general taxes; and the legal requirement to maintain horses and arms—so essential for the state and its political offices. Carmela Pescador explains how the initial recommendation to have the same amount of funds became a fixed requirement with Alfonso XI: knights who requested offices within the urban power also had to maintain horses and arms.7 Pérez-Prendes has calculated the enormous consequences that this new royal attitude had on the very development of the market and the exportation within the urban industries managed by these “good men.”8 Indeed, the economic consequences were negative, since they constituted a double tax. Teófilo Ruiz offers a convincing explanation in his Crisis and Continuity.9 The tax exemption was in fact nothing more than the result of a process of negotiation. The tax exemption for urban militias was produced at the same time as the taxing of the monarchical jurisdiction in the same cities through the enactment of the Fuero Real. Apparently, this coincidence was at the core of the rise of bourgeois families and their noble aspirations. Moreover, in certain cities the monarchical jurisdictional power was ratified as a result of this negotiation. The process of negotiation not only led to the construction of the monarchical jurisdiction, but also entailed the growth of those bourgeois powers within the privileged political sphere of the city. It is necessary to reorient the problem toward the urban space as the particular center, privileged and separate—contrary to what Hilario Casado and Teófilo Ruiz’s latest works suggest. Urban knights, taken individually or in their family business sphere, were active in the dual rural/urban plane. On the other hand, when taken in their associative processes, they based their expression only within the urban space. The books of the confraternities evince this particular aspect. Studies on urban elites and their relation to popular chivalry have multiplied in recent years. It would be difficult to cite the entire bibliography in this regard. Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 36, 2 is a monograph devoted to medieval associations. It focuses in particular on the franja de Levante and on Aragon, with some notes on Castilian cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (as in Diago Hernando, “Las corporaciones de caballeros hidalgos”). Nonetheless, we still lack relevant works dealing with a preliminary question: How did confraternities and bourgeois chivalric alliances establish their forms of expression and preserve them in each group’s archive? The Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos claims to have been created in 1338. At times it has been associated with the founding impulses of Alfonso XI, which would have supported its foundation during his presidency of the Bur-

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galese city council, on the occasion of the celebration of the Cortes of Burgos that year. It is not the first attempt at selective association stemming from the necessities of self-representation and consolidation of power of the so-called urban elites, to which the texts of the period refer, in general, as hombres buenos.10 One overlooked fact is that Burgos city representatives who signed the Cuaderno de la Hermandad de 1315 would also become prominent members of the Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos. This indicates that some of them conceived the possibility of an innovative alliance between certain groups of hidalgos and certain bourgeois power groups, just as would occur in cities such as Cuenca and Jaén, to point out some of the best studied, in the fifteenth century.11 Their participation in the Cofradía de Santiago may offer us an insight in our consideration of the possible political character of the Confraternity. There does not seem to be sufficient data to determine whether Alfonso XI was the true founder of the confraternity, but he certainly sanctioned it in one form or another. If that is the case, I must also address a movement on the part of Alfonso XI to reordain institutionally those chivalric groups in accordance with those feudal categories and lineages. In the same way that many of the lineages of the hidalgos of the Confraternity are reordained in the multifaceted project described by the Libro de la Banda (Book of the Sash), as I will discuss in Chapters 4 and 5, it appears that there is also a separation when the Burgalese bourgeois lineages—and perhaps those in other villages—are poured into the confines of a confraternity of knights that is constituted through a series of rules and conditions of existence of the group. Regardless of whether the Cofradía de Santiago was founded by Alfonso XI, the constitution of the chivalric confraternities was issued as a private initiative, proceeding directly from the knights themselves. In the case of the Gamonal, the origin is a very specific familial nucleus. In that of the Hermandad of 1315, the group of noble and urban knights was organized privately as a way of opposing the political force of the tutors and ricos hombres. Not only was it constituted in the chivalric initiative, it also constituted the recognition of an elite group formed by knights—with rights of participation in the government, or even control of it. Burgos is undoubtedly the crucial theater within the history of the chivalric corporations. It is not the only one—Soria and Escalona and, later, Cuenca, Jaén, and Murcia would follow suit. But without a doubt it is the fundamental space, as much for its geographic situation as for the activities of material and personal exchange with foreigners and for its relationship with Castilian monarchy. Teófilo Ruiz, Juan Antonio Bonachía Hernando, and Hi-

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lario Casado Alonso have considered Burgos to be an unofficial capital of the kingdom. In fact, between the conquest of Seville in 1248 by Fernando III and the onset of the Trastamaran dynasty (beginning in 1369), it may have been the kings’ preferred residence. It was Fernando III, who, in 1221, instigated the construction of the magnificent cathedral, which would be consecrated forty years later. The Monasterio de las Huelgas Reales de Burgos, founded by Alfonso VIII, was the spot chosen by Alfonso XI for his coronation, a fundamental act for the construction of the maiestas. The conditions of Burgos as the Caput Castellae (Head of Castile), its geographic placement, and above all the business spirit of those foreigners and Castilians who converged in the city and in its outlying villages, made Burgos one of the most populous and wealthy cities of the Iberian Peninsula. The calculations of Bonachía and Ruiz, based on the municipal documentation, allow the Burgalese population to be estimated at somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants during the century that runs from the ascension to the throne of Alfonso X in 1252 to the death of Alfonso XI in 1350. During the same century, the urban knights of Burgos constituted the true power group within the city. The fiscal conditions in which they lived, set in resolutions issued by Alfonso X, allowed them a high degree of development. During the first half of the fourteenth century, only the two chivalric congregations I have mentioned—Santiago and Gamonal—were organized around a codex of self-regulation that constitutes at once their presence and their memory. It entails their presence, since it is this codex that defines their character, their will to transform in the urban space, and their ceremonies, all in a continuous present. It also entails memory, because the codices are cumulative and not only do they depict the present of the confraternity, but they elucidate—at least documentary—the conduct of the confraternity throughout its history, and they trace its background from the moment when the gap between foundation and construction of the codex was bridged. It would not be possible to analyze the poetics of these chivalric orders without such resources. The Cofradía de Santa María de Gamonal (Confraternity of Our Lady of Gamonal) claims a foundational date of 1285, created on behalf of the Estévanez family and gathering some of the most notable families of the urban chivalry—Bonifaz, Sarracín, and Prestines—who also belonged to the Cofradía de Santiago, probably since 1345.12 The letter whereby Alfonso XI concedes the so-called regimientos—the autonomy of local powers—mentions members descended from those families, who are deemed to be knights of the Cofradía de Santiago. Those regimientos constitute the most important act is-

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sued by the king to promote the city’s self-government; it is an act of inclusion insofar as it associates the regimiento with the cofrades, while it also excludes large segments of the burgalese society. The regiments are the last sanction (1350) of the transformations promoted by the confraternities. Three facts should be underscored. First, the enormous degree of power that the Cofradía de Santiago obtained from its inception. Second, the fact that the families included in the foundational moment of Gamonal were also early members of the Cofradía de Santiago. Third, the codex that contains the rules and list of names of Gamonal was created much later than the Santiago codex. All this suggests that the foundation of the Cofradía de Gamonal in 1285 had a brief impact and that its presence was subsumed by the Cofradía de Santiago, which dominated the center of power until at least the mid-fifteenth century. It was in this period, the middle or end of the fifteenth century and until 1605, that the Cofradía de Gamonal resurged as a power group. This is documented in the codices, particularly in the one that contains the rules and documents, manuscript 22.257 from the Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid) The first code of rules for Gamonal that dates from 1285 is only preserved thanks to a 1305 draft, attributed to public scribe Gonzalo Pérez. These rules may already include a series of corrections upon the first version, of which there is only a trace. The code of Gamonal has three fundamental parts: the first covers the group’s holidays, which are devoted to public welfare and alms; the second addresses ceremonies of group solidarity; and the third concerns the distribution of its properties and delineates the limits of the confraternity, following the donations and foundations of Pedro Esteban, or Estévanez. Subsequent rules, established toward the end of the fifteenth century, elaborate a complex commentary and corrections on the first rule. They do not, however, break substantially with the three principles of public welfare, internal solidarity, and property and distribution of space. Aside from the principle of internal solidarity, centered around the funeral ceremonies of the members of the group, the rules of Santiago and Gamonal differ notably. They even differ on one important detail regarding the commemoration of the death of their members. The code of rules of Gamonal, unlike that of Santiago, limits the number of members of the confraternity. The death of one of the members was an opportunity not only to reaffirm solidarity among the brothers, but also to perpetuate the order by selecting a new knight to replace the deceased. It is worth noting, as Ruiz has shown, that the Cofradía de Gamonal was more selective than that of Santiago, motivated by financial concerns. Also noteworthy is its limit on the number of members it could include at

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any given time and the zeal that characterizes the code’s cadastral description of its land and properties. This last detail supports a persuasive theory of urban space regarding the Cofradía de Gamonal—one that is not so evident in the Cofradía de Santiago. The description of its space avers that an important part of the infrastructure of the city belonged to the Cofradía de Gamonal. All our knowledge regarding these institutions depends on those manuscripts. They were an exercise in self-regulation and production of presence in which each confraternity established its norms, contracts, and registers. These are unusual manuscripts for their era, whose formal characteristics are the product of exacting design. As may be inferred from later books with traces in the cuaderno de pleitos (court record), to the citizenry, the manuscripts of the confraternities, and even their individual chapters, were a metonymy of the power and integrity of the confraternity itself.13 To carry out undertakings like those of the manuscripts of Santiago, from the fourteenth century onward, and of Gamonal, after the fifteenth century, requires an enormous economic investment. These are manuscripts written on parchment with several different inks and pigments. They contain the transcribed rules of the confraternities following a division into conveniently rubricated chapters. All the manuscripts of the confraternities feature a register of the names of their members and, in the case of the confraternities of Santiago and of Gamonal, this register features a gallery of portraits of the knights. Each brother’s likeness has been painted according to a distinct iconography that reflects an abiding method of knightly depiction throughout time. Therefore, these codes of rules—a representation of the knights across time—as preserved in such manuscripts reflect all the modifications to the rules and include portraits ranging from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries—and sometimes even beyond. The manuscript of Gamonal has registers that date to as late as the eighteenth century. Besides an economic investment, there is an investment of faith and trust in the capacity of the book to organize, create, maintain, and (re)present the links forged among a group of people and the places, times, and voices through which these people have chosen to be portrayed. The book is a synthesis and metonymy of this complex structure, but it is also the still point upon which the expansion and development of the confraternity is achieved. Thus, the Libro de los caballeros de Santiago asserts itself as a locus of authority and as legal representation of the pertinence of the order. To participate in the order, and in all the economic, material, or cultural contributions explicit in the rules, the aspiring member also was required to pronounce an

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oath upon the book, touching it as one would the text of the Gospels; that is, “jurar en la regla” [“swearing on the code of rules”].14 The book also has a specific residence or headquarters, to which it is necessary to arrive. The location of the book is the city. The book cannot be extracted from the city because there is an intimate bond between the two. This bond is not only derived from the manner in which the book designates the citizens of Burgos, or from the fact that it has a specific headquarters. As we will see, the book is a map of the territory and constitutes a manifestation of its practice. There inheres a deictic link between the book and the city: the text of the book identifies, ordains, and configures the city itself. The chronology of the confraternities and their books is problematic, however. In an almost systematic manner they often mention the precedence of Gamonal with respect to Santiago. While this may be accurate regarding the formation of these corporations, namely that the order of Gamonal (1285) is fifty-three years older than that of Santiago (1338), it is false when it comes to its manuscripts. The codex of the Cofradía de Santiago dates from the middle of the fourteenth century and it may be more than a century older than that of Gamonal; indeed, the latter appears to be inspired by the former. More relevant than the chronology itself is how the book manipulates it as it asserts itself and its antiquity. The creation of the manuscript of Gamonal and its effort to situate itself in a period before that of Santiago is a way of constructing its legitimacy based on historic antiquity. The libros of both Santiago and Gamonal place us before their own art of aging while constantly engaging all pasts and all futures. The book is strictly infinido.15 Each book points clearly to its origin—1285 in the case of Gamonal and 1338 in the case of Santiago—but endeavors to keep an open ending, an ending that should be avoided. These manuscripts contain blank pages, in anticipation of additions and future modifications. They function like a cartulary: new documents can be inserted at any point in the codex. This can occasionally, if there are not enough blank pages in the indicated place, require reordering and new binding. A good example is the insertion in the manuscript of the code of rules of Santiago, drawn up in 1501. This addition modifies the earlier rules and purposely posits their ordinations for “tiempos venideros” (“times to come”), or even “para siempre jamás” (“for ever after”).16 Every new insertion is definitive yet nonetheless leaves space for the following and makes manifest the previous ones without erasing them. The order and the book are conceived as a project in time and both are subject to changes of differing importance.17 Chivalric corporations, particularly those of bourgeois roots, conceive their identity as an evolving device that

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changes primarily by addition (new portraits, for example) yet also by innovation, as when a new rule is written that signals a continuation of a preexisting one, repealing without eliminating it. Writing does not presuppose erasing, rather it is the explicit rejection of a palimpsest—avoiding thus to create an illegible trace of the text that preceded the present one. Avoiding palimpsests is one method of occupying history, of spanning time through a voluntary expression of modernity. The transformation of the aesthetics of the portraits shows that every modernizing process entails an explicit criticism of the past. The older portrait remains on the surface of the parchment as the past of present things, to use Saint Augustine’s apt phrasing. Rendering all pasts transparent and explicit (where the plural noun has a qualitative value, not quantitative) ratifies the perdurable nature of the chivalric group with respect to the space to which it is bound, as defined by the book. The technical quality of the codex is remarkable. Although some scholars have considered the painters of the portraits to be mediocre artists who produced portraits of inferior quality, the truth is that both codices constitute a fascinating artistic endeavor. More important, they show an outstanding aesthetic of power that may be qualified, in time, as revolutionary and unknown, as I will show through the representation of the sumptuary elements. The codex is the site where the congregation is developed. It contains all the concepts, expectations, and subsequent variations that were printed on them. They also contain the graphic record of the individuals belonging to these congregations studied in these pages and contain the graphic record of the individuals who are part of the institution, who simultaneously construct and are constructed by the codex itself. They construct the codex to the extent that they are agents in all that pertains to the regulation of the code, but are also constructed, since the codex offers an hieratic, stable, and model representation of its members, and this is their self-modeling, or fashioning.18 It is the codex that shapes this kind of fashioning, and herein lies its importance. For such reason, the codices are a huge investment, both synchronically and diachronically. The codices are the central space, the very residence of both the origin and the regulations of the social groups and their overall function. The book also signals the desire for an archive. This is why we have linked it to the cartulary. First because it is obviously an archive in time whose conditions of material use are adapted to political and historical necessities; but also due to its hypomnesic and selective character. Both the codex of Santiago and the codex of Gamonal contain documentary pieces and elements, agreements, contracts, and the signatures of the knights. This is especially true of the codex

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of Gamonal whose life after the sixteenth century (and at least until the eighteenth) appears to be most eventful, judging by the documentary strata, the agreements to correct the oldest texts, and other documentary sources. If the section devoted to the codex of Gamonal is presented as a ruin, contrary to that of Santiago, the documentary section manifests an extraordinary vitality, and in this respect its trajectory is opposite to the codex of Santiago. The hypomnesia of this particular archive, the site where both origin and regulation reside, according to Derrida’s definition,19 arises from the order of the book, a discrete and discontinuous narrative: neither Gamonal nor Santiago could narrate their permanence at the pinnacle of their civilian powers, that is, from 1285 (rule drawn up in 1305) and 1338, respectively. Nonetheless, the codices present this narration in constant movement, interrupted only by several reforms and modernization attempts. In this sense, they function like those cartularies of the monasteries situated on the northern border: in them, the internal order of the documents is one of various processes of falsification, as a narrative order subjects the reader to an uninterrupted permanence of power of the monastery and of its possession of designated territories throughout history.20 The place of residency of those books, of those who created them, and of those who are represented in them is the city. Max Weber describes the movement of creation and transformation of the city almost as if it had a life of its own as a result of points of contact in main squares and markets, which become distinct from the rural environment.21 The city is an explicit will to extract a piece of the agricultural universe to render it into a space that is different in its economic production and its expression of social relations. The city of Burgos, in which these books and their confraternities reside, allows us to study how this extraction is produced and to what extent the separation of the city as its own political entity and its internal organization are linked to the sociopolitical theses contained in the books of the confraternity. It is important to bear in mind the issues regarding the formation of family networks within neighborhoods, the control of the city space, and the forms of the production of presence. In The Urban Experience, David Harvey devotes a chapter to the topic of the establishment of neighborhoods in their relation to the “similarity” of those who populate them. At the onset he points out a crucial problem: “The seeming complexity of sociological accounts derives from the difficulty of defining ‘similar’ and the difficulty of showing whether people are similar because they live close to each other or live close to each other because they are similar.”22

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This is a key issue within the organization of the bourgeois chivalric group in the city—in particular in the core of the city of Burgos. Prosopographic studies, beginning with those done by Teófilo Ruiz about the Bonifaz and Sarracín families (who were involved in both the Gamonal and Santiago confraternities), have shown how these families are concentrated in spaces that are increasingly more distinct. One particular zone is the Calle de San Llorente in the eastern part of the city. Another important area is that of Tenebregosa and Correoneria streets, which intersect at the western Puerta de San Martín, gateway for the king, and the cathedral that marks the center and the high point of this urban complex. These important streets form an enormous corridor that runs across the east-west axis of the city, and its longest. It also traces the pilgrimage route to Santiago and follows the orientation of the cathedral and the course of the stars. David Harvey’s question cannot be answered in the same way in the case of the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the era of capitalism (the fundamental object of his study) as it is in the case of the process of appropriation of the control of the city by a middle class who is also building its own power structures in the fifteenth century. For bourgeois or urban knights, the city itself is a space of hope—to use another of David Harvey’s ideas.23 This idea, nevertheless, functions in the present discourse as a figure of speech, not as a concept derived from a scientific analysis such as the one proposed by Harvey. Such analysis would be inapplicable to the Burgos of 1250 to 1350. The trope of a space of hope upon which a social class is built is appropriate in this context. The works of Casado and Ruiz have insisted in recent years on the economic and social interrelation between urban and rural spaces. An examination of the ledgers and a meticulous investigation of the property and land cultivation systems have each shown that the urban frontiers are insufficient to understand the economic and social development of the most relevant Burgalese families. Hilario Casado’s thesis focuses on “the intimate union that existed between the country and the city.”24 The same can be said, for example, of movements to organize social and political groups such as the movements of rural solidarity. These theses connect well with the aforementioned classic work of Weber, as well as with the writings of Georges Duby on the region of Mâcon or his Guerriers et paysans.25 Why then would it be useful to return to focus only on the intramural city, as I propose here, to examine the processes of fraternization devised by bourgeois knights? The answer is that, through their constituent books, they establish the poetics of their orders within the urban space.

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There is a theoretical-political logic in the fact that the rules of the chivalric groups studied here situate their center of gravity “dentro de la villa” (“within the city”). This logic is founded in how the idea is diffused—mainly after Giles of Rome’s (1247–1316) De regimine principum (1285)—that all political discourse must be understood only through the civitas, or city. Or perhaps a term that had some success in the political theory of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the communitas ciuitatis. The French translator of the work of Giles of Rome at the end of the thirteenth century and in a move not uncommon among translators, tried to overcome the ambiguity of the Latin text by duplicating all nouns. For him, the noun ciuitas used in Latin should be translated as “vilez et citez,” thus referring to the dual nature of the Latin concept in which ciuitas is at the same time the original political beginning (“cite,” or polis) and the urban enclosure (“vile”).26 Juan García de Castrojeriz offered an identical translation in Castilian when in 1345 he finished the assignment that Bernabé, the bishop of Osma, had given him by direct order of Alfonso XI. García Castrojeriz not only translated the Latin, but also profusely glossed the text. From the beginning of the fourteenth century Giles of Rome’s text had become the theoretical and political vulgate in all of Europe and was widely studied. Giles of Rome, who like Brunetto Latini or Thomas Aquinas eventually formed part of the Italian intellectual community in Paris, refers to a political system that functions in the communitates ciuium of the Italian Peninsula. This includes the city-states, communal Italy, and above all the imperial construction of republican models. Although the term “republican imperialism” may appear contradictory, treatises such as Dante’s De monarchia, dedicated to Henry VII and written in 1310, are manifestations of this idea.27 From the middle of the fourteenth century political theory is fundamentally de regimine civitatis. The most important point of reference in this regard is Bartolo of Sassoferrato’s political treatise De regimine civitatis.28 To construct a political theory of the city, Bartolo introduces an innovative thesis: he considers a translation of Aristotle and Giles of Rome necessary in a new legal vocabulary. For him, the city is not simply a universe of political action but one of experimentation on the basis of legal policy.29 Scholars who analyze the city, citizenship, or the state often highlight the role of the city as the construct of the antagonistic legal policy of the state.30 This antagonism does not necessarily imply the state’s quest for separation. Following models of self-regulation and self-government and the distinct processes of distribution of human geography, the city offers spaces of hope along with legal and political alternatives that can be applied on a statewide level. This is the particular issue raised by the dialectic between the

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city and the monarchy, in the proposal of civitas and urbs, as civic networks challenge monarchical sovereignty and jurisdiction. In these proposals, the identification of this power group issues from its connection with the ideas of civitas and urbs. The expression “los de las ciudades” (“those of the cities”), used constantly in cuadernos (court logs), refers not only to the people living in the major Castilian cities but to those who wield political power in an urban setting. To minimize the theoretical and practical value of the city in the assertion of the middle-class powers would be as misguided as to ignore the importance of the interaction between the countryside and the city throughout the process of economic development. In the case of the chivalric confraternities, the limitation of intramural space is even more significant. Actually, the confraternities limit their action to the interior of the town. The codes of rules themselves make certain exceptions while asserting that the intramural space belongs to the confraternity. For example, in the event of the death of one of the knights, the rest must accompany him into the interior of the city: “Et que todos los confradres que ouieren a la sazon cauallos e coberturas que fagan encobertar los cauallos e traerlos por la uilla con el cauallo del finado” [“And let all of the brethren who have at that time horses and coverings, cover their horses and bring them through the town with the horse of the deceased”].31 There may be small exceptions if a brother dies outside of the city or if the deceased has expressed his desire to be buried outside the city. In each case, the confraternity contemplates the possibility of gathering at the gates or their direct vicinity, thereby maintaining a strict relationship with the city enclosure. In fact, these areas are actually spiritual limits of the city, centers of pilgrimage or of patronage that are under the protection of the town. If, on the other hand, the deceased brother dies outside of the city walls and is not to be buried inside the city, the brethren will be there: Si alguno de los confradres finare fuera de la uilla e lo traxieren a la uilla que todos los confradres le salgan a reçebir fuera de la uilla fasta la casa del Leon o a sant agostin o fasta el hospital de Gamonar o fasta sant françisco o fasta barrederas e quel fagan onrra de cauallos encobertados e de todo lo al que dicho es a la uigilia e al enterrar como es dicho. E si non lo trayieren a enterrar a la villa que los confradres le fagan onrra de çirios e de candelas a la uigilia e a la missa quando los parientes ge lo fizieren saber. . . . E si el confradre finare e se mandare leuar a enterrar fuera de la uilla que los confradres que

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salgan con el cuerpo fasta fuera de la villa a los logares sobredichos, e quel fagan onrra de los cauallos encobertados. [If any one of the brothers dies outside the town and if they bring him to the town, let all of the brothers go out to meet him outside of the city to the house of Leon or to Sant Agostin or to the Gamonar hospital or to Sant Françisco or to Barrederas and let them honor him with covered horses and with all that has been decreed which regards vigil and burial. And if they do not bring him to be buried in the town let the brethren honor him with candles of vigil and with mass when his family members inform them. . . . And if the brother dies and is ordered to be buried outside the city, let the brethren go out with the body to the aforementioned places, and let them honor him with covered horses.]32 The same stipulation is issued for the holiday of the sege, or the day of Santiago. The knights must cross the city from where they are “until they reach the church of Santiago.” All the festivals, processions, lance throwing, and target contests are to be held within city walls. Festivals, displays, processions, meeting places—like the churches of Santiago, Santa María, or San Esteban—constitute the mapping of the urban space and the establishment of the presence of the confraternity. It is a process of the production of a space of memory. It delimits the space through the placement of landmarks. For Michel de Certeau this bornage, or delimitation of borders, is central to the concept of urban space.33 The rule of the confraternity is not limited to a description of the movement of the citizens; it creates the story of its limits. It constitutes a “theater of action” (de Certeau), in which the distinct objects that have been mentioned (gates, churches, places, walls) form the network of communication. The delimitation of borders is clearly manifested in the code of rules of the Confraternidad de Santa María de Gamonal. There it occupies a prominent space between folios 3 and 4 of the manuscript.34 It evokes in this section the properties of the confraternity and its distribution throughout the city, from the neighborhood of Gamonal in the east to Tenebregosa and Correoneria streets in the west. This east-west axis is the backbone of the city. The story of the borders is based on the donations and foundations of the man who inspired the confraternity, Pedro Esteban, or Estévanez, and his wife, Ucenda de Prestines. The rule details how to identify and traverse this space, and to legally transform it into a space that belongs in its entirety to the confraternity.

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It is the theater in which the power of this group is developed. The rule itself requires the delimitation of the space of the interior of the city, but it also shows that its properties coincide with the central design itself, the main axis of the city that follows the pilgrimage route to Santiago and centers around both the old and the new cathedrals.35 This is the map that urban knights transform into space, that is, they produce space. This last expression is from Henri Lefebvre, and it is part of an entire discourse on social construction. The production of urban space entails the substitution of the extramural rural nature for a new natural order, carefully designed and based on passageways, communications systems, and points of reference.36 It is not enough, however, to create meanings or points of reference in this produced space; the inhabitants must also submit them to practice, and it is through this practice that the creation and production of the space grows into a complex web of meaning. The practice of space, or spatialization, has a leading role in medieval culture. The ceremonial procession in monastic or cathedral spaces is perhaps the most compelling example of this process in which each movement is a speech act. The faithful or the monks methodically cover the ecclesiastical space. The ritual’s order may not be easily altered since it depends on the narrative’s syntax, with pauses that call for meditation and contemplation.37 The same is true of the urban processions of the penitential and other similar confraternities, like those of Bologna, for instance. Likewise, particularly after the fifteenth century, different urban segments, neighborhoods, or guilds appropriate space or confront each other in it through processions (in cities such as Seville, for instance). According to de Certeau, space is a “lieu pratiqué,” a place submitted to a practice.38 The distinction between “place” and “space” is particularly appropriate in the case of the confraternities. Playing with the idea of the urbs and the relationship between the book and urban space, I consider the confraternity’s book as a place, a syntopic object, and the city as a diatopic object that submits to practice the space of meaning created by the book itself. This intuition of the book as a place is associated with the symbolic value of the bibliographic object. The libro of the confraternities is not only a vehicle for the text, but it also has value in and of itself as the stage where contact between the empirical world and the representation of urban chivalry is reached. The book is also a place because it contains the rules on how the empirical urban space must be practiced. The rules are not extraordinarily explicit and yet preclude a few assumptions. Nonetheless, these assumptions allow an appropriation of intramural terrain that advances gentrification, a strategy of

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urban reordering that implies a number of different procedures. One of these is the organization of the confraternities and their general practice in space, either regulated or not, although pursuant to certain customs. The libros of both Gamonal and Santiago include sections that feature portraits of the knights and constitute another practice of space—with fascinating visual impact. Consonant with the equivalence between common forms of frequentation and acts of speech posited by Michel de Certeau, these portraits represent the protagonists of the urban chivalry in the very emission of a speech act. It is critical to understand the circumstances in which they were produced and their ramifications in order to discern a speech act in the abstraction of a portrait. It seems contradictory to speak of an “abstract figure” when alluding to a portrait. Nevertheless, these portraits contain two levels of abstraction. First is the impossibility of depicting the knights’ faces and their substitution with other figurative elements. The second is a practice of space in the absence of space itself. Both codices present a galley of portraits of the knights who form the confraternity. The oldest portraits of the Libro de los caballeros de Santiago do not express a true will to show any identifiable physiognomy. Each portrait appears to be a repetition of one hieratic face illustrating the fashion of an abundant beard and long hair. All the knights have the same expression. The only distinguishing features are the inscriptions of their names and their coats of arms. In fact, the inscription with each name serves to identify the arms and the subject’s genealogical situation rather than the actual knight. The arms-name-confraternity relationship is far more important than the identification of the specific person. The logic of lineage appears, then, to be the first priority. All the knights also have a similar position on a horse. In the most recent portraits of the same book, the identification of individuals appears more prominently, particularly after more educated brothers were incorporated—those Alfonso X called the “knights of the law.” In these portraits the face (cleanshaven) is individual and irreproducible. With regard to the book that depicts the knights of the Confraternidad de Santa María de Gamonal, which is a much later codex, likely created at the end of the fifteenth or in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the faces also show a certain hieratism; or rather, they share similar features with minimal differences among the various knights. The portraits follow two or three distinct patterns and establish variations with respect to these models. Again, the coat of arms constitutes the most important part of the representation. Only one of the knights has his face completely covered by the visor of his helmet,

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and that is the man who painted them, Jusepe de Ayala. This self-portrait is a highly symbolic aesthetic expression: the artist cannot paint himself. With this statement, he also makes clear that his identity is less important than his inclusion in the codex, in the group. All the portraits from the first period of the libro of Santiago and practically all those of the libro of Gamonal are in a very similar position—riding a horse. Here arises the second problem that I pointed out earlier, that of the representation of spatialization in absence of space itself. That is, a theory of spatialization derives meaning in the place defined by the codex. The position of the brethren on the horse marks a common practice of space in the chivalric game of bohordo (lance throwing). The portrait presents the form of an act of speech in which the brother claims a space in accordance with a grammar that controls the rules of production both in the coats of arms and in the exhibition and use of the lance.39 In the later portraits, a sword replaces the lance. Thus, the grammar of the speech act has varied substantially. If bohordo is a collective term and refers to a group ceremony, the term “sword” is completely individual and conveys the character of the protagonist as that of a knight-errant, just as he appears, for example, in the images of Santiago, patron saint of Spain, or on the covers of chivalric romances that were printed beginning in the fifteenth century.40 The book does not paint a specific space. The portraits and the speech act are in a vacuum, in the space of the book. The book constitutes one of the rules for the practice of space, a grammar of the speech act, but not the practice of space itself. As will be evident when I address the ostentation of luxury, this is a key element of these books. Space itself cannot be represented because it is outside the book. The space of the city, in which the confraternities have meaning, is a space that they appropriate when they begin to practice this grammar of the speech act. The distinction between book-place and spatialization is critical. The image of the knights is hieratic to a certain degree; it does not represent space yet establishes a grammar of spatialization. Image plays a central role in the processions of medieval culture. Hans Belting has questioned the relationship between the sacred image and cult in the moment in which the image, whether two-dimensional or sculpted, disseminated and exhibited the rest of the citizens (the community of the faithful, in particular). This practice was fundamental among the processional confraternities of the earlier Middle Ages and in following periods up until our own time. As Hans Belting and Jean-Claude Schmitt aver, the image is shown to produce not only a religious impact but also a political and economic one. The political value is based mainly on the public display of power of a specific community represented by

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its image and how this image occupies the city space. The economic value is based on the expectation of contributions from the community under the advocacy of the image. W. J. T. Mitchell asserts that the image expresses a desire; it challenges the balance between the community depicted through the image and the communities that the image confronts. The image dwells in a place (a church, a town hall, or the headquarters of a confraternity, for instance); the image itself is a place (for example, the altar), but occasionally, at certain times of the year, it may be moved, thereby acquiring narrative meaning.41 Now, in the case of the libros of the confraternities, the relationship between image and space is different. The images portrayed in the book actually reach beyond its confines, in their real substance, and they themselves occupy space. They are recognized as the imagined objects of the book, and thus create a dysfunction between the symbolic value of the image and its specific realization. The images in these portraits were not simply people with first and last names. They walked the streets with the same attire and symbols with which they were represented in the book (with some exceptions I will describe shortly). The image is made flesh so as to occupy the city space and assert itself in the processional environment. It is an epistemological jump of extraordinary proportions. Every festival, as the practical spatialization of space, takes place inside the city walls. It is in this space where the group acquires all its meaning. The city walls have more than just functional value. It has been recorded on various occasions how in the beginning of the fourteenth century and later in the middle of the fifteenth century the city of Burgos made a large investment to build new city walls with new gates and battlements. The functional criterion for this construction has been underscored by Ruiz, as well as by Bonachía and Casado. Scholars see this investment as a somewhat surprising movement since Burgos at the time was not precisely on the frontier. These historians have explained with great detail the functionality of the new walls: first, they served to defend the city, an undeniable bastion of the Castilian monarchy, from the uprisings of a bellicose upper nobility; second, as Ruiz points out, the walls are also an effort to separate and delineate urban spaces.42 This line of reasoning explains to what extent the walls entailed the delimitation of a “space of hope,” to invoke Harvey’s urban concept. It bears underscoring that the dominant families of Burgos in the fourteenth century were the families of the non-noble chivalry, who enjoyed distinction because they occupied a space linked to the urban elements of defense. The second chapter addressed how the identity of the societates militum in numerous European cities (Florence, Nîmes, Marseilles, and others) is closely linked to defensive spaces—specifically towers, gates, walls. The presence of the city walls

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also allowed these groups to preserve their geographic and political identity. The dismantling of many of these societates coincided with the destruction of the walls. In some cities, like Florence, walls were being rebuilt, eliminating the power centers of the military societies, the turres. In Burgos, the erection of the new walls was not solely for defensive purposes either. They were also a physical manifestation of the symbolic value of urban ordination, the organization of urban space in relation to the powers that were constantly manifesting their power and ultimately seized it. The walls facilitate reflection on models of urban reorganization and how the city is perceived as a space of hope for a rising social class whose identity is based on the office of chivalry. The creation of this space of hope is tied to what I denominate the public hope of chivalry. In the chivalric fable, the practice of chivalry is based on the aspiration of territorial control, which is linked to nobility and to monarchical jurisdiction. Chivalric literature—the great source of the creation of hope—is normally focused on the chivalric aspiration for governorships, newly formed kingdoms, or the (re)conquest of spaces that had been illegitimately occupied (from the legend of Lanzarote to that of Amadís). The bourgeois chivalric hope is much more localized and implies an ordination of the urban space and the distribution of the population similar to what geographers and urbanists consider to be processes of gentrification. That is, the process by which the ruling classes are reunited in the construction of specific districts, with the consequent segregation, conditioned by economic pressures, of whole sections of the society.43 In this case these sections are pushed toward the poor areas of the city and the extramural suburbs, while the most powerful families of the confraternities are concentrated in a few streets close to the most prominent places inside the new city walls. As Ruiz has shown, many of the most privileged families tended to concentrate inside city walls, acquiring palatial urban properties.44 The city, then, is the theoretical point of reference upon which the process of the construction of the social group was founded. Rather than referring to how each individual family developed its wealth, this refers to the associative process that united the different families to the circles of power and unhinged the interrelations of social forces at the heart of the monarchy, advancing a new point of reference predicated upon medieval and early modern chivalry. Chivalry is thus articulated as a key resource for a growing middle class. Chivalry’s aim to be recognized was achieved via public manifestations. Through ritual, the knight forged links that can only be rendered visible through symbolic objects and their tropological relation with the invisible

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inner transformation. The mission and principles of chivalry are represented through each member’s arms or through his dress; his habitus is the material depiction of a habit. Chivalry was traditionally represented with a habit that included gold in late medieval Europe, from Roman times until the Knights of the Golden Spur. Gold is in a symbolic register tied to the expression of the monarchical and imperial auctoritas of the papal potestas. Both the monarchy and the papacy sealed their legislations with golden seals. The knights’ penchant for gold invoked the monarchical seal and allowed them to assert that they were sealed by royal power, theretofore an extension of royal jurisdiction. The gold seal signals their bond to chivalry as well as their social status: the ordo is golden. In the realm of the non-noble knights, however, gold has a different provenance. It is neither a royal seal, a concession of nobility, nor an investiture of chivalry. Gold remains a signifier for the ordo, but its source is material wealth and it is cultivated through the practice of the manual arts. To wear gold would have been an act of representation of the non-noble knights, to portray themselves as if they were nobles or had been ordained by the king. This transgression is, nevertheless, an untenable production of presence. If the gold may not enact a presence externally, where should it appear internally? If the production of presence cannot transcend beyond the code of rules to the urban space, might it move in the opposite direction? As Gaston Bachelard affirms, it is here that the presence must coincide with its image. Indeed, the most significant aspect in the relation between book, place, and space is the process that results in the production of a physical impact that interferes with this space and the manner in which this impact relates to the bodies that move in the same space.45 This poetics of representation is fundamental to an understanding of the political value of the confraternity and its theory, as depicted in its book. Nevertheless, its modes of representation and ostentation were limited by the issuance of the sumptuary laws, which appeared repeatedly between 1252 and the end of the reign of Alfonso XI, contained in specific legislations, royal ordinances, or court logs. The sumptuary laws limited ostentation to ensure social distinction between members of distinct social strata.46 These laws or forms of representation were not unique to Castile; they were enacted throughout all of chivalric Europe. Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444) upheld them in his treatise De militia of 1422, written during his interregnum as chancellor of the Republic of Florence.47 The flaunting of wealth and its clear distinction from sociopolitical ostentation is key to urban life, where external emblems of distinction fulfill a variety of functions. In the Cortes

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of Burgos of 1338, presumably the same year as the founding of the Cofradía de Santiago, Alfonso limited the use of certain cloths, colors, and enamels, and in particular the use of gold: “Ningún ome de qual quier estado que sea, saluo nos, que non vista pannos de oro ni de seda ni vista pannos con oro freses ni contrenas ni al jofar ni con otro adobo ninguno ni con esmaltes, saluo que puedan traer en los mantos texidos ningunos pannos con oro freses ni Contreras ni al jofar o cuerdas sin al jofar” [“No man of any social class, except for us (the king), may wear fabrics made with gold or silk, nor fabrics with gold ornamentation or any metallic features or mother-of-pearl, nor any metal or embellishment except that they may wear on their robes mother-of-pearl embroideries or belts without any mother-of-pearl”] (Cortes 1: 454, point 37).48 In the Cortes of Madrid of 1339, the city and town representatives had already petitioned the king to remove most of the content of this law.49 The book’s style is direct concerning the voice of the representatives, as in a classic cahier de doléances, while it deploys an indirect style to convey the authoritative voice of the king by way of the legal instrument prepared by the scholars: Otrossy, ssennor, uos touiestes por bien e fue la uuestra merçet de ffazer ordenamiento ssobre rrazon delos pannos de vestir e delos adobos e de los guarnimientos dellos et ssobre los guarnimientos delas ssiellas e delos frenos. Et, ssennor, a muchos caualleros e omes bonos, que ante deste ordenamiento tenian e tienen pannos e ssiellas e ffrenos con adobos e guarnimientos de muchas maneras, et non osan vsarlos por rrazon de uuestro ordenamiento, et por esta rrazon pierden muy grad algo e menoscaban mucho delo suyo et esto non es uuestro seruiçio. Porque uos pedimos merçet que tengades por bien e mandedes que cada vno e cada vna ome bueno e buena duenna e donzella puedan traer e trayan pannos e ssiellas con adobos e con guarnimientos cada vno quales entendiere quele cunplen saluo ende que non trayan pannos de oro nin de seda nin tauardo aguadero de escarlliata las personas a quien uos lo defendiestes. [Moreover, Lord, you thought it good and it was your mercy to make an ordinance concerning the wearing of different clothing, and the adornments and embellishments of them, and concerning the embellishments of the saddles and of the bridles. And, Lord, to many knights and good men, who before this ordinance have had and continue to have robes and saddles and bridles with adorn-

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ments and embellishments of many kinds, and they do not dare use them because of your ordinance, and because of this they lose much status and they damage much of what is theirs, and this is a disservice to you. Because of this we ask your mercy and that you see fit that every good man and good woman and maiden may wear their clothing and use their saddles with adornments and embellishments each one wearing what he wishes except that they not wear cloths of gold nor of silk nor scarlet—the people who you have defended.] (Cortes, 1: 468) The ostentation of gold and other luxurious items is not viewed as an individual privilege, even though it may be implied in the expression “cada vno quales entendiere que le cunplen” [“each one wearing what he wishes”]. What the petition of the representatives articulates is the social and economic utility of their clothing and the adornments with which they dress their horses. Ultimately, this was of key concern for the bourgeoisie—constituents of the class of non-noble knights—who would continue to enjoy certain tax exemptions as well as economic and political favors, as long as they maintained arms and horses with all their vestments. What is lost is, in their view, a disservice to the king: the identification of this wealthy society amid political circles and, ultimately, the possibility to measure economic differences within the social class itself predicated on the potential for ostentation of an individual or of a particular lineage. The monarch’s response is decisive: Responde el rey que eneste ordenamiento que el ffizo que es grand ssu pro dellos e guarda de ssus faziendas et que tiene por bien que sea guardado el ssu ordenamiento bien conplida mente. Et que manda alos offiçiales dela ssu corte e alos otros ofiçiales delas vilas que prenden por la pena que enell ssu ordenamiento sse contiene aaquellos que enella cayeren. Pero que tiene por bien deles quitar las penas que enell ssu ordenameinto sse contiene, si ellos cayeron fasta oy miercoles vint e quatro dias de nouiembre. [The king answers that in this ordinance that he made that is done for their good and that has as its object the protection of their households and he wishes that this ordinance continue to be well followed. And that he commands the officials of his court and other officials of the towns that they arrest any who do not follow it. But

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that he will pardon those who have not fulfilled it up to this day, Wednesday the twenty-fourth day of November.] (468–69) There is a certain irony in the king’s response. He does not offer any specific reason for which the law should still be in effect. The only objective reason, rather obliquely present, is that certain fabrics and ornaments are the exclusive prerogative of the king and no one else may wear them. It is a right that we could call heraldic rather than sumptuary since it relates to representation, identification, and distinction. These were expensive fabrics, metals, adornments, and vestments—hence the irony in the monarch’s reaction. While urban representatives claimed that they suffered a significant loss by not flaunting them, the king replied that they were indeed saving. The king underscored economic savings to address an issue concerning society and class. The king knew that he was dealing with an attempt to cross the boundaries of ordo or “estate” (the concept that he uses in his ordinances), which he sought to secure in place beyond the reach of specific economic powers. For the knights, this was an even greater problem in their petitions and their cultural and representational activities, since their capacity for the production of presence hinged on this habit. One of their strategies was to take advantage of the gap between the physical manifestation of the institution and the book in which it was constituted. The heading of the first line of the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos (Book of the Knights of Santiago of Burgos) states: Esta es la Regla de los coffrades dela cofradria del Apostol sennor Sanctiago, que mandaron fazer por mandado del cabillo Sancho perez fijo de don johan guillen. Et garcia sanchez, fijo de don vidal. Et Alffon ffernandez fijo de don fferrant martinez el Jouen. En el anno que fueron mayordomos todos tres. En el anno dela Era de mill, e trezientos e .lxxvj. Años. Et fizola Por su mandado johan Garcia, criado de fue de pero johan de Carrion, Dios e señor Sanctiago le de buen galardon. AMEN. [This is the rule of the brothers of the confraternity of the Apostle Lord Santiago, which was ordered into being by officer Sancho Perez, son of Don Johan Guillen; and Garcia Sanchez, son of Don Vidal; and Alfonso Ffernandez, son of Don Fferant Martinez, the youngest. In the year in which the three of them were stewards.

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In the year of the Era of 1376. And executed as ordered by Johan Garcia, a servant of Pero Johan de Carrion, may he be handsomely rewarded by God and Santiago. AMEN.]50 This indicates that the rule was written in 1338 (= 1376), but the edition was assigned to someone who appears to have died before the time this heading appeared in the present codex. It seems likely, then, that Johan García was a servant of Pero Johan de Carrión when he began to write the rule. It is also possible that Pero Johan de Carrión was still alive at the time, since the personality of the editor emulates that of the person he serves. On the other hand, the heading speaks of a distant past, even though it is impossible to ascertain how remote. Nonetheless, this suggests that the codex that contains the Libro de los caballeros is not from 1338, but is several years older. When these knights represented in the Libro de los caballeros trod the streets of Burgos, the legislation about gold and luxury was already in full effect. All of them enjoyed an economic status that would have allowed them to wear suits trimmed with gold, silk, precious stones, and other fine materials or ornaments. Yet despite various attempts in the Cortes, they could not reverse the Alfonsine laws that had been ratified in the Cuaderno de peticiones de las Cortes de Alcalá de 1348 (Record of Petitions of the Cortes de Alcalá of 1348) or later instances. Portrayal, however, is an entirely separate matter. Perhaps Burgalese brothers of the Cofradía de Santiago could not venture out in the street with suits, bridles, saddles, or spurs of gold, but could they be depicted in a portrait with such attire? Judging by the Libro de los caballeros, they could. It is not possible to date this codex with precision yet it can be situated very close to the creation of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá (Ordinance of Alcalá), which issued from the 1348 Cortes de Alcalá de Henares with two royal copies, one from 1348 and another from 1351, and near the time of the Libro de la Banda, which we examine in the next two chapters. The stylistic resonance between the two codices of the Ordinance of Alcalá, the Libro de la Banda preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris (fonds espagnol ms 33, hereafter P 51) and the Burgalese codex of the Libro de los caballeros, are outstanding—particularly with respect to the writing of the initial and of the names of God and the Holy Virgin in the invocation of the book. The style in which the letters are drawn, and how they are divided in registers that alternate between red and blue, is reminiscent of the style of the 1351 Ordenamiento de Alcalá. The same occurs in the branches with which the initial letter E is illustrated, as well as with other specific details about the design of the capital letters. Although

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no paleographic detail is decisive, all indications appear to refer to the style between 1348 and 1351 rather than earlier styles. The letters of the invocation are filled in with gold leaf—not the initial E, just the following: “En el nombre de dios e de sancta maria” [“In the name of God and of Holy Mary”]. It is the only instance in which the codex uses real gold in its creation. However, it is not the only time that the codex tries to feature or represent gold. In fact, the representation of gold and other prohibited ostentatious jewels were a significant part of the creation of the codex, especially the album with the portraits of the knights. The strategy to represent gold pertains to the heraldic arts. Gold coloring is used to emblazon heraldic furniture that carry this enamel, thus establishing equivalence between the color or pigment and the metal it references. The first page of the portraits of the knights uses this technique profusely—in the golden leopards that recall those of the Plantagenets (only two instead of the three of the English dynasty) in the painting of Don Johan de Sant Chestel. The colors are similar to those of the sign of the king of Aragon used by Johan de Canbranas or the castles of the king of Castile that appear on the border of the shield of Alfonso Gutiérrez of Camargo (fol. 21). An identical equivalence may be gleaned on the verso of this same folio on which golden lions and castles are depicted on a red field or, in the Burgundian style, with gold and blue stripes. All this clearly suggests an equivalence between a color and an enamel to which it makes reference and whose ostentation, outside the book, is formally prohibited by diverse orders of the king of Castile and León. The codex thus imposes itself on reality and constitutes a discourse about the self-representation of the knights of Santiago beyond the possibilities of physical representation. The codex may be posited as the apex of the process of representation of a bourgeois class of non-noble knights. The ideology of nobility frequently ridicules this movement. Fifteenthcentury authors, like Alfonso Martínez de Toledo in the Corbacho (1438), Diego de Valera in his Espejo de verdadera nobleza (Mirror of True Nobility, 1441), or the bishop of Oviedo and castellan of the Castel Sant’Angelo Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo in his Speculum humanae vitae (1468, printed in Spanish translation in 1491), among others, frown upon noble pretensions predicated on the plutocratic conditions of these groups.52 The logic of this attitude is to safeguard the nobility and its public presence: it is unfathomable for nobles to engage in the practice of manual arts (e.g., commerce and the trades). It is, however, more difficult to understand why this interpretation persists in some of the modern studies about these confraternities, such as those cited by Carmela Pescador or Pardo de Guevara and others. But it does evince histori-

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cal resistance to the nobility’s ideological refusal to avow the productions of presence of a bourgeoisie in transformation and intent on constructing itself a legitimate locus of power. This is a core moment in the construction of a bourgeois class, which, to invoke Habermas, aims to constitute the center of the public sphere (Structural Transformation). This initiative ultimately spurs the construction of civic capitalism and influences the rise of civic movements. Although confraternities and brotherhoods like those in Gamonal and Santiago—or other cities, as well as the associations formed in Cuenca or in Jaén by non-noble or feeissuing knights—were all entities of power, they were also public associations constituted as a means of defense or protection. The presence of the confraternity as a group of public and social preservation is one of the foundations of the construction of the group and of its manifestation of physical power and its own system of protection. This is revealed, for example, in the importance that these rules confer to the death of the members of the confraternity. The rule of Santiago of 1338 and that of 1501 employ a great part of their energy in explaining how the death, burial, and vigil of a dead brother should be conceived. Not for one instant should the corpse or the family be abandoned by the knights, and there are specific penalties for those who do not respect this chapter. We, of course, may see it as a simple vigil, a show of ostentation of the friends, neighbors, and family members of the deceased. Or we may relate it to other very concrete problems, which cast the confraternity as a system of protection of the goods of the family of the deceased and, in general, as a social precaution.53 Indeed, the ordenamiento of the Cortes, like the petitions of Alcalá of 1348, can be read in passages like the following: A los que nos pidieron merçed quelos procuradores delas Ordenes dela Trinidad e de Sant Olalla e los otros procuradores delas otra Ordenes ganauan cartas dela nuestra chançelleria muy aguisadas, diziendo quelo an de preuillejos, e que demandauan e cotrinnien apremiada mente alas gentes con las dichas cartas queles mostrasen e diesen los testamentos delos finados, e despues que gelos auian mostrado, queles demandauan queles diesen todas aquellas cosas que se contenien porlos dichos testamentos, que son mandadas a lugares non çiertos e a personas non çiertas. [Those who asked of the procurators of the Orders of the Trinity and of Sant Olalla and of other procurators of the other Orders,

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gained letters of our chancellery indicating that they are granted privileges and that they demanded and requested urgently to the people with the aforementioned letters that they showed them and gave them the testaments of the deceased, and after they had shown them, that they demanded that they be given all things which were contained in the aforementioned testaments, that they are sent to nonspecific places and to nonspecific people.] (1: 605, pt. 39) In such instances, the confraternity sought to constitute itself as a defender of the material interests of the group. Something similar explains the confraternity’s aim to control the system of kinship, and, in particular, its matrimonial alliances, since up to 1348, the king had the power to issue mandatory letters of matrimony: Alo que nos pidieron merçed que muchas vezes era nuestra merçed de mandar dar nuestras cartas de afincamiento a algunos en rrazon de algunas duennas e donzellas e bibdas e otras mugeres que casassen con algunos omnes, e que mandasemos que de aqui adelante non diesen tales cartas, e quando tales cartas ffuessen, quelas non cunpliesen nin cayesen en pena nin en emplazamiento los quelas non cunpliesen, e que pusiesemos pena alos quelas ganasen e vsaren dellas. A esto rrespondemos que quanto cartas de rruego, que seria sin rrazon delas non dar a algunas personas que entendieremos que es aguysado delas dar, pero quelas mandaremos dar la primera vez; mas que otras cartas de premia nin de afincamiento nin de enplazamiento, quelas [non] mandaremos guardar, e si enplazamiento ffuere ffecho en que digan que uengan sobresta rrazon, que tenemos por bien que non sean tenudos alo seguir. [To which they asked us to send letters of emplacement to some concerning some ladies and young ladies and widows and other women to be married with some men, and that we ordered that from here on they should not give such letters, and that when such letters were, that they not be fulfilled nor should they be penalized or impeached who do not comply, and that we place penalties on those who gain and use them. To this we respond that with regard to letters of pleading, that it would be without reason to not give to some people that we un-

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derstand that it is advisable of them to give, but that we send them the first time; but that other letters of obligation or of emplacement, that we not order them to be kept, and if emplacement was made in which they say that they come on this reason, which we understand to be good and that they not be forced to follow it.] (602–3, pt. 30) Every representation carries with it a specific defense, an expression of construction of a class that not only feels dominant, but also tries to create mechanisms of visibility that integrate it into a public sphere—sufficiently endowed with rights and privileges. This is how an onerous and complex position may be safeguarded. The poetics of the chivalric ordo on the part of the non-noble knights and of the confraternities of Santiago and Gamonal is a race toward the legitimation of their spaces and institutions in concert with monarchical sovereignty. They do not represent an alternative, but rather the opening of a new accommodation for power. Like one who opens the gates of the city for the entrance of the monarch, the confraternities open the doors of the institutions for participation in the monarchy, thus becoming part of the royal house (the concept of the royal house is used by the monarch himself to refer to his officials, as was seen in a previously transcribed text). In this opening the nobility and the jurists must be remembered: the first because it is the category upon which the tension of forces of the feudal and monarchical politics rests; the second because it is the great chancelleresque and institutional innovation of the transformations in the administration of the royal jurisdiction. The confraternities of the non-noble knights needed to enter in both dimensions of this opening. It is sometimes noted that in the fifteenth century there was a definite blending of chivalry and nobility. Hilario Casado, for example, speaking about the Cofradía de Gamonal and that of Santiago and their functionality or capacity for representation in the city of Burgos, points out that “there is another, even more important motive in the case of these two confraternities, which gathered the elites of Burgos, such as is the peak of the chivalric ideal. Just as in the rest of Europe, we are witnessing a leveling between the meaning of chivalry and nobility, which now are considered to be identical.”54 Neither the available facts nor the medieval texts about chivalry allow us, however, to reach a conclusion like the one here transcribed. The institution and concept of chivalry are, certainly, the abbreviation of a public and social hope. Chivalry is, above all, a series of fables in debate, as I have tried to ex-

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plain on various occasions. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest aspirations that constitute this concept of chivalry is that of the process of ennoblement, that is, the legal, civic, and theological authorization of the pertinence of an individual to the dominant category. Now, chivalry and nobility are far from being equals. What the facts do show is precisely the opposite. On the one hand, those considered noble knights were opposed to the possibility that had arisen definitively with the legal treatise De dignitatis by Bartolo of Sassoferrato in the middle of the fourteenth century, devoted to the typology and legal treatment of nobility, and which precisely proposed, as the first point of reference, an militia sit dignitas. It is difficult to find any treatise that had as much legal impact as this one, which was abundantly discussed amid the debate about chivalry and nobility from the middle of the fourteenth century at least until the publication in print, in 1492, of the Nobiliario vero by Fernando de Mexía, veinticuatro of Jaén—a local government position.55 This debate, which involves both nobles and jurists, along with the pressure exercised by the urban chivalric groups in particularly notable places like Burgos, Jaén, and Cuenca, impedes us from perceiving a simplistic identification between the ostentation of chivalry and the possession of a certain nobility or hidalguía. Chivalry, in contrast, entails the hope of the bourgeois groups to be able to access the category of nobility through the unique dignity bestowed by the kings, in accordance with established laws, most of all with Juan II of Castile (1405–1454; king during his minority beginning in 1406, until he reached the age of majority in 1419), which could be used to benefit the very expansion of the noble category. Juan II, Indeed, in a pragmatic emitted in 1427, authorized the legal and political argumentation with the texts of the mos italicum until Giovanni Andrea (1275–1348), which includes, therefore, the traditions that come out of the environment of Bartolo of Sassoferrato.56 Both the debate and the pressure of the urban groups indicate, also, that the ostentation of power (the abstract concept of power or imperium) or of local powers (the particular power positions in local governments, or authorities) is insufficient motivation for the non-noble knights. The hope of chivalry, through its texts, myths and cultural constructions, goes far beyond this civic power, and above all, it entails a much closer relationship with the monarchy. Their motivation does not appear to be simply that of paying taxes or not, as Jara Fuente suggests in his aforementioned studies about Cuenca, since many of the urban chivalric groups were exempt from fiscal obligations since the time of Alfonso X. Chivalry constituted a frontier that was to some extent unintelligible, an epistemological threshold of nobility. The study of the point of encounter be-

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tween the urban chivalric corporations and the noble chivalry is precisely that of an impossible interchange. They share part of the lintel, the very concept of chivalry, but neither of the two spheres can properly go through the door that accesses the other side without losing something fundamental. For the nobles, as the authors of that time period remind us, to cross this threshold would require an occupation outside the sphere of the hidalguía.57 For the non-noble knights it would constitute incorporation into nobility by civil instead of theological means (which, nevertheless, is what claims the majority of the nobility de linaje [through lineage]), along with the relative loss of their capacity for action in the offices they carry out.58 On the other hand, it is insufficient just to establish the connections between non-noble and noble chivalry without introducing a new variable into the equation, namely the role played by the letrados (the jurists) in this complex fabric of conflicting forces situated below the common lintel of the concept of chivalry. It is necessary to return, then, to the portraits contained, particularly in the Libro de los caballeros de Santiago. There are three elements that remain throughout the entire section devoted to the portraits. One is heraldic exhibition, the second is chivalry itself, and the third is the sequence of name and office that heads each of the portraits. Heraldic exhibition will be addressed in Chapter 6. The other two are of interest to us now. Indeed, one of the theses that the portraits transmit, besides the sequence between name and office and chivalry, is that all the knights hold a public office and, in a significant number of cases, they are professional jurists. Nevertheless, this does not make any of them any less a knight. What is more, the portraits establish a direct, historical, and indissoluble link: the non-noble knight may ride on horseback, may present himself with all the trappings of the knight in general, may dedicate himself to chivalric games and public displays, but above all, these are people who maintain a public role that is central to the city, within the constitution of the archives (we must remember, origin and order) and within the scholarly and university spectrum. If the first portraits simply represented the knights in the activity of throwing javelins, the portraits that appear later, most of all beginning in the fifteenth century, represent terribly serious lawyers and scholars who have just left their university classrooms only to pose with their hoods and their caps, with their coats of arms, conveniently mounted on horseback. The caballería letrada (learned chivalry) of which Alfonso X speaks in Partidas 2.10.3 has been made flesh by completely dissolving the false dialectic between arms and letters, and thus uniting these two forms of monarchical sovereignty. If this were the only dialectic that is dissolving, the problem may not

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become more than just superficially cultural or a matter of representation. But we must connect it with an old project that pertains to the most intimate aspirations of the university scholars, and that is what Bartolo of Sassoferrato expresses with precision in his treatises De dignitatis and De insigniis et armis. In this aspiration lies the necessity of the scholars to leave the narrow margins of the juriconsulta to be integrated within the circuits of the objective power. To do this, the lawyer or scholar must cross the border of an ordo, that of the nobility, because this it is this noble category that controls the objective power within all the political practices and theories. The category of nobility crosses, according to Bartolo of Sassoferrato, through the three elements that function on different hermeneutic levels. The first is that of ostentation; while Bartolo points out in De insigniis that the possession and exhibition of the heraldic pieces does not in and of itself make one noble, he also indicates that the concession of heraldic arms by the sovereign, who in the political language of the time is called princeps, entails the recognition of nobility, and that according to his treatise De dignitatis, nobility can be created ex nihilo by the princeps, based exclusively on the recognition of the virtue of the plebeian subject who may be ennobled. The second element is that of the university and legal office; according to Bartolo, in a consultation that was successful in European law, a certain number of years of legal office should be sufficient to be able to gain recognition, by the prince, in the noble categories. The third and most important is the ostentation of chivalry, or, better yet, the recognition of pertinence to the chivalric category. According to De dignitatis, which begins with the quæstio “an militia sit dignitas” [“if it is correct to say that chivalry confers nobility”], the most direct way that the prince has to make a plebeian a noble is to grant him knighthood. Through chivalry, the prince not only distinguishes a person, but he also ennobles him, pulling him out of the sphere of the other plebeians.59 This is a legal and theoretical artifact of the highest importance, both for the knights as well as for the monarchs. It allows the first to establish with certainty a public hope based in chivalry, particularly when dealing with the non-noble knights. It allows the latter to control the amplitude and intensity of the chivalric institution itself, forming a group of monarchical solidarity, which, as we have already seen, is reinvented time after time in the hands of the monarchy. Chivalry, in any of its manifestations, is a product of regulation. This is precisely what makes this ordo so interesting as a social and political constructor. In all cases, it appears as something that can be theorized. The theory differs with each case and is presented through very different texts. The books

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of the confraternities of knights are no more than a perspective within this multiform universe of regulations and forms of theorization. The confraternities, contrary to the rest of the chivalric formations, were founded in their localization. They could not exist, nor did they seek to exist, outside of the limits of the city in which they were developed and in which they were made manifest through the production of presence. The originality of this thesis about chivalry is that instead of accompanying the monarchy into the exterior, developing themselves in every sense of the monarchy’s jurisdictional territory, the confraternities of knights propose to offer themselves as one of the lodgings or habitations of the jurisdictional house of the king. It is in this place and in the space in which they practice where the confraternity has meaning and where the negotiations of power are produced. The city is a main plaza of power, because what is exchanged is the possibility of participation of these groups within the governmental and administrative models of the sovereign.

chapter four

The Order of the Sash

The interaction between localization and delocalization is part of the poetics of the order and of the process of creation of a social class. As discussed in the two previous chapters, the Hermandad of 1315 is an initiative to create a social and political network based on a chivalric alliance that operates throughout the monarchical sphere. The confraternities of Burgos, on the other hand, circumscribe their participation in royal jurisdiction by localizing their order within city limits. This poetics is a production of space: the ordo is manifested where it may be identified, where it is intelligible. To this end, an ordo defines a political space where it may become an estate—another of the terms used to refer to ordo in the Romance languages of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the ordo, as conceived in this book, participates in the dialectical conditions of the social class concept. Therefore, the poetics of the order questions its own limits without questioning the ordo’s structure or its sociopolitical relevance. The poetics of the order is predicated on the production of space, but also on how this production sustains criticism. This chapter will address the formation of chivalric classes from the perspective of this dialectic, advancing the thesis encompassed by the monarchical answer to the delocalization and localization of chivalry as proposed by the Hermandad of 1315 and the confraternities of Burgos. The reasons for this dialectic between localization and delocalization are not self-evident. In chivalry, the dialectic is related to three aspects: the nomadic— rather than itinerant—character of the royal Cortes, and its implications for the political exploitation of jurisdictional spaces; chivalry’s wandering character, owing to its mythology and the creation of its literary models; and the importance of the process of construction of civil and urban powers (civitas and urbs, respectively) on a chivalric foundation.

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In this dialectic, the civic powers that self-regulate pursuant to chivalry seek localization. Their identity can be linked to the urban geography where they are based. In some texts, the non-noble knights convey to the king the historical relationship between their military legacy and the city to claim territorial rights and allegiance to the monarchy. One example is a brief chronicle written during the reign of Alfonso X, titled Crónica de la población de Ávila (Chronicle of the Population of Ávila). In the text, the concept of populating a city is linked to urban chivalry and its way of life. Urban chivalric groups subsume their political ideas from a heterotopical discourse—a discourse subject to nomadism and the delocalization of the court—to the fixed topos of the city. The city, set apart from nature by its walls, is posited as a site of participation in sovereignty, as one of the chambers of the monarch. The fraternities discussed in previous chapters invert the natural process of the monarchical court’s nomadic movement: they compel the king to move inside the walls where civic hope is defined and enacted. Following this movement, cities stage an urban theater with ephemeral architecture, festivals, and public displays, for the aesthetic negotiation between urban order and the anticipated entrance of the king. This is often linked to ceremonies marking the entrance of the king into the city, festivals in which urbs and civitas are depicted as monarchical accommodations.1 I will trace how this dialectic enters into the monarchical discourse on chivalry and what thesis it raises for a poetics of the ordo. Monarchical chivalry was legally and culturally regulated to be errant, as it issues from the notion of adventure, of the errant knight with a political base in the house of the king. Perennially errant, the knight confronts all events throughout the kingdom on behalf of the king. Moreover, chivalric culture carries the knight farther, crossing mythical and mystical borders, seeking the expansion of the monarchy’s cultural boundaries.2 In this errant quest knights do not aim to colonize a neighboring territory but to disseminate the concept of monarchy through the practice of chivalry. The knight-errant is the monarchy’s instrument, so he wears the king’s external signifiers emblazoned on his habit. Literary texts create a typology of errantry and adventure, define its conditions of possibility, and submit it for social or literary criticism. Adventure is the main tropologic and anagogic source. The king’s body moves while the knight is moving—the knight is his stigma, following the natural bond contracted through his investiture. This thesis on movement seems to be an antithesis for the civic thesis on how chivalry is capable of configuring its own localized space—whether precedes or succeed it in time, is irrelevant. The Orden de la Banda, or Order of the Sash, created by Alfonso XI, is a

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way to resolve this dialectic engaging the thesis of errantry and delocalization. The foundation for the Orden de la Banda is what I will refer to as the Libro de la Banda (Book of the Sash), the first redaction of its rules and the conditions of possibility of its concept of adventure, which are consonant with the monarchical objective of occupying territory through chivalry. The poetics of ordo is now the poetics of a specific order—the Orden de la Banda, the first monarchical knightly order instituted in medieval Europe. In a sense, this is chivalry within chivalry, a method of establishing a knightly order that is much closer to the body of the king. This creative movement is dominated by anxiety, as if the investiture of chivalry (or of the institution of knighthood itself ) did not suffice to affirm the thesis of the monarchical body that dominates an entire territory, and it were necessary to create an entity that was even more intimately linked to the body of the king. In the following chapters, I will survey the conditions and the material issues involved in the creation of the Book of the Sash and its chivalric order. I will define the theses it advances and will examine its writing and rewriting process. The oldest manuscript of the Book of the Sash (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Fonds Espagnol, MS 33 = P) is a parchment codex in folio. This codex appears to have been intended for the royal chamber of Alfonso XI. Nonetheless, the codicological characteristics of this manuscript are disquieting. The rest of the texts on the Orden de la Banda fail to elucidate certain enigmas. In fact, their review generates new ones, mainly for two reasons: first, the appearance of the Segundo Ordenamiento en Razón de la Banda, which may have occurred during the early years of the reign of Juan I or soon thereafter; second, the fact that most of the manuscripts that comprise the code of the Sash (compiled as the Segundo Ordenamiento, or Second Ordinance) have been transmitted in cuadernos de Cortes that recorded laws from Alfonso XI and Pedro I to Juan II—that is, from 1348 through the mid-fifteenth century. These ledgers appear during the era of Juan I. The earliest extant codices, then, date to the later years of the reign of Enrique III, or the early fifteenth century. This is when the first Libro de la Banda was replaced by the Segundo Ordenamiento. There are a few codicological details of manuscript P that I deem fundamental to understand the challenges this codex poses, on which I will comment in some detail.3 First, the codex is partially mutilated. It comprises three quires, the first of which is a quaternion that was detached and lost with the corresponding loss of a part of the text in the central bifolio (i.e., folios 4 and 5). In the same

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quire, folio 8 has been ripped yet without any loss of text. The second quire includes only one bifolio. The third quire is a ternion, from which blank folios 5 and 6 have been detached. Some of these mutilations are part of the process of the creation of the codex. As is the case in every medieval codex, the manuscript is readjusted following the imposition of the text—to use a technical printing term. Others are part of the particular fate of this manuscript and are overcome when it is compared with its only other extant reproduction, contained in the codex of the Biblioteca del Monasterio del Escorial, Y.II.13. This is a sixteenth-century handwritten reproduction, probably ordered by humanist and historian Ambrosio de Morales (1513–1591), who mentions the text briefly in his Discurso sobre las antigüedades de Castilla (Discourse on the Antiquities of Castile).4 The third mutilation of the manuscript, however, is much more significant, not in terms of how the codex is but to how it was intended to be. It indicates that the most extensive part of the codex was supposed to consist of an indeterminate number of blank pages, where the growing list of names of the knights of the Sash would have been recorded. These blank pages at the end of the manuscript constitute the historical and legal coherence of the order: while the regulatory text is fixed and does not provide space for changes or corrections (not even for marginalia), the incorporation of the names of its members as an element of its constitution assures the continuity of the order and ratifies the regulatory text transhistorically. The text thus remains invariable as the order grows and is consolidated through generations and lineages. The most regrettable mutilation may indeed be the disappearance of some of the blank pages. Along with the incomplete nature of the codex itself, this loss evinces the failure of the project, the unfulfilled possibility of the order, now besieged by mutilation, errors, and infinitude. It is important, therefore, that among other changes, subsequent versions of the rules (already transformed in the Second Ordinance) situate the list of knights in an internal, closed chapter of the text. While manuscript P left abundant space for new incorporations, the new text in its manuscript and later printed representations, fossilizes the order and confines a past and unrecoverable history, even closing the possibility of growth in its membership. Second, this is strictly speaking an unfinished codex. Its enormous parchment folios, whose size appears unaltered today, have been prepared in different ways to receive some form of illumination. This illumination is partially depicted, especially in the incipit of the manuscript, written in gold leaf with certain initials in red and blue, as well as in the final list, where red, blue, and gold were used.

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Most of the initials and other areas for illumination are only sketched, and certain details are particularly problematic. For instance, the name of Alfonso on folio 3 of the book’s prologue should be polychromatic and should occupy two lines of text (exceeding their borders above and below), yet it is only sketched with a lead pencil and is identical to the illumination of the same name on the manuscripts prepared by Nicolás González for Alfonso XI and for Pedro I of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá of 1348: the first of these codices (MS BNM Res. 9) could be dated around 1349 or 1350, while the second (ms BNM Vitr. 15-7) dates from 1351. Some of these offer clues worth pursuing. In developing an initial thesis on the Orden de la Banda, it is critical to note that the Book of the Sash, ms P, was not created when the Order was founded, but later in the reign of Alfonso XI—and it coincided with some of the projects of legal and social transformation that culminated in the promulgation of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá (Ordinance of Alcalá) of 1348. Nevertheless, P is the result of an abandoned venture; it is a ruin, in Walter Benjamin’s sense of the term.5 The complexity of the problem has dual manifestations: it is a venture that was to be transformed around 1348, but instead became a ruin. Presumably, this ruin was abandoned and reconsidered many years later yet the original idea was never fully restored. Instead, in a certain way, manuscript P is also evidence of this failure. Subsequent attempts to reorganize the Orden de la Banda would have especially interesting consequences for their historiographic treatment: later historiography, especially after the fifteenth century (Lope García de Salazar and his Bienandanzas y fortunas), and even toward the end of the fourteenth century (the Crónicas of Pero López de Ayala, the various versions of the Crónica de Alfonso XI) enhance the importance of the Orden de la Banda.6 A key element of this manuscript is the final list. As previously mentioned, it is in its own quire, and, considering the size of these quires, it is feasible that the text and list would have been prepared in separate workshops before they were integrated into the codex. The list is relatively elaborate, albeit far from finished. The first page, contained in folio 8v, where Alfonso’s name appears (incorrectly spelled as Alfoso), illuminates the name of the king in gold, and the rest of the initials are depicted either in gold, or gold and blue (and one later instance of red and blue). In addition, the column that lists the names of Alfonso, Don Pedro, Don Enrique, and up to the name of Don Tello is incorporated into an architectural-style drawing, with an illustrated column and a blue and red base. This type of illustration may have been included in all the columns that featured the names of the knights of the Sash. This list poses an

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additional problem: each initial occupies two lines, the space reserved for each name; only the name of Alfonso occupies all available space, while the others are simply indicated with abbreviations. These sketched initials may have been intended as placeholders as the manuscript was drafted in haste, since the codex could not be finished following this primitive design. The drafter of the manuscript may have indicated “el infante” in lead pencil so that the illuminator could fill the two lines with the full title: “El infante don Pedro”; instead the result is an odd “el infante” in black ink. The same occurs with the following entry, which reads: “don enrriq” (Don Enrique), even though there is plenty of space. Again, it appears to be a placeholder so that illuminator could complete the full title, for instance: “El infante don Enrique, hijo del rey.” It is a partial codex in a dual sense. To use a neologism coined by Don Juan Manuel, it is an infinido, a book that remains open to continuation. It is also, regrettably, an unfinished codex. Judging by the extant sections, finished and otherwise, it is easy to conclude that the Book of the Sash was intended to be a jewel. This was clearly the reason for its large format and the use of parchment—at a time when paper was widely used, and parchment was reserved for grand ventures, such as the luxurious codices of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá dated in 1348 and 1351. Moreover, the golds and blues scattered throughout, along with the lead penciled placeholders, suggest the luxurious quality and the elevated cost that the finished project would have entailed. The fact that the book remained so drastically incomplete signals a specific crisis that allowed this potential jewel of a book to become a ruin. To trace the various roots of this crisis, I will first attempt to identify the book’s sponsor. Assuming it was Alfonso XI, perhaps his abrupt death in 1350 explains the end of this endeavor. There are also reasons to suggest that the book’s sponsor was Alfonso XI’s son, Pedro I. In this case, the question would be, why did Pedro conceive the idea of renewing a chivalric project to which his father had devoted a certain degree of energy early on during his reign, albeit with a different approach from that which engendered Trastamaran historiography? The Orden de la Banda made its striking appearance in the 1330s yet seemed to subside until the 1360s, at the height of the war of succession between the children of Alfonso XI, which resulted in an important dynastic change in Castile and León (the victor in the war of succession, Enrique II, was the first of the Trastamaran kings). At the end of the fifteenth century the Trastamaran dynasty was the foundation of imperial Hispanic power. Does the Book of the Sash belong to this period of crisis? How does it relate to the period, in any case? It is not enough to simply understand the reasons why it may have resurfaced at this time. It is also necessary to question its conceal-

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ment, as well as the circumstances behind its perennial infinitude, beyond the first few decades. Between 1330 and 1796 (when Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos recovered part of the book to illustrate public spectacles),7 the Book of the Sash, unfinished, rewritten, and fragmented, vanishes and resurfaces on numerous occasions. The genealogy of these concealments is key in understanding the book’s cultural influence and its role in textual creation of the institution of the Sash and even the very institution of chivalry. It is also necessary to know how the manuscript would function, and its repercussions, to ascribe meaning to the codicological considerations thus far described. Nevertheless, this analysis must not hinge solely on the Book of the Sash. Its incompleteness, allusions, and losses offer scant support for these conclusions, and we lack an adequate bibliography on this particular subject. To confront the magnitude of the questions presented by an examination of the codex of the Book we must understand the codicological tradition in which it is inserted and the interpretive paradigms of its material conditions. This examination reveals the political and legal sphere in which both the codex and the text of the Book arise and whence they disseminate. I will review two codices whose scarcely studied conditions aid in this approximation. Ultimately, I will attempt to enter the realm of the royal chamber, the private space in which the political and natural body of the monarch resides. This inquiry will show that the Book has been composed according to innovative paradigms of legal aesthetics of the monarchical maiestas. This is fundamental to the understanding of the borderland that the Book of the Sash occupies and, with it, the chivalric congregation founded by Alfonso XI throughout its history. The manuscripts that may elucidate this problem were from the shop of Nicolás González, illuminator for Alfonso XI and Pedro I, and both include the 1348 Ordenamiento de Alcalá. In the first manuscript (BNM MS Res. 9 = OA-1348), the copy of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá features the version promulgated by Alfonso XI; the second one (BNM MS Vitrina 15-7 = OA-1351) contains the version issued by Pedro I in 1351. This second manuscript is particularly important, despite its uneven quality, and will underpin the arguments that follow. In 1881, the manuscript OA-1351 was sent to London as part of an exhibition of objects of Spanish and Portuguese art.8 This codex is indeed a work of art. It is a parchment folio of exquisitely meticulous elaboration.9 It opens with a privilegio rodado of Pedro I (fol. [0]v), crowned by a slightly smaller chrismon, not unlike the privilegios rodados that Alfonso X defined in Siete Partidas (3.18.2–3). The chrismon occupies the upper left quarter of the folio, while the privilegio rodado is about three times larger and is at the center of

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the folio. The conjunction of both signs is not infrequent, and it appears in letters of privilege of Alfonso X or of Fernando IV.10 In these, the chrismon is situated at the beginning of the letter (generally only one sheet conveniently folded and with hanging seals); below will come the text of the letter, and in the central lower part, flanked by the signatures of the witnesses, the appearing and confirming parties, the privilegio rodado itself—a round seal drawn with the heraldic arms of the kingdom and the names of the king and his officials. OA-1351 is a book, not a letter, thus the privilegio rodado and the chrismon certify and sacralize the codex from its very beginning, subjecting it, nevertheless, to an innovative aesthetic, in which the book is ascribed to the forms of production of the chancery documentation, and, thus, to its conditions of archive and configuration of an authentic legal person (the expression is from Partidas 3.18). The book is properly illuminated with gold in several areas. In the first place—the one that points to its integrity—in the numeration of the folios. Nicolás González frames the foliation in red, and inserts the gold leaf numbers, in Roman, each preceded and followed by a period, thus inalterable. Gold also illuminates Pedro’s name (fol. .i.v), while the name of Alfonso, along with other letters of the same folio, remain blank. Finally, gold is also used to illuminate numerous parts throughout the text, particularly the initials of the titles. These also feature blue and green pigments. The resulting volume is ostentatious. The initials of laws within the titles are generally sketched in blue and adorned with red geometric motifs. Similar to the Book of the Sash, in which gold is only partially used (although it was to be used extensively), OA-1351 is a codex designed for the royal chamber. Rather than simply a copy, it includes the only authorized version of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá. In medieval legal terminology, it constitutes an exemplar, the original. Quoting notary Rolandino Passeggieri: “Exemplar dicitur originalis scriptura, genus videlicet ex quo generatur uel sumitur exemplum; quod quidem exemplar apellatur etiam originale et autencticum . . . unde uersus: Exemplar pater est, exemplum quod generatur” [“Exemplar denominates an original text, the source whence all its samples are generated; thus, the exemplar is also known as the original and authentic . . . so it is often said: Exemplar is the father while the sample is its progeny”].11 Nevertheless, the colophon of this manuscript is strangely mistaken. Its appearance suggests that it is a royal chamber copy and should have a gold seal, particularly when compared to other copies of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá, including contemporary ones, like the one contained in manuscript BNM 6406, which is a codex clearly destined for use in the cities, councils, and other sites of the

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kingdom, since it lacks the personal sign of the king (the privilegio rodado) or any other signs of the king’s juridical aesthetics. Although 6406 is a beautifully manufactured parchment codex, it is of notably inferior quality to that of OA-1351. Nevertheless, OA-1351 colophon reads: “Et destas nuestras leyes mandamos fazer un libro seellado con nuestro seello de oro para tener en la nuestra camara. & otros seellados con nuestros seellos de plomo que embiemos a las çibdades & uillas & logares del nuestro señorio. Delos quales es este uno” [“And of these our laws we command that a book be made sealed with our seal of gold to have in our chamber, and others sealed with our seal of lead which we send to the cities and towns and places of our dominion. Of which this is one”]. The same colophon can be read in OA-1348, also a codex made for the royal chamber. There is no question: both codices have been carefully composed and corrected as needed by Nicolás González. The colophon highlights a different issue: the royal codex is the exemplar—the model by which all other books will be copied and later sent to the cities, towns, and other sites. The exemplar is identified by the royal seal that should have been affixed to it and to all its copies. The colophon, then, is not alluding to the same codex. Instead it is the model to be copied onto all other copies—those that are to receive the seal of lead. This colophon is not the colophon of the codex of the royal chamber, but it is a model, a legal formula for the codices it must generate. The original book, the exemplar, even establishes some distance from itself. Through the colophon, it redirects the reader to the codices that have been copied based on it. In this sense, the book created for the royal chamber—be it the Ordenamiento de Alcalá or the Book of the Sash—is bestowed with an aura of even greater importance and legal relevance. The book has been conceived as an irreproducible work of art. Irreproducible because of the richness with which it has been endowed. Irreproducible also because of the privilegio rodado, which points to it as an original document, signed by the king and confirmed by his highest officials. Irreproducible, clearly, on account of the gold seal that designates (or designated) it as an exemplar, as a book of the royal chamber. And finally, unrepeatable because its text, meticulously corrected, and guarantor of legality itself, is to a certain degree, impossible to be flawlessly copied in its integrity, despite the commitment of responsible scholars. Nevertheless, the unrepeatable piece would be devoid of meaning without its copy. The paradox of its irreproducibility lies in that it has been created, at the same time, so that it cannot be exactly reproduced and yet is the source of multiple copies, which convey their secondary status via the lead seal and lack of gold. The codices contemporary to OA-1351, as well as the aforementioned

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BNM MS 6406, completely lack any sign of aesthetic or artistic presence. In some way, they have lost the aura. This aura—which is not etymologically related to aurus, or gold—that irreproducible character of the work of art described by Walter Benjamin, in the juridical ambit that I have been discussing, is precisely achieved with the effusion and use of gold, in contrast to the secondary nature of lead.12 The use of this system of composition and reproduction and the expression regarding the seals of gold and of lead, along with the justification of the cuaderno de cortes is inexistent in earlier cuadernos, prior to the Ordenamiento de Alcalá. Both forms of certification are known in the setting of the exempted document, such as the letter, the privilegio, the bulla (as in the bulla aurea, for example), but not in the case of the order or the cuaderno de cortes, and much less in that of the book.13 There is no similar mention in any order of the Cortes before Alfonso XI in Alcalá. Only OA-1348, perhaps the oldest testimony of the Ordenamiento de Alcalá as issued by Alfonso, contains this formula, and not only for the order itself, but also for the issuance, as a final resource in the order of priority of the laws, of the Siete Partidas. Indeed, the king here points out that in order to arrange and read this immense code, the Partidas, which never before had been legally received, he commanded that two copies be made for the royal chamber, one sealed with gold and the other with lead: Et los pleitos & contiendas que se non podieren librar por las leyes deste libro & por los dichos fueros. mandamos que se libre por las leyes contenidas en los libros de las siete partidas que el rey don alfonso nuestro uisauuelo mando ordenar. como quier que fasta aqui non se falla que fuessen publicadas por mandado del rey / nin fueron auydas nin reçebidas por leyes. Pero nos mandamos las requerir & conçertar & emendar en algunas cosas que cumplian. Et assi conçertadas & emendadas / porque fueron sacadas & tomadas delos dichos delos sanctos padres / & delos derechos & dichos de muchos sabios antiguos & de fueros & de costumbres antiguas de es españa / damos las por nuestras leyes. Et por que sean çiertas & non ayan razon de tirar & emendar & mudar en ellas cada uno lo que quisiere / mandamos fazer dellas dos libros / uno seellado con nuestro seello de oro & otro seellado con uestro seello de plomo para tener en la nuestra camara / por que en lo que dubda ouiere quelas conçierten conella. (OA-1348, fol. 15v)

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[Regarding trials and disputes that cannot be solved neither by means of this book’s laws nor with the fueros, we order that they be solved with the laws contained in the books of the Siete Partidas, given by king Alfonso, our great-grandfather, even though they have never been hitherto published by any prior king, end therefore they have never been neither deemed nor received as laws. But then we requested them, and edited them, and amend them in some places where it was necessary. And so edited and amended, since they were founded in the sayings of the holy fathers, and on the rights and sayings of may an ancient wise and [16r, col a] on fueros, and ancient and Spanish customs, we give them as our laws. And so they are certain and nobody has the right to pick or to amend or to change anybody as he wishes, we ordered that two boks should be made, one sealed with our golden seal, and another one sealed with our lead seal, to have them in our chamber, so that if any doubt should arise, they can compare them with those.]14 In this case, the difference is very clear: as Alfonso XI promulgates the laws, he retains them inside of his chamber, contrary to what he does with the Ordenamiento de Alcalá. The invention of the double seal and the duality of the exemplar—its reproduction and its innate irreproducibility—is circumscribed to the brief period between 1348 and 1351, and it determines the order of reading and interpreting the laws, not just as a text, but as a source and space of authority. The illumination—the use of gold—of the law is the ultimate certification that this law proceeds directly from the king’s voice.15 The legal significance of this dialectic is clear. The exemplar is not only a text from which all other texts are copied; it is also the authoritative source to resolve disputes on the literal interpretation of the law. The exemplar is the literal guarantor, with the implication that its text lacks errors. In these circumstances, the exemplar has two different marks. First is the mark of representation: pursuant to sumptuary laws, gold and blue have been reserved for the representation of the king and of certain members of nobility who are related to the royal house. The sumptuary laws issued during the reign of Alfonso X and beyond, in successive court orders, do not only aim to restrict the ostentation of riches, but also to establish a code of representation in which any individual can be recognized as a member of a particular estate—either by the colors and materials they may wear, or perhaps more important, by those that they may not. In the Cuaderno de las Cortes de Burgos of 1338, issued by Alfonso XI, the first and only one in which he fleet-

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ingly mentions “los caualleros de la vanda” [“the knights of the sash”], he also decrees that “No man of any social class, except for us [the king], may wear fabrics made with gold or silk, nor fabrics with gold ornamentation” and he forbids the knights of the Sash to wear any gold markings.16 Second is a mark of place, given that the book designates and defines the space in which it must reside, a space that the law also codifies. The royal chamber is not an indefinite or merely administrative space, as may be deduced from the fiscal formula that determines a sum of money for the king’s chamber to be raised with taxes or penalties. It is a specific place where the body (both natural and political) of the king is looked after, as inferred by the law of the Partidas (2.9.12) that regulates the site of the royal chamber: el camarero . . . ha asi nonbre porque el deue guardar la camara do el rey aluergare e su lecho e los pannos de su cuerpo e las arcas e los escriptos del rey. e maguer sepa leer no los deue leer ni dexar aotri que los lea. e sobre todas las cosas ha mene ster que no sea mesturero ni descobridor delo que viere e oyere mas deue ser cuerdo e callado e de buena poridad. e quando tales fuesen el repostero e el camarero deueles el rey fazer bien e merçed. asi commo diximos delos otros. e quando contra esto fuesen deuen auer esa misma pena que los otros. [the Chamberlain . . . is so called because he should have charge of the chamber where the king lodges, and of his chests, his clothing, and his papers and, even if he knows how to read, he should not read those papers, or permit anyone else to do so; and in addition to all these things, he must not be a telltale or one who reveals what he sees and hears, but he should be discreet and silent, and endowed with a good talent for secrecy. When the butler and the chamberlain of the king are persons of this description, he should confer benefits and favors upon them, as we have stated concerning the others; but when they violate this law, they should receive the same punishment as the others.] The law stresses several aspects: first, that the chamber is the place where the king lives, and specifically where his body rests and his robes are stored— the official attire of the king, adorned with gold and silk and the coat of arms of the kingdom. The second is that the writings of the king that authenticate the law are kept in the chamber. The writings of the king as an expression of

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the law, pursuant to the theoretical creation of a space of legal certitude, are indeed inviolable since they constitute the foundation of all legality. The law and the king reside in the same space because they are mutual projections.17 Whatever he might see or hear, the chamberlain must never reveal what transpires in the royal chamber. A secretum officialis must be honored at all times regarding both the private (the life of the body of the king) and the public (the legal life of the king through the writings that accompany him). The royal chamber is the very space of the archive. The domicile of those elements of representation, both material and documentary, which sustain the discourse of royal power. They are maintained there as a trace, to paraphrase Derrida, preserved and untouchable, but at the same time, submitted to a sort of impulse of destruction deriving from its irreproducible repeatability: irreproducible because the exemplar may not leave the archive (the chamber), but repeatable through the copies, which are, in turn, a trace or imprint of the original. The repeatability, nevertheless, carries with it an entropic process, the trace of a change, a germ of destruction through variation.18 It is in this frame in which we must consider the ultimately unfulfilled project of the Book of the Sash. The various mutilations that we have traced appear to conceal that the book was to be the one worthy of the royal chamber, a book endowed with an aura and by an aureola of irreproducibility, which is marked by its codicological characteristics and by the use of gold to write its letters. Also, by the fact that the book has been conceived with the formal characteristics of a legal document. It was to be archived, subjected to a secret that, as we will later see, was to remain framed in the space of the king and of the knights of the Sash. At the time the Book of the Sash was converted into the manuscript we have called P there was no extant formal model for the regulation of the chivalric order. The Orden de la Banda was not only a new inquiry on chivalry, it was also a study on how to write and issue a treatise or monarchical regulation on chivalry. It was an inquiry on how to produce a text out of the royal chamber. Hence it is extraordinarily significant that in light of this absence of models, the Book of the Sash is formulated according to the order of the book of laws issued from the Cortes; more specifically, one that contains the Ordenamiento de Alcalá. Indeed, no previous order exploited the means of representation that we have mentioned. This fact is somewhat paradoxical and is an interesting chapter in the aforementioned dialectic of the aura. The Book of the Sash was also created to signal to a place within the royal chamber, yet contrary to what happens with the Ordenamiento de Alcalá, the Book was not designed to be copied in

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various instances and used in different places. It was supposed to be archived, but without abandoning the space of the archive. Neither was it designed to be sewn into another cuaderno of Cortes that would serve to confirm it, as for instance, the Cuaderno de la Hermandad. It is an independent piece whose discourse is situated in history. It does not offer legal formulas (at least not until the Segundo Ordenamiento is produced), but instead relates its own story, its provenance, and the motives that led to its creation. Nevertheless, the Book has been produced to serve as a center of attention, as a reference point of a centripetal movement. The Book was designed as a point of encounter, as was also the royal chamber, or the king’s power of representation. In fact, it is a point of encounter whose aura and aureola are not only irreproducible, but that may not be reproduced as copies outside of the archive either. Moreover, like anything else that pertains to the royal chamber, it must remain secret. One of the chapters of the Book of the Sash makes precisely explicit that the knights of the order must keep the contents of the book secret. Hence, exactly the same as the law from the Partidas that forbid the chamber guard from revealing anything he might observe or surmise in the royal chamber. One of the heretofore unresolved problems of the Book of the Sash is its most tangible aspect: its text. The text contained in P is only conserved in one other copy, that of the manuscript Y-II-13 of the Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, made in the sixteenth century at the behest of the Hieronymite historian Fray Ambrosio de Morales (1513–1591). It may have been copied a thousand times during the Middles Ages, but in this case it has been lost as often as it has been copied—there is no other written sample. The rest of the manuscripts that contain the code of the Sash differ extraordinarily from the text of P. In fact there are two established renderings, one represented exclusively by P; the other, this Segundo Ordenamiento transmitted in at least seventeen more manuscripts, in addition to all the copies of it contained in the manuscript tradition of the Doctrinal de los caballeros (1437) of the Burgalese bishop Alonso de Cartagena, which is presented explicitly as a legal compilation about chivalry.19 Some scholars like Alfonso Ceballos-Escalera y Gila have surmised that the purported Second Ordinance of the Sash to which Fray Antonio de Guevara, Bishop of Mondoñedo (1480–1545) alludes in his letter to Alonso Pimentel, Fifth Count of Benavente (d. 1530), dated 1526, is merely an assumption by the bishop, and that, in fact, only he offers this text. What Guevara offers is a free, disordered, and at times glossed table of the Second Ordinance. The latter was copied at least seventeen times in thick volumes of court orders. In some of the manuscripts, like the one conserved in the Cathedral of Córdoba

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(MS 7), the copyist announces that his is the “Ordenamiento tercero fecho en Burgos en razon de la vanda et de la justa et de los torneos et de lo que deven fazer et guardar los caualleros” [“Third ordinance made in Burgos because of the sash and of the joust and of the tournaments and of that which knights must do and keep”], but this is undoubtedly an error. The antigraph probably read “ordenamiento segundo” (second order), but upon copying it, perhaps the scribe intended to correct it, rendering “tercero” (third). Hence, it may not allude to the text of the order (which is otherwise identical to the others), but instead to the position it occupies in the aforementoned codex, and bound after both the order of Valladolid of 1325 and the order of Madrid of 1329.20 It is completely impossible to ascertain a date for this Second Ordinance. It is improbable that it is previous to the copy of P, given that P appears to be an exemplar—definitive copy, as previously explained—composed some time between 1348 and 1351. If such is the case it would appear to be justifiable to assume that the exemplar is based on an already authorized text and that, because of this, it constitutes a final copy, an original. The argument could be inverted, and we could postulate that the Second Ordinance is indeed the first, and the P, thus, would be a later and refined draft of the Second. Nevertheless this argument seems improbable, given that the Second, contrary to what occurs with P, has an archaeological character, fixes a tradition, as we will later see, and is also broader and more descriptive than P, which indicates a reformulation and abundance of clarifications on some points. What appears more probable, then, is that the Second Ordinance is indeed the second, and that it is later than the text of P, and also later than the codex P itself. It has been postulated, following the miscalculation of the Bishop of Mondoñedo, Fray Antonio de Guevara, that the Second Ordinance was created in 1334, two years after the first, but in reality there is no reason or documentary substance of any type that certifies this supposition.21 The Second Ordinance circulates in a very particular manner. In the conserved tradition (which undoubtedly is not the complete tradition), the Second Ordinance is transmitted systematically in codices that contain cuadernos— legal documents issued from the Cortes. This appears to be the only certain fact. A perfunctory survey of the different transmitted texts sets forth two interesting consequences. The first is that there are two possible branches of the transmission of the text, which present some common readings and which do not affect the text substantially. For example “cumplian & meresçian” compared to “meresçian & cumplian,” or “fechas las caballerías en burgos” compared to “fechos los caualleros en burgos,” and so on. All these details, equipollent variants, are systematically presented in each branch. The second aspect

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is that all the medieval cuadernos that transmit this piece gather legal orders from Alfonso X to Enrique III. The oldest among those conserved (with the call numbers Z-I-8 and Z-I-9 of the Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial) are probably from the era of Enrique III (r. 1390–1406), or at the latest from the beginning of the time of Juan II (r. 1406–1454). We must also point out that this artifact, constituted of the systematic and ordered compilation of the cuadernos, is an instrument created and disseminated between the end of the reign of Juan I (r. 1379–1390) and the reign of Enrique III, that is, sometime during the very last years of the fourteenth century. It is possible that the Second Ordinance was composed during this time. Its drafting may have been as early as 1379. Indeed, Juan I assumes the crown with a chivalric gesture very similar to that used by Alfonso XI, and also in Burgos;22 at this time, in the cuaderno, or court log derived from this Burgalese encounter, Juan I himself creates a complex order about chivalry, only comparable to the content of Partidas 2.21, that remains unstudied.23 Moreover, since his first days as king of Castile and León, Juan I began to peruse the legislation of his grandfather; of this there are some traces remaining in the royal codices with the Ordenamiento de Alcalá, especially in the one issued by Pedro I in 1351 (OA-1351). In one of its margins, alongside a law that announces the curse to all kings who do not wish to keep the law, there is a note in the following tenor: “que el rrey don johan por bendicion que lo quiere guarder” [“that the king Don Juan wishes to safeguard as a blessing”].24 On the other hand is also Juan I who establishes the post of lieutenant standard-bearer of the Sash, naming to the charge the Alavese nobleman, writer, historiographer, and chancellor of Castile Pero López de Ayala (1332–1407). In his testament Juan I indicates to his son Enrique III that he must maintain Ayala in the lieutenancy.25 It is in these same years, specifically in 1383, that mark the creation and statutes of the Cofradía de Nuestra Señora del Salor, in Cáceres, declared to be “a imitación de la de la Banda” [“emulating that of the Sash”].26 I do not think that we can be more specific regarding the dates, only that it is probable that the Second Ordinance was drafted at the beginning of the reign of Juan I, and later transmitted along with the cuadernos during the time of Enrique III, or, more probably, during the time of the Castilian regency of Fernando de Antequera (1406–1412), which may permit us to put them in relation with the impulse of the chivalric orders promoted by Fernando de Antequera before and after 1412, first as the founder of the Orden de la Jarra y el Grifo (Order of the Jar and the Griffin) around 1410 and later as the continuer (according to the suggestion of the aragonese noble Enrique

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de Villena [1384–1434]) of the Catalan Ordre de la Garrotera, presumably founded by Pedro III the Ceremonious, king of Aragon (r. 1336–1387).27 The immediate question is why it would be transmitted in such a context. At first glance it may appear difficult to confuse the Second Ordinance with a legal code of laws, but perhaps not as difficult to put it in relation to certain royal edicts that were transmitted in the same way, such as the Ordenamiento de las tafurerías (dedicated to the laws dealing with gambling and its economic consequences), which, indeed, were also transmitted in some cases along with the Second Ordinance in one of the voluminous codices. And this is where we must find a good reason: someone imagined that it was necessary to disguise the original Book of the Sash (text of P) with the trappings of a royal edict, or order, thus giving it the text and form of the Second Ordinance. The royal order, however, has a particularity that the Book of the Sash does not have: while the Book of the Sash is secret, the order is public; while the Book is unrepeatable (and probably unrepeated, with the sixteenth-century exception mentioned above), the order is subject to an unlimited series of repetitions and reproductions, throughout the spectrum of the legal and political reception in all the organs of power. The difference could not be more profound. Converted to the form of an ordinance, the text of the rules of the Orden de la Banda, according to the Second Ordinance, remains invested with the force of law, and it executes a key role in the political strategies of the monarchy.28 The code of rules of the Orden de la Banda, rendered as an ordinance, is no longer an optional element, as it begins to operate at the heart of what Michel de Montaigne considered the mystic foundation of legal authority.29 The second reason is less important, but it is useful and may be considered correlative to the previous. All the codices with royal orders and cuadernos de cortes are arranged chronologically. Nobody thought to place the Second Ordinance as a piece of Juan I, Enrique III, or Fernando de Antequera, but it is instead situated among the texts produced by Alfonso XI. The codex, the context of the Second Ordinance, gives a de iure date to the Second Ordinance, endowing it with a new authority based on history, and, in particular, on a history that binds the Trastamaran dynasty with Alfonso XI. The poetics of the order of chivalry is an investigation into its circumstances and material conditions of possibility. On the one hand, the Sash, through its texts, raises an investigation on form and location. On the other hand, the texts, without a previous formal model, were created on the basis of a juridical aesthetic and shaped as formal legal document. Thus, these texts originated in the legislative voice itself, in the very center of the construction of monarchical power, which is the dominion of the jurisdictions. The interesting thing is

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that even though, at least with respect to the Book of the Sash as it appears in P, they were not promulgated as laws; instead they were totally disguised as laws, and, as we have seen, in the Second Ordinance they were already transmitted as a royal order, in manuscripts that compiled the royal edicts, which had all the force of law. But it is a second search that is being manifested in this modus operandi. A second localization, surely more important, which is that of the center of gravity of the royal sovereignty, the royal chamber: the place where the ultimate instrument of power, the exemplar, originates and is conserved. That is where the chivalric order is also situated. The material circumstances and those of transmission of the Book of the Sash and of the Second Ordinance gain all their interest when they are inserted within the processes of reinvention of chivalry. The poetics of the chivalric ordo has its own inchoate character, is always reinventing itself, articulating new theses of monarchical power. Each regulation is also a thesis on the amplitude of the monarchical power and the strategies to extend it. It is a movement, a displacement, the occupation of a space and a territory. A political space, a geographic territory. This centrifugal movement that departs from the legal voice and the royal chamber where the body of the king resides is an investigation of the very monarchical jurisdiction. The character of inchoateness of the Castilian chivalry is particularly complex. In the first place, because it entails an invention, a rhetorical, legal, and political movement that results in the regulation of an institution linked to the monarchy. It is, then, a voluntary movement in which a consistent discourse is constituted in a way of verbalizing and establishing the sociopolitical and cultural relationships between a social group and the monarchy.30 In this sense, the creation of the Orden de la Banda, just as it appears in the history after 1330–1332, would have constituted a very important thesis by Alfonso XI. In the first place, this thesis could be proposed as a continuation and revision of the plans of Alfonso X, who regulated for the first time chivalry as an institution linked to the monarchy. This first regulation has a political, social, and cultural dimension—not specifically military. Alfonso X also was worried about military problems associated with certain specific forms of chivalry, however, particularly the non-noble chivalry and its office, obligations, and military techniques (as evident in the Partidas 2.23 and the following titles), and, in a very different realm of action, by the political and legal problem of the military orders connected to the so-called Reconquest and the Crusades, frequently under the Cistercian rule. The code of chivalry in the Partidas has been widely studied.31 The conflictive relationship of military orders with the process of construction of the

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monarchy, however, is still complex material. It is especially important now because the Orden de la Banda is related most of all with the processes of institutionalization of the military orders, as it is an order of chivalry within the general chivalric ordo. This particularity is difficult to grasp without insisting on the relationships of the military orders and their particular status and regulation in the process of the monarchical construction. The fundamental reason rests in the capacity of the military orders to maintain the jurisdiction of their seigneurial domains and the exclusion of the monarchy from this privileged expression of power Alfonso X tried to control in some way these orders by creating one.32 Indeed, he founded the Orden de Santa María de España, or Order of Saint Mary of Spain, but this was quickly absorbed by the Cofradía de Santiago and reduced to its rule, thus illustrating the power of the orders and the inability of the king to enter into what has sometimes been called, somewhat exaggeratedly, a “State within a State.”33 The attempt by the monarchs to control military orders is perhaps one of the fundamental frames of the construction of the modern State (with all of the quotation marks that this expression requires as far as pre-Revolutionary periods is concerned) in the case of Castile and León and, later, Spain, takes us at least from Alfonso X in the thirteenth century to Felipe II (r. 1556–1598). The work of historian and member of the Order of Calatrava, Francisco de Rades y Andrada (m. 1599), titlted Crónica de las Tres Órdenes y Caballerías de Santiago, Calatrava y Alcántara, published in 1572, could be said to be a history whose only aim was to depict the long jurisdictional journey launched by the monarchy until the moment when Phillip II is named maestre of each of these three orders.34 It is easy to understand the importance of the syntagma “Order of Chivalry,” not from the perspective of an abstract code, but from the concretion of the constitution of chivalric subgroups that are connected to the monarch as their master. One of the political risks of the monarch is the invention of chivalry in these terms: the process by which he aims to dominate the jurisdiction of all power groups, institutions, rules, and orders. An invention that, to be effective, requires successive reinventions. Alfonso XI became directly engaged in this process of reinventions, along with his chivalric policy. The trajectory traced by Alfonso X continued in it, albeit partially, as there is a significant difference between the two models. Alfonso X confronted a universe in which the concept of noble chivalry was completely outside of an established discourse in the kingdom of Castile and León and lacked any regulation. There was only minimal regulation of obligation and services regarding the non-noble knights. This is evident primarily in

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the fueros and, most notably, in the Fuero de Cuenca and its relationship with the so-called Fuero de las Cabalgadas.35 He had access to literary texts, in many cases of significant European influence, which appear to date from the time of a first flourishing of monarchical ideas and theories—chivalries promoted in the realm of Alfonso VIII, who was often emulated by Alfonso X. They are texts such as the Cantar de mio Cid, the Libro de Apolonio, which speak of the model and institution that would be part of the regulations operated by Alfonso X. The difference lies in that Alfonso XI confronted a situation full of highly relevant changes: the discourses and debates on chivalry had proliferated and been manifested not only in philosophical and theoretical treatises but in historiographic works that were being read in public spaces or in other literary works that had significant influence. A salient example is the complete oeuvre of Don Juan Manuel, a contemporary author who disputed the policies of Alfonso XI.36 Among the historiographic works, the Alfonsine imprint and its need to put into operation that which had been theoretically established in the laws made chivalry acquire an unusual presence, especially in the Estoria de Espanna, but also in the universal Grande e general estoria (Great and General History). Among literary works, two appear to date around the time of Alfonso XI and constitute fundamental points of inflexion in this literary, political, and cultural universe: the Amadís de Gaula and the Libro del cavallero Zifar. Each of these works entails not just one but a multiplicity of positions regarding the meaning of chivalry. As I have shown elsewhere, the problem of chivalry in the Iberian Peninsula, and more specifically in the CastilianLeonese setting, is that it is a product of a legally ex nihilo regulation, which clashes with the interests of a nobility opposed to what the monarchy desires but also with other groups to which we often pay less attention, like those that the Cuaderno de la Hermandad calls “noblemen, hidalgos, and good men from the cities and villages.” This forces, in reality, a long and complex debate, whose imprints I explored, for the first time, in my 1996 book, El debate sobre la caballería en siglo XV. It is not a matter, here, of offering the elements of that debate, but instead of attempting to understand that the chivalric politics of Alfonso XI aspire to settle the debate, particularly with the nobility represented by Don Juan Manuel. The positions of Alfonso XI are, to put them in these terms, more modern than those of Don Juan Manuel, or, at least, they came across better in movements of transformation of the nobility (frequently through the chivalry) that took place during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in various places in Europe (mainly Florence and Burgundy) in both political and

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legal environments. To make this aspiration a reality, Alfonso XI articulated a new poetics of the chivalric order in which he reorganized the structure of the orders and the inherited estates, and attempted to situate all the nobility, independent of its specific lineage, in the chivalric order, conceiving from his majority the heuristic power of the investiture and of the donation of a habit whose ostentation is susceptible to one or various regulations. To understand the problem that the Sash represents in this process of inventions, it is necessary to construct its chronology and to put it in relation to the political and jurisdictional problems that confronted it. We have already determined that the texts that regulate the order correspond to periods that were much later than the institution of the order. P, the Book of the Sash in its oldest version, cannot be dated before 1348. E, the text of the Second Ordinance, transmitted in the cuadernos de cortes, is probably from the time of Juan I. The chronology of the institution of the order that I am now going to present is not at all related to the chronology of the Sash that has been done before. In fact, it can be said that which I am now going to expound constitutes a completely new sketch of the Orden de la Banda. The period between 1325 and 1330 is when the interest of Alfonso XI for the chivalry appears to have gestated. In 1325 Alfonso tried to recover the territories expropriated to the Templars in 1322, and, in spite of his failure, he did not appear to be frustrated in his intentions.37 The decade of the 1330s may be considered to be the period of highest activity of the chivalric politics of Alfonso. It is, probably, the period of gestation and the first transmission of chivalric novels like Zifar and Amadís, along with other narrations that may be unknown or conserved in codices similar to the chivalric and hagiographic anthology contained in the manuscript H-I-13 of the Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, or even in the course of historiographic narrations into which are inserted chivalric narrations that propose a theory on the monarchical practice of chivalry.38 These creations would coincide with the treatise of Alvaro Pelayo, or Pais, bishop of Silves (Portugal), around 1341–1344, in which he considers the king’s obsession with chivalric deceit to be unwarranted— without mentioning the specific orders to which he refers.39 It is also the period in which Alfonso XI devised the ceremony of chivalric investiture and the coronation in the Monastery of the Huelgas Reales of Burgos. This ceremony is also evoked in the imaginary tradition of Castilian power in the epic poem Mocedades de Rodrigo, as incorporated in Crónica de Castilla also known as Crónica del Campeador.40 It is during this period, after his chivalric investiture, that Alfonso XI decided to ordain as knights, by his own hand, those nobles who surrounded him and who accepted his power—a movement by which he

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excluded those who did not accept the investiture, like Don Juan Manuel. It is, obviously, the period in which Don Juan Manuel took up the pen, literally learned how to write, with the goal of creating his own political chivalric paradigm in a series of literary and political works of maximum forcefulness. In this context, previous even to the investiture of the king and his coronation, the Orden de la Banda was created. It is fundamental to remember that this order was created before the royal investiture, given that we are in fact speaking of a chivalric order beyond the order of chivalry, a chivalric order in which the chivalric investiture is not even a necessity. All the reports referring to the creation of the Orden de la Banda correspond with that contained in the Crónica de Alfonso XI, a chronistic tradition of enormous textual complexity, which we will attempt to weigh out here exclusively in accordance with our interests.41 The narration relative to the creation of this order is situated in a context in which the king recuperates or rather acquires the jurisdictional rights of the land of Álava. The earliest narration of the creation of the order is from around 1344 or 1345, although the manuscript that contains it, conserved in the Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, is from 1376 and there is not a trace of any earlier manuscript. As Diego Catalán has studied on several occasions, the manuscript of 1376, signed by Juan Núñez de Villasán (or Villaizán), is the beginning of a recasting of a primitive chronicle, dated at around 1345.42 Although this scheme is valid, the textual forest of the chronicles of Alfonso XI surely is not easily subjected to the most Lachmannian textual scholarship systematizations. Each one of the manuscripts contains differences that must be repudiated by variants of differing importance. Also, in spite of the attempts at reconstruction by Diego Catalán, it is certain that the oldest manuscript is the one from 1376, and this makes it difficult to conjecture how the version of around 1345 on which Juan Núñez could have worked would have been. The Escorial manuscript of 1376 is an interesting parchment codex with some illustrations. Folios 85v–86r, which contain the narration of the creation of the order, have, in their margins, up to eleven heraldic shields with several other bands, each one of which has a different combination of tinctures and metals. These illustrations are not a mere representation of the creation of the Sash, given that the narration explains that the habit of the order is a black band on a silver (represented as white) field. Only in the time of Pedro I and Enrique II were changes made to the tinctures of the order. The change of tinctures and stains, and even the incorporation of other elements to the shield of the Sash was frequent in the second half of the fourteenth century, since when Pedro I established his alliance with King Muhammad V of Granada (1338–1391) in 1363, and later up to the end of the fifteenth century.

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A noteworthy detail is that, even though it refers to a previous time period (1330), the manuscript addresses it from the contemporary period of 1376. The text can be read in the following manner: E otrossy estando el rey en bitoria por que lo sopo que en los tiempos passados los delos sus regnos de castiella et de leon husauan siempre en mester decaualleria et lo auian dexado que non husauan dello fasta en el su tiempo. Et por que oviessen mas voluntad delo vsar ordeno que algunos caualleros et escuderos delos dela su mesnada traxiessen vanda en los paños et el rey et el rey [sic] esso mesmo. Et seyendo en bitoria mando a aquellos caualleros et escuderos que el rey tenia escogidos para esto que vestiessen paños con vanda queles el auia dado. Et el otrossy vestio paños desso mesmo con vanda. Et los primeros paños que fueron fechos para esto eran blancos & la vanda prieta. Et dende adelante a estos caualleros dauales cada año de vestir sendos pares de paños con vanda. Et era la vanda tan ancha como vna mano. Et era puesto en los pellotes et enlas otras vestiduras desde el ombro ezquierdo fasta la falda Et estos llamauan los caualleros dela vanda. Et auian ordenamiento entre sy de muchas buenas cosas que eran todas obras de caualleria. Et quando dauan la vanda al cauallero fazian le jurar et prometer que guardasse todas las cosas de caualleria que eran escriptas en aquel ordenamiento. Et esto fizo el rey por que los omes cobdiçiando auer aquella vanda oviessen razon de fazer obras de caualleria. Et assy acaesçio de pues que los caualleros et escuderos que fazian algun buen fecho en armas contra los enemigos del rey o prouauan delo fazer el rey dauales la vanda et faziales mucha onrra en manera que cada vno delos otros cobdiçiaua fazer bondat en caualleria por cobrar aquella onrra et el buen talante del rey asy como aquellos lo auian. [Moreover, the king being at Vitoria, because in times past the men of his kingdoms of Castile and León had always practiced chivalry, and he had been told that they did not do so in his day, in order that they might be more eager to practice it, he commanded that some knights and squires of his household should wear a sash on their surcoats, and he, the king, would do likewise. And being at Vitoria he sent orders to those knights and squires whom he had chosen for the purpose to wear surcoats with, on them, the sash he had given them. And he also put on a surcoat with a sash: the first

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surcoats made for the purpose were white, and the sash black. And from then on he gave each of these knights two surcoats with sashes each year. And the sash was as broad as a man’s hand worn over cloaks from the left shoulder to the waist. And they were called the Knights of the Sash. And they had an ordinance among them, that contained things regarding deeds of chivalry. And when a knight was given the sash, he was made to swear and promise to keep all the things that were written in the ordonances. And the king did this so that men wishing to have that sash would have reason to do knightly deeds. And it happened afterward that if a knight or a squire did such a feat of arms against the king’s enemies, or tried to perform such a feat, the king gave him a sash and did him high honor, so that all the others wished to do good knightly deeds to gain that honor and the goodwill of the king, like those who already had it.] The foundational moment of the Sash corresponds with the obtaining of the jurisdictional rights of the land of Álava. The chapter does not establish any specific relationship between both events, but systematically, completely in line with manuscript tradition, both narrations share the same chapter. It seems that the only point of connection between the two events is the land of Álava, and, particularly, its main city, today the capital, Vitoria. Both events point to a form of collective renovation of royal power. In the first case, because of the way in which the brotherhood of Álava deposits power on the king.43 It is a brotherhood constituted of three estates, but, above all, of the Alavese hidalgos. This brotherhood never before has delegated its jurisdictional privileges in the king, just as the chronicle explains, and it does it now for the first time. Along with this fact of the delegation of power of a group upon the individual monarchical power sits the narration of a movement almost of redistribution. In this case, the king himself turns into a group of brothers, in a fraternitas or societas in which everyone wears the same habit. In some way, in the place in which the brotherhood has signaled the king, the king has in turn become converted into the brotherhood. This new habit is also a new habitus, a form of life in which the group and the body of the king become the same project based in chivalry. The relationship between the brotherhood, the jurisdictional recuperation of Álava, and the Sash has another much more political and symbolic dimension. The brotherhood is presented as a defined power group that expresses its dominion of a space, of a territory. The lands, concejos (provinces),

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and villas of Álava, which form part of the brotherhood, produce this space in the moment in which they address the king. What they do is integrate him within the limits of this space. It is presented as a reunion of all the estates, each one of which has its own voice inside of the brotherhood. It is a brotherhood that substitutes the great entity of royal sovereignty in the style of the other brotherhoods organized to defend themselves against the royal power or that of the high nobility in moments of specific crisis, like that which occurs during the councils of regency. The most important act is a speech act that voluntarily emerges from the voice of the brotherhood, that according to the narration has not been provoked by the king but instead comes to him almost at the time in which Alfonso is reconstructing the loose pieces of his power—a personal power that was recently acquired after the period of minority and regency. The brotherhood presents to him the possibility of annexing this land of their own free will, in the first person. The king and the brotherhood come to this agreement through the legal contract that consists of the petition and concession of the Fuero Real, the first legal code of monarchical projection, promulgated for the first time by Alfonso X in 1256, and since then conceded—or, better, imposed in a gradual manner—as the central jurisdiction of the king settles in. The fraternity or independent brotherhood is voluntarily dissolved in the jurisdictional power of the monarch. In a kind of inverting movement, the king himself is converted, immediately, in the very origin of a new fraternity, a brotherhood, the Orden de la Banda, founded in a poetics of the fraternity, whose center is now unquestionably the king himself. Dissolution of the brotherhood and creation of a new fraternity, pivoting on the image of the king and jurisdictional lord constitute one single movement in which is symbolized the way in which the monarch constructs his power on top of different groups of power. The very image of the monarchy is placed, in this case, in the foreground. The habit is the identity. As we will see in Chapter 6, the poetics of the emblem of the Sash makes up, at the same time, identity and distinction, that is, social group and individual. The text of the Chronicle is, we must remember, from 1376, thus it incorporates, just like the images that accompany the manuscript, multiple contemporary or more modern elements, like the concession of the Sash and the drafting of the book.44 Both elements appear later, given that the Chronicle never again considers the possibility that someone could receive the Sash on behalf of the king. The group of the Sash, in the Chronicle appears to be made up once and for all, and no one else is integrated into it during all the historical narration, including in occasions in which the chivalry is central, as occurs with the ceremony of chivalric investiture of King

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Alfonso. Nor does the Chronicle allude to this possibility of integration in the poeticization of the Chronicle, which is given in the Poem of Alfonso XI. Foremost is that the process of creation of the chivalry of the Sash is totally collective and is produced in absence of a discourse about the meaning of the individual reception of the chivalry. The king is not endowed a knight nor is the Sash limited to knights, but it also brings in squires from whom it asks for no type of previous investiture. On occasion it has been said that it is a chivalry within chivalry, but it would be much more appropriate to say that it is a chivalry outside of all chivalry. The group, just as it is created and considered, and just as its emblematic exhibition is organized, appears, rather, to be modeled on the caballeros mesnaderos or amesnadores, that is, a group of warrior hidalgos of indistinct individuality, who protect the body of the king. Their name comes from mansionata, that is, household, the body of warriors that resides in the house, mansion, of the king, along with him, as “knights of his palace.” The residence of the knights in the royal house, this link between chivalric group and mansion is in the same system of localization as the Book of the Sash of the royal chamber. This is how Alfonso X defines the mesnaderos in Partidas 2.9.9: como quier que todos los del reyno son tenidos a guardarle [al rey], con todo esso algunos ya dellos que señaladamente lo han de fazer, tan bien de dia como de noche. E estos son amesnadores, e por esso los llaman assi, segund lenguaje antiguo de España, porque ellos non se deuen partir del fasta que le amesnen saluamente. E esta guarda que ellos le han de fazer es que non resciba daño en el su cuerpo, de fuera assi como de feridas o de muerte o de otra cosa que se tornasse en mal o en deshonrra. E essa misma guarda le deuen fazer desque fuere asosegado, que ellos le han de velar e de guardar quando dormiere. E porque ellos sienpre deuen estar aparejados de poner los cuerpos a vida o a muerte por el rey, por esso los llamaron antiguamente compañeros de su palacio. [although all persons in the kingdom are bound to watch over him, nevertheless, there are certain of them who are especially required to do so, by day, as well as by night. These are the Guards and they are styled thus in accordance with the ancient language of Spain, for the reason that they should not separate from him until he is safely protected. This guard which they have to observe is to prevent him from receiving bodily injury from without: as, for instance, wounds,

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death, or anything else from which either harm or dishonor may result, and they must maintain it over him, after he has returned to rest, when they are required to watch and protect him while he sleeps. And, because they must always be prepared to devote their bodies to life or death on behalf of the king, they were formally called Companions of the Palace.] This definition functions in an exceptional manner regarding the knights of the Sash, as is proven upon examination of the treatment that they receive in other texts. The mesnaderos are, in fact, a prolongation of the body of the king, but they function as a group, not as an individual. They concentrate and multiply the monarch, thus revealing a solution to the tense chivalric dialectic of localization and delocalization. The armed retinue escorts the king to his house, they limit him to the palace, or better yet, to the royal chamber, after having exercised the nomad power through the Cortes. They make up the multiple body that protects the unique body of the king, as in a metaphor of the concentration of personal power and of central jurisdiction. Indeed, the knights of the Sash receive a treatment very similar to that of the armed retinue defined by Alfonso X. They always behave as a group and they represent the body of the king in all circumstances—both in times of peace as well as in times of bellicose confrontation. In the investiture and coronation of King Alfonso XI, according to the Chronicle, the Sash plays a role that may be considered relatively marginal. This is even more important because the chivalry, not just that of the king, plays a central role. All the narrations revolve around the investiture of the king, with all the political significance of ritual that was explained in Chapter 1. But the most important thing about the political meaning is the moment in which the king begins to arm knights. Many scholars, with Ceballos-Escalera y Gila in the most prominent position, have determined that the king is arming this list of people as knights of the Sash, but there are reasons to argue the contrary. The group of knights of the Sash is offering a spectacle of force in the name of the body of the king, totally independent of the fact that there are other knights and squires who are doing chivalric games. In this case, the Sash is totally separate from all other chivalry: E dende (el Rey) vino su camino para Burgos; e desque llego a la çibdad, fallo que eran venidos algunos de aquellos por quien avia enbiado que rresçibiesen del caualleria; e atendio fasta que todos fuesen llegados. E en tanto que venian aquellos por quien el rey

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avie enbiado, el rrey e los que alli eran con el no dexavan de honrrar la fiesta de su caualleria e de su coronaçion, los vnos lançando a tablados en muchas partes de la villa, e los otros bofordando a lança e escudo cada dia; e otrosi tenien puestas dos tablas para justar, e los caualleros de la vanda, quel rrey avia hordenado e fecho poco avie, estauan todo el dia armados quatro dellos en cada tabla, e mantenien justa a todos los que querian justar con ellos; e por que venien estonçes muchas gentes de fuera del rreyno en rromeria a Santiago e pasvan por Burgos por el camino frances, el rrey mandaua estar onbres en la calle por do pasauan los rromeros que preguntasen por los que eran caualleros e escuderos, e dezianles que viniesen a justar. [And from there (the king) came on his way to Burgos; and from the time he arrived at the city, he found that there were come some of those for whom he had sent so that they might receive knighthood; and he waited until all those were arrived. And as those for whom the king had sent were arriving, the king and those who were there with him did not cease from honoring the festival of their chivalry and his coronation, some on decks in many parts of the town, and others throwing the javelin and the shield every day; and still others had placed two decks in order to joust, and the knights of the sash, that the king had ordained and made a short time ago, were all day armed, four of them in each deck, and held a joust with all those who wished to joust with them; and because there then came many people from outside the kingdom in pilgrimage to Santiago and they passed through Burgos by the French road, the king commanded that there be men in the streets wherever the pilgrims would pass who would ask if there were any who were knights or squires, and they told them to come and joust.]45 The knights of the Sash will not appear again in this entire process. After this moment, chivalry constitutes a matter that is relative no longer to the group but to individuals. The chivalric investitures ideated by Alfonso XI during his coronation were carried out in the moment in which the king himself was invested, which changed completely the political sign of the whole process of investiture and concession of chivalry. Thus, neither Juan Núñez de Lara nor Don Juan Manuel, the two most prominent nobles in Castilian society at the time, attended. The chivalric investiture designed by Alfonso, contrary to that of the Sash, is built on a base of a good ritual whose political significance

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is explicit and because of this entails a kind of vassalage to each one of the individuals whose name appears in the Chronicle. The ceremony is made up of a concatenation, a renovation of the links between lord and vassal represented by the chivalric investiture: the king invests the rich men, and they continue the chain by investing, in turn, their men. Both the king and the rich men give their men robes and arms, but, contrary to what appears with the Sash, in which all receive the same clothing, in this investiture each one receives it “segund que le convenia” [“according to what it was convenient for each one”], that is, each one with the materials and textiles that are most appropriate and each one with their own heraldic artifacts, not with the arms of the Sash or those of the king.46 Thus, in this initial moment of the Sash, which corresponds with the year 1332, the group does not individualize through its members, and, in fact, it has been considered outside of the chivalric investiture (including outside of that of the king himself ), and independent of all political content of which general chivalric investiture is endowed, as is shown in the coronation ceremony. In all this, the Sash occupies a place that is completely marginal to the political specter of chivalry. The only document from the time of Alfonso that mentions the knights of the Sash and that, because of this, corroborates their early existence, is from 1338. In the Cortes of Burgos of this year, the king regulated the ostentation of riches, or, to state it more clearly, of signs of distinction: Ningun ome de qual quier estado que sea, saluo nos, que non vista pannos de oro ni de seda ni vista pannos con oro freses ni contrenas ni al jofar ni con otro adobo ninguno ni con esmaltes, saluo que puedan traer en los mantos texidos con al jofar ocuerdas sin al jofar. E los caualleros dela vanda que puedan traer la vanda tan sola mente de qual quier panno que sea en que non aya oro, e que la puedan traer perfilada de oro freses o de trena o de otro perfil qual quier en que non aya al jofar ni piedras. [No man of any social class, except for us, may wear fabrics made with gold or silk, nor fabrics with gold ornamentation or any metallic features or mother-of-pearl, nor any metal or embellishment, except that they may wear on their robes mother-of-pearl embroideries or belts without mother-of-pearl. And the knights of the sash may only wear the sash of any fabric that is not made of gold or free of any golden ornamentation, and that it may be trimmed with

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imitation of gold or silver, or any other trim that does not include mother-of-pearl or gems.]47 This code about the representation and the external distinction joins easily with the so-called sumptuary laws or the laws dealing with the ostentation of luxury. We have already had occasion to speak about that in Chapter 3, most of all regarding the bourgeois need of ostentation of wealth and the construction of personal distinction. In this case all that interests us is to document the Sash in 1338 and to do it in relation to the body of the king and as an exception within the concert of the “men of any social class.” The most appropriate place to narrate the individual accomplishments of the knights of the Sash should have been the epic poem that depicts the Chronicle of Alfonso XI, namely the Poem of Alfonso XI. This poem was probably composed around 1348, according to the investigations of Diego Catalán, which were never questioned either by scholars or by editors of the text.48 In the entire poem, there are at least seven mentions of the knights of the Sash. And in each case, the references allude to the group in general, and they never refer to individual knights who may have been members of the Sash. The first mention is quite generic and praises the Sash. It is impossible to learn more about the Sash based on this praise: Coraçón commo de cobre contra sus omezieros; fizo la vanda traer a ssus cavalleros, e doblóles las quantías por la vanda más valer: todas estas cortesías el buen rey mandó fazer. [A heart like copper Against his opposers; Made his knights A sash bear, And doubled them the sum So that the sash knights were more corageous: All of these gestures The good king did demand.]49

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The group considers itself, above all, an extension of the king’s body. In the battle for the Strait of Gibraltar against Albohacén, the king is accompanied by his knights: Con el van muchos caualleros que le fezieron omenaje & los de la vanda braçeros omnes de muy grand linaje. [With him many knights travel That paid him homage And the strongmen of the sash Men of very great lineage.]50 Here the text sets a difference between the knights who have paid homage to the king, who have credibly accepted the knightly investiture and its consequences, from the strongmen of the Sash, who have a military offensive function and always operate as a compact group linked to the body of the king. In stanza 1,436 (Yo Ten Cate; Victorio, stanza 1,434), the knights of the Sash are defined more closely as mesnaderos that must await the body of the king: en esta lid entraré commo sienpre fablarán los de la vanda veré. commo me aguardarán. [In this fight I shall enter As they shall always tell The men of the sash, I will see As they guard me.] In his exhortation to the combatants at Tarifa, at the gates of the Salado, Alfonso first addresses his friends who, considering the notion of fraternity as described in the laws and political ethics, are likely to be loyal men of the highest nobility—that is, those who are mentioned by their first names in the Poema. Later, he addresses knights and peons to

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motivate them as they head to combat; and last he addresses the members of the Sash: Ya el día mucho anda. ¡Esforçar christiandad! ¡Cavalleros de la Vanda oy beré buestra bondat! Esforçar e non temer cosa al ferir de la espada; que la vanda muy fermosa oy sea por vos honrada! [The day is already long. Long live Christianity! Knights of the Sash Today I shall see your determination! Strength and no fear Of the wound of the sword; May the beautiful sash Be honored by you today!]51 The king, as we can see, tends to address the knights of the Sash as warriors who ride alongside him, protecting and guarding him, during those moments when the king himself acts as a knightly hero. The members of the Sash constitute a personal guard: Con gran braveza entera los de la vanda llamó, salió de la costanera, la delantera tomó, e fizo fazer grand plaza segund natural guerrero, sobre mano una maça, su cavallo bien ligero. [With great courage he called The men of the sash,

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He left the flank, He took the lead, And made a strong position As a natural warrior, A mace in hand, His horse swift.]52 In the last mention of the knights of the Sash, their specific and separate condition vis-à-vis the rest of the knights is apparent, whether they are ricos hombres (high nobility) or more ordinary hidalgos: Luego la frota fue guisada con ricos omnes honrados, fijos dalgo de la mesnada ligeros e esforçados, cavalleros de la Vanda. El rey les dio complimiento asaz de mucha vianda e fizoles libramiento [Later the fleet was prepared With rich honorable men, Hidalgos from the group Light and strong, Knights of the Sash. The king gave them provisions And much food And paid them.]53 In such a long poem, of a clear epic orientation, in which Alfonso XI’s various conquest campaigns are related, in which numerous individual feats are attributed to heroes on both sides, the knights of the Sash occupy an extremely discreet post, almost confidential or casual in its nature. Whenever the knights of the Sash are mentioned, it is in a laudatory manner, which evinces that the author of the Poema had no hidden resentment against this order. It was simply not perceived as anything other than an indistinct group of knights who guarded (aguardaban, reads the text) the king himself, and whom he paid a salary or otherwise compensate economically. It may be assumed that in the Andalusian battles that the poem relates, the king did not wear the Sash’s robe,

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but surcoats and caparisons with the coat of arms of Castile and León. The knights of the Sash, however, wore and were noted by the Sash’s robes. Not only were they distinct among the warrior corps, but they also were distinct in the description of the social hierarchy that the poem articulates. The knights of the Sash are always named last, following mention of the high nobility (ricos hombres), hidalgos, the urban knights (villanos), and peons. This indicates, on the one hand, that the Sash is a specific group, not to be confused with any of the others, and that the others were clearly not part of the Sash; on the other hand, it also indicates that this group is in fact at the margins of a debate regarding social hierarchies, whose role may only be defined as a function of the Sash’s direct relationship with the king. That is, precisely the type of relationship that caballeros mesnaderos may have. The Poema is fundamental for an understanding of the Orden de la Banda before the creation of manuscript P, which contains the regulations. The Poema is necessarily prior to the Book of the Sash (= P). I do not mean that it is chronologically earlier; in strictly chronological terms, they may be simply contemporary texts. It is earlier in the sense that the Poema does not include the innovations that were introduced in the Book. The Book, as opposed to the Poema and as opposed to the chronicles of Alfonso XI’s time, individualizes the knights, naming them in a sequential list, just as it appears at the end of the codex. Meanwhile, the chronicles and the Poema handle it in a very different manner, viewing the knights of the Sash as an indistinct group whose members are never mentioned, as if the individual were to lack the importance ascribed to the group. This is significant, as neither the Poema nor the chronicles mention many of the knights that appear in the Book’s list, which never notes that they are knights of the Sash, referring to them instead as wealthy men or ordinary knights. This surely means that the Book of the Sash constitutes an important transformation of the social spectrum that extends to the Sash, and it is this transformation that will remain in force during the following hundred years or more. The Poema and the Book are likely two contemporary pieces that nonetheless clearly suggest two very different versions of the Sash. The Poema looks back, to the moment in which the order was created in Vitoria, in 1330, an event that took place beyond the realm of chivalry, without any investiture. Not even the king was vested. The Book, however, sees in the Orden de la Banda a strategic instrument for the transformation and domination of high nobility (named at the end of the list), although this strategy becomes—as we said—a ruin.

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In its early incarnation the Sash was more than an order, a habit; at least during the first years of Alfonso’s reign, until perhaps 1348. What must be considered is the significance of this moment of vestment identity between the king and the knights that he himself has vested. The notion of the habit, thus expressed, could remind us of military orders that wear a habit that features at its center some cross-like icon with well-known variations. The robes distributed by Alfonso were mere sheets of fabric, a white surcoat, possibly with a black sash, a heraldic shield apparently devoid of concrete history or meaning. Only Pedro I would provide this symbol, the Sash of Castile, to the kingdom of Castile.54 The most reasonable thesis on this matter is that Alfonso XI did not order the creation of a set of regulations for the “knights of the Sash” (as they were known until the Book was written) until well into his reign, perhaps not until 1348. At least it is odd that no document refers to such a set of regulations, whereas they are often mentioned after that date. It is equally peculiar that the cortes of Burgos in 1338 set regulations for something that should have been regulated in the Book. It is strange that only texts written well after Alfonso’s death in 1350 would allude to the Sash’s regulation. Without said regulation, Alfonsine knightly politics seems to have been geared more toward the realm of self-investiture and the legality of knighthood in general. Evinced by the self-investiture ceremony and that of the investiture of new knights is the political faith that Alfonso deposited in knighthood’s ability to constitute a natural link between the godfather who vests and the vested knight.55 This is why he refused to be vested by someone else and also why Juan Manuel refused to be vested as a knight by anyone else. It is also why he became godfather, or pater, of the wide group of knights he invests with his own hand. Similar faith could only have been found in the legal code that served as his main reference: the Partidas, by his great-grandfather Alfonso X. Nonetheless the Partidas could have been a reference at that time, but not enforced as a law. Hence one of the ambitions of the king was to establish an order of priority of the laws that was, in a manner of speaking, sustainable. The 1348 Ordenamiento de Alcalá constitutes, then, the last link in that chain. A fundamental link, since in the reading of the royal prelate, the Partidas that appear nearly at the end of the list exerted huge influence over the judicial and legal practices: Título .xxviijº. por quales leyes se deuen librar los pleytos Ley.ï. como todos los pleitos se duen librar primera mente por las leyes deste libro. Et lo que por ellas non se pudiese librar / que se libre por los fueros. Et lo que por los fueros non se podiere librar / que se libre por las partidas. Nvestra entençion & nuestra uoluntad es quelos nuestros naturales & moradores delos [15v, col. b|

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regnos sean mantenidos en paz & en justiçia. Et como para eto sea meester dar leys çiertas por do se libren los pleitos & las contiendas que acesçieren entre ellos. Et maguer que en la nuestra corte usan del fuero delas leyes & algunas villas del nuestro señorio lo han por fuero & otras çibdades & uillas ayan otros fueros departidos por los quales se pueden librar algunos pleitos Pero por que muchas son las contiendas & los pleitos que entre los omes acaesçen & se mueuen de cada dia que se non pueden librar por los fueros. Por ende queriendo poner remedio conuenible a esto / establesçemos & mandamos quelos dichos fueros sean guardados en aquellas cosas que se usaron. Saluo en aquello que non fallaremos que se deuen meiorar & emendar. & en lo que son contra dios & contra razon o contra las layes que en este nuestro libro se contiene. por las quales leyes deste nuestro libro mandamos que se libren primera mente todos los pleitos ciuiles & criminales Et los pleitos & contiendas que se non podieren librar por las leyes deste libro & por los dichos fueros. mandamos que se libre por las leyes contenidas en los libros de las siete partidas que el rey don alfonso nuestro uisauuelo mando ordenar. como quier que fasta aqui non se falla que fuessen publicadas por mandado del rey / nin fueron auydas nin reçebidas por leyes. [Title .xxviijo . under which laws lawsuits should be brought Law.ï. how all lawsuits should be brought primarily under the laws of this book. And whatever cannot be brought under them shall be brought through the fueros. Our intent and desire is that those born and living in the [15v, col. b] kingdoms are kept in peace and justice. And to achieve this it is necessary to give precise laws concerning lawsuits and disputes. And although in our court the fuero and the laws are used and some towns of our dominion use the fuero and in other cities and towns there are other verbal fueros under which one can bring lawsuits. But the disputes between men are numerous and occur every day and lawsuits cannout be brought under the fueros. Therefore, wishing to provide a proper remedy to this / we hereby establish and order that said fueros be observed in all areas in which they are used. Except where we have decided that they must be improved and amended, and in which they are against God, against reason or against the laws contained in this book. Under such laws of

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this book we order that the civil and criminal lawsuits should be brought first. And the lawsuits and disputes that cannot be brought under the laws of this book and by the said fueros, we order that they shall brought under the laws contained in the books of the Siete Partidas that our king Don Alfonso wisely ordered. However as of yet it has not been decided that they were published by order of the king / nor were they supported or received by laws.]56 A consequence of the priority of the laws established in the Ordenamiento de Alcalá is the activation of the chivalry laws contained in Partidas 2.21, as well as the law regarding natural links included in Partidas 4.24, since neither of these particular legal aspects could be regulated by the rest of these codes. Indeed, regarding nobility and knighthood, the only important change introduced by the Ordenamiento de Alcalá that overrides the Partidas (the seventh Partida, in this case, and also overriding a previous regulation by Alfonso XI, issued at the 1338 Cortes of Burgos) is one addressing conflict resolutions among noblemen by activating in the very body of the Ordenamiento, a mythical order issued in Nájera in 1076, supposedly promulgated by Emperor Alfonso VI. Thus, even though Alfonso XI’s knightly politics was an integral element of his process of constructing the monarchy and, particularly, of the process of his own depiction as an independent monarch beyond the influence of his minority tutors, it does not seem likely that the conception of a lay military order, formally instituted by a set of regulations, could have arisen until much later in the creation of the habit. What does seem evident, nonetheless, is that Alfonso had the accurate intuition that he could constitute a group of loyal advocates, within and beyond the families among which the kingdom had been distributed during his tutoring and that a modern way of accomplishing this was knightly investiture and the affiliation of these knights directly with the king. Perhaps the most revolutionary movement consists in having incorporated, as a fundamental and large group, many of the people and lineages represented by those who signed the 1315 Cuaderno de la Hermandad. That is, those who had entered into a brotherhood with other squires, urban knights, and other bourgeois, with the precise intention to defend themselves against the high nobility of the ricos hombres. Alfonso dissolved this coalition and established another under his own aegis in yet another process of social order reconstitution. These knights were later granted important posts within the kingdom’s administration, thus creating the idea of a political society well merged with its ruling head as well as his conquest of a central jurisdiction. Chivalry was an essential instrument for this project, adhering here to the

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ideas and strategies of Alfonso X. The Sash, then, would be less of an order and more of a group and would not function as an institution, but rather as a type of political and moral reference point, as seems apparent in the chronicles of Alfonso XI and the allusions to it in the Poema de Alfonso XI. Although the Sash was incorporated into the coat of arms of Castile and León in some of its heraldic forms, this did not take place until well into the reign of Pedro I. It is true that for Pedro this entailed the appropriation of a symbol that had not only identified his father but also brought together a series of lineages surrounding the king and his heir, that is, Pedro himself. Pedro would also be the first to uphold the shield of the Sash as a form of representation for the monarchy, as in the case of the coat of arms featuring the Sash adopted by the Reales Alcázares of Seville (1367).57 The vassal appropriation is evidenced in certain known historical passages, like the one reproduced by Pero López de Ayala in his Crónica de Pedro I regarding Pero Carrillo. The episode describes a crucial moment of the exhibition of the Sash. Pedro sees that the person who is proudly displaying it is standing before the battle lines of his stepbrother Enrique (future King Enrique II), Count of Trastámara. The Sash is a royal emblem, so its bold display before the count’s armies entails a gesture of direct aggression against legitimacy, a sort of emblematic confrontation. But Carrillo is not, at that time, a vassal of the king, even if he serves his father, Alfonso, as such; thus, legal prescriptions must be followed. This is a legality that can now be stipulated by the Book, that is the only instance that explicitly addresses the bold display of the Sash within the exclusive realm of the king’s vassals: Aquel día vio el rey delante las haces del conde andar rigiendo la batalla a un caballero que traía unas sobreseñales bermejas con vanda de oro, e preguntó que quién era: e dixéronle algunos de los suyos que le conocían, que era Pero Carrillo. E el rey envió a él un su doncel, e mandóle que dixiese a Pero Carrillo, que pues non era su vasallo, que non avía por que traer la vanda; ca esta Orden de la Vanda, que el rey don Alfonso ficiera, era muy honrada e muy escogida e muy presciada en el regno de Castila, e aun en otras partes, e que non la traían si non muy escogidos omes, e esmerados en costumbres e en linaje e en caballería seyendo vasallos del rey, o del infante su fijo primogénito heredero, e non de otra manera.58 E el doncel del rey llegó a Pero Carrillo, e díxole lo que el rey le avía dicho que le dixese. E luego Pero Carrillo tiró las sobreseñales que traía, e eran de un tapete colorado con una vanda de oro, e dixo así

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al doncel: “Decid a mi señor el rey, que quando Albuhacén, rey de Benamarín, cercó la villa de Tarifa, me mandó el rey don Alfonso su padre, entre otros nobles e buenos que allá envió para la ayudar a defender, que yo fuese allá con ellos: e una noche ovimos pelea con los moros, que querían entrar por un portillo de la villa de Tarifa que cayera de los golpes de los engenños: e aquella noche morió allí el señor de los Montes Claros, que era un moro muy poderoso, e tenía allí muchas gentes. E luego dende a quince días me envió mi señor el rey don Alfonso, que Dios perdone, estas sobrevistas de su cuerpo, e me envió mandar que traxiese la vanda: e después acá la tengo, e de aquí adelante yo no la traeré más sin su licencia del rey, pues non le place.” E al rey plogo quando vio que la tiró de sobresí: que tan cerca estaban los unos de los otros que se veían bien. E esta regla se guardó siempre en la Orden de la Vanda en las Cortes de los Reyes de Castilla, que ome que non fuese vasallo del rey, o de su fijo heredero, non traxiese vanda. [On that day the King saw a knight walking before the lines of the count, reviewing the battle, wearing red surcoats with a Band of gold, and he asked who that was. And certain of his men who knew him told him that he was Pero Carrillo. And the king sent one of the young gentlemen to him, and ordered him to say to Pero Carrillo, that since he was not his vassal, he had no reason to wear the Band. For this Order of the Band, which King Don Alfonso founded, was much honored and much sought after and much prized in the Kingdom of Castile, and even in other places, and no one wore it except very select men, polished in their habits and in their lineage and in their chivalry, being vassals of the King, or of the Infante his first-born son and heir, and in no other manner. And the King’s young gentleman came to Pero Carrillo, and told him what the King had told him he should tell him. And immediately Pero Carrillo took off the ensigns that he wore, which was a coloured cloth with a Band of gold, and spoke thus to the young gentleman: “Say to my lord the King, that when Abulhacen King of Benemarin invested the town of Tarifa, King Don Alfonso his father ordered me among other noble and good men to go to aid and defend it, and I went with them. And one night we had a battle with the Moors, who sought to enter through a breach [in the wall] of the town of Tarifa which the blows of the weapons had opened.

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And that night died there the Lord of Montes Claros, who was a very powerful Moor, and had many men there. And fifteen days after that my lord the King Don Alfonso, whom God will save, sent me these surcoats from his body, and sent me an order to wear the Band. And since that time I have held it, but from this time onwards I shall not wear it anymore without the licence of the King, since it does not please him.” And the King was pleased when he saw that he had taken it off, for they were so near to the other side that they could see well. And this rule was always kept in the Order of the Band in the Cortes of the Kings of Castile, that a man who was not a vassal of the King or of his son and heir apparent did not wear the Band.]59 The person narrating this event is the Alavese noble Pero López de Ayala, first standard-bearer and lieutenant of the Sash, instituted by Juan I and confirmed by Enrique III, who is indeed here safeguarding the very legality of the group. Ayala is writing for Juan I before whom he recounts not only the history but the manner of knightly behavior. The core of the chapter is not an event, but rather its hermeneutics: regardless of the events that may have led to the receipt of an honor (the Sash, in this case), the link of the vassalage and its very legitimacy, together with the regulation of the order itself, are more important and should be valued above any other circumstance, including, in this case, the obvious courage of Pero Carrillo. It is certain, nevertheless, that Pero López de Ayala is constructing a criticism based on the injustice of Pedro I, who, following proper knightly norms, should have confirmed Pero Carrillo’s Sash. Instead, he is content to see it continue despite the knight’s battleground bravery alongside his father. Loyalty to Pedro I throughout successive eras always seems to be identified with the sign of the Sash, as seen in a passage of El Victorial, where the protagonist of this knightly biography, Pero Niño, count of Buelna, returns to defend the sign of the Sash. In legal terms, this passage is more complex than it appears to be, since Pero Niño seizes the sash from a French squire in Marseilles, that is, beyond the jurisdiction of the king of Castile. One of the fundamental themes that Bartolo of Sassoferrato discussed in his De insigniis et armis (circa 1355) is that heraldic signs displayed in different kingdoms must be considered different even when they are not. For Pero Niño (who had a penchant for excessive attitude), these judicial considerations surely lacked the slightest relevance, since the Sash is, in his view, synonymous with vassalage toward the king: “Estando allí en Marsella, hera allí un escudero de paraje que

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traya la devisa de la Banda; e Pero Niño fue a él e tirógela, por quanto non la tenía del rey de Castilla” [“There in Marseilles was a resting squire who was wearing the emblem of the Sash; and Pero Niño went to take it from him, as he had not been given such by the king of Castile”].60 Finally, it is interesting, yet less definitive, to consider that when agreements were established between the Nasrid king of Granada Muhammad V and Pedro I, about 1360, the former adopted several elements of Western representation, creating, for example, the first Nasrid shield. For this shield, Muhammad V chose a sash, upon which he ordered the Arabic inscription “La ghallib illa Allah” (“There is no victor other than God”). This poetic of the emblem seems to date to this period of the years 1350 to 1360, although it evidently recovers a sign, a habit, established by Alfonso XI. From this perspective of a Pedrist Sash, it is possible to consider the process of reappropriation of the habit, the emblem, the sign, and the set of regulations by the Trastámara dynasty that relocates the Book, cloaked now as a royal order as Second Ordinance and dated beyond appeal—legally, as part of those books of ordinances we referred to before—as a product of Alfonso XI. The Orden de la Banda is a codicological, textual, and historical labyrinth that we have only now begun to elucidate. The next chapter focuses more closely on the text and its rewritings, since the Sash is inextricably linked to this sequence of circular narratives regarding its nature. The keys to the invention of the Sash are manifest in the ruinous aspect of the book that was conceived to be a jewel. This jewel was to remain, not unlike the writings and the robes (paños) that actually create the king’s body, in his royal chamber. There, the Book would have resolved the dialectic of knighthood’s location and dislocation: it would have defined a center and a source from which it could reach all corners of the territory and the logic of its worlds, the very notion of the monarchy. This is why it is so important that the historical narration of the creation of the Sash, the one that appears in the Crónica de Alfonso XI, sets it to coincide with the granting of the jurisdictional resources over the land of Álava, which culminates with the concession—or rather, imposition—of the Fuero Real. Perhaps it is not entirely coincidental that the first standard-bearer of the Sash was the Alavese noble and chancellor of Castile Pero López de Ayala. The judicial exchange, or negotiation, was an attempt to concentrate monarchical power as well as a means to transform it: Alfonso received this jurisdiction from the confraternity and he immediately created a group that would protect his body, originating with the armed knights who guarded the very chamber that housed the body of the king, the chamber that doubled as the foundation

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for the origin and the ordinance. All of which takes place according to the practice of a knightly society. This is a particular use of the society. It is a chivalry beyond the realm of chivalry, with an entirely original statute, free, shall we say, of any other judicial ties. The Book, constructed with the juridical aesthetic of the exemplar and residing in the royal chamber, will constitute a particular ordinance. What is the advantage, however, of acting along with chivalry, located within its domain yet dislocated beyond chivalry in general? Why redefine this the poetics of the ordo? The strategy in fact results in a double use of chivalry, one that is completely original. It is a double poetics of the ordo. The ordo and the chivalric order, in this sociopolitical poetics, follow two different paths: one ties or attempts to tie nobility to a natural, strongly vertical link as that defined in the legal invention of chivalry that appears in Partidas 2.21 and that becomes manifest during the coronation of Alfonso XI. Along the other path, it defines a new organization that functions as a fraternity and that opposes the military order with which it maintains an analogous relation; the fraternity originates in a centrifugal movement that spurs from the royal chamber. It is in this movement that the tropology of the central monarchical jurisdiction concentrates. Indeed, location and dislocation are here subsumed in a single thesis, a single poetics of the ordo that veers off in two different directions yet is oriented toward a single objective. Knightly orders are organized, in all their strategic possibilities, as an instrument for the concentration of royal power, which constitutes one of the logics of the monarchical model that will dominate all the Late Middle Ages as well as modern absolutism.

chapter five

Rewriting the Order

The specter of rewriting lies in the dialectic of location and mobility—to conjure the imperceptible imminence of a dreaded conditional future. Location is a process of codification in which an object is frozen in a particular space. The political relevance of processes of location is significant in a social structure grounded on the notion that every being is subject to his estate and to his social order (ordo). This social structure suffers an intrinsic lack of equilibrium, a juridical and political impossibility that requires the manifestation of the specter: the rewriting of the code, the reconfiguration of the rules of the ordo, or the perennially inchoate poetics of the order. The redefinition of the relations of power resides in this inchoateness, in the condition of being always in flux or always starting the ordinance. The dialectic inheres in a paradoxical condition of mobility in the process of codification and of a social category, of its functions and its relationships through the process of writing and rewriting a code. Rewriting affects the relations of chivalric alliances within the ordo of knighthood and within the space of sovereignty organized by the monarchy. Rewriting also reveals the debate on the significance of relations of power within the monarchy. I will explore what is negotiated, how it is negotiated, and, above all, why this negotiation takes place within the scope of the poetics of the chivalric ordo. In this chapter, I will examine the subtle yet crucial differences introduced throughout the process of rewriting of the Order of the Sash, a process that takes place over several centuries and over an enormous variety of textual forms that range from royal ordinance to historiography, including legal compilations, political treatises, and epistolography. The first text of the Order of the Sash, to which I will simply refer as the Book, does not seem to date before the end of Alfonso XI’s reign. Thus, the text of the Book constitutes an archaeological gesture: it is a process of

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rewriting and regulating a group that, if successful, would only have existed in principle and in appearance—in the absence of such a written text during the previous eighteen or twenty years.1 Another aspect that must be considered is that only during King Pedro I’s rule (r. 1350–1369) or in texts from the fifteenth century onward is the sign of the Sash used in the context of monarchical statements. The investiture and concession of a habit by Alfonso XI to a group of knights in 1330 or 1332 entailed a strong initiative of consolidation of monarchical sovereignty, yet there are only vague traces of this initiative during the rest of the Alfonsine reign until the appearance of the Book. Apparently, that first instance of union predicated on the community of the habit had been rendered unnecessary or had waned. The mention of the Cortes of 1338 or those of the Poema de Alfonso XI seem slight, as seen from outside, and suggest a notable institutional independence of the knights on one end and the king on the other. Only the writers from Álava, such as Pero López de Ayala, and from Vizcaya, Lope García de Salazar (1399–1476), as well as chroniclers, such as the king of arms Pedro de Gracia Dei (before 1476–after 1506), and those who plagiarized the latter until the sixteenth century indicate given knights acknowledged in their works as members of the Sash. In Alfonsine historiography no such thing ever occurs, nor does it happen in any works that are contemporary to the Sash. It is also evident, on the other hand, that as soon as Alfonso XI was crowned and quickly configured nobility by way of chivalry, Alfonso’s social and administrative politics were concerned, above all, with the restructuring of power in the cities through a redefinition of the learned classes and the participation of the dominant bourgeoisie in the formers’ circle—the same bourgeoisie that descended from the Hermandad of 1315 and that later would reorganize into guilds and municipalities and other groups of power that would depict their presence through the discourse of chivalry.2 The Book, by contrast, is decidedly monarchic. It establishes, with precision and detail, and with specific penalties in the event of an infraction, the relationship between the knights of the Sash and the king or his sons. The Book, therefore, completely dissolves that sense of independence. The Book also foretells the relationship between the knights and Alfonso’s sons, establishing a hierarchy between the brothers and half brothers. Alfonso’s son, Pedro, had been born in 1332, while his illegitimate twin half brothers, Enrique and Fadrique, were born a year later. Tello, another half brother who also appears on the list of the knights of the Book, was born in 1337. It is therefore further reason, beyond what was already noted, to believe that the Book appeared well after the constitution of the group of knights. I would argue, then, that the

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Book is retroactive and that it establishes an archaeological regulation whose mission is to reconstitute the relations between the king and his knights, as well as monarchical sovereignty itself, based on the chivalric investiture. The text then depicts the chivalric group beyond the lifetime of its members. While the group instituted by Alfonso XI is predicated on a personal pact between the monarch as creator and the knights created therein, the Book constitutes a representation of the manner in which the pact survives beyond the physical reality of its members and even beyond the very presence of its founder and first master. The Book gives life, de jure, to the order, actively as well as retroactively. The Book of the Sash is not only the regulated discourse that engenders a chivalric order, but also renders into a chivalric order what in prior years had presumably been a group of knights who were loyal to the king and whose characterization derived, initially, from the investiture by sheets of cloth of the same color and heraldic arms that would preclude individual identification yet be recognizable as the value of a group organized horizontally as a fraternity, or societas. Questions remain regarding the process through which this archaeological gesture was produced, as well as about the circumstances that led to the composition of the Book as a manuscript of the royal chamber. Questions remain as well regarding the type of discourse contained in this Book and how it may be used or how it may be subject to mobility and rewriting. Most, if not all, of those who have studied the Order of the Sash have been content with a hybrid text they have composed and paraphrased based on the ample variety of existing testimonies and versions, without pondering the enormous problems inherent in the process of producing the ordinance and its successive rewritings. In fact, until now, no one has acknowledged that these are two very different texts in more than one sense. The differences between the versions, which I will examine in detail—not merely editorial variations—hint to one or several carefully developed processes of transformation that affect both the form and content of the regulation of the Sash. To achieve this analysis, I will refer to the P text (to avoid any gaps, supplemented by the Escorial manuscript prepared for Ambrosio de Morales cited earlier and the Sumario de las maravillosas y espantables cosas que en el mundo han acontescido, by Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres), and the Segundo Ordenamiento (Second Ordinance), as they were copied onto the Escorial manuscripts, which I will refer to using the letter E. Both quantitatively and qualitatively the differences between P and E are remarkable. One of them is clearly notable, and although it may not be the most critical, it helps us understand the type authority that the Segundo Orde-

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namiento text seeks to assert. It is a stylistic and formal difference that traverses the entire text of E and renders it a clearly judicial document. The Segundo Ordenamiento cloaks itself as a royal ordinance in the legal context in which it is transmitted; this judicial costume is enhanced through the variations contained on the transmitted text. First, the Segundo Ordenamiento leans toward the modernization of the language, even in the chapters that it copies from the Book without major modifications in its content. The Segundo Ordenamiento engages in a complete linguistic revision of its model. This revision launches a clarification process of the entire text of the Book, crafting nominal complements and pronouns to insert in passages where the Book could be equivocal, for instance, in the issuance of penalties or in the complex web of rules included in the chapters dealing with tournaments and jousts. In this regard, it evidently acts as a proper juridical text, where ambiguity is the worst foe. The Segundo Ordenamiento incorporates a complete set of formulas derived from legal and chancery language, most appropriate to the documents produced by the jurists in the legal realm, which are not present in the Book. The goal of these formulas is mainly to clarify the separation of articles from one chapter to the next, or even within a single chapter, such as the otrosí formula, which translates loosely as “moreover,” and is derived from the juridical Latin alterum si. Other formulas are more deeply codified in juridical language and are typical of the expressions in which the law is declared or in which a legal corollary is delineated. An example is the formula for decision dezimos que (“we declare that”) used in legal resolutions, which is deployed throughout the entire text of the Segundo Ordenamiento. Beside this first stylistic variation, one that indicates a very different objective regarding the transmission and authorization of one text when compared to the other, there are further and more significant variants. Visually, the first and most notable of these resides strictly in the sequence, since the Segundo Ordenamiento varies significantly in the arrangement of the chapters, the order in which they appear, and alters the overall structure of the Book. This variation, however, is explained when two other background differences are considered. The first is the manner in which the Segundo Ordenamiento distances itself from many of the courtly principles of the Book, removing from its text any female presence or intervention. The second difference is that the Segundo Ordenamiento essentially dissolves vassal ties among the knights of the Sash and any possibility of vassal ties between the knights of the Sash and the king’s sons. Table 1 summarizes some of these differences, which I will discuss further on, along with a few less notable distinctions. The inverse Table 2 may

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not assist us right now to explain further differences, but it may be useful to doublecheck certain chapters when reviewed alongside the previous one. As I mentioned earlier, the Book appears to have a retroactive nature aimed at recapturing monarchical relations among a group of knights and the king (knights that Alfonso encountered in the early stages of his reign). The Book’s writer has effaced the specific sources for the text, but its model is clear. This framework is easily traced to the Siete Partidas and the chivalric literature that enjoyed a good measure of success during Alfonso’s reign. Throughout the following nonlinear analysis, it is possible to discern the specific aspects that denote the influence of these models. Table 1. Arrangement of Chapters in Libro de la Banda Compared to Ordenamiento de la Banda Book of the Sash (ca. 1348–1351)

Second Ordinance of the Sash (after ca. 1380, before 1406)

Prologue and chapter 1

Prologue and chapter 1, changes in order within the text

Chapter 2, ways to arm knights of the Sash

Initial formula in chapter 2, rest of chapter 7

Chapters 3 to 6 entirely missing Chapter 7, on food (one or two initial phrases missing)

Chapter 6, changes in order of text

Chapter 8, regarding drinks

Chapter 6, abbreviations

Chapter 9, regarding the royal arm

Chapter 14, almost verbatim

Chapter 10, on dates when order meets

Chapter 15, totally different regulation, including significant conceptual changes

Chapter 11, on weddings and knightly investitures of members

Chapter 18, almost verbatim

Chapter 12, on demise of a member

Chapter 19, almost verbatim

Chapter 13, on verbal feuds among members

Chapter 17, reordering text, certain segments moved to another chapter

Chapter 14, on armed confrontations among knights

Chapter 10, parts of text taken from another chapter, penalties different

Chapter 15, on possibility of a knight injuring another in a confrontation

Chapter 10, only the second part verbatim

Chapter 16, on possibility of a knight receiving land from the king without a discount

Omitted

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Adds chapter 11, on possibility of a knight offended by the king being able to address him on the matter Chapter 17, on knights who live with the sons of the king

Chapter 12, incorporated at end

Chapter 18, on knights who abandon the king while still benefiting from his support

Chapter 12, first part

Chapter 19, on knights who assume role of justices or officials

Chapter 13, verbatim

Chapter 20, on assistance to a publicly announced tournament

Chapter 20, slight omissions

Chapter 21, on assistance to a publicly announced joust

Chapter 16, aside from certain variations to a more modern style, verbatim

Chapter 22, on need to safeguard the book

Chapter 21, important omissions and additions

Chapter 23, rules of the tournament

Chapter 22, slight omission in heading, important variations in one point, specifications to clarify text on other points

Chapter 24, rules of the joust

Chapter 23, important style variations that modernize and clarify text, addition of one point, omission of another, important changes in several others

Chapter 25, list of the knights of the Sash

Incorporated just before chapter 7

The Order of the Sash is ruled by a master, as was the case in the military orders of the Crusades and Reconquest. Nonetheless, at no point do the regulations indicate the role of the master, nor his provenance; they even fail to regulate his election. There is no extant detail regarding the master; his civil affiliation is missing from the historic narratives as well. The only post in the Sash that is associated with an individual’s name is that of the standard-bearer, held by Pero López de Ayala during the reign of Juan I and Enrique III. Both Boulton and Ceballos-Escalera y Gila thus conclude that the master of the order is the king himself.3 This is a persuasive opinion considering the relation between the Castilian monarchy and masterhood of the military orders. There is no instance in any of the texts, however, to sustain this parallelism. Indeed, the master appears to be independent from the figure of the king. The regula-

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Table 2. Arrangement of the Second Ordinance Compared to the Book of the Sash Second Ordinance

Book of the Sash

Prologue and chapter 1

Prologue and chapter 1

Chapter 2

?

Chapter 3

Chapter 5

Chapter 4

?

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapters 7 and 8

Chapter 7

Chapter 2

Chapter 8

Chapter 4

Chapter 9

Chapter 3

Chapter 10

Chapter 15

Chapter 11

—

Chapter 12

Chapter 18

Chapter 13

Chapter 19

Chapter 14

Chapter 9

Chapter 15

Chapter 10

Chapter 16

Chapter 21

Chapter 17

Chapter 13

Chapter 18

Chapter 11

Chapter 19

Chapter 12

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

tions of the Sash confer minimal importance to the master, whose presence is ritual (to preside over the incorporation of knights into the Sash) and in a few cases is informative and punitive (to acquire facts regarding infractions of the order and to issue penalties in consultation with other knights of the order); yet even in these cases the king overrules the authority of the master. Moreover, all the regulations, to some extent, assign the bulk of any matters associated with the order to the king—along with his sons in the case of the Book and without them in the Segundo Ordenamiento. The core of the order is the king, even if he does not bear the title of master.

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There is no point, in any of the regulations, stipulating that a member of the Sash must be formally vested as a knight before joining the order, nor that he receive this investiture at the time of his incorporation into the order. The incorporation rituals (chap. 2 of the Book; chap. 7 of the Segundo Ordenamiento) do not include the knightly investiture. The regulations nonetheless specify how other knights of the Sash must proceed when another member either marries or is granted knightly investiture (Book, chap. 11; Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 18). All this suggests that the master, whoever he may be, does not have the authority to vest knights, one that perhaps resides beyond the confines of the order and independent of it. The king was therefore securing a farther-reaching right. In his particular poetics for this chivalric group he did not include a poetics for the ordo of chivalry. Rather, he set a certain degree of tension between this particular order and the ordo. In the epic on investiture and coronation, the king had already avoided confusing knightly investitures with the donation of a habit to the Sash and there is no trace of Sash bestowing during the knightly ceremony of the king. By the time the Book was written, nearly eighteen years later, there was no room for this type of confusion either. By then, Alfonso XI had meticulously read the Partidas and had understood the political importance of securing knightly investiture as a specific prerogative of the king, despite what Don Juan Manuel had suggested on the pages of his Libro del cavallero et del escudero. Alfonso thereby kept apart from the order the knightly concept delineated in Partidas 2.21, where the king is named as the ultimate and only guarantor of the chivalric order. More significant, he also intends to keep apart from the order the notion that, according to Partidas 4.24, chivalry constitutes a natural link. The king acts within and apart from the order; his political and legal figure manifested as a member of the Sash (his name heads every list on every set of rules), but also as the source of all authority. The rules themselves define in detail this dual personality of the king in the manifold realm upon which he exerts his authority. Chapter 2 of the Book (Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 7) establishes the order of vassalage and its very significance through the heraldic object represented by the Sash. The sash is not offered as a hereditary heraldic object, since it always remains the property of the royal house, of the “king or one of his sons.”4 The sash thus becomes a particular site of legislation: the Book conceives of it as property of the king of Castile and it compels not only the knights of the Sash to abide by this principle but also all those knights, Castilian or foreign, who are seen wearing a sash (Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 9;

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probably chap.4 in the Book). This is a fundamental issue in the establishment of heraldic property, whose importance is analyzed by Bartolo of Sassoferrato in his jurisconsulting treatise De insigniis et armis, which, as noted earlier, had considerable influence on the creation of ideas regarding nobility, its representation, and, most significantly, the process of its creation.5 The ritual ultimately serves to subsume all critical issues of chivalric allegiance into an object of contemplation that remains the political property of the king. The rules (to quote the Segundo Ordenamiento) also explain during which occasions the Sash must be worn. It indicates that it is preferable that the knight “siempre tenga unos paños en que aya vanda” [“always have cloths that feature a sash”]; the knight should “que los vista una vez en la semana, o más si más pudiere él” [“wear them once a week, or more often, if possible”]; (chap. 3, which may correspond to chap. 5 in the Book). As an object of contemplation, the sash may also serve as a reminder of certain behavior. For instance, when the knight is unsure about what he should or should not eat, “membrándose de la Vanda” [“remembering the Sash”] (Book, chap.7; Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 6) should be enough to guide his decision. The heraldic object, therefore, serves not only as a means of identification but also as an object of meditation and introspection to understand the duties of the order, and as a habit, in the dual sense of an article of clothing and of a custom to be followed. The king delineates limits within and beyond the order, as the ruling establishes all the instances in which there must be agreement between the wishes of the king and the duties and attitudes of the knight. Two of these seem particularly worthy of notice, since they become elements of the process of representation of the king and of the political behavior of the monarchy. The first of these is the presence of the knight of the Sash in ceremonial acts called for by the king; the second is the political role of the knights of the Sash, particularly in official posts as judges or adelantados (border officers). These two aspects link the political framework of an idea of chivalric monarchy and contribute to the consolidation of both the legal and political presence of the monarch as well as the relevance of the knights in the nonmilitary political sphere. The knights, maintaining their military external appearance —chivalry—are functionally displaced into another of the spheres of institutional violence, the imperium legis, which is the manifestation of the force of law through the presence of royal jurisdiction. There inheres in this process a key dialogue between the invention of chivalry, as envisioned by Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas 2.21: to construct chivalry and, consequently, a chivalric monarchy, it was not necessary for Alfonso X to construct the military image of the knight, but rather to establish him as a piece of the politics of peace and grant him

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one or several missions that would secure the functionality, the legality, and the loyalty of the knight beyond his primary function as a warrior.6 The clear independence between the order and the external political and juridical universe also gave the king considerable range to maneuver. At any given moment, a knight of the Sash could be expelled from the order, as established in the regulations (Book, chap. 18, Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 12; reiterated in Book, chap. 22, although the Segundo Ordenamiento eliminates the possibility of expulsion in chap. 22). The possibility of expulsion does not imply that the knight, once naturally linked to the king, might cease to be. The independence of the order regarding other natural links allowed the king to apply the law unbound by the penal code that operated within the confines of the ruling of the Sash. He could thus safeguard, on behalf of general law, the profile of all juridical entities and avoid all interference between the rule of the law and membership in the Sash. Chapter 19 of the Book (Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 13) is a good illustration: Seyendo algun cauallero de la vanda justiçia o ofiçial del rey en algun lugar & acaesçiese que otro cauallero de la vanda feziese algunas cosas por que meresçiese muerte, que aquel que fuese ofiçial que lo prenda & que lo enbie al rey, & otrosy enbiel dezir todo el fecho en commo passo por escripto, por que el rey faga sobrello lo que fallare que deue fazer de derecho. Et sy de otra guisa lo feziese el cauallero de la vanda que fuese juez, que el rey que ge lo escarmiente dandol aquella pena que fallare quel deue dar. [If there is a knight of the Sash who acts as judge or is an officer of the king in any location and it so happens that another knight of the Sash commits acts on account of which he deserves to die, the one who is an officer may capture him and send him to the king and may declare in writing the facts as they occurred, so that the king may act upon these facts what is prescribed that he must do by law. But if the knight of the Sash who is a judge acts otherwise, then the king must punish him issuing upon him the penalty that he deserves as the king decides that suits better.] The chapter suggests the will of the king to institute members of his knightly corps as officers and members of the legal branch, which would enhance royal power in cities and other regions. It also signals the independence of this public role regarding the Order of the Sash and the dismissal of any

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corporative signs among the knights who belong to the institution. It also increases the particular power of the king over public affairs, since the member of the Sash acting as judge or official of the king momentarily loses his judicial abilities and may only participate as a notary while the king himself assumes the role of key magistrate. This provision is significant, nonetheless, and I will examine it vis-à-vis the aspirations of the bourgeois knightly groups to control the lettered posts, the archive, and other centers of administrative power within urban spheres. To counter these aspirations of urban chivalry, Alfonso posits instead the possibility that the king’s own envoys, the jurists themselves, may be able to join the Order of the Sash. The writing of the institution does not establish a difference of legal authority between the interior and exterior of the institution itself; it only expands the obligations of the interior without reducing its public and more general duties. In this regard, it is a gesture of extraordinary modernity, to the extent that the process of institutionalization does not affect the theories of power (since it does not limit them) or the applicability of public law. The establishment of these liminal principles in fact buttresses the theory of monarchical sovereignty based on a central and sole jurisdiction. I do not mean, however, sole jurisdiction in the revolutionary sense of the modern state, but in the sense that it is personified in the body of the king, and centralized on it. It all supports the core independence of the figure of the master from the person of the king. Even if the post of master were indeed filled by the king (which would be impossible to ascertain), the ruling does not confuse these two roles in any manner, and they appear as completely distinct institutional figures among which there can be no interference. Only the king may traverse freely between the interior and the exterior of the order. The Book and the Segundo Ordenamiento are very different when it comes to the relationship between the king—and his family—and the knights. While the Book enhances this relationship, the Segundo Ordenamiento limits it. The Book, for instance, opens with the ritual of the incorporation of the knights to the Sash. Among the different gestures and oral performances, the knight must recite a solemn oath that includes several parts. The first of these, according to the Book (chap. 2), is that the knight is a vassal of the king or one of his sons. The Segundo Ordenamiento (chap. 7), in turn, occludes the possibility that the knight be a vassal to the sons of the king. Only the monarch may set the vassal relationships even when some of the knights may in fact be at the service of one of the king’s sons.

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When it does not alter or eliminate it, the Segundo Ordenamiento recasts the relationship of the knights to the sons of the king. The Book devotes a specific chapter (17) to regulate how the knights must proceed should they be offended by the king’s sons while living under their roof. The Segundo Ordenamiento erases this chapter and replaces it with another (chap. 11), according to which, any knight of the Sash who feels offended by the king is authorized to confront him. It is at the end of this chapter that the text that proceeds from chapter 17 of the Book is included almost verbatim: Book, chapter 17

Sy algun cauallero de la vanda biuiere con alguno de los fijos del rey & se agrauiare en algunas cosas que non fagan contra el desaguisado, que lo muestre al rey delante los caualleros de la vanda que y fueren, pidiendole merçed que lo faga emendar, & si logar y ouiere en que se pueda emendar, & sy non, que el rey que lo tome para sy & que le faga merçed & emienda por ello.

Segundo Ordenamiento, chapter 11 Si por aventura acaesçiere que algund cauallero de la vanda se toujere por agrauiado del rrey en ser contra el por alguno de los que non ayan la vanda, dezimos que este atal que lo pueda dezir & mostrar al rrey ante los otros caualleros de la vanda & el rrey con los caualleros que y fueren que aya su acuerdo & lo que fallare que fuere de rrazon & de aguisado que deuen fazer y que lo fagan & que sea tenido de lo cumplir asi. Otrosy dezimos que si algund cauallero de la vanda biuiera con alguno de los fijos del rrey & se agrauiare en algunas cosas no façiendo contra el aguisado, quel que lo muestre al rrey delante los caualleros de la vanda que y fueren pediendo merçed que lo faga emendar & si lugar y ouiere en que se pueda emendar, si no quel rrey que lo tome para si & que le faga merçed & emienda dello. If by chance it happens that some knight of the sash feels offended by

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If any knight of the Sash lives with any of the sons of the king and feels offended by unfair treatment, that he expose such to the king in front of the knights of the Sash who are there, and that they request mercy that the knight be atoned for it if that is possible at all, and if not, the king should take the knight for himself and gives him mercy and atones him.

the king in being against him for one that does not have the sash, we say that such man may tell and expose such to the king before the other knights of the Sash and the king with the knights of the Sash present agree and decide upon it, and whatever they find is reasonable and appropriate to do, that they should and must do it, and that shall be done. Moreover, we say that if any knight of the Sash lives with any of the sons of the king and feels offended by unfair treatment, that he expose such to the king in front of the knights of the Sash who are there, and that they request mercy that the knight be atoned for it if that is possible at all, and if not, the king should take the knight for himself and gives him mercy and atones him.]

The language in both texts tends to avoid certain ambiguities. In neither case is there mention of the concept of “law” (derecho as used in Spanish) reserved exclusively for cases in which justice originates outside of the institution. More subjective concepts are articulated instead, such as “feel offended” (tenerse por agraviado), “appropriate”/“unappropriate” (aguisado/desaguisado), alongside resolutions or atonements (enmiendas), according to that which is “reasonable” (de razón), rather than according to a specific code. The institution, in fact, has its own rationality, one that rules over its writing and its conceptual borders. This rationality is defined by the code of rules, which constitutes a description of a final vocabulary of the institution and its members.7 Hence, any variation in the text becomes crucial, whether it involves a linguistic or a sequential shift. In this case, the Segundo Ordenamiento introduces a rationality of the offense that is not present in the Book, since it casts the king as the offender. Although it limits this possibility to a subjective appreciation, since it is up to the king and the knights of the Sash to

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determine if the complainant had reason to take offense. Likewise, it limits the importance of the offense, defining it as a comparative offense deemed worthy of consideration, with respect to a similar offense committed by a knight who is not a member of the Sash. The meaning of the second part of the chapter that includes the text from chapter 17 of the Book is completely altered in this context, as it ascribes increased relevance to the subjectivity of feelings and emotions regarding chivalric honor and, by extension, to the individuality of each knight. Both the individuality of a knight and chivalric honor may be considered as relatively innovative concepts in the process of construction of the chivalric institution. While in other legislation from the period honor is conceived as something that is granted, rather than an individual trait, both the Book and the Segundo Ordenamiento entertain the possibility that a knight of the Sash may obtain it “por hondra que aya en el” [“by the honor that may reside within him”] (Libro, chapter 2; Segundo Ordenamiento, chapter 7). This chapter and its variations may be read more clearly alongside chapter 16 of the Book, which is erased and omitted in all its aspects by the Segundo Ordenamiento without any trace of it remaining elsewhere: “Otrosy, porque los caualleros de la vanda esten meior guisados para quando menester fuere, que ayan la tierra que touieren del rey o de alguno de sus fijos sin descuento ninguno, & aun que acaesca algun descuento en aquella tierra, que non descuenten a ellos ninguna cosa.” [“Moreover, so that the knights of the Sash be appropriately prepared whenever it is deemed necessary, they must have land granted by the king or any of his sons with no discount, and even if there happens to be a discount already on that land, they may not be subjected to any discount at all”] (Libro, chap. 16). The problem could be identified specifically in 1348, in a record of petition of the Cortes where the following exchange arises: Alo que nos pidieron merçed en rrazon delas tierras que de nos tenien e de mis ffijos, queles ponen en ellas grandes descuentos, e que gelas pusiesemos en tal manera quelas ouiesen çiertas e ssin descuento ninguno e sin mengua: que sabriemos queles ponien enellas los nuestros arrendadores muy grandes menguas e descuentos e cohechos, en guisa quelas auien mal paradas. A esto rrespondemos quelo tenemos por bien, e para adelante assy lo mandaremos guardar; e aun aquellos que an querella de algunos cogedores e arrendadores sobre esto, muestrenlo alos nuestros contadores, e mandarle hemos ffazer dello derecho.

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[In respect of the mercy you requested regarding the lands of mine and my sons that you possess, which are greatly discounted, and we have placed them in such a manner that there were certain ones and without any discount and without decrease: that we know that our landlords inflicted great decreases and discounts and bribes upon them, due to which they are in a poor state. To this we respond that we agree with that, and we have decided that from here on it must be observed; and those that have complained of some bribers or landlords regarding this should demonstrate such to our accountants, and we will apply the law.]8 The content of this chapter evinces the king’s acceptance of territorial domains belonging to the knights of the Sash. This could be easily understood in the case of ricos hombres who were members of the Sash and whose mayorazgos—the Castilian right of primogeniture—could be constituted by jurisdictional seigneuries of uneven relevance. The chapter, however, makes particular reference to other knights and squires who are not necessarily ricos hombres. The Book marks a clear distinction between ricos hombres and knights or squires regarding the ownership of land. For example, in chapter 10, which regulates the assistance to members of the Sash during the Pentecostal commemoration in court: “Et el que non veniere a esta fiesta non auiendo por sy el escusa que dicha es, sy fuere de los ricos omnes quel tome el rey de la tierra del para sacar quatro catiuos, et si fuere cauallero o escudero, quel tome para sacar dos catiuos” [“And he who does not attend this commemoration without providing an excuse, if he is one of the ricos hombres, he must pay the king enough land to set four captives free, and if he is one of the knights or squires, to set two captives free”] (Libro, chap. 10). These knights and squires are among those who own land that once belonged to the king or his sons, land that was received as a benefit. It is to this type of land grant that it specifically refers, not to the land of a mayorazago (which does not belong to the king). The discount is not, therefore, a type of tax or levy, since neither ricos hombres nor squires were subject to such requirements. According to Hilda Grassotti’s research, land is often synonymous with maravedís, or “metallic income.”9 It is important to note that the calculation of a numeric figure based on land presumes the ownership of said land. The Segundo Ordenamiento not only omits this chapter, but also changes substantially the one that appears in the Book as chapter 10 and addresses meetings between the king and his knights. Aside from other differences that will be considered further on, the Segundo Ordenamiento also eliminates the

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reference to the possession of land transcribed in the previous paragraph. Both omissions regarding land suggest that the Segundo Ordenamiento avoids all manner of royal intervention over the possessions, loans, or benefits granted to the knights. This appears to indicate a retreat in the execution of royal authority regarding the knights of the Sash. The reason for this retreat could be found in the development of jurisdictional seigneuries among the new noble lineages that arose after the end of the fourteenth century and in the consequent reduction of benefit grants on the part of the king. In fact, there was a substantive evolution and transformation of the most influential lineages in the royal sphere between the time of Alfonso XI and the Trastamaran period. While Alfonso XI constructed a new array of lineages around himself, using chivalry among other political artifacts or devices, the Trastamarans saw these new names being consolidated with those who were already established during the reign of Juan I. The lineages that emerged from the Alfonsine period were those who proved dominant in Trastamaran Castile, at least during the reigns of Juan I trhough Juan II.10 To be gleaned from this intervention upon the text then is a major transformation for the social provenance and the public role of the knights of the Sash. In certain instances, the Book confers the king powers that the writers of the Segundo Ordenamiento viewed as excessive in their representation as well as their execution. Chapters 13 and 14 of the Book (reordered in the Segundo Ordenamiento as chapters 17 and 10) repress any verbal or armed confrontations between members of the Sash. In the case of a verbal confrontation, the Book stipulates that the culprits be reprimanded by the king, who will preside over a tribunal constituted by another twelve knights. The Segundo Ordenamiento addresses this issue in chapter 17, but the section on the amendment is transferred to chapter 10, where it addresses armed confrontations. It also leaves the king alone in the tribunal, failing to mention his twelve knights. This may appear casual unless we observe that the Segundo Ordenamiento always avoids the sight of the king surrounded by twelve knights (cf. Book, chap. 22, Segundo Ordenamiento, chap. 21). The mythical, sacralized representation of a king with his twelve apostles or peers thus appears inconceivable to the writers of the Segundo Ordenamiento. In the chapter addressing armed confrontations of the Segundo Ordenamiento the text also tries to limit the king’s powers of arbitration, or as the Book designates it, his “will” (aluedrio). The Book prescribes that he who first wields the sword be limited to wearing only half of the sash for a period of two months and the second one should be “que finque en aluedrio del rey & de los caualleros de la vanda quel den aquella pena que entendieren que meresçe”

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[“subject to the will of the king and of his knights of the Sash who will issue the penalty that they deem deserved”] (chap. 19). The Segundo Ordenamiento, in turn, relieves the king of this arbiter role and simply concludes that “que ayan esta mesma pena tan bien el uno como el otro” [“the same penalty should apply to one and the other”] (chap. 10); that is, both infractors should wear only half a sash for two months. The Book is predicated on the concepts of chivalry and loyalty. These will constitute the logic of the ruling in a very specific manner. Chivalry is defined as Christianity’s key institution, “la más alta et más preciada orden que Dios fizo” [“the highest and most valuable order that God created”] (Book and Segundo Ordenamiento, prologue), and this definition is elaborated, making reference to the dual frontier occupation of Christianity and the kingdom. The referents of the Book are by now well known and date back to the historical books of the Bible, recast to the same end by a series of treatise writers, from Giles of Rome in the thirteenth century to Gutierre Díez de Games in fifteenth-century Castile.11 Aside from minimal modifications to improve the text’s syntax, the Segundo Ordenamiento does not introduce major variations. Both texts coincide in the close relationship between chivalry and the social structure of the ordines and with the feudal principle of a knight’s permanence within his own state. The inclusion (and even reclusion) of the knight to his state is an element of his frontier role, of his close knowledge of social, spiritual, and territorial frontiers. The concept of loyalty is mainly a judicial-political concept. The legalitas (Partidas 1.1.4) is also translated as the dual idea of love, both political and sentimental; it is the bond that unites vassals to their lord and the bond that unites the knight to his beloved. Alfonso X is the likely source for the knightly relationship of loyalty, specifically in Partidas 2.21.9. A second model is introduced at this point, one that translates the idea of love and political loyalty to the sentimental realm. This idea does not arise from any specific juridical or political tradition, but is incorporated in the Book of the Sash as a result of the tradition of the chivalric novel and chivalric literature in general. We may discern therein the political allegory of models such as the Amadís, whose first version probably stems from the realm of Alfonso XI or similar Arthurian chivalric traditions that the king seemed to favor— judging by the reactions of some of the political scholars of the Alfonsine period, such as Alvaro Pais or García de Castrojeriz.12 This elaboration of the concept of love constitutes an advancement regarding enterprises like the Hermandad de 1315, in which this principle was merely invoked as an element of politics or courtesy. Henceforth, the Book establishes a dialogue with

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a space for reflection regarding chivalry that proves crucial to the construction of chivalric ideals. Moreover, in theoretical, juridical, and legal treatises on chivalry, the Book does not attempt to define an ideal, engaged as it is in specific regulations instead. Nonetheless, the treatise author has not overlooked the fact that the ideal—that is, the sentimental, affective nuance of the chivalric universe—may also be a method to control chivalric action. In the first chapter it introduces emotional and abstract elements delineated by a political and judicial hermeneutics. The objects of desire of the knight are there hierarchicized to achieve the construction of the bounds of behavior of the particular morality of a member of the Sash: first, there is God and the boundary between religion and Christianity; second, the king as a projection of power and foundation of the territorial and political boundary; third, a woman, as the libidinal object of the chivalric novel, but also articulated as a metaphor for political love and as an element of control of the moral rectitude of the knight, since the woman always sees all his actions and judges him based on them;13 fourth, the love for oneself, a horizontal love that subsumes the I into the we of all the fellow members of the order and into the wider concept of the order itself. The Book ascribes an especially important role to the woman, while the Segundo Ordenamiento eliminates it or limits it substantially. I cannot ascertain the approach of chapter 6 of the Book, since it was lost along with the four central folios (two bifolios are missing) that vanished from the first quaternion. Only Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres, Ambrosio de Morales—via the Escorial manuscript Y-II-3—and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos have read the P text. By the time Georges Daumet edited it in 1923, the book had already lost two folios and it is impossible to determine whether Jovellanos was able to read it in its entirety. Gutiérrez de Torres appears to be the first one who had access to a complete version, perhaps this very manuscript. Thus, trusting this version, which seems faithful, in every other aspect, to P, chapter 6 could include many of the following ideas in a similar manner: si alguna dueña o donzella fija dalgo viniese a la corte del rey por algund desaguisado o injusticia que le fuesse fecha, que los caualleros de la vanda o qualquier dellos la pusiessen delante del rey & mostrassen su derecho & razonassen por ella para que le fiziessen lo que el rey fallasse con su corte que se deue fazer porque ella ouiesse de auer todo su derecho. & dezia el ordenamiento en esta manera: pare mientes el cauallero de la vanda a do viere alguna dueña o donzella que fuere a pie y el estuuiere caualgando, que decienda luego y

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se vaya para ella & la acompañe fasta su posada & le faga entender como la pueda ayudar. [if any noble dame or noble damsel appeared at the king’s court on account of any insult or injustice committed against her, the knights of the Sash or any of them should present her before the king and put her rights in evidence and argue on her behalf to comply with that which the king determined with his court that should be done, so that all her rights may be safeguarded & the ordinance said thus: the knight of the Sash must halt upon noticing a dame or damsel walking on foot while he is riding his horse, dismount his horse and approach her and accompany her up to her dwelling & inquire with her how he may be of assistance.] The content has well-known models in Arthurian literature, which was read and translated in the Iberian Peninsula since the first third of the fourteenth century. It is often in the prose tradition of Arthurian Vulgate and post-Vulgate—the best known in the Peninsula—that the adventure is launched following the sudden appearance in court of a damsel asserting her rights, in the manner of the romans in verse of the so-called postclassical period (that is, the tradition that imitates and perpetuates the one inaugurated by Chrétien de Troyes). It is likewise in Amadís and in Zifar—during the first adventure where Zifar and his family are reunited after the expatriation, as well as at the moment when Zifar becomes king of Menton. This tradition is linked to one of the key elements of chivalric traditions: the transformation of the structures of familial ties vis-à-vis an endogamous feudal structure. One of the reasons why the adventure is linked to the feminine character has to do with the quest for marital ties—to be sought within the ranks of nobility yet beyond the realm of close family.14 This is no longer applicable in either the Alfonsine or the Sash’s universe, but its courtly presence is reflected in the way the Book invokes the feminine role. The entire passage, however, is treated somewhat differently in the Segundo Ordenamiento. First, there is no chapter devoted to the feminine role, but it is addressed within the context of another general discussion: Conuiene a todo cauallero de la vanda que sienpre tenga vnos paños en que aya vanda, aun que non los pueda traer de cada dia que los vista vna vez en la selmana & mas si mas pudiere & otrosi el su andar que sea el mas sosegado que pudiere & que nunca calçe

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botas nin çapatos nin traya las calças arrodelladas. Et otrosi el su fablar que non sea muy apriesa nin muy abozes & que pare mientes siempre en su lengua. & que nunca diga palabras torpes Et señalada mente que nunca faga nin diga ningund agrauio contra ninguna dueña nin contra muger donzella fija dalgo & ueniente a la corte del rrey a querellar de algund desaguysado que le ayan fecho que los caualleros dela vanda o qual quier dellos que la pongan antel rrey por que pueda mostrar su derecho & avn si cumpliere que razone por ella por que aya cumplimineto de derecho & aun de mas del rrazonar que faga lo quel rrey fallare con su corte que deue fazer por que ella aya todo su derecho. [It is advisable that any knight of the Sash always have with him clothes that feature the Sash, even if he cannot wear them every day, in which case, he should wear them once a week and more often if possible & also that his gait be as calm as he can sustain it and that he never wear boots or shoes, and do not wear knee-high stockings. Moreover, his speech should not be rushed or loud and he must be able to refrain his tongue and that he never pronounce uncouth words. And particularly that he never do or say anything that may constitute an offense against noble dame or damsel. And if she comes to the king’s court to complain about any insult upon her, the knights of the Sash or any one of them should present het before the king so she may assert her right; and if it is appropriate, the knights must even to argue on her behalf and to ensure the upholding of her right and to ensure compliance with what the king and his court may deem suitable to be done to safeguard her rights.] These details may seem incidental and the Segundo Ordenamiento summarizes chapters 5 and 6 of the Book.15 Nonetheless, the Segundo Ordenamiento continues to obscure the importance of the feminine role in the order’s regulation and does so precisely in the site most traditionally linked to female decision within courtesan culture: her role at the post of a tournament or a joust. Chapters 23 and 24 of the Book offer a detailed account of the norms that govern the tournament (23) and the joust (24). For the most part, these are technicalities that Noel Fallows intends to describe appropriately in his forthcoming work.16 Within the regulations for the tournament and the joust, the Book incorporates female voices of authority, and of the damsels (unmarried women) with whom the field crew must consult to determine who are the

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winners of the tournament, the most distinguished knights, and the recipients of the jewel, a prize whose feminine connotation also has its provenance in chivalric novels as well as in the woman who gazes, as referred to by José Enrique Ruiz Doménec.17 All these details, without exception, disappear in the Segundo Ordenamiento. It would be difficult to explain this omission if we bear in mind that this occurred during one of the rising moments of courtly culture and of its literary and representative dimension in Castile and León. Perhaps it owes to the specificity of the process of the writing of the order: he who recasts it endeavors to render it a masculine concern, most likely because he conceives of a knightly order as a military corps, and the tournaments and jousts as appropriate exercises of this military stance. To exclude women is to limit the courtly and literary nuances present in the Book in favor of an ordained structure, linked to the transmission of the Segundo Ordenamiento as a judicial text within the framework of royal ordinances. This evinces a fundamental difference and signals a radicalization of the dominant language and of male practices. Ultimately, the problem is not that women participate in the realm of play, but that their exclusion also constitutes the limitation of all performative and cultural acts associated with the courtly universe. This exclusion, in a sense, unhinges one of the fundamental principles of a tournament or joust as a ludic engagement common to all, pushing it beyond the scope of sporting activity and recasting it as a vehicle to accomplish political, military, and personal ends. Indeed, historians like Maurice Keen have favored the study of the political and military functions of the tournaments and read them as an exchange of military tactics and strategies. Because of their popularity, and because knights came together from far and wide to attend great tournaments, they were a powerful force toward generalizing both the standards and the rituals of European chivalry. The fact that their popularity grew in the face of the church’s consistent censure, gives us, moreover, a further measure of the degree to which the development of chivalric attitudes and values progressed independent of the official climate of ecclesiastical opinion.18 This is a perfectly acceptable perception of the issue, yet it undoubtedly overlooks the fact that the tournament is, perhaps mainly, a cultural device wherein personal and collective power are enacted and whose relationship with romanesque and fictional models is crucial yet also perceived with a certain degree of irony. This tension between the romanesque settings of the tournament and

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the irony in its reception is present above all in the historiographic narrations that we occasionally approach as notarized records of specific facts and events. Nearly twenty years after the death of the king, the writer of the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI (Great Chronicle of Alfonso XI) delighted in the description of tournaments and the manner in which the king himself mingled with the adventurous knights and seized the opportunity to note the importance that the tournaments had for Alfonso.19 The participation of the king as an adventurous knight is at least unwise and perhaps also improbable outside of the text of the Gran Crónica, which is strongly imbued with chivalric narration. Nevertheless, the chroniclers had a keen sense of the difference between the military chivalric techniques and activities and their cultural enactments during tournaments. While recounting the siege of Algeciras, the author of the Crónica makes us aware of the rough Castilian knights and their orderly military activity alongside a group of foreigners who wish to lend their aid to the king. The chronicler pauses to describe the foreigners’ weapons, particularly, their helms, feathers, and accouterments, only to reveal that their ornamentation and errant knight distinction are ineffectual in real combat and drag them to defeat or death.20 In these circumstances, the key to victory was the concrete understanding of warfare by these new crusaders (Alfonso had secured a dispensation for his military incursions in southern Iberia). The chronicle’s narrative is highly rhetorical and most likely fulfilled an objective similar to that achieved in the Cantar de mio Cid by the confrontation between the disheveled troops led by the Cid uphill and the elegant army of the count of Barcelona, outfitted in the latest French fashion, who were also approaching—illustrating the absurdity of the courtly removed from its proper cultural milieu.21 The rules of tournaments and jousts included in both the Book and the Segundo Ordenamiento (without female participation in the latter) entail an infraction of the regulations defined in canonic and ecclesiastical law since 1130, especially through papal letters. Successive prohibitions between the council of Clermont and Lateran IV would render the tournaments gradually less sanguinary while more culturally opulent and innovative. Throughout this development the chivalric imaginary also had a crucial role, as the tournament soon became a stage for the fiction of chivalry via the incorporation of tournaments organized from the start with well-defined parameters to secure their grandeur and thematic focus.22 Alfonso X had adopted many of the stipulations of Clermont in both the Espéculo 3.7.5 and in Partidas 1.13. In the former he asserted that the tournament was an illicit activity that was only justifiable in battle. In Partidas 1.13.10, when discussing burials and sepulchers, the le-

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gislator warned that those who had perished in a tournament were not to be buried in the Catholic cemetery: Torneamiento es una manera de uso de armas que fazen los cavalleros e los otros omes en algunos logares, e acaesce a las vegadas que mueren algunos dellos. E porque entendió santa Eglesia que nascen ende muchos peligros e muchos daños, también a los cuerpos como a las almas, defendió que lo non fiziessen. E para esto vedar más firmemente, puso por pena a los que entrassen en el torneamiento e allí muriessen, que los non soterrassen en el cementerio con los otros fieles Cristianos. [A tournament is a kind of practice in arms which knights and others engage in in certain localities, and it occasionally happens that some of them are killed; and for the reason that the Holy Church understood that there arise from this source many dangers and injuries to their bodies as well as to their souls, it forbade their celebration. In order the better to abolish these pastimes it imposed as a penalty that those who took part in a tournament and died there, should not be buried in a cemetery with other true Christians.] The Book is able to distance itself from the realm of the law and to deploy more dynamic courtly resources. It does not define the tournament itself, however, or remove it from a more strictly institutional scope. The joust and the tournament are depicted in the Book and in the Segundo Ordenamiento as vehicles for the selection of knights of the Sash, rather than as performances. Chapters detailing how a knight may earn the Sash, despite the “honor present within” an individual knight, are based on the abilities that the aspiring knight demonstrates as a tournament or joust contender amid particularly unfavorable circumstances. If a knight wears the Sash without being a member of the order, two knights of the Sash will challenge him to a joust. Should the challenged knight win, the aspiring member will be compelled to swear in the presence of those attending the first scheduled tournament to reinstate his membership to the order (chap. 8). All this indicates that both the tournament and the joust were conceived as specific campaigns with specific ends, as events that are exclusively associated with the institution’s conception. Nevertheless, even within the institution, the regulations attempt to control the ghastly consequences of the tournament that had been forewarned by the ecclesiastical legal authorities. Therefore, the norms governing tournaments

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and jousts require that blunt weaponry be used and that a fallen contender may not be trampled by another knight, among other stipulations to limit the flow of blood. In this regard, it is noteworthy that both the absence from the tournament and the flow of blood are penalized in a similar fashion. These selective norms that tend to control violence by means of certain principles of etiquette are consonant with books on tournament rules written around the same time by the French noble Geoffroi de Charny (d. 1356) and with the violence they aim to control. Charny’s books were quite well known throughout Europe, above all the Demandes pour la joute, le tournoi et la guerre. His work was passed on in luxurious codices, one of which (mutilated by a miniature collector) was housed in an aristocratic Castilian library from the end of the fourteenth century and resurfaced in the second half of the fifteenth century in the library of Pedro Fernández de Velasco, first count of Haro.23 The political utility of the tournament should not be overlooked. The following passage of the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, which is inspired at this point by the Crónica de Alfonso XI, recounts the moment of chivalric investiture of Guichard de Lebert, viscount of Tartes, who, contrary to what some scholars assume, was never a knight of the Sash: E en tanto que venian aquellos por quien el rey avie embiado, el rrey e los que alli eran con el no dexavan de honrrar la ffiesta de su caualleria e de su coronaçion, los vnos lançando a tablados en muchas partes de la villa, e los otros bofordando a lança e escudo cada dia; e otrosi tenien puestas dos tablas para justar, e los caualleros de la vanda, quel rrey avia hordenado e fecho poco avie, estauan todo el dia armados quatro dellos en cada tabla, e mantenien justa a todos los que querian justar con ellos; e por que venien estonçes muchas gentes de fuera del rreyno en rromeria a Santiago e passauan por Burgos por el camino frances, el rrey mandaua estar onbres en la calle por do passauan los rromeros que preguntasen por los que eran caualleros e escuderos, e dezianles que viniese a justar. . . . E en este tienpo estando el rrey en este plazer, vino ay Guicardo de Labret vizconde de Tartas, et dixo al rrey que era su boluntad de rresçebir el honrra de caualleria . . . e de alli adelante quedo por su vasallo.24 [And as those that the king summoned came, the king and those that were there with him did not stop honoring the celebration of his knighthood and his coronation, some on stages in many parts

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of the town, and others fighting with lance and shield every day; and there were additionally two plots for jousting, and the knights of the Sash, who the king had ordained and knighted not long ago, were assembled four per plot the entire day, and jousted with whomever desired to joust with them; and because many people from outside the kingdom came to Santiago on their pilgrimage at that time and passed through Burgos on the camino Francés, the king commanded the men to be in the street through which the pilgrims passed, who would ask if they were knights or squires, and ask them if they would come to joust. . . . And at this time with the king in said place, came Guichard de Lebert, viscount of Tartes, and told the king that it was his will to receive the honor of knighthood . . . and from thereon was his vassal.] The tournament is a representational form of the power of the new king. At no point is it indicated that the Gascon viscount has been made a knight of the Sash. The chronicler in this case goes beyond the particular circumstances of the Sash, and alludes to its true political relevance: Guichard de Lebert explicitly requests to be knighted by the king, thereby becoming his natural vassal. Once again the chronicler distinguishes between the attraction and representation ceremony and the general political value of the other gestures. Taking into account that this chronicle was written during the time of Enrique II, natural son of Alfonso XI, whose alliance with the kingdom of France had provided him with victory over his stepbrother Pedro I, the political impact of the French noble becoming a vassal of the king of Castile by act of knightly investiture is all the more noteworthy. In any event, said noble never appears in the registers of the Sash.25 Indeed, the tournament is a universal celebration that situates the center of gravity in the political body of the organizer. It is unnecessary to highlight the extent to which this fact is crucial in political times and settings of weak legitimacy, as occurs with the first years of the reign of Alfonso XI or Pedro I. The tournament is a form of attracting the iuventus mundi—the knighthood—to a fixed power space and, at the same time, as Keen argued in the previous quote, a way to convey the customs of a powerful knightly monarchy. Ultimately, it is a celebration of holy, political, and above all cultural legitimization.26 The literary and court sources seem to be clear. Although Alvaro Pais argued that the training of the kings, and particularly Alfonso XI, was provided by the Holy Scriptures, it seems more evident that Alfonso was especially interested in courtly narrative and poetry, and hence reproaches it in a general

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manner: “Vnde multum conuenit regibus crebro Sanctas Scripturas et sanctos libros legere uel audire et non romanços, in quibus fabulae et uanitates et mendacia et carnis delectabilia continentur, ut per exercitium sanctae lectionis et scientiae, regendi populum inueniant margaritam.” [“It is very convenient that the kings read and listen daily to the Holy Scriptures and to the sacred books, but not to the romances, in which there are fables, vanities, lies, and matters that only appeal to carnal pleasures, so they behave inspired by the study and science of the sacred, and are able to better rule their people”].27 The definition corresponds with that used by lawyers and moralists, well into the seventeenth century, to refer to books about chivalry and sentimental novels (Sarmatti, Le critiche). The Arthurian novel related to the Vulgate and the post-Vulgate, as well as its Hispanic version, such as Amadís, is present in this manner of writing the institution through the Book. The corresponding texts of the Partidas are also present, some of them already mentioned and others that are not. Also present are political elements of the third part of book 3 of De regimine principum, by Giles of Rome, which had been translated in 1345 and annotated for Alfonso XI by Juan García de Castrojeriz at the request of Bernabé, bishop of Osma. There are also tournament regulations in imitation of the first regulations promulgated by Edward I of England at the end of the thirteenth century, in which they regulate the blunt weapons for à plaisance confrontations and the functions of the fieles (tournament judges), or diseurs, among others.28 Finally, the composition of the Book is a complex framework of monarchical construction that invokes the chivalric traditions at will to put forth a legal, political, and cultural triptych. Throughout the Book I see an attempt to intervene in this complex dialogue between political theory and legal regulations, on one hand, and the literary and courtly universe of the knighthood on the other. Political theory and legal regulations are also well aware of the dissimilar perspectives of Alfonso X and Don Juan Manuel regarding chivalry.29 Chapters dedicated to the behavior of the brothers of the Sash constitute one of the spaces in which that dialogue transpires. The Alfonsine part is taken from the titles of Partidas 2 dedicated to the behavior of the king, as an ideal projection of the entire idea of chivalry, and in particular, from the laws that govern food and beverage, which come from Partidas 2.5.2 and are reflected in 2.21.19. One of the spaces in which the union of theoretical projects and chivalric novelesque projects occurs is the court, which is a special focus of the Book. The most notable aspect of this orientation is of clear Arthurian stock and consists of the necessity of the knights of the Sash to join the king in the Pentecostal celebration (Çinquaesma in the Spanish text). The knights of the

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Round Table meet on the eve of Pentecost in Camelot, to celebrate the holiday with King Arthur. A lady enters to demand the presence of Lancelot, who exits with her. The reader knows more than the knights, as the latter are not aware that the greatest knight in the world has left to knight a young squire. The anxious knights discuss this departure while they enter the room that houses the Round Table. The name of each knight has been magically written in the knights’ respective seats; in the Siege Perilous, in which many knights had been struck down by their pride, a surprise awaits: Et ainsi alerent tant qu’il vindrent au grant siege que len apeloit le Siege Perilleux. Et lors i troverent lettres qui i avoient novelement esté escrites, ce lor fu avis. Et il regarderent les lettres qui dient: .cccc. anz et .liiii. sont acompli emprés la passion Jhesucrist, et au jor de la Pentecouste doit cist sieges trover son mestre.” [And thus they proceeded until they arrived at the great seat that they named the “Siege Perilous.” Once there they found an inscription that appeared to them to have been recently written. Then they saw that the text read as follows: “454 years have passed since the passion of Jesus Christ, and this seat shall find its master on the day of Pentecost.]30 The Pentecost celebration is the moment when knights meet with the king and consider a new adventure before dinner. An adventure that could reproduce the most important part of the history of the Christian narrative: the moment in which the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles before they individually reach earth to preach. This is an adventure that occurs in the presence of the Master. The reproductions of holiness are made evident. Arthur is the character upon whom models of French and English theocracy are projected.31 Castile is a kingdom where royal holiness is scarcely established, and one of the chapters is this representation that appears in the Book jointly with the Pentecostal meeting: the Book posits the king as pater et magister, who meets with his knights in anticipation of grand adventure. It is necessary to confirm the courtly space, to create a center of attraction around his person, following definitional criteria of the court that stretch from Walter Map in his De nugis curialum to Alfonso X in Partidas 2.9.32 These obligations constitute an imaginary and emotional resource to help construct the legalities regarding the necessity of the warriors to help the king in the quest, which are regulated in book 3 of the Espéculo, in Partidas 2.23, and elsewhere. The important aspect

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in this instance is how the dialogue with literature is a fundamental argument to forge a bond between political and legal reason and the affection that unites the king and his knights by means of the concept of love, chivalric fiction, and the ways of life proposed by the latter. In turn, the knight himself is invested with a holy charisma, as the knighthood invokes his character. The king-teacher, whose representational center is situated in the Pentecost, is now the one who bestows the emblems and symbols before they travel (and conquer) in his name. The thesis about the localization and mobility of the knighthood as a function of the idea of monarchical sovereignty is thus assembled: the metaphor of Pentecost is the metaphor of central jurisdiction, in which a sole instance of power is capable of concentrating the power of monarchical discourse and disseminating it by knights who represent extensions, organs, as it were, of his political body. It is extraordinarily significant that the Segundo Ordenamiento alters this chapter entirely. The Book constructs all the holiness of the celebration of Pentecost in chapter 10 and binds it to the patron saint that invested Alfonso by his own hand, as well as to ceremonial acts of mercy, such as the liberation of captives. In turn, the Segundo Ordenamiento (chap. 15) eliminates the last two reasons with all their related conditions and reschedules this meeting. The Segundo Ordenamiento then increases the number of meetings to at least three during years when such meetings cannot be held every two months. These three meetings will be held on Easter Sunday, on the feast of St. John the Baptist (Midsummer), and on Christmas. Of course, in the previously discussed liberation process of the knights with respect to the king there is no penalty accompanying the absence of the knights, and part of its institutional character is also lost: while the Book warns that this meeting will be used to prove which knights have obeyed the regulations and which have not, which in religious and military orders implies the meeting of the reading of the chapter, the Segundo Ordenamiento limits it to a display of arms and horse for the king’s review. As previously stated, any reference to penalties that involved territorial concessions are excluded here. A royal ordinance is made to be copied incessantly. This is contrary to what occurs with the Ordinance of Alcalá, or with the copies of the Partidas that Alfonso XI and Pedro I ensure are sealed and held in the royal chambers. Additionally, contrary to what occurs with the appearances of a regal codex that holds the codicological ruin that I designated earlier as P, the royal ordinance does not vouch for its place within tradition. It does not tell in which branch it is found, whether it bears seals, or if it is usually copied in gold. It possesses a labile character, a more circumstantial application. Thus, it gener-

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ally responds to a specific necessity, instead of establishing a new concept of law. The Ordinance of Alcalá and the Partidas, and even the Book as it appears in P—to the extent that it contains of an order constituting an institution— create a new concept of law. These texts, stamped and written in gold, bearing the marks of the king, are intended to be public documents. Through the multiple copies divided into thick codices of ordinances, the Segundo Ordenamiento claims loudly its secret and inviolable, its magical and incommunicable content. Paradoxically, it takes this idea much farther than its predecessor, the royal P codex, which asserts at the end of chapter 22: “Et todas estas cosas que dichas son que las guarden entresy los caualleros de la vanda & que non las digan a otros” [“And all these matters are observed among the knights of the Sash and are not communicated to others”]. The Segundo Ordenamiento, in turn, manifests a concern that differs completely from the disclosure of the content of the regulations. Its version of the same issue, in chapter 21, reads as follows: Et otrosi dezimos que qual quier cauallero de la vanda que descubriere a otro cauallero que non sea de la vanda alguna de las cosas que en este libro se contienen quel den por pena que non traya la vanda en estos tres meses & si otro cauallero de la vanda que lo viere o que lo supiere que ge lo diga luego al maestre & sy non ge lo descobriere que aya esa mesma pena que ha de auer el que faze el yerro & esta pena sera por la primera vez pero si la segunda les cayere que sea la pena doblada. [And moreover we say that any knight of the Sash who reveals any of the contents of this book to another knight that does not belong to the Sash, shall not be allowed to wear the Sash for three months in reprimand; and if another knight of the Sash sees and knows about it he must later tell the master; and if he does not disclose said transgression, he shall bear the same punishment as the man who committed the infraction and for the first instance, but for the second instance the punishment shall be double.] The text is very clear, just as its interpretation. At the foreground is the social magic that the secret institution exercises by means of its exclusive knowledge. After reading the regulations, one may question oneself candidly about that which must be kept secret. I could label almost the entirety of the regulations as obvious, and I would not be the first in doing so. It is the secret

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itself that has legal value, and not the content of what must be kept secret. The secret establishes the distinction between those who know and those who do not (although what they know may be trivial). It also sets apart those who cannot gain access to this knowledge without ever having crossed a legal frontier through a ritual system. The Order of the Sash is not properly keeping a secret; the secret hinges on who keeps it, on who is the owner of the secret. It makes the owners depositories of a mark of prestige that goes farther than bodily conditions, of graphic marks (the Sash) or lineage (although the regulations show that only hidalgos could become knights of the Sash). The Sash thus defines a noblesse d’état, that is, a nobility that transcends lineage, inheritance, and hierarchical circumstances, and is based on its intellectual position and knowledge with respect to the rest of society.33 The paradox continues: the research documents are made public to declare the presence and the content of the secret. The legal ordinance codices are handbooks whose end is to be used. Their readers are not, certainly, ravenous novel enthusiasts, but generally lawyers who work in public matters and who need to have access to the legal sources to prepare their cases. The codices are also components of libraries, to be used in the libraries of royalty or nobility where lawyers perform their work. Since they are frequently used texts—reference texts—there are many and they are complex, systemized, and endlessly copied (either copied in full or by the quire, following the pecia system). We can heretofore assert that the legal regulation of the Order of the Sash enjoys greater visibility than the Order itself. Indeed the most prevalent aspect is the text that established the order, whose relevance supersedes that of the institution itself. It is as if the secret existed to warrant the invisibility of the order, whereas the publication of the regulation by means of legal instruments provided constant faith in its existence and its conditions, and that these must remain as the only and inviolable patrimony of a select group of owners of the secret. The redaction of the Book could be examined in relation to a certain point of the book of pleas of the Cortes of Alcalá of 1348. This plea shows that after the siege of Algeciras (a Merine or Benemerine taifa) by Alfonso XI’s troops (1342), the hidalgo knights of the king were in a pitiful situation: Alo que nos pidieron merçed quelos nuestros ffijos dalgo non estauan bien guisados como cumplie, e queles ffiziesemos merçed con que se pudiesen guisar para nuestro seruiçio, ca por los annos que

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ffueron muy fuertes despues que vinieron de Algezira a aca, e por la grand costa que auien ffecho ante desto, tanto ouieron que ffazer en se mantener, que non se pudieron guisar de cauallos e de armas. A esto rrespondemos quelo tenemos por bien, e nos cataremos manera commo les ffagamos merced. [In respect of the mercy you request from us that our hidalgos were not as well provided as they should be, and that we give them some compensation so that they could prepare themselves for our service, because the very hard years they had to suffer after they came from Algeciras until now, and because of the expenses they had to endure before the campaign of Algeciras, they had to spend so much to keep themselves that they could not provide themselves with horses and arms. To this we respond that we have made a favorable decision, and we will find a way to give them such mercy.]34 Without knowing exactly when to date the composition of the Segundo Ordenamiento, it is difficult to reach general conclusions in this respect. It could be from the era of Juan I, although the vast majority of the initial transfer could belong to the end of the reign of Enrique III; or perhaps, even to the period of the regency of Fernando de Antequera (who was also the founder of a chivalric order in honor of the Virgin Mary, known as the Orden de la Jarra y el Grifo (The Jar and the Griffin). It is certain, however, that the writing of the institution of the Order of the Sash is the fruit of a constant dialectic of vocabulary about knighthood. Perhaps the most surprising aspect regarding the writing the institution in this chapter is that it seems to be the substance itself of the institution’s existence. It would be exceedingly difficult to identify the specific details, the glorious feats, the participation in chivalric events, or the legacy of the brothers of the Sash. The names that appear in the chronicles are very different from those that appear registered in the lists that contain the different copies of the regulations. Few names coincide; it is as if there were two different orders of the Sash, one confined to the ordinances, and another half-hidden order, whose fragments and ruins surge from time to time in historiography. The farther the historical narrative is from the events that it narrates, the more frequent are the mentions of the Order of the Sash. The Sash receives a few mentions in the Poema de Alfonso XI, fewer yet in the Crónica de Alfonso XI; loose pieces written by the man who claims to be lieutenant of the banner of the Sash, the chronicler Pero López de Ayala; something more

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in the Bienandanzas e fortunas of Lope García de Salazar (1399–1476), and later, progressively more in Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres Sumario (1524), or in the Crónica de Alfonso XI, published in 1551. It seems to be little more than an artifact in ruins from its inception, one that survives through its rewritings. As seen earlier, codex P of the Book is the clearest and most tragic manifestation of this ruin. Yet it is a success of a ruin. Even though the institution insists on its inexistence, its textual record insists on granting it a presence, in bringing it to the world, until all the historians (the more distant, the better) are convinced that, indeed, there were knights of the Sash that lived with the regulations in hand and carried out memorable deeds. The poetics of the order resides in this process: flooding the historical discourse with texts about the institution, creating these legal marks of action, incessantly, as a requirement for modernity and political action. This flooding is one of the keys to constructing the poetics of the chivalric order as a semblance of political action and consolidation of monarchical sovereignty. The success of these texts is enormous: they have created the Order of the Sash beyond the specific event. They have launched its errancy and the dissemination of its political meaning—the monarchy—not through territorial geography, but through historical territory. The new space of chivalry is time. Chivalry throughout time is the development of lineage. The concept of lineage is the foundation of networks of families and power structures with an unequal yet permanent distribution of distinct powers—economic, social, political, or legal. The medieval expression “make lineage” does not only allude to the increase of family, but to an increase within aristocratic categories. Lineage and the nobility are indissolubly united as a base of feudal and monarchical society. Lineages, thus, function in a permanent dialectic, as cycles of greater or lesser capacity of action within power structures, but always present in such structures in a diachronic manner. Lineage cannot be grasped in a fleeting instant: it must be understood as part of a longer narrative, as a foundation of the entire history of an imperium, whatever its nature may be. Thus, lineage constitutes the specific structure into which an ordo evolves. The process of rewriting the order, or the poetics of the ordo, cannot be understood from synchrony alone. Only a diachronic process lays the foundations of the ordo. Knighthood is one of the forms in which nobility or semblances of nobility originate. This means that knighthood is the path to political action and community with the monarchy. This is the public hope of knighthood and all chivalric associations share this goal despite their origin or location. There is no chivalric discourse, regardless of origin, that does not

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express itself as a will to establish political and legal relations with the monarchical order. Knighthood, like nobility, does not act solely in the present, however. It engages the past and reaches into the future: in the past, to regain a history of legitimization and search for glorious lineage; and in the future, to establish the means to reaffirm this lineage. Lineage is one of the keys of the poetics of the ordo because it is the actual permanence of the ordo within the discourse of power throughout time. In sum, chivalry is one of the tools for “making lineage.” The construction of lineages is among the strategies of the rewriting of the Order of the Sash. Lineages appear in the regulation system itself. The rules are never transferred without the names involved and these are integral to the rules. The names, the lines of the Sash, are the specific rules of production of chivalry and aristocracy in the particular sphere defined by the Order of the Sash. The texts treat these names and lineages in differing manners. The Segundo Ordenamiento, by placing the chapter of names in the middle of the text, instead including them at the end as does the Book, freezes these lines and stops them in a particular time, preventing thus the list expansion. The texts that rewrite or recast the narrative of the Sash throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries seek these lineages, in search of their historical significance for the kingdom—or, during the sixteenth century, for the construction of modern Spain. In this instance, the poetics of the ordo is the rewriting of lineage across time, deploying the narrative of the Sash. The Sash acquires new relevance, even greater than in the past, as it becomes the legal and institutional apparatus that reaffirms these lineages in history. In 1437, Alonso de Cartagena (1385–1456), bishop of Burgos and intellectual beacon for an entire generation of nobles, writers, and intellectuals in Spain and Italy, wrote the treatise that would bear the title Doctrinal de los caballeros for the Castilian noble Diego Gómez de Sandoval (d. 1454), count of Castrojeriz and marquis of Denia. Cartagena composed a work that looks like a legal treatise, conveniently divided into titles and headings, or rubriçellas, according to the seminal idea of offering the interlocutor a theoretic summary, of a legal and historical nature, regarding all that a knight should know. Alonso de Cartagena also excludes information that many knights would like to know, but that he considers to be of little interest to them—an attitude that seems to resurface throughout his intellectual activity.35 All of Cartagena’s work in this respect is largely archaeological: his vision is to establish the legal and political code of knighthood in a historical discourse that refers to a past where the chivalric model is clearly monarchical and based on the system of ideas conveyed by courtly literature.36

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This could seem insignificant were it not for the fact that the representation of knighthood at this time was in another one of its crises, regarding the manner in which many knights and nobles preferred to represent themselves to each other through what I have come to call the Roman model of chivalry. Indeed, following legal innovations taking place in the Italian Peninsula during the fourteenth century, this model allowed them a greater political and jurisdictional presence through the establishment of jurisdictional lordships from the period of the reign of Enrique II (1369–1379) and through the fifteenth century. In this type of lordship, the king grants dominions to certain nobles, who acquired jurisdictional, economic, and taxation rights over these dominions. As I have explained elsewhere, the chivalric fable, as a basic narrative structure of the late medieval chivalric model, has undergone a series of changes and debates that tend to establish a closer bond between knighthood and nobility. The incorporation of the Roman model to the chivalric fable implies a desire on the part of the noble knights to participate in the jurisdictional spheres; precisely the participation that the courtly model of chivalry intends to prohibit, attaching the entire jurisdictional process to the monarchical model.37 The complexity of this issue requires that it be studied in light of other texts. The Cartagena text, specifically, excludes all those innovative texts and incorporates instead the chivalric-monarchical legality of Alfonso X to Alfonso XI.38 It is in this context of already “ancient” texts regarding chivalry that Cartagena includes the Segundo Ordenamiento of the Sash. The final reason for the existence of the ordinance seems to be of a private character. The coat of arms of Diego Gómez de Sandoval mirrors the heraldry of the Sash. It is a sable stripe on a silver field, just like the coat of arms of the Sash at the time of the founding of the order: a black stripe over a white background. The bond of lineage is sufficient for the ordinance to be present, but it does not satisfy Cartagena. The bishop considers that the ordinance is a sign that Alfonso XI was a “famous and proven knight,” and not a “king who wants to make the type of laws used in trials” (Doctrinal 3.5, introduction). For Cartagena, the Sash is, above all, a set of tournament regulations, and therefore in the introduction of the texts he states that all the regulations are repealed by ecclesiastic law. If he decides to transcribe the text, he says, it is “for having known the diligence that the notable king exerted in speaking of the facts of the arms,” but not because the legislation “must be used at present” (3.5, introduction). The Segundo Ordenamiento is therefore an artifact, a sample of how chivalric rules were written at the time that the lineage belonging to Diego Gómez

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de Sandoval was created. It is also a sign of its contemporary futility. The Sash has already granted what it could—lineage, a certain concept of chivalry—yet its project is exhausted. The Doctrinal de los caballeros was enormously successful throughout the fifteenth century and part of the sixteenth century. More than fifteen manuscripts from the fifteenth century indicate an enormous reception, and several editions from Fadrique de Basilea in Burgos (1487) ensure its permanence in tradition.39 It was also the object of plagiarism, in the Tratado de la guerra by Diego Rodríguez de Almela (ca. 1426–after 1492), dedicated to Martín de la Selva and Rodrigo Girón. Neither belongs to the lineages of the Sash, nor do they establish any connection to them. Despite being extraordinarily faithful to its model, Almela omits the ordinance of the Sash.40 The Order of the Sash, its relation to lineage, and its permanence in time form part of the historiographic discourses in print at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In 1524 the Sumario was published in Toledo at the press of Ramón de Petras and signed by Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres, lawyer and judge of the court of Toledo. The Sumario is a miscellaneous work, the first part of which is a review of a history of Spain from several sources. Two of the sources relevant to the present chapter are the Crónica de Alfonso XI by Nuñez de Villaizán and the Book of the Sash. Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres (and strangely not Ambrosio de Morales, who does not leave evidence aside from the fact that he commissioned a copy of the manuscript) seem to be the only one who not only knows but also quotes and uses the text of the Book of the Sash, not the text of the Segundo Ordenamiento, the source heavily used by Alonso de Cartagena and (as we will see below) Antonio de Guevara. Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres is a selective compiler, but is extremely faithful to the sources. He eliminates certain passages, but does not alter those that he copies. It is worth noting that he eliminates all the chapters and stories that the Crónica de Alfonso XI inserts between the founding of the Order of the Sash in Álava and the chivalric investiture of Alfonso XI. For Gutiérrez de Torres, those episodes are useless, so he consolidates the foundation of the order and the investiture of the king (although they take place in different cities, Vitoria and Burgos, respectively), and at no point conflates them. However, the true use of the episodes related to knighthood and to the Sash must be sought in the margins of the Sumario. Gutiérrez de Torres inserts a small ordinatio that allows one to navigate a text written in an extremely compact box in Gothic typography. The sequencing of the text according to the chapters dominates the ordinatio, since they are mere rubrics. But the margin is also a mirror of history. There, throughout a lineal nar-

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rative of history that includes an indeterminate number of people, the marginalia highlights all that belong to the Torres, Gutiérrez, and Fonseca lines, the families to whom the book is dedicated. For Alvar Gutiérrez de Torres, as for many that use the historiographic genre, the reading of history is above all the dislodging of lineage and its relation to the noteworthy deeds of each monarchical period. This is why he incorporates the chapters of the Sash: they are useful in allowing him to locate several members of his line who, according to him, had been honored with the Sash by Alfonso XI.41 Antonio de Guevara (1480–1545), bishop of Mondoñedo, also creates a text about the Order of the Sash that, in his case, seems influenced by the negative brand with which knighthood was stamped following the comuneros uprisings during the early years of the reign of Carlos V—known as the Revolt of the Comuneros or the Communities of Castile. Guevara adapts the text of the Segundo Ordenamiento, which he regards as an original revision by Alfonso XI himself, to the genre of an epistle addressed to the count of Benavente, Alonso Pimentel (d. 1530), and dated 12 December 1526. Three aspects deserve our attention. The first is how the ordinance adapts to the epistle, the second is the history and origin of the Order of the Sash, and the third is the reflection on nobility, lineages, and chivalry that the bishop provides in his letter. The adaptation process of the text to the sphere of the letter constitutes the relative disappearance of the original text. While Cartagena was interested in the literality of the ordinance, and copied every line in his legal compilation to present it free and textually separate from all elements of the commentary (introduction or titles), Guevara is more interested in emphasizing his own discursive, descriptive, and narrative contribution. He does not make a distinction, whether graphic, stylistic, or rhetorical, between the history that he narrates and the ordinance that he copies. Nonetheless, he integrates the regulations of the Segundo Ordenamiento, eliminating the ordinatio of the text and the legal imperative style of the text that he copies, substituting it for the formula “His rule commanded.” Moreover, this formula highlights the archaeological character of the content of the letter and the treatment of the material as an antiquity that is already inapplicable. In an attitude very similar to that of Cartagena, the Sash constitutes a model for Guevara that no one could dream of recuperating—not even Pimentel himself, to whom it is addressed, and who seems to have become interested in the order, perhaps for political motives. The use of the formula “His rule commanded” and the transformation of the style of the text that said formula implies, as written by Guevara, imagines a “past past,” or perfect and unrepeatable past, not unlike

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the lineages that formed the Order of the Sash, whose disappearance Guevara certifies. A similar proposal allows us to view the order described by Guevara. In it, along with several details from the Crónica de Alfonso XI, a paragraph stands out that has gone down in chivalric history as part of the political and legal myth of Alfonso XI. Guevara’s interpretation is that Alfonso blocked “the firstborn sons of knights that had mayorazgos [majorats]” from entering the order and, therefore, set up the order in benefit of the “second or third sons that did not have inheritances, because the intent of the good king Don Alfonso was to honor the hidalgos of his court that had little and could do little” (Las epístolas familiares, 1:252). This perception seems a mythological narrative, a mythologie in the purest Barthesian sense, of the manner in which Alfonso attempts to free himself, by means of the knighthood, of the burden of the ricos hombres and their confrontational stance before the king and the public, as it is evident in the narrative of the Crónica as well as the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI. The third aspect is much more interesting when also placed in this double archaeological perspective of a perfective or conclusive past. It is at the end of the letter, after a copy of the list of the knights of the Sash. This list allows the bishop of Mondoñedo to examine the fortunes of the lineages: those represented in the list are, for the greater part, “not only . . . finished, but above all forgotten” (Las epístolas familiares, 1: 261) and their inheritances gone. The history of Spain traces the appearance of new lines that have gained authority with time and that have established new forms of power, as well as new forms of wisdom and knowledge, a theme that Guevara develops profoundly in this and other letters. The final diagnosis of the bishop is presented in the following manner: Los hijosdalgo y caballeros, por más de ilustre sangre que sean, si tienen poco y pueden poco, téngase por dicho que los han de tener en poco, y por eso les sería muy saludable consejo que antes se quedasen en sus tierras a ser escuderos ricos, que no venir a las cortes de los reyes a ser caballeros pobres, porque de esta manera serían en sus tierras honrados, y así andan por las cortes corridos. [The hidalgos and knights who have little power, despite how illustrious their bloodline may be, will receive poor consideration, and therefore it would be very advisable to them to remain on their lands to be rich squires and to not arrive in the royal court to be poor knights, since they would be honored in their lands,

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instead of being regarded dishonorably in court.] (Las epístolas familiares, 1: 263) With the disappearance of the chivalric lineages, the same knighthood has disappeared or it is desirable for it to disappear. Different values should replace it, which Guevara situates in a different concept of the nobility and royal familiarity, appealing to a vocabulary that departs from knighthood, which is the political advice of classic culture. For Guevara, the universe represented by the Sash of Castile is ethically and politically obsolete, if not extinct. The knights and knighthood in general, then, should no longer be the subject of royal acceptance, nor should they seek the company of the king. They should instead retire to their rural dominions to become hidalgos of the hinterlands, like Don Quixote, and not seek chivalric investiture, but rather remain in a state of mediocrity that precludes involvement in royal politics, whether in active politics, war, or social politics. The knights are burdened with the stigma of having risen up in communities against imperial power and having shown that knights constituted a social group that, if connected by a common order, may also make mutual political demands, such as those made in several statutes by the comuneros against the king and court. The use of the Order of the Sash continues to grow. Modern scholarship that addresses the order, from Ramírez de Arellano, Villanueva, and Daumet to Boulton or Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, tends to enhance the importance and the presence of the Order of the Sash. There seems to be a consensus that the use of the order was limited to its heraldic use or as a source of recognition of some lineages, but that remains an artifact. The ruins of the Book would not have thrived except, precisely, in the poetics of their use, or in their usefulness to the texts; that is, in the fact that they have constituted an episode of history that has been invoked and recalled on several occasions. The Sash is the result of a production of presence in this sequence of rewriting that increases throughout time and gives life to the order itself past its existence as an empirical or extratextual occurrence. The Sash is the permanent inchoateness of a social and political transformation represented by what Eelco Runia would consider a “spot of time,”42 the act by means of which a past time becomes present through metonymy. The act of rewriting the Sash is in effect a metonymic process in which the constitutive parts of power, the gestures, the processes, the book, and above all the lineages, are reinstated. The lineages are a fundamental piece of this metonymic act: each name represents a whole that is manifested in its continuity throughout history. In what manner is power redefined from the discourse of the construction

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of lineage? Dominating the process of creation, growth, and scope of the lineages is a way of delimiting the political territory of the monarchy. Knighthood makes it possible to configure this space, and ascribing knighthood to people, families, and specific lineages is a manner of limiting the ample authority that the monarch has secured for himself. The creation of lineage is articulated by law, but the limitation process is of an exceptional nature. The Ordinance of the Sash may not be a legal document, yet its liminal character allows for its repeated rewritings and transformations. This exceptional character is also evident in that the rewriting and transformations are sieges undertaken from very distinct textual spaces: the political treatise, the historical work, or the epistle, all of which are texts situated somewhere between private and public; all works created to respond to particular needs, but published and disseminated without an associated control system. The construction of lineages is to be construed as an exception because the general framework of law does not stipulate these limits. Nevertheless, the poetics of the ordo is characterized by its potential: it offers perceptible, written solutions to explicitly posed problems. Therefore, this exceptional framework should be considered as a voluntary and explicit expression, as a positive expression of limitation. The ordinance contains a list of names, which becomes limited in the rewritings, when it is frozen in the interior of the text rather than at the end. It is similar to creating a proper space for the lineages represented by those names and vested in the habit of the order. Chivalric alliances outside of the realm of knighthood, as discussed in the previous chapter, secure the permanence of chivalry’s social structure. It is a knighthood whose participants, in name and known lineage, appear as an article of legal ordinances. The names become law. Through the names, a space of hope is created for the monarchy, as the last sphere where the monarch can be recognized. It is a wrinkle in time: the final space of monarchical sovereignty is in the names whose presence becomes permanent.

chapter six

Poetics of the Chivalric Emblem

Every etiological explanation is a myth.1 In many instances, nonetheless, these explanations have a functional role, as in the case of emblems and heraldry. The notion that heraldry addresses the need to identify a subject during battle issues from the origins of the interest for this discipline and is evident even in modern texts.2 This book does not come to a close with a chapter on heraldry to engage in practical etiological explanations. I will provide a perspective on the artifices of the creation of emblems as centerpieces of a political strategy engaged in the production of presence for certain forms of power and their interpretive rules. Heraldry, or rather, the poetics of the emblem, is the creative process through which classes, lineages, families, and subjects that belong to the system of power negotiations are present in geography as well as in history, while dictating how this presence must undergo a hermeneutic analysis based on the constitutive elements of the emblem—forms, bordures, colors, tinctures, and charges. This book began with a chapter on an apparatus for entry, for movement toward the interior: a chivalric subject was transformed and integrated into an ordo through ritual. This chapter will study the heraldic emblem as an apparatus (dispositif) to achieve permanence, a movement whose presence constitutes a theory of interior maintenance. An emblem subsumes, in a visible stamp, the issues that have arisen along this analytical thread regarding the poetics of the ordo and the creation of a social class. Thus all of the problems examined throughout this book are inextricably linked to emblems throughout geography and history: the entry into nobility and the place occupied within, the web of alliances between families, the practice and display of the group in an urban space, the permanence in lineage and of lineage. The construction of the emblem is ultimately a theory of how an emblem—and all that is encoded

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therein—is incorporated into the exercise of political powers, whether by the monarchy and the nobility or by chivalric citizenry. The emblem does not originate solely in abstraction, but relies on its framework. Thus a heraldic emblem requires a concrete material manifestation. As such, the poetics of the emblem belongs to the study of material culture. The emblem appears in apparatus that have been created for spatial and temporal practice: coverings, clothing, coats of arms, flags, book pages, ex libris, and super libris, as well as much more durable materials, such as the sculpted stones above the façades of rural and urban homes. It is, therefore, a mueble, or “charge.” A charge is a term in the heraldic vocabulary that designates any figure, item, or device that belongs on a heraldic coat of arms and is depicted therein. The emblems are also charges of the construction of political power in space and time: represented by all parties in both, they nevertheless possess a mobile, joint character that largely depends on their creativity. In terms of space and time, the heraldic emblem dissolves the distinction between poetry and history. The creativity that it may inspire is a method of changing history.3 The emblem articulates and encodes a historiographic narrative, the qualitative parts of which provide the keys; it offers characters in a familial and lineal narrative by means of well-encoded symbols of every type. Understanding a heraldic emblem means learning to observe all of its subdivisions and interpreting, in each one, how the interaction between families and lineages has taken place; how they have come together and how they have split. The poetics of the emblem introduces the need to control the hermeneutics of the apparatus itself. This hermeneutic process is integral to the poetics of the emblem, since the latter is not an interpretation of the emblem that follows its creation, but a means to define its presence and perception. Although there are numerous interpretations of emblems, very few hone in on the specific issue of the poetics of the emblem.4 I have chosen four sources that have buttressed the central arguments of this book and that are among the very few found either among the dates that I have been examining or shortly before. The first is the novelistic poetics of the emblem of Alexander the Great, according to the original version of the translator, adapter, and Castilian creator of the Book of Alexander. In this version, the poetics of the emblem demonstrates its political potentialities in the expression of desire for history and territory. It is important to begin with this consideration of a literary text because it will be pertinent to understand how literature and the transformation of historical occurrences interact in the theoretic plane of

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this poetics. The second is the poetics of the emblem of Don Juan Manuel, produced as a political thesis for the legitimization of his lineage in the heart of monarchical power as he reflected on his opposition to the politics and legality (often chivalric) of Alfonso XI. The third source is the poetics of the emblem of the Order of the Sash, according to the Book of the Sash and the Second Ordinance of the Sash; in this poetics, an emblematics based in the abstract is considered to consolidate the monarchical group and release it from any prior subjection, while it introduces an emblem for the future of the kingdom of Castile. The final source consists of handwritten books with portraits of bourgeois knights as they appear in the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos (Book of the Knights of the Confraternity of Santiago of Burgos). The need to construct the emblem of Alexander arises in the middle of a crisis that has not been highlighted, but should be properly addressed; a crisis of political and lineal legitimacy that triggers the heroic career of the monarch. When he realizes the existence of the dynastic crisis, Alexander’s body trembles in a sickly manner, and the poet describes his appearance in meticulous detail. His color is transformed, his skin becomes dark. He becomes a quiet person and, if he speaks, he speaks to himself. He chews on his lips, grinds his teeth and puts them to wood and steel to sharpen them, until transforming his teeth into a lion’s perfect weapon. He imagines his misfortune to be that of the offspring of a lion whose heart is prepared for the hunt, yet limited by the size of his body.5 He wrings his fingers, his lips tremble, as his mind tries to reconstruct the future. At this point, Alexander finds himself before another body in crisis, although for different reasons. Pallid, with dark circles under his eyes, skinny, and poorly dressed, he finds himself in the presence of his master, Aristotle. He spent a sleepless night formalizing a syllogism and now is only held upright by the belt of his toga and his hair is disheveled. Nevertheless, from his reddened eyes he is able to see his disciple’s body in crisis.6 He discerns two moving images face to face, from the descriptive power of the poet, to confront the worst of all crises, which will trigger the imperial history of Alexander.7 The confrontation has barely begun. Next, Alexander reviews with his teacher everything that Aristotle has taught him. Item by item, he mentions his trivial and quadrivial knowledge. Alexander also places this entire volume of knowledge in crisis: he wants to forget some of the subjects, and spurns others, as others are incapable of providing him consolation and tranquility. Knowledge, Alexander remarks, does not give him the only things he needs: hope, consolation, and, finally, revenge.8

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The background that spurred the narrative is worth mentioning. Alexander’s problem is a crisis of legitimacy. The poet has been sowing reasons for Alexander to believe that his true father is not Philip of Macedon, but Nectanebo, who might have lain with Queen Olympia. The Latin versions of the story find this as fact, but the Book of Alexander does everything possible to foment doubt by keeping such doubt in the scope of rumor. Alexander reacts, and, in the Castilian version, throws Nectanebo from a tower. The poet makes his father speak and blesses him, but, in fact, does not mention whether the speaking father is the man flying toward the ground or Philip, who happens to be behind the young man.9 The crisis of legitimacy entails a crisis of much greater substance. Alexander becomes insecure about his personal history. He can no longer narrate his persona; he becomes a subject with uncertain origins. Theory, that is to say, all that Aristotle has taught him, will not allow Alexander to reinvent himself, and the only thing he can do is resort to the part of the curriculum that Aristotle has not taught him, but that, nevertheless, is the only part that can ensure the construction of the identity of the youth that has just lost his identity. The new space is not only for knowledge, not only for theory, but is rather a laboratory of action, a territory in which Alexander can return to build himself: History. Alexander immediately immerses himself in history, searches for himself in history, and, above all, yearns for history. The crisis of legitimacy, the trauma of the death of the father at the hands of the son, does not trigger an Oedipal torture, and Alexander does not seek his own blindness. Alexander, now lacking parents, dives into a much more complex territory in which he can construct his own history and reorganize the legal and political universe in which he feels uncomfortable. He goes in search of the lost space; in search of the territory that adapts itself to the map that dictated history prior to that of his supposed father. Alexander will have to develop his entire life on the frontier and will have to tell the story over and over to make it his own, and for the story to engulf his own identity. The artifact that brings together the plans for this libidinal mechanism is the coat of arms of Alexander, whose ekphrasis, according to the Castilian poet in the Book of Alexander reads as follows10: La obra del escudo vos sabre bien cuentar Hy era deboxada la tierra & la mar Los regnos & las villas, las aguas de prestar Todas con sus escritos por meior devisar

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En medio de la taula estaua vn leon Tenia so la garpha a toda Babilon Cataua contra Dario a guisa de fellon, Ca uermeia & turuia tenía la enuision Tanto echaua de lumbre & tanto relampaua Que uençia a la luna & al sol refertaua Apeles que nul omne meior del non obraua Por meior lo tenia quanto mas lo cataua. [The work on the shield I shall describe to you, Portrayed on it were the land and the sea, Kingdoms, villages, and main waterways, All with inscriptions to best descry them. A lion appeared at the center of the shield, Who had all of Babylon under its claw, And regarded Dario with a menacing gaze, With bloodshot and caliginous eyes. Such was the light and such the lightning therein, That they vanquished the moon and vexed the sun. Appelles, whose works no man could surpass, Considered it [the shield] greater the more he looked at it.] (LAlex, ms O, 96–99) None of the more direct models of the Spanish poet are so heavily interested in the coat of arms of Alexander. Walter of Châtillon simply points out that the youth wore the arms at the legal age, upon finishing basic education (bk. 5, line 200). The Historia de Preliis does not even touch upon the chivalric investiture of Alexander, but rather jumps directly from the taming of Bucephalus to the meeting with Nicholas, king of the Arideans.11 In turn, the Roman d’Alexandre solves the inquiry in a hemistich, referencing merely “ses escus de sinople” [“his sinople (green) shield”] (line 563).12 It seems that the poet was inspired by the Aeneid, specifically the end of the eighth book starting with verse 671, where the coat of arms of Aeneas is described. Vulcan makes the arms for the hero upon the request of his spouse Venus. The history of Rome is represented in the coat of arms of Aeneas, from Ascanius and the Capitoline wolf up to the present from the writings of Virgil—the same

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story that was told to Aeneas by his father Anchises upon the hero’s arrival at Tartarus. Alexander’s coat of arms looks like a rotella, a round shield. It depicts the waters of the seas, the land, and each one of the kingdoms of the world, and contains an inscription or its heraldic colors “por meior devisar” [“to best descry”], that is, so they may be interpreted by whoever looks at the bearer of the arms from the front. Devisar is the technical verb to designate the interpretation of a heraldic emblem. Thus, it is a round map of the world, framed by the sea. Asia is located in the upper section where it dominates the world, following the model of the T and O maps and the disk-like maps, such as those that were fashionable in the monastic libraries like the Burgo de Osma or Hereford. These disk-like maps are illustrated with the heraldic colors or with images of the inhabitants of the different lands. These images depict the history, or abbreviated histories, of each of the kingdoms. They comprise a cartographic and miniaturized version of works about the description of the world that abounded in the libraries of the Middle Ages.13 The crucial aspect in this case is that Alexander had placed the history that he had read as a result of his crisis on the coat of arms and that it was this story that he chose, inserting an element that the histories and the maps that Alexander reviewed had lacked: an image of Alexander himself—not only behind the coat of arms, but also as its heraldic symbol. The coat of arms bears the metaphor of the lion articulated by Walter of Châtillon, which the Castilian poet translates as follows: Entendia el infante en este pensamiento amolaua los dientes cuemo leon fanbriento tan bien molia el fierro cuemo si fues sarmiento sabet que de dormir nol prendia taliento Aviá en si el infante atal conparaçión cvemo suele auer el chiquielle leon quando iaz en la camma & vee la venaçión non la puede prender & bateiel coraçón.14 [The infant focused on this single thought, As he sharpened his teeth like a ravenous lion, And chewed on iron as if it were mere branches, Yet was unable to sleep.

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The infant then compared himself, To a lion’s cub who is trying to sleep, And sees the prey nearby, Yet is unable to grab it, so his heart beats.] The lion appears rampant on the table of the coat of arms, prepared to hunt for geography and history as soon as he is granted knightly investiture; an unequivocal sign that the “chiquielle leon” [«cub»] may leave the cane of the teacher and the paternal home at the same time. The emblem is reconfigured as follows: the Alexandrine lion launches its claw from absolute north toward the other side of the border, threatening what will later be fulfilled— the conquest of the world and the domination of geography and history. The lion is the heraldic expression of the libidinal mechanism.15 In the poetics of the emblem, it is necessary to craft the hermeneutic rules and the potential of the emblem designed. The interpretation of the painter Apelles serves this purpose: “Apelles que nul omne meior del non obraua / por meior lo tenia quanto mas lo cataua” [“Appelles, whose works no man could surpass / considered the shield the more he looked at it.”] (98cd). Apelles, here in the third person, is the reader who contemplates the coat of arms and expresses himself on the other side of the poetic voice describing the coat of arms. Without his voice, the poetics of the emblem would not be complete, given that he represents, at once, the authoritative, qualified voice and the hermeneutic entity of the emblem. Apelles, on the other hand, is the voice of the head architect and official portrait artist and authorized by Alexander himself: “[Alexander] imperator edixit ne quis ipsum alius quam Apelles pingeret” [“The Emperor (Alexander) proclaimed that no one other than Apelles should paint his portrait”]16 Apelles is the one who renders nature subordinate to art, and submits history to a perfect narrative adapted to an irrefutable truth, as Walter of Châtillon writes in book IV of Alexandreis, in the morose ekphrasis of the mausoleum erected for the wife of Darius. Apelles is the master of nature, and he remarks on the perfection of the coat of arms, or rather, how this emblem adjusts to nature. This adaptation presents the past and, above all, the future, from the moment that the lion launches its claw to the other side of the border. Amaia Arizaleta argues that the coat of arms of Alexander is a figure of the history of Alexander.17 Indeed, it would function as such were we in the sphere of analogy and metaphors, or allegory. Moreover, the coat of arms is a representation, history itself, and does not need to be updated based on an exegetic artifact other than its own literality. The coat of arms is not a mere announce-

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ment of future conquests, but rather the expression of the desire for geography and history; the emblem is a discourse created by Alexander himself as a political expression of the transformation to which his crisis of legitimacy, identity, and education has driven him. In the dissolution between history and poetry represented by the emblem, this is the poetics of a history that, although it appears fractured in the present, may be projected in a future past. The poetics of the emblem of Alexander, of his coat of arms, may be contrasted with the poetics of other coats of arms, such as those of Achilles or Darius, as found in the Book of Alexander. These coats of arms establish a dialogue with Alexander’s: Achilles’ coat of arms, a depiction of the Trojan War, from the perspective of the hero, son of the sea (637–42); and Darius’s, almost as a nostalgic representation of a kingdom announced as lost. Thus, Darius’s coat of arms conveys the history of the territory that he occupies, the history of his conquests, like a Trojan column. But it is above all the expression of what Darius will lose at the hand of the Macedonian lion, which results in the poet writing a political reflection about the expiry of power (970–82). The process of the construction of this emblem forces us to reconsider the representation of Alexander in the face of the clerecía educational construct, given that it is not concretely fate that enters in crisis in the persona of Alexander. The discourse of the poetics of the Alexandrine coat of arms and emblem makes a significant statement: the scholastic and university theory based on the seven arts is useless in the face of the true problem of legitimacy of power represented by the discourse of history, upon which Alexander focuses, and whose desired nature is represented on his coat of arms. Aristotle must therefore articulate an urgent education that has the usefulness that the preceding one had lost, and it is in that space that the poets of the history of Alexander, including the Castilian poet, avail themselves of the Aristotelian moral and political perspective.18 The poetics of the Alexandrine emblem is a poetics of future. It is a new semantics of the historical times in which the world map of the future had to be constructed through the representation of a prior past, as favored by the history that Alexander researched. There are three fundamental elements that construct the semantics of historic times: the poetic description, the object, and above all the interpretation that gives hermeneutic meaning to the heuristic power of the emblematic concision. Semantics of historical times is often, as Reinhart Koselleck has shown, a future past: history is not a means to become familiar with the past, but rather to control the future, to reinsert an element of the past into a historical discourse that may change the course of history.19 Alexander returns his gaze

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directly to the future, emblazoned with a new emblem, secured with straps on his forearm and around his neck. In contrast, Don Juan Manuel reestablishes a poetics of the emblem on completely different bases, from the perspective of the discourse of a future past. For Don Juan Manuel, the future inevitably passes through the rewriting of history, and this is exactly what he does after his writing of the Abridged Chronicle of Spain (before 1325). Don Juan Manuel does so with all subtlety and using the heuristic power of the emblematic in his Book of the Three Reasons, an apologetic work about the role of the Manuel family, and specifically the role of Don Juan Manuel, in the Castile-León monarchical power. In The Book of the Three Reasons, Don Juan Manuel responds in writing to Johan Alfonso, a Dominican monk and scribe of Don Manuel’s court, regarding three issues in which, according to the nobleman, he had shown interest. In spite of the objections of Don Juan, who believes that they are “más ligeras de dezir por palabra que de ponerlas por scripto” [“easier to recite than to put to paper”], he agrees, undoubtedly attracted by the idea that the preacher may “retraer quando cumpliese” [“retell them when necessary”].20 He may faithfully repeat the reasons in front of any audience—the verb retraer means “to recite out loud.”21 The three reasons are the following: the first is an explanation of the Manuel coat of arms; the second is why the Manuel clan can knight men without being knights themselves; the third is about the conversation that took place between Don Juan Manuel and King Sancho IV on the latter’s deathbed. As Rafael Ramos first revealed, followed by Georges Martin, Don Juan Manuel aims to show that he is the only living representative of the only branch that is legitimate and blessed with the right to hold the kingship of Castile and León.22 The originality of this approach does not lie in the aim, but rather in the poetics of the means he deploys to construct such an approach. Alan Deyermond, examining the rhetoric of this treatise, signals the appropriation by Don Juan Manuel, with historical causes and ends, of a large number of popular, exemplary, and, generally, traditional stories.23 What is important to underscore is not the fact that such appropriation may arise from a series of more or less well known sources (which would not benefit us more than a friendly catalographic exercise), but rather, how Don Juan Manuel uses and transforms tradition, brazenly recasting even well-known sources, to underpin his line of argument. Don Juan Manuel’s line of argument is based on a reorganization of the historical narrative. In order to explain his coat of arms, he not only describes it, but also deconstructs coats of arms that are known throughout Europe and

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emblazoned on the coat of arms of the king of Castile and León. Additionally, he deconstructs them from their most literal aspects to the hermeneutic process of the heraldic allegories, all with the intention of not only rewriting history, but also reinterpreting history. The coat of arms stamped with the crown of the princes of Spain, as one sees, for example, in the images of the Conde Lucanor of 1575,24 form a specular image (inverted by the vertical axis) of those of Castile and León. The coat of arms was conveyed by Fernando III to his son, Prince Don Manuel, and appeared for the first time in approximately 1270, in the form of wax seals that certified privileges conferred by the prince. Its seniority is assured, and it is not necessarily an invention of Don Juan Manuel’s heraldic skill. Conversely, the veritable facts surely end there, given that the narrative that flows from the mouth of the Castilian noble is plagued with voluntary inaccuracies that facilitate this reorganization of the legitimacies based on the production of geographic and historical presence of the Juan Manuel emblem.25 Don Juan Manuel’s argument is based on the divine origin of his coat of arms, which represents a manifestation of power as a political projection from a theological beginning. These arms are conveyed to Queen Beatrice, mother of King Alfonso X, and his brother, Don Manuel (father of Don Juan Manuel) by means of a dream. She awakes startled, in the final days of her pregnancy carrying Don Manuel, because in her dream an angel announces to her that the fruit of her womb will avenge Christianity. This story is told to Fernando, her husband and king, who is surprised, given that this dream is “Muy contrario del que ella sonnara quando estava ençinta del rrey don Alfonso, su fijo, que fue después rrey de Castiella, padre del rrey don Sancho” [“very different from the one she dreamt while pregnant with King Don Alfonso, her son, who later became king of Castile, father of King Sancho”] (92). The dream, however, may have spiritual causes according to Aristotelian Thomism: “Spiritualis autem causa est quandoque quidem a Deo, qui ministerio angelorum aliqua hominibus revelat in somniis” [“That which originates from God is a spiritual cause and it is revealed to men in their dreams by ministry of the angels”]26 and raises questions regarding its origin. To ascertain whether it is divine or diabolic it is necessary to consult spiritual guides, such as confessors or bishops. Next, the bishop of Segovia, Don Ramón de Losana, enters the scene and chooses the name of the child, Manuel—one of the names of Christ—as well as the coat of arms to be displayed, through divine inspiration. The entire process of the construction of the legitimacy of power represented in this coat of arms is of theological origin. The coat of arms is presented as a deconstruction of the coat of arms of

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the king of Castile and León. They are, as Don Juan Manuel says, “así derechamente commo las traen los rreys” [“just like those worn by the kings”] (93), but with certain changes of significant interest. The coat of arms of Don Manuel, the same as the coat of arms of Don Juan Manuel in the later heraldic, is emblazoned with four quarters: the first and fourth with a rampant lion of gules on a field of silver, and the second and third with a sword, a hand, and a wing of gold in a field of gules. Thus, Don Manuel’s coat of arms is a specular image: the arms of Castile and León inverted along the vertical axis. But Don Juan Manuel emblazons them in a slightly different manner and, moreover, uses a series of expressive means that clearly indicate the points in which he wishes to emphasize the poetics of his chivalric emblem: Et de que el plazo bino [el obispo Ramón de Losana] devisól estas armas, commo las nós agora tramos, que son quarteronees blancos e bermejos así derechamente commo las traen los rreys. Et en el quarteron bermejo do anda el castiello de oro, pueso él una ala de oro con una mano de omne en que tiene una espada sin bayna. Et en el quarterón blanco, en que anda el Leon, puso a esse mismo Leon. Et así son las nuestras armas: alas e leones en quarterones, commo son las armas de los rreys, castiellos et leones en quarteronnes. [(Bishop Ramón de Losana), who devised these arms, like those that we now bear, which are white and red quartered just as those worn by the kings. And in the red quarter containing the golden castle he placed a golden wing with the hand of a man in which he holds a sword without a scabbard. And in the white quarter containing the lion he placed the same lion. And thus our arms are the same: wings and lions in quarters, just like those worn by the kings, castles and lions in quarters.] (93) Don Juan Manuel twice notes the similarity of his coat of arms to those of the kings. Note, for example, that the castle disappears, while the lion is, according to Don Juan Manuel “the same lion” from the royal coat of arms. Don Juan Manuel is thereby claiming his leonine origin, inherited directly from Fernando III, son of Alfonso IX of León, by which he may keep the lions but remove the castles, thus skipping a generation in Castilian lineage to once again meet the line that he considers legitimate, which is none other than his own. On the other hand, it is Don Juan Manuel who inverts the order of the quarters of the coat of arms. In the horse dressing and on the coat of arms of

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Don Manuel, the lions are emblazoned on the first and fourth, and the wings with swords and hands in the third and fourth. But Don Juan Manuel is interested in reestablishing the same order of the coat of arms of the king, “así derechamente commo las traen los rreys” [“just like those worn by the kings”], and not inverted like those of his father. This is the first future past element that Don Juan Manuel introduces. He returns his coat of arms to the order that his father’s did not have, but should have borne. The arms are none other than the coat of arms of Castile and León, although with a fundamental change consisting of the removal of the castles, while maintaining the same lion from which he descends though his paternal grandfather, Fernando III, who was also the first king of Castile and León. The poetics of the Manuel coat of arms is not complete with this inversion of the inversion. The poetics requires a figurative interpretation, typical of every possibility of establishing a future past. In the poetics and in the semantics of the future past, the figure plays a fundamental role, as it constitutes a permanent element of history that, to function, must be duly reinterpreted.27 The interpretation, however, cannot depend on the user of the coat of arms, he who brandishes it, but on someone who may fulfill, by some means, the role that Apelles performs in relation to Alexander’s coat of arms. It must depend on someone who reveals the hermeneutics of the heuristic power of the poetic emblematic act. In this case, it is the creator of the coat of arms, Ramón de Losana, the man who, according to Don Juan Manuel, establishes this interpretation. The interpretative process is a narrative: a novella in which the characters are the arms of the coat of arms, the allegory of which is the fulfillment of the destiny of the Manuel clan as had been staged in the dream of Queen Beatrice. Don Juan Manuel pinpoints each of the pieces, recomposing the narrative once he has constructed the allegory of each arm. An example demonstrates the third point of Don Juan Manuel’s interpretation: the wing of gold. At this point the nobleman has argued that the sword represents strength, justice, and the cross; the strength is necessary to fulfill the dream of the queen, and it may only be achieved with justice and with faith in Jesus Christ. Subsequently, he states the symbolism of the hand, which is “la que faze todas las obras” [“the one that performs all of the work”] (94). Thus, reading from left to right he arrives at the wing que sinifica estas tres cosas. Lo primero, sinifica el ángel, que fue mensajero a la rreyna cuando sonnó el suenno que de suso es dicho.

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Otrosí sinifica que es parte de linage de los enperadores que trayan águilas, et el ala es parte del águila con que buela et puede sobir en alto. Otrosí, es de oro, que sinifica grant poder et grant riqueza et grant avantaja de las otras gentes, así commo el oro á grant avantaja de los otros metales. Pues lo que la espada acabare por fortaleza e con justiçia et con la sennal de la cruz, por el seso et por la sabiduría et retenimiento de la mano, sobirlo el ala en avantaje et en riqueza, en el canpo vermejo, que es canpo de sangre, que significa muchos esparamientos de sangre en serviçio de Dios et en onrra et ensalçamiento de la sancta fe cathólica. [that signifies three things. It first signifies the angel, who was the messenger to the queen when she dreamed the aforementioned dream. It also signifies that it is part of the lineage of the emperors that bore eagles, and the wing is the part of the eagle with which it may soar to great heights. It is also golden, which signifies great power and wealth and superiority over the other peoples, just as gold is superior to other metals.What the sword can carry on with strength and with justice and with the sign of the cross by the wisdom and intelligence and the restraint of the hand will be carried aloft by the wing and make it superior and wealthier, as it is in the red field, which is the field of blood, which signifies much bloodshed in the service of God and the praise of the holy Catholic faith.] (94) Like a moving picture, the narrative develops from left to right, and one quarter gives way to the next. In order to construct a narrative that functions in the order that it is read, it was also fundamental to place the recently described golden coat of arms in the first quarter, although this also entailed violating the order of the blazons of his father that we know through the latter’s seals. Thus, the war narrative that illustrates the first quarter, and that assumes the process of attitude and activity by the means of which the dream of Queen Beatrice will be fulfilled, culminates in the following quarter, upon which a lion is emblazoned. The lion, as Don Juan Manuel remembers, is a metaphor of Christ in various passages of the Scriptures. But, above all, the lion “muestra este infante era derechamente de los rreys de León” [«shows that this prince came directly from the kings of León»] (94) and, consequently, that the lion is also the most powerful beast—“este linage deve tener avantaja et sennoría de las otras gentes para acabar el servicio de

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Dios” [«this line should have an advantage and lordship over other peoples to fulfill the service of God»] (95)—and that he should not abandon it, the same way that a lion does not release his prey, particularly in respect to the war “contra los moros” [«against the Moors»] (95). The entire emblem has a teleology, which is the field of silver upon which the lion of gules is emblazoned. This leads Don Juan Manuel to recompose the narrative contained in the emblem for the fourth time: Et este Leon está en campo blanco, que es significança de folgura et de paz. Pues lo que la espada conqueriere con fortaleza et con justiçia et con la fe et creençia de la sancta cruz; e la mano obrare con la sabiduría et con el entendimento; et el ala, que significa la mesajería del ángel, et que el linaje de los enperadores subirá en onra et en riqueza et en poder; et en canpo vermejo, que es sennal de sangre et de vençimiento; mantenerlo ha el Leon, que es significança del Leon de tribu de Judá, que es Hemanuel, et el Leon de los rreys onde viene este infante. Et los que de su linage vinieren, mantenerlo an a la fin en estado de paz et de folgura. [And this Lion lies in the white field, which signifies tranquillity and peace. Thus, that which the sword conquers with strength and with justice and with faith and belief of the holy cross; and the working hand with the knowledge and understanding; and the eagle, which signifies the message of the angel, and that the lineage of the emperors will rise in honor, wealth, and power; and in the red field, which is a symbol of blood and conquer; will be kept by the Lion, which symbolizes the Lion of the tribe of Judah, which is Immanuel, and the Lion of the kings from whence this prince descends. And those of his line to come will maintain it until the end in a state of peace and tranquillity.] (95) The peace of which Don Juan Manuel speaks is substantiated by the lineage of Don Juan Manuel, which is the direct line of the kings of León, and which must avenge the death of Christ, thus establishing the line as the end of history. The emblem thus expresses the manner by which he can return order to the history that he had lost when Alfonso succeeded Fernando. It is a manner of formulating the future past postulated and studied by Reinhart Koselleck: it is necessary to go back to write the past to be able to recompose the future.

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Don Juan Manuel accomplishes this by placing a new form of emblazoning the emblem of the Manuel clan in the past; an emblem that, reconfigured by means of his own hermeneutics, also rearranges history, resetting the reading movement of the emblem itself, thereby offering the spiritual exegesis of historical literality. The poetics of the chivalric heraldic emblems of Alexander and Don Juan Manuel (the only two in existence for the period delineated here, or for the previous period) share the figural and figurative elements. They are based on the production of a representational presence that is later submitted to a hermeneutic system in which the political thesis and the mnemonic resources are substantiated. They are public figures, in that they can be identified and narrated to an audience, whether it is the poem that relates the history of Alexander, or the words of Don Juan Manuel. The reorganization of history proposed by these narrated images, the creation of a future past concentrated in the presence of the emblem, is based on graphic and figurative elements. Moreover, in both cases these elements are found in tradition: previous images of maps of the world, for example, or the coat of arms of the king of Castile and León deconstructed by Don Juan Manuel. This tradition then launches a debate with tradition itself, engendering confusion and conflicting narratives about the basis of these figures. However, the emblem of the Order of the Sash is entirely different: unlike the previous emblems, it avoids figural representation. It is a meaningless void. It is a black stripe crossing a white woven background. It suggests an enigma whose allegorization and narrativity seem especially complicated by its degree of abstraction. Heraldists will argue from a positivist or descriptive perspective that the stripe is a basic piece of the emblazonment and also that it becomes one of its divisions. Yet it is intriguing how this piece, a simple and undeveloped geometric form, came to construct a coat of arms claimed by the Spanish monarchy. When compared to the full coats of arms of Alexander and Don Juan Manuel, the coat of arms of the Sash seems empty. There is a creative poetic will to construct the power of the king on the basis of something that has neither meaning nor representational content. Such is the foundation for the affirmation of legitimacy of at least two Castilian kings. The choice of a piece without representational content, if carefully considered, evinces strategic intelligence. No prior allegory, no future past can be attributed to it; this emblem can only mean what the creator wants it to mean. Such is the power of abstraction. Later efforts to provide the coat of arms of the Sash with some type of

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figurative representation constitute a fundamental step. The color and tincture changes on the Sash of gold in the field of gules, or the band of dragantes (dual dragon heads, each one biting one of the ends of the bands) are later representations in which one seeks to separate the Sash of Castile from the rest of the heraldic coats of arms that use this piece. The stripe of gold and the field of gules invoke the tinctures and colors of the arms of Castile, thereby minimizing a problem raised in the Book, in the treatise De insigniis et armis by Bartolo, in the Victorial, or in countless other texts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—the legal and political conflict that can occur when two distinct entities of power identify themselves with the same heraldic coat of arms. Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that, before these changes were introduced, the Sash was astonishingly simple; the chronicler of the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI merely described the clothing of the Sash as a white cloth with a black stripe that is nearly as wide as a hand. The emblem of the Sash, although starting with Alfonso XI, began heraldically with the reign of Pedro I, and lasted throughout the Trastámara period to the Catholic kings, who removed the stripe from the arms of Spain. There is absolutely no information that allows us to place the emblem prior to the coat of arms of the king, or that of Castile and León. The first king to place the Sash on his arms was Pedro I, and it is only from then that the Sash entered into Castilian history, the texts, and a legality was applied to the Sash that goes from the Victorial of Gutierre Díaz de Games to Antonio de Guevara and his rejection of chivalry, using the Order of the Sash as a point of reference. The Sash reaches us as such in its beginnings, outside of time and space. The emblem of the Sash creates space as well as time out of pure nothingness. Among the poetic and creative acts to which I have referred, it is the most radical. Thus, it is important to comprehend the type of poetic act that the creation of the Sash entails, what type of space and time it ushers in, and how the emblem is organized as a meeting point of these conditions. The Sash is an object of contemplation and meditation. Like all emblems it is, in its own way, a theater of the memory, but the Sash sets forth a difference: while any other chivalric emblem directs the memory to a symbolic narrative with the leading role played by the individual or his line, the emblem of the Sash, in its existence without space or time, directs its contemplative character to the collectivity of those who wear it or to the charisma of the one who has bestowed the Sash, the king. The knight may thus appeal to the charismatic power of the Sash itself in moments of doubt, even in those moments when doubt could have made him the creditor of a

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quixotic “I say that it smells, and not of amber,” as depicted in Article 7 of the Book of the Sash: Otrosy que se guarden de non comer manjares suzios, ca de los buenos ay assaz en que se pueden bien mantener. Otrosy, por que ay algunas frutas & ortalizas torpes & suzias, que guarden eso mismo de non las comer. Et tanbien de los manjares commo de las frutas, non las quisiemos aqui contar por menudo, por que serian malas de contar. Pero el cauallero de la vanda que lo quisiere bien guardar, menbrandose de la vanda bien entendera que es lo que deue escusar de comer destas cosas atales. [In addition they must keep from eating dirty food, since for the good ones there is enough to eat to keep well. Also, they must keep from eating some fruits and vegetables because they are vile and dirty. And we do not want to discuss food such as fruit here because it would be bad to tell such stories. But the knight of the Sash who wants to keep well, will understand what he should avoid eating by thinking of the Sash.]28 The memory is based on habit, in a dual sense. On one hand, the habit is clothing, to which the Book of the Sash confers a central role. On the other hand, the habit is habitus, or in the words of Pierre Bourdieu: L’habitus est ce principe générateur et unificateur qui retraduit les caractéristiques intrinsèques et relationelles d’une position en style de vie unitaire, c’est-à-dire en ensemble unitaire de choix de personnes, de biens, de pratiques. Comme les positions dont ils sont le produit, les habitus sont différenciés; mais ils sont aussi différenciants. Distincts, distingués, ils sont aussi opérateurs de distinctions: ils mettent en œuvre des principes de différentiation différents ou utilisent différemment les principes de différentiation communs. Les habitus sont des principes générateurs de pratiques distinctes et distinctives.29 Therefore, the habitus is as much a structure to interpret the world as the universal generator of our practices. When Bourdieu uses “practices,” he means fulfillment of the discourse, or, to use the theoretic term, performances. The Book of the Sash thus fulfills a dual purpose. First, it represents a poetics

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of the generation of codes of conduct, life choices, relationship systems, and, above all, distinction—a distinction to which the political poetic of the book designates as originating in the political body that the king bestows upon the Sash that, at the same time, clothes and invests the knight as a member of the Sash. This handover of arms is functional as well as representational of the passage of that political body’s meaning. Hence, the second purpose: upon placing the habit of the order on the knight, the king also makes him internalize the purpose of habitus, thus creating a political, social, and legal universe on the charismatic foundation of an object of memory and identification, which is the part without representational meaning called the “Sash.” This also bestows the Book with a legal authority that various extant manuscripts, contained in codices with Cortes’ logs, will only accentuate. The Sash becomes, in the text of the Book, a punctuation mark. That is, the graphic mark that approves each of the rules contained in the Book. Indeed, not only is it essential that these laws establish practices to be internalized, but perhaps even more significant is that the code also binds these practices with the investiture of the habit of the Sash. Therefore, each one of the rules is marked with how, under what circumstances, and before whom the Sash should be worn, its properties, and how knights should behave upon seeing the Sash on someone, whether he is a member of the order or not. The Sash is not merely an emblem; it also produces a distinction of political, moral, cultural, and sentimental character. Every exterior or interior moment of the knight falls under the abstract symbol of the Sash. But upon placing it on their bodies, the abstraction adopts a concreteness of utmost importance: it becomes the signature of the king. After all, the Sash is bestowed by the king, so that those who wear it are instantly situated, charismatically, around the body of the king and his progeny. The Sash launches history out of a dearth of meaning. The poetic act in this case is a legislative act, the act of speech by which an empty object is filled with a meaning that establishes distinction, hierarchy, dependency, obligations, and domination, promulgated by the words of the king himself. This is an act of the poetics of the ordo and the dissemination of lineage. The Order of the Sash presents the group by means of an external brand, the signature of the king, on the body of the constitutive elements of the institution. The book of lineages is thus manifest, establishing a direct bond among the three entities: the code of rules, the monarch, and the knights. Yet the Sash does not only enter as a sole heraldic mark. In heraldry, the muebles, or charges, join and combine and, as a result, the Sash is reproduced in the noble Castilian and Spanish arms throughout centuries, evincing how the lineage itself has

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emerged, and how it has merged with other lineages throughout history. The poetics of the Sash is thus a narrative of origin and etiological explanation and, therefore, the graphic footing of a myth. The emblematic poetics involve many other forms of launching history, creating origins, organizing past futures, or inventing futures. These poetics are modes of defining the place in history of those who hold the emblem itself. Each one of the emblems analyzed so far—the few existing for this period, the Book of Alexander, the Book of the Three Reasons by Don Juan Manuel, and now the Book of the Sash—form a production of presence in the heart of a crisis of transformation or a crisis of growth. Each one of them is an original thesis, innovative and unique in its creative conditions, and not the reproduction or topical repetition of given models. The poetics of the emblem always involve inchoative processes, as in each case they represent new and actual theses on the permanence of power in the geographical or historical space or their relation to the discourses of power. The poetics of the emblem is also related to the chivalric dialectic between localization and dislocation that we studied in the previous chapters. The emblem is made to demarcate a space, but is also made to traverse it—emblems travel on moving bodies and across history sculpted and painted on media that remain throughout long periods of time. The poetics of the emblem is, in the end, how groups, institutions, or individual, political, or natural entities codify power. The coat of arms of the king worn on the bodies of the knights represents the political body of the king himself, an embassy, as if they were credentials. In the fifteenth century, the so-called officers of arms are generalized: heralds, pursuivants, and kings of arms who, dressed in the arms of those they serve, become their legal spokesmen and faithful bearers of the laws of the nobility.30 The most innovative poetics processes of the chivalric emblem are to be found in the appropriation process of the heraldic discourse on the part of the bourgeois brotherhoods. Heraldry is traditionally a privilege of the nobility. The strict laws that regulate symbols and emblems, which came into being from the middle of the fourteenth century, always place the heraldic emblem in relation to the nobility. Heraldry is a form of political-theological power brand. As such, it is much more interesting that, at exactly the same time, the bourgeois Castilian confraternities, and especially the confraternity of Santiago of Burgos, are based on a heraldic regulation and display—in a particular bourgeois poetic of the heraldic emblem for the use of urban space and for the permanence of these groups within this space throughout time. The old rule of the confraternity of Santiago establishes in detail who may

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belong to the brotherhood and its obligations. The most significant elements of membership are, seemingly, the entry fee calculated in maravedis (the currency) and wax (for the manufacture of candles, central elements in all penitential rituals, masses, and so on) on one hand and, on the other, the economic capacity to maintain arms and a horse. This detail is much more fundamental in that, effectively, possession of arms and horse and the ability to keep them through time are not only the constitutive elements of the definition of the city knight and his tax exemptions (equivalent to, in principal but not always, the continued expense required by maintenance of the arms and animal), but also generally correspond to the most universal and archaic definition of the chivalric institution itself. The fueros (local charters) and privileges conferred in 1256 to the city knights of the cities, such as Peñafiel, Buitrago, Ávila, and Burgos, do not only indicate the necessity for the knights to maintain horses and arms, but also mention the arms that are to be owned and maintained in precise detail.31 Regarding the legislation of the insignia of arms in general, the Espéculo of Alfonso X does not recognize among the urban knights any other flag than that of the king, which is provisional anyhow. The law not only established the conferral of the flag by the king to the urban knights—they may not make one, but must always depend on a kingly gift—but also states that the flag must be destroyed upon the death of the monarch, in hopes that his successor will confer a new flag. Nevertheless, the confraternity of Santiago is represented, as is well known, in a long series of portraits where the underlying theme is the heraldic arms of the knights. One may think that it deals only with a representational intent, of a manner of substituting the personal portrait for an institutional portrait. In cases where the physical features seem to have been difficult to reproduce due to the absence of the model in front of the artist, or perhaps they were simply considered transitory, the codex would instead offer a type of permanent portrait based on the coat of arms. Although this concept was employed, it eventually proved somewhat weak. The problem is posed not only in the space dedicated to the portraits of the brothers of the confraternity, but in that they are the constitutive elements of the rule itself. Although scholars have only paid attention to the economic fees and the maintenance of arms, the rule actually stresses the heraldic display in a particular manner. It is fitting to revisit the restrictive rule for entry into the confraternity: Establecemos que en esta confradria sean Reçebidos por confradres todos los buenos & fijos de los buenos que sean para ello & los que

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lo pudieren fazer que mantengan cauallo & armas & coberturas para seruir & guardar esta confradria segunt que aqui dira & daqui adelante que non sea reçebido ninguno por confradre si non touiere coberturas. [We hereby establish that in this confraternity we shall accept as brothers all good ones and sons of the good ones and those who can maintain horse, arms, and coverings to serve and guard this confraternity following that which is set forth herein and from here forward no one will be accepted as a brother if they do not possess coverings.] (fol. 14v) The principle of admission—and above all of eventual exclusion—is the ownership of coberturas, or lack thereof. A cobertura is a cloth that generally featured some form of ornamentation and was used to cover the horses, sheets, or dressings. From this point forward, in fact, the only representational element of the brotherhood that the code mentions is the covering, and various chapters will be devoted to designate the moments in which the brothers shall present themselves in public with their coverings. The confraternal brothers must display their coverings to the mother of a comrade, at the wedding of a sibling, and in similar situations, but avoid wearing them in other situations, for instance: “los confradres desta confrandria non en cubierten njn trayan cauallos por pariente njn por otro omne seyendo vezino dela uilla que fine que non sea en esta confradria. & qual quier que passare contra esto peche Çient marauedis por pena paral cabildo” [“the brothers of this confraternity shall not cover nor bring horses for dead relatives or neighboring men of the town that are not part of this confraternity and whomever shall stray from this rule shall pay one hundred maravedis to the council as a penalty”] (fol. 15r). The coverings are thus not only a criterion of acceptance and exclusion, but also, as with the emblem of the Sash, a distinction criterion. Wearing the coverings not only signals that the individual belongs to the confraternity, but it also distinguishes the group from anyone outside the confraternity, even from the sphere of family or friendship. The coverings initiate a social expression of emotion. Thus, independent of the most intimate expression of emotion and passion—happiness or sadness, laughter or lament—the coverings constitute a public expression of affection, of the love that forms part of the poetics of the brotherhood that we addressed in the second chapter. Upon public manifestation, affection instead becomes a mode of affectus officialis, given that it is exclusive of the group of

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power formed by the brotherhood itself as the members of the confraternity are identified in the expression of this official affect by bearing the coberturas. The code also maintains the private dimension of the display of the coverings, differentiation within distinction. Even where the code of rules speaks of coberturas, it fails to describe them individually. This differs from what occurs, for example, with the Order of the Sash, where the emblem is constructed and described formally. In this instance, only the medium of the emblem, the cobertura, has been constructed, but not the emblem itself. The coverings dress the horse so that it becomes a continuation of the representation of the horseman. Both display the same motifs: the knight displays them on his shield (those who only wear a sackcloth and those armed with steel travel without any type of tunic). The horse’s coverings are also adorned with the heraldic symbols of the owner. Nonetheless, in the poetics of this emblem it is necessary to distinguish between the medium, the dressing, and the motif of the heraldic arms. As the code does not describe the specific coverings, referring only to the medium but not to the motif, each family must devise the latter. The code indicates that not only may heraldic motifs distinguish people, but that the arms and dressing may distinguish the confraternity itself. Coverings are thus the signifier of the confraternity. The medium is a symbol of membership in the confraternity and it indicates that no other bourgeois in Burgos bore or could bear coverings unless he belonged to the brotherhood. Otherwise, this distinction criterion would be negated and it would be useless for the code of rules to emphasize the occasions and motifs that warranted the display of coverings. The problem also may be read from legal perspectives—from the perspective of the tabula picta, or that of the ornamentum. These views, studied by Marta Madero and Emanuele Conte, respectively, analyze the texts of the glossators of Roman law, who point toward a separation between the medium, ownership, property, or representational symbol of a form of power (imperium maiestas or, simply, absolute owner) of substantial character and which is represented in the medium, which corresponds to the accidence of concrete representation.32 The covering may thus be legally considered property of the confraternity, as much as a representation of its power. The fundamental legal act here consists in accepting the medium to represent the arms, or rather, to allow the delegation of individuality in the power of the group. The covering, as a public expression of the power of the confraternity, confers this same degree of distinction to the line whose arms are represented in the medium. In the Sash or other orders power is peremptory and absolute, as a symbol of what it represents belongs fully to the guarantor of the institution—

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such as the king, the master, or, in the case of the military orders, the pope himself—by means of the particular rule. In the regulations of Alfonso X’s Espéculo mentioned earlier, the law is even clearer in this respect. The medium itself must be destroyed upon the death of the monarch, so that the object in possession of the councils cannot be used again: “Ca ssabida cosa es que los conçeios non deuen auer otra ssenna ssi non la que les diere el Rey, e por esso las rronpen cada que el Rey muere por que las an de rreçebir del Rey” [“It is known that the councils should not bear another symbol if not dictated by the King, and therefore they destroy each one when the King dies because the King must confer them»] (Alfonso X, Espéculo 3.5.19). In such cases there is not, strictly speaking, any distribution of power, but a provisional conferral of it that may be rescinded by withdrawing the entire emblem—that is, the medium as well as the ornament. In the case of the Confraternity, however, power is a process of co-optation in which representations are inverted, thereby creating a community of cooperation in the creation process of power itself. This exchange or cooperation achieves its relevance in its process of concretion—the moment when the coverings of the confraternity are adorned with the heraldic arms of its members. Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués has contributed most of the scholarship available on the heraldic arms of the knights of the confraternity of Santiago.33 In fact, he offers a full description of the heraldic peculiarities of the coat of arms in the facsimile edition of the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos (Book of the Knights the Confraternity of Santiago of Burgos). Aristocratic heraldry always poses problems of representation, and, as is evident in the case of the construction of the emblem of Don Juan Manuel, it is sometimes accompanied by a mythical narrative. Bourgeois heraldry should be analyzed from a very different point of view. Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués himself recognizes that our knowledge of the heraldry of the fourteenth century is circumscribed to the aristocracy while the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos is a unique reference on bourgeois heraldry. This codex undoubtedly constitutes what is known regarding chivalric representation of the members of this group. Even though the Libro de la cofradia de Santa Maria de Gamonal (Book of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Gamonal ) also contains portraits, these are a belated imitation of those contained in the codex of the confraternity of Santiago, and does not mention heraldic display in city streets. The chivalric bourgeois emblem, it seems, is presented in medias res, even mutilated or acephalous. In the Castilian chivalric legislation included in any of the Alfonsine

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works, from the Fuero Real to the Siete Partidas—including the Espéculo and different editing stages or particular concessions of the Fuero—the royal insignia and various forms of flags, banners, and signs are regulated in detail, but invariably as representations of monarchical power. There are no particular laws of heraldic character, nor is there any legal consultation, such as that practiced by the Perugian jurist and professor Bartolo of Sassoferrato in his De insigniis et armis (circa 1355), or like those that abound since that date in certain treatises, from the Arbre des batailles of Honoré Bouvet (ca. 1340–ca. 1410) to works such as the Libro de las armas of Diego de Valera (1412–ca. 1488), or the Nobiliario vero of Fernando Mexía.34 Around the time that the writing of the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos began, the only specific reference to the insignia of the city knights or to the council (which is the denomination that the law usually gives them), is the previously mentioned example, or other similar references of a penal character that are found in the same book and title. It is possible to surmise that chivalric bourgeois heraldry began in a period reasonably close to when the codex was written yet it is also possible that the codex marks its inauguration. The latter is clearly supported by three fundamental facts previously mentioned. First, as Teófilo Ruiz has shown in his “The Transformation of Castilian Municipalities,” it was the period spanning the repartition of Seville and the death of Fernando IV (1248–1252). More specifically, it was during the reign of Alfonso XI in the mid-fourteenth century when the so-called urban elites— comprised primarily by the city knights of Burgos with their social and economic power—were established as an authentic power. Second, it was during the same period that the city knights of Burgos themselves, conscious of their ascent in the ladder of power, began to organize themselves in different confraternities and brotherhoods whose political content was manifested in their need for self-representation and in their distinction within the sociopolitical and municipal space to which they belonged. Third, one can observe a negotiation process between the bourgeois knights and the noble or gentlemen knights, in the formation of brotherhoods like the one that appears in the Cuaderno de la Hermandad of 1315. These three facts, together with the enormous political and cultural prestige that the concept of chivalry enjoyed in Castile since its legal inception by Alfonso X, suggest that these are the key dates for the creation of the entire universe of ornamenta and systems of chivalric display. Let us assume that bourgeois knights were in the process of constructing not only their power, but also the ways to represent it and, consequently their heraldic insignia. They were selecting the pieces, charges, bordures and cadency of their coat of arms, as well as how to place, distribute and combine them.

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This process is what heraldry is all about, the art of depicting the particular history of a person through his lineage, using a symbolic permutative language limited to certain forms and colors (five tinctures and two metals). Despite these parameters, this language allowed a high degree of narrative creativity through the innovative use of the charges. Heraldry, through the combinations and the placement of the distinct elements throughout the coat of arms, permits a high degree of involvement on the part of the individual who seeks to construct his own identity. This process of innovation or deconstruction was outlined in the example of Don Juan Manuel, as well as in the case of the urban knights and the brothers of the confraternities of Burgos, Santiago, and Gamonal. There are two elements that seem crucial to Menéndez Pidal de Navascués. The first is the use of the charge from the arms of the king of Castile and León, which is the golden castle on the field of gules. The second is the style of dividing the coat of arms into four quarters, also following a heraldic style pertinent to Castile and specifically to Fernando III, as he incorporates the royal coat of arms of Castile and of León using the alternate quarters. As Menéndez Pidal de Navascués argues, this alternate quartering should be considered a Castilian innovation of European heraldry. In both cases it seems appropriate to consider that they address “arms worn for homage,” or in signo subjectionis.35 Either possibility indicates the will to establish a link to the monarchical insignia. It is visible in many chivalric marks (the bordure with castles, according to Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, is found on 17 percent of the coats of arms, and quartering is the most frequent division) and cannot function as a mark of lineage, as it obviously does not belong to the royal family. However, the relationship functions, in contrast, as a manifestation of dependency, or, in the terminology of Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, as a symbol of voluntary subjection to the royal will and its politics. It is evident that this elite bourgeois knighthood did aim to assert independence from the king. As Ruiz has shown in “The Transformation of Castilian Municipalities,” the idea of a bourgeoisie independent of the monarchy forms part of a historiographic myth, connected in the last example to the Castilian commoners. On the contrary, chivalry itself, according to the rule, is placed at the service of the king. Previously, during the minority of Alfonso XI, the Hermandad de 1315 had also been placed under the monarchical patronage of Alfonso, who acted as final guarantor of their rights and privileges. Some of the heraldic charges or the tinctures may be interpreted from the symbolic perspective posited by Menéndez Pidal de Navascués. The emblems bearing a fleur-de-lis, the gold metal and blue tincture (which were the most expensive), or the figurative theme of a tree with a wild boar were, moreover,

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heraldic elements of foreign origin: French, Navarran, Burgundian, or English. These symbols certainly extend throughout Europe, but maintain their identity of origin. Many of the families that compose the Burgalese urban elite were, in fact, of foreign provenance, and it seems possible that they wanted to reproduce heraldic symbols coming from their birthplaces. Although it is very certain that the arrival of these symbols “to Spain in the fourteenth century coincides with that of other forms which were then taken from the AngloFrench space,” it is equally true that the relationship between these symbols and some of the foreign families that populate the north of Castile and Burgos in particular is extremely telling.36 In fact, the heraldry of the confraternal knights of Burgos demonstrates a complex process of the construction and reconstruction of lineage through its symbols. The heraldic laws offer numerous possibilities, but, in the aristocratic sphere, the accumulation of lineages in different partitions is usually employed. The noble emblem tends to shed light on how alliances (e.g., marriages) and favors (e.g., the conferral of a decoration or a distincion) were added to a certain lineage. The coats of arms are, in this case, abbreviations of a history—ultimately, a way of narrating that history. Many of the confraternal brothers acted in the same manner. However, others tended to reorganize their coats of arms in accordance with their desire to reconstruct their lineage. Menéndez Pidal de Navascués also mentions that in some of the lineages, like that of Juan Maté, some alliances substituted prior alliances: the symbols that have been emblazoned on the coat of arms in the prior generation may disappear in the following generation because of a new alliance to which they wish to give greater prominence. In the same vein, En los casos de cambio de apellido, las armas siguen generalmente la varonía. Los hijos de Pedro Martínez de Mazuelo, tesorero de la Casa de la Moneda de Burgos, trajeron todos el partido de Mazuelo y Cadena . . . sin alteración continua usándola Bernardino de la Cadena . . . Juan de la Mota no tuvo descendencia masculina de su matrimonio con doña Toda Íñiguez de San Vicente. Le heredó una hija, doña Catalina Íñiguez de la Mota, que casó con el alcalde mayor de Burgos y Capitán de los Reyes Católicos en Portugal Alonso Díaz de Cuevas. Varios hijos de este matrimonio adoptan el apellido materno, pero anteponen las armas de padre. [In the cases of change of surname, the arms generally follow the male side. The sons of Pedro Martínez de Mazuelo, treasurer of

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the Treasury of Burgos, all wore the Mazuelo and Cadena and . . . Bernandino de la Cadena continued using it unaltered . . . Juan de la Mota had no male descendants from his marriage with Dona Toda Íñiguez de San Vicente. He was succeeded by a daughter, Dona Catalina Íñiguez de la Mota, who married the Lord Mayor of Burgos and Captain of the Catholic Kings in Portugal Alonso Díaz de Cuevas. Several children of this marriage adopted the maternal surname, but give preference to the arms of the father.]37 In this case, heraldry entails a way to fulfill, from the two different perspectives of civil representation, both lines of lineage and, as a result, the inheritance. The emblematic poetics of the confraternity of Santiago serves to construct its chivalric representation. It is certain that, by means of display of the specific emblems, heraldic symbols, and arms, the confraternal brothers are projecting an image to the world that approximates them not only to chivalric attitudes, but, more specifically, to aristocratic attitudes. The reasons for such a representation are evident, especially keeping in mind the need of the elite to construct their relationships with the monarchy and, at the end of the day, to maintain and even improve their tax treatment. We must highlight the relevant political motives underlying this attitude, since this symbolic approach is one of the forms of the poetics of the ordo and of the construction of the social class. Behind heraldry lies a political-theological idea of the exercise of power, insofar as it is related to a symbolic language that exposes an etiologic mythological narrative. The emblematic poetic has the capacity to construct the idea of lineage in the bourgeois sphere and later define the genealogical lines throughout its history. The idea of lineage entails the consolidation of the elite as a more or less closed group. It is an ordo characterized by its chivalric attitude, represented by the common medium of the coverings or dressings and, finally, from which individuals emerge through the contribution of their particular emblems. The confraternity thus insists on its particular poetics of the order by proposing itself as a closed estate. It is certainly possible to identify lineage through the particular coats of arms, to recognize it throughout time. According to the research of JeanClaude Schmitt, the images acquire all of their meaning once placed and interpreted in their sequential nature.38 Indeed, the emblematic or heraldic series of the Burgalese confraternal brothers do not only indicate this will to create the ordo, but they also explain how the families were related and how

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these familial and lineal relationships may only be generated within the ordo. The combination of the heraldic elements throughout time, as reproduced in the pages of the codex, shows us not only the particular emblematic poetics, but also the strategies, the structures of relation, the reconstruction of possible alliances, the will to establish dialogues with power, in short, the systems of construction of the community that are essential to the development of this social class in the midst of the creation process. The Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos is a work of extensive duration, a work that can be designated with Don Juan Manuel’s neologism: infinido. It is a work not without end, but of impossible finalization, of permanent renewal, a work that, as one of the versions of the code shows, is “de aquí en adelante para siempre jamás” [“from here forward, forevermore”]. The manuscript, moreover, writes “jamás” with a bold capital letter: “Para siempre Jamás,” or Forevermore. It will continue adding names and portraits, in an endeavor of unlimited growth. All growth is accompanied by some form of disappearance: as something is added, something is erased. For instance, the code of rules said to have been written in 1338 is rewritten in 1501. Everything changes, but what changes most is that all references to the coberturas of the horses and the horses themselves disappear. The book mentions them in only one instance, and in the following manner: Otrosy porque antiguamente estaua ordenado que quando algun confrade fallesçiese los pajes de los confrades con los cauallos encouertados acompañassen el cauallo del confrade finado, e porque aquesto paresçe cyrimonia ajena e apartada del tiempo, Por ende en lugar de aquella honrra, Ordenamos que cuando algund confrade fallesçiere todos los confrades que fueren a la honrra e en la çibdad estuuieren lleven el dia del enterramiento e viesperas e misa del terçero lobas de luto e vayan juntos çerca del cuerpo del finado. [Moreover, because in the past it was ordered that when a brother died the pages of the brothers with the covered horses would accompany the horse of the fallen brother, and because this seems a ceremony far away and removed from time, In place of such honor, We hereby order that when a brother dies, all of the brothers that take part in the honor and are in the city wear mourning gloves the day of the burial, the vespers and the mass of the third day and go together to the body of the fallen brother.] (fol. 61r, col. b)

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All of the coverings and representational symbols of the order are reduced to a pair of mourning gloves. The disappearance of the coverings in 1501 coincides, however, with two conditions that perhaps make such a heraldic display unnecessary in the urban space. On one hand, there is the generalization of the lineage emblem among the urban knights throughout Spain, and on the other, the displacement of numerous confraternities and urban chivalric institutions of the aristocratic threshold throughout the second half of the fifteenth century. The heraldic emblem of nobility and chivalry creates a signifier that is both geographic and historical. This signifier stands for a signified that is political in essence; a proposal about the actions of power and about how power is shared and represented in the manner in which every emblem disseminates itself in space and time. The examples analyzed here trace the great poetic variety of the process of constructing this political thesis. Each emblematic poetics must be analyzed separately because its unique conditions of possibility are also pertinent to this poetics. The literary version of the creation of the coat of arms of Alexander as an expression of the crisis of legitimacy is not, ekphrasistically and rhetorically, different from the emblematic poetics of Don Juan Manuel. Nonetheless, the latter engages in exegetic processes that are linked to political theology or to the deconstruction of the Castilian monarchical power of his time. The emblematic poetics of orders like the confraternity of the Sash and the confraternity of Santiago are borne out of completely different proposals and in each case are bound to the poetics of the ordo: by means of an abstract graphic, the king inaugurates a group whose lineage will flood peninsular geography and history and will leave its footprint in heraldic tradition up to the present. The confraternity of Santiago leans toward a localization of the ordo, toward a practice of urban space and time by means of the creation and incorporation of a graphic heraldic configuration shared between the confraternity itself (the coberturas, or coverings) and its members (the symbols painted on those coverings). Heraldry is, in the end, the last breath of the poetics of the ordo. It is what remains. It identifies books, houses, street fixtures, properties. It is a signifier that, as Eelco Runia argues, is incorporated into involuntary memory yet imposes its presence as a permanent remnant of time, as a spot of time.39 This spot of time is produced for its time to survive, to impose its mythological character and its political conditions. The poetics of the ordo cannot be observed in the absence of these symbols that are at once the most visible and the most difficult to interpret.

Conclusions

Throughout this book I have studied circumstances and texts related to the ways in which monarchical and urban powers are constructed, as well as their relational systems at the end of the Middle Ages in the reign of Castile and León. The resulting balance of powers will mark the changes launched in the transatlantic Imperium totius Hispaniae of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the comuneros revolts of the early sixteenth century to the abolition warrants of the urban knighthood (the so-called caballería de cuantía) in 1619. I have examined the configuration of power of an emerging mercantile class that moves to the core of the city and takes possession of it, as well as its modes of self-representation once it is inside the city. Consequently, it has been necessary to know how the emergence of the bourgeoisie relates to monarchical sovereignty, with its central jurisdiction, and the way in which this type of imperium reshuffles the nobiliary systems in order to withdraw from them. It has also been necessary to know why the relation of forces between monarchical imperium or sovereignty, nobiliary values, and bourgeois power is articulated through the use of the social laboratory of chivalry. My inquiry has been mainly in regard to the materials through which these powers are expressed and how they can be interpreted. At the same time, the analyses proposed here show what the theoretical consequences of this kind of investigation are, and what concepts may be engaged to view these genealogical problems concerning power from the perspective of the forms of government, empire, and the construction of cultural paradigms. In the end, this has been an analysis of the subject and the dynamics of power. To approach these problems, I have considered two kinds of manuscripts and printed sources. Some have been formed precisely in the liminal space between the monarchical and bourgeois voices that manifests itself in the logs of the Cortes. The logs are, in fact, the only site of direct interaction between monarchical sovereignty and the bourgeois authority of the city representa-

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tives (procuradores de las ciudades), with their desire for the dominion of territory and of legal and political devices: the Hermandad of 1315 and the logs of the Cortes have allowed us to interpret how the voices that debated in this interlocutory space were articulated. The other materials issue from both sides of this interactive border: some, like the Book of the Sash and its manuscript transformations, are generated in the same regal archive and in the king’s chamber; the others—the Book of the Confraternity of Santiago of Burgos and the Book of the Confraternity of Gamonal—emerge from the same urban institutions to reside in the interior of the walls of the cities whose space and archives they claim to dominate. The problem considered here has manifestations beyond Castile: in Plantagenet and Lancastrian England, as well as in Provence, the duchy of Burgundy and, in a more radical fashion, in the Italian republics, particularly in Florence. It is not merely a coincidence that the issue originates in the great European empires’ process of constitution. In the cases of Spain (along with Bourgogne and the Holy Roman Empire), Britain, and France, the constitution of the jurisdictional centrality operated through a substitution process of the high feudal nobility by emerging social classes linked to the cities and the universities. For bourgeois organizations, societies of mutual protection, it was not simple to articulate a voice, let alone render it in the first person. The way in which the royal archives function, and in particular, the congressional records and minutes that give accounts of meetings of the Cortes convey this voice through a deferred recording. The king’s public scribes engaged in a legal aesthetics whereby the process of intermediation also limited the agency of both groups. Therefore it was crucial for urban citizens to express themselves in the first person, in a few yet substantial texts. This first person, however, functions as an institution, not an individual; his manifestation is associated with the intention of controlling and dominating spaces and territories arduously removed from nature. It is with this expression, “removed from nature,” that Max Weber defines the presence of urban fabric and its methods of sociopolitical operation. The texts of the Hermandad of 1315 and the books of Santiago and Gamonal were created from this geographically and politically privileged position. The most surprising result is how citizens’ capacity for group action was established within them. This action starts by constituting itself as a subject that extends its definition of power in a double movement of group construction and of the definition of its realm of agency. The definition of this agency as chivalric is an extraordinarily compelling thesis. The use of chivalry as a

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strategy for political association reveals one of its lesser-known aspects. Its legal invention, designed to explore new forms of construction of monarchical imperium, render it the entry mode into an objective practice of power, while the unity and centrality of monarchical jurisdiction is recognized. Beyond the notion of chivalry as one of the pillars of feudalism, it is worth noting that it is fundamental to monarchical sovereignty, as it is manifested throughout the late Middle Ages until the end of modernity. The legal invention of chivalry in Castile and León occurs relatively late. It was regulated for the first time around 1260, in Alfonso X’s Partidas 2.21. Since then chivalry has been the subject of a key legal discussion that repeals the earlier political theories, expressed in theoretical treaties as well as in literary traditions. The authority of the law imposes its constitutional nature: it offers a theory on the objective practice of power. The monarch retains a privilege that destabilizes all theological concepts concerning nobility and that, consequently, revolutionizes social organization: upon creating knights, the king creates nobles, thereby reformulating the category that defines the exercise of imperium. The monarchical strategy is much more subtle when it establishes a form of chivalric creation that is not aimed at the individual, but the collective. Therefore, the king does not appoint knights in order to recognize specific individuals, but rather to delineate a system of association that operates as an institution. Two forms of chivalric association are centered in this strategy: one promoted by the king and another by the bourgeoisie. Chivalry is the public and social hope of the process of redemption for both the bourgeoisie and the nobility. This process of redemption assumes forms that far surpass the primitive noble function of the officially sanctioned physical violence, and through the end of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period is incorporated in discussions where violence assumes subtler manifestations. One way to achieve this interlocution is for the learned class and the jurists, as well as the university professors, to incorporate it into the discussion of chivalry. The last pages of the books of bourgeois associations portray certain knights who are very different from those of the first pages. If the oldest are represented in the practice of urban space by way of the chivalric ceremonies of the group, those of the last pages, also on horseback, arrive wearing their official uniforms as jurists, public scribes, and legists. To this day, in various parts of the Englishspeaking world, attorneys feature the abbreviation Esq., a vestige of their chivalric status. What led to this odd and apparently contradictory union between chi-

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valric groups and the lettered classes? In fact, the deployment of the chivalric institutions, whether bourgeois or the inferior nobility known as the Sash, to establish the jurisdictional centrality of monarchical sovereignty constitutes one of its greatest innovations. Against the claim of jurisdictional privileges of the high feudal (or seigneurial) nobility, knighthood was invented to be a nobility group without jurisdictional capacities or the ability to contest, from this position, to the high nobility seigneiuries. Only in 1823 did jurisdictional seigneuries, or señoríos jurisdiccionales, disappear definitively in Spain. For the monarchical imperium, chivalric associations constituted an extension of the judicial body of the king. The knights of the Sash were also those who held posts as border officers, mayors, and judges. In turn, the bourgeois alliances, initially formed (like those of 1315) as a defense mechanism against high nobility, attempted to build a bond with the king, claiming the right to control the civilian archive. Archive control did not assume only the capacity to organize documentation, but also its methods of production and publication. The bourgeoisie sought a space in which to assume roles that were part of the concept of monarchical imperium. These forms of association through chivalry, whose repercussions can be seen in the reorganization of the urban polity and the constitution of local powers, were thus one way to establish an alliance between the emerging classes and the nascent monarchical sovereignty. The growth of European cities and of the Iberian Peninsula in particular hinges on the acquisition of power by these groups and on early forms of what geographers and urbanists view as movements of gentrification. These entail the control of urban space by the so-called urban patricians, that is, the bourgeois class organized into groups of chivalric power. A group’s constituent manuscripts are, precisely, inventories and cartographies of its belongings and of its concepts of space, centers of power, religious and devotional manifestations, ceremonies of cooperation, and representation of association. The manuscripts—which feature the appearance of the archives and a language based on the developing legal aesthetic—contain theses about this process of gentrification of the urban space. What were the consequences of the formation of these chivalric groups? For the European monarchs, the knightly orders of hidalgos reorganized forms of nobility. It is from the period analyzed here that these projects proliferated. The first of these orders is that of the Sash, founded by Alfonso XI, but promptly followed by a growing number of similar orders that occupied all imperial and monarchical Europe well into the sixteenth century, from the Garter of Edward II of England, to the Order of the Golden Fleece of the Dukedom of Bourgogne, which in the era of Carlos I included the imperial

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mark and was still the symbol of imperator totius Hispaniae, according to the coat of arms of the king of Spain. Beyond such construction strategies of political powers, it is worth emphasizing the importance of these civilian powers throughout the modern age. The city is constructed as one of the antagonist powers of the state, as studied by geographers and urbanists such as David Harvey or James Holston, and the creation of the groups of chivalric power plays a central role in this process. Without leaving the Iberian Peninsula, it was the urban groups of knights who, from the center and the periphery of the Peninsula, upheld their concept of power and their privileges against the imperial concepts of Carlos V, throughout plebeian revolts in Castilian cities, of the germanías in the east, and the irmandiños in Galicia. All of them also articulated the semantics of the brotherhood of the groups analyzed in this book, and referred to themselves as “germans” and “irmãos” (brothers). It is also in relation to these groups that Felipe II intended to develop a new form of monarchical sovereignty, resorting to an alliance with the cities and revitalizing the urban chivalry. This project, which took form around 1570, coincided with a great emergence of knightly literature, advanced as a tropologic model in which an intimate relation between chivalry and monarchy was established. Don Quixote, who by 1605 “approached the age of 50 years,” exemplifies a knight from a small hamlet, village, or city who has been summoned in an effort to revitalize the urban chivalry, but who experiences the very failure of this policy and the success of the professionalization of the army in the school of Alba (owing to the political proposals of the Duke of Alba during the Eighty Years’ War). In 1619, Felipe III issued an order to abolish knighthood, that is, the bourgeois chivalry based in the most important Spanish cities, precisely on account of the economic power that they had obtained, a power that threatened the integrity of the royal economy. This book suggests the need to pursue other investigations to understand problems that arise in the process of constructing the Hispanic empire in transatlantic terms, not only for the type of knightly representation and epic poetry of the conquest, but above all for the contingent of urban forces that took part therein. The most typical case is that of individuals such as Francisco Pizarro or Hernán Cortés, whose genealogy is rooted in Extremadura’s urban chivalry. Ultimately I have alluded to the importance that urban structure and its methods of administration have in the process of the construction of empire. Are these structures exported, perhaps, along with systems of association that

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define the civilian landscape and the urban geography? How do these rationalistic urban structures—as in the founding of Lima, for example—interact with the practice of space and the organization of the structures of power that I have studied? How do these organizations relate to the viceroyal representation of imperial jurisdiction? While these questions are left unanswered in this book, they nonetheless arise from this inquiry, one in which the issue of civilian existence is afforded its due prominence.

notes

introduction 1. In his Poetics, Aristotle uses a common verb for an activity that, according to him, does not yet have a name. This activity consists of the use of words to imitate reality. The verb he uses is poiein, the noun, poiētikē. Aristotle quite willingly distances this word from its typical usage, “to make,” “to build,” to arrive at a specialized use in a literary context. I deploy here the notion of poetics from a similar perspective yet do not consider poetics to be any process by which a given object is created through the mediation of one or several texts. To be even more precise, the term poetics points to a distinctly inchoate moment in which the creative will that underlies the formation of a specific object is also expressed. This inchoate moment is for the most part irreducible, so the poetics manifests itself in the impossibility of its separation from the creative moment, ineluctably characterized by a continuous process of rewriting. We then find ourselves before a paradox: although poetic activity in general aspires to its own realization (its performance), such a realization is never fully achieved. Instead, it is the resulting tension that has most significantly shaped the historical narrative that accompanies us to the present day. 2. The distribution of the signifier and the signified may be noted in the database used. Cf. Real Academia Española Database Corpus diacrónico del español (CORDE), http://www.rae.es, and Mark Davies, Corpus del español (2002– ; 100 million words, 1200s–1900s), http://www.corpusdelespanol.org (both accessed 31 July 2008). 3. This typology of peace has influenced all Western political thought regarding peace, even the Kantian concept of ewige Friede, where the juridical-political problem of perpetuity or eternal duration of peace is posited. The problem of Kantian ewige Friede, or “perpetual peace,” one that Hegel, in his philosophy of law deemed purely philosophical (Hegel, Principes de la philosophie du droit, 3: ch. 3, 2, para. 324, 333) is, after all, unthinkable without the doctrine of salvation of the Middle Ages. Kant locates it within a politicaljuridical realm, not unlike Saint Augustine (Kant, Vers la paix perpetuelle). Even Jacques Derrida, in his heartrending obituary for Emmanuel Lévinas, underscores the metaphysical component of the politics of peace: “Alors il n’y a peut-être jamais de paix, dira-t-on, mais si paix il y avait, elle devrait être éternelle et, en tant que paix instituée, paix juridicopolitique, non naturelle. Certains pourraient peut-être en conclure qu’il n’y a jamais et qu’il n’y aura jamais en fait une telle paix. Une paix purement politique peut toujours ne pas avoir lieu dans des conditions adéquates à son concept. Dès lors cette paix éternelle,

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toute purement politique qu’elle est, n’est pas politique; ou encore: le politique n’est jamais adéquat à son concept.” Derrida, Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas, 155. 4. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 8. 5. “Pacis vocabulum videtur a pacto sumptum. Posterius autem pax accipitur, foedus primum initur. Foedus est pax quae fit inter dimicantes,” Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, 18.1.11. 6. Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, 19.13. Trans. Marcus Dods in Augustine. The City of God, intro.Thomas Merton, trans. Dods (New York: Modern Library, 1950). See Rodríguez-Velasco, “Pax,” where I posit that even though studies on Saint Augustine have always highlighted the definition of peace as “tranquillitas,” it is worth noting that the most often repeated lexical root of peace is “ordo,” and that Augustine himself, despite naming up to nine types of peace, sets forth only one definition of “ordo,” as a theoretical corollary of his deliberation on peace. 7. Chivalry has been the subject of a remarkably original collection of research projects. Among those that, in my opinion, have most aptly described the conditions that led to the rise of the knightly institution as we recognize it today, I would single out the seminal work of Jean Flori in L’idéologie du glaive and L’essor de la chevalerie. In addition, Georges Duby highlighted the relationship between chivalry and the peace institutions in Hommes et structures du Moyen Âge. Maurice Keen’s Chivalry is perhaps the most important reference work for any traditional or historicist approach to medieval chivalry and belongs to a tradition of distinguished works—among which are several classic, albeit largely outdated examples, that are of unparalleled literary value—such as Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie, first to posit the political aspect above the military question, and Léon Gautier, La chevalerie, which offers an interesting literary genealogy of knighthood. The most recent and better known texts with a more contemporary historicist perspective are those of Kaeuper, especially his Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. It is my impression that collective studies—including the aforementioned as well as most of the books on knighthood published in the last few years (Barber, Scaglione, Fleckenstein, and others)—have focused on the history of chivalry and this is therefore a timely occasion to delve into much more particular issues. 8. I have adapted the concept of fable directly from the Greek noun used by Aristotle in his Poetics: mythos, through which the argumentative body of the narrative is expressed. The expression “chivalric fable” is inspired in part by Michel de Certeau’s fable mystique (La fable mystique). The idea of “social hope” is Richard Rorty’s from Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, but it is read from a completely different perspective and problematic than those that concern Rorty (see in particular his chapter 4, also his Philosophy and Social Hope). I had begun to address this problem in the essay “Teoría de la fábula caballeresca.” 9. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, chapter 4 in its entirety. Rorty establishes an interplay between the earlier Hegelian concept of dialectics and dialectical experiences and the concept of “language game” set forth by Wittgenstein. 10. The notion of lineage is essential for understanding the structure in which relationships of power and the means of interpreting the subject take place in a narrative space in which the construction of subjectivity and the construction of forms of biopower go hand in hand. For a discussion of the relationships of feudal kinship, see José Enrique

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Ruiz Doménec, La memoria de los feudales; for subjectivity and power, see Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, vol. 1, La volonté de savoir, and L’herméneutique du sujet. 11. This is the story with which the lengthy Lancelot en prose or Lancelot propre begins, a central part of which is known as the Arthurian Vulgate cycle. 12. Joanot Martorell (and Martí Joan de Galba), Tirant lo Blanc, ed. Albert Hauf. Tirant is based loosely, but recognizably, on the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman novel translated into Catalan in the fifteenth century and known in Catalan as Guilhem de Vàroych, as edited by Pere Bohigues, Tractats de cavalleria. Both the edition and facsimile of Guilhem can be found in Biblioteca Virtual Joan Lluis Vives, http://www.lluisvives.com/. 13. See Albert Soler i Llopart’s edition of Llull’s Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria. Llúcia Martín Pascual has analyzed the relationships among Llull, Guillem de Vàroic, and Tirant lo Blanc (Lectura ). The Guillem de Vàroic in Catalan is preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid MS 7811, along with several letters that also play a major role in the narrative of the Tirant lo Blanc. See Martín de Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch. 14. Estoire de Merlin, ed. Poirion, Walter, and Berthelot in Le livre du Graal; Don Juan Manuel, Libro del caballero et del escudero, in Cinco tratados; Charles P. Wagner, ed., Libro del cauallero Zifar; Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval, Li livres dou graal, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Poirion, Berthelot, and Dembowski. 15. The most distinctive trait of chivalric literature in the broadest sense is its theoretical content. For the beginnings of chivalry in France, see Jean Flori’s foundational texts, L’idéologie du glaive and L’essor de la chevalerie, and several of his other shorter works. See also Maurice Keen, Chivalry, although it arises from a restricted perspective that does not account for the theoretical debates. In the case of Spain, see Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate sobre la caballería en el siglo XV. 16. By “performance” I refer to the concept that begins with J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words and appears throughout the work of Judith Butler. 17. See Erich Köhler, Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der hofischen Epik. See also Pierre Riché and Jacques Verger’s volume Des nains sur des épaules de géants (as well as earlier works of each). For the representation of the court as schola, see also Adeline Rucquoi, “La royauté sous Alphonse VIII de Castille”; Aldo Scaglione, Knights at Court; and Joachim Bumke, Höfische Kultur. 18. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 5. 19. On the changes in the concept of literature since the eighteenth century and the consequences of these changes for theory, philosophy, and politics, see Jacques Rancière, Le Partage du sensible. 20. Map, De nugis curialium, 1.1; translation is from Courtiers’ Trifles, 3. 21. Both expressions, “dead voice” and “persona authentica” are procedural technicalities and both are found in Partidas 3.18. 22. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Production of Presence; Jean-Luc Nancy, The Birth to Presence; Eelco Runia, “Presence” and “Spots of Time.”

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chapter 1. ritual as a str ategy for chivalric creation 1. I am alluding to Michel Foucault’s notion of a device, or dispositif. Foucault offers a detailed explanation of this concept as a mechanism of domination in his preface to Anti-Oedipus, the English edition of Deleuze and Guattari’s L’Anti-Œdipe (xi–xiv). Deleuze focuses explicitly on Foucault’s concept (a concept that Foucault himself seems to have developed as a response to a piece by Deleuze) in a brief essay of his own. See Deleuze, “Qu’est-ce qu’un dispositif?” 2. See Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, on the approach to ritual within the social sciences. My own approach does not follow this scholarly current, since my principal interest is in the particularities of knighthood rituals. 3. See Agamben, Homo Sacer, for a critique of this idea. 4. Throughout the present chapter, I cite Gregorio López’s 1555 edition of the Partidas, with some spelling and punctuation changes, with Scott’s translations. 5. Arizaleta, La translation, examines thoroughly the complex creative process of the Castilian Alexander. On the mester de clerecía creative work and its relation to translation and theory, see Rico, “La clerecía del mester,” and Weiss, The “mester de clerecía”. 6. Cañas Murillo bases his edition on the P manuscript; manuscript O’s rendering of the third stanza of the above citation (Willis, El libro de Alexandre, 28–29) seems to clear up a bit the more obscure portions of P: “Place your blessing upon these arms, / as without You no weapon is worth anything, / so that I might carry out with them such destruction / that Greece may be saved from this tribulation” [“Tu da en estas armas la tu bendiçion / ca sen ti non val nada ninguna guarnizon / que pueda fer con ellas atal destruçion por que saque a Greçia desta tribulaçion”]. 7. Amaia Arizaleta argues that the chivalric investiture of Alexander “does nothing but present a practice that was frequently a part of dubbing ceremonies” (La translation d’Alexandre, 249); in reality, however, it does not offer any specific information—nor could it—of such “royal ceremonies.” On the contrary, these practices seem not to have ever existed. See, for example, Ruiz, “Unsacred Monarchy.” For a somewhat different version of this piece, see, by the same author, “Une royauté sans sacre.” Nieto Soria questions Ruiz’s arguments in his Fundamentos ideológicos del poder real en Castilla, although even Nieto Soria acknowledges that there was never a ritual specific to the monarchy. Linehan contributes to the debate, citing the absence of any sacred element in investiture ceremonies and reordering the chronology of some of the elements that are usually considered part of these ceremonies, such as the participation of the statue of Saint James (History and Historians of Medieval Spain). See also the preface to Ruiz, The City and the Realm. 8. Ian Michael already pointed out that the oration and petition of the benedictio ensis is privative of the Spanish version (The Treatment of Classical Material, 119). With respect to the clerical monopoly on the benedictio ensis within processes of chivalric investiture, it is necessary to consult Flori, L’idéologie du glaive. 9. From another perspective, Bonifacio Palacios Martín underscored the scant general interest within the Iberian Peninsula for royal coronation ceremonies (“Los símbolos de la soberanía”). 10. Chapter 6 focuses on the chivalric emblem and offers a more detailed analysis of

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this crisis of identity and legitimacy. 11. In this case, the identification of the crisis between kingdom and hero is crucial to understand the liberation movement undertaken from the chivalric model and from historical and narrative discourse, as independence and legitimacy require rearticulation. At play is one of the forms of the “future past” conceptualized by Reinhardt Koselleck (Vergangene Zukunft). 12. Later, and above all in historical texts of the fifteenth century, there are several narrative accounts of knighthood ceremonies. None of these reformulate the legal and political problems related to the reception of chivalry established in the period between 1260 and 1350; rather, they follow the same pattern. See Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate sobre la caballería. 13. See in particular the prosopographic sections of Nicolet’s study (L’ordre équestre, 1: 247–85), although the entire work merits special attention by medievalists focused on politics and the concepts of judicature and civility at the end of the medieval period. Nicolet’s arguments are particularly important for understanding the reconfiguration of medieval chivalry during the second half of the fourteenth century in the Italian Peninsula, as well as in places such as Burgundy and Castile (at least during the fourteenth century). The rearticulation of republican metaphors in the juridico-political organization of Florence, Burgundy, and Castile also constitutes a reorganization of the chivalric ordo, which likewise finds its origins in the period of the Roman republic. I have dealt with this issue in “Santillana en su laberinto de lecturas”; “La caballería cortés ante la caballería romana”; and more recently in “Pax: Hablar de la paz en la Edad Media.” I have taken up all of these ideas in a systematic way in República teórica, a monograph that will soon be published (Deus volens) by the Institución Fernando el Católico in Zaragoza (Spain). In this book I analyze the cultivation of republican ideas and metaphors in Florence, Castile, and Burgundy from the point of view of the aristocracy, as well as the transformations seen within the political sphere. This book will also present, as an appendix, editions of some of the theoretical texts that circulated in Castile and originated in the Italian Peninsula, France, and the duchy of Burgundy. 14. Martínez Díez, Ruiz Asencio, and Ruiz Albi, Historia latina de Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, 54. See also Falque, Gil, and Maya, Chronica Hispana Sæculi XII, 48. This edition offers an identical reading. In later historical texts, Rodrigo is dubbed by King Fernando, not by Sancho, and in Coimbra; see Rodríguez-Velasco, “El Cid y la investidura caballeresca.” 15. I wish to offer my heartfelt thanks to Alberto Montaner, who has been kind enough (kindness being one of his most salient traits, in any case) to allow me to consult his text before it was published. I also wish to thank him for the numerous conversations that we have had on this topic. I honestly believe that if we have disagreed about anything, it is because of my desire to argue for argument’s sake. In this case, as in others, it is most likely that he was correct. 16. Montoya Martínez, “La doctrina de la caballería”; Pérez Martín, “El estatuto jurídico de la caballería castellana”; Porro Girardi, La investidura de armas en Castilla, argue that the Partidas constitute a massive substitution of existing laws and ideas regarding chivalry, and that one might understand its laws as the basis for interpreting knighthood in successive centuries. As far as I am aware, no one has considered that the opposite may

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be true, that is, that the Partidas had no concrete impact on chivalry. For a more original presentation of this issue, even if the selected corpus does not permit the author to develop her ideas in precisely the way she might have desired, see Lizabe de Savastano, “El título XXI de la segunda partida de Alfonso X.” 17. For an original analysis of the development of this monarchic model, see Krynen, L’Empire du Roi. 18. For further analysis, see Rodríguez-Velasco, “De oficio a estado” and “Invención.” Jerry Craddock and I are currently preparing a critical edition of title 21 of the Second Partidas accompanied by ample commentary on its laws. 19. In this case, a parallel narration depicts Sancho’s independence from his brother Fernando precisely by explaining how he refuses to receive chivalric investiture, as adviced by Jaume I of Aragon: “E aquí don Ferrando pres sa muller, filla del rei de França. E féu-lo lo rei de Castella cavaller, e don Ferrando féu cavallers a sos germans, e no a don Sanxo, car nós lo pregam que els altres germans faés cavallers et no ell. E dix-nos lo rei de Castella que ell e els altres germans ho volien, e pus ells ho volien, que ben los podia ell fer cavallers. E dixem nós, devant don Felip e denant don Nuno e sos rics hòmens, que mal consell li dava qui el consellava que don Ferrnado faés sos germans cavallers. Et dix-nós ell que ells lo volien, e pus ells ho volien que bé ho podia ell fer. E nós dixem-li que ira e bando metia entre ells, que tos temps mentre no fossen bé, los retrauria que ell los havia feits cavallers, el altres haurien-ne endeny e ira. E nó dixem-los si ells ho querien: e ells dixeren que oc. E era prop nós don Sanxo, e dixem-li a l’orella que no lo faés per re. E ell dix que faria ço que nós li consellàssem. E nós demanam a don Sanxo denant tots: “Don Sanxo, ¿vos volets ésser cavallers de don Ferrando?” E ell dix: “Abuelo, lo que vós en querées, en quero jo.” E nós dixem: “Doncs açò en queremos nós, que vós que predades cavalleria de vostre padre e no d’otro homne.” E ell dix: “Senyor, plaçme, e fer lo he como vós queráes e como vós consellades.” E el rei féu cavaller don Ferrando, e don Ferrando féu cavallers a sos germans, llevat don Sanxo” (Jaume I, Crònica o Llibre dels Feits, ed. Ferran Soldevila, 384–85). 20. The minute glosses that López makes here are important, not so much because they point out the corresponding allegationes (commonly deceptive as a philological tool, but fundamental as a means of fixing and amending the Partidas), but above all because they indicate that to which Alfonso does not make reference: urban knights and the “celestial militia” (the ordination of clerics). 21. Barry Taylor, along with other scholars, has tried to determine precisely what the content of this work might have been, yet this has proven to be a fundamentally impossible project, even though we may have an approximate sense of the work’s structure. See Taylor, “Los capítulos perdidos”; Lizabe de Savastano, “Don Juan Manuel y la tradición de los tratados de caballería,” and to a lesser extent, “El título XXI de la segunda partida.” I have presented my ideas on the matter in El debate. 22. Ramon Llull, Libre de l’Orde de Cavaylaria, ed. Albert Soler i Llopart. On the investiture ceremony, 197–200; on the symbolism of the arms, 201–6. Alfonso X, Siete Partidas, 2.21.11: “Otrossi clerigo nin omne de religion non touieron que podrien fazer caualleros, porque serie cosa muy sin razon de entremeterse de fecho de caualleria aquellos que non ouieron nin han poder de meter y las manos pora obrar della” [“Neither a priest nor a man belonging to a religious order could be made knights, because it would be a

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very unreasonable thing for those who did not have, and do not have the power of actively engaging in its labors, to meddle with the affairs of knighthood”]. Regarding the moral and lay symbolism of the arms, and of the sword in particular, see law number 4 of the same title. 23. For more on the Llulian arte and its role within the devout Mallorcan’s political discourse, as well as the transformations of art in the different versions created by Llull (frequently due to specific political problems), see Badía and Bonner, Ramon Llull: Vida, pensamiento y obra literaria. 24. I have slightly modified Ayerbe-Chaux’s editorial criteria. 25. On this issue, see Ramos, “Notas al Libro de las armas”; and Martin, “Alphonse X.” 26. Scholars who have examined chivalry from the perspective of the knighting ceremony or from the perspective of Alphonsine law as an absolute and descriptive concept—as a reflection of something and not as a construction—have based their work largely on this issue. This historiographical perspective, employed by Jesús Montoya Martínez (“La doctrina de la caballería”), Antonio Pérez Martín (“El estatuto jurídico de la caballería castellana), and Nelly Porro Girardi (La investidura de armas en Castilla), is difficult to sustain at this point. 27. Peter Linehan has examined the investiture of Alfonso XI. In each instance, the Alfonsine need for jurisdictional independence manifests itself when the monarch ultimately chooses a ceremony from the ones that his bishops had suggested. An icon of the apostle Saint James is part of this ceremony. On the other hand, Linehan also shows that this statue was constructed specifically for Alfonso, although Castilian historiography has assigned to it a different, more legitimizing history. See, for example, Linehan, “The Mechanics of Monarchy,” “Alfonso XI of Castile and the Arm of Santiago,” and History and the Historians of Medieval Spain. 28. This episode of the Chronicle of Alfonso XI, which I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 2, has also invoked as confirmation of the importance of knightly investiture for the Knights of the Sash (Equites Bindae). As we will see, every knighting enacts a “good ritual” (“buen ritual”), perhaps resembling the one contained in the Partidas, although this is impossible to ascertain. 29. For more on this issue, see my critical review of Funes and Tenenbaum. A revised version of this review can also be found at http://www.jrvelasco.com/category/ commentaria. 30. Once again, see my review of Funes and Tenenbaum. The bibliography on the Song of Rodrigo is frequently focused on the Castilian epic. This focus conceals in some instances the complex group of interpretive problems that the text presents. For further analysis, see Martin, Chansons de geste espagnoles. The manuscript that contains the work is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), Fonds Espagnol (Esp.) 12; Archer Huntington has made a facsimile edition under the title Crónica rimada [del Cid]; more recently, Matthew Bailey has produced a facsimile edition (Las “Mocedades de Rodrigo”), at 96% of the original size, that also contains various studies. 31. BNF Esp. MS 12, f. 196r. See also the editions of Alvar and Alvar (Épica medieval castellana, vv. 652–62, p. 138); and Funes and Tenenbaum, vv. 652–62. 32. See Partidas 2.13.20 and Martin, “El Cid de las Mocedades.”

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33. See Rodríguez-Velasco, “Review of Funes, Leonardo and Felipe Tenenbaum.” 34. It should be noted that Deyermond himself pushed back the date in his 1999 study, “La autoría de las Mocedades de Rodrigo: Un replanteamiento.” I still believe that the first date is more appropriate. 35. Given that the legal text referred to in this part is the Partidas, we may assume a terminus post quem of 1348. 36. Regarding the date of the Zifar’s first redaction, I suppose that there is much more to be said. My position is more allied with that of Cacho Blecua (“Los problemas del Zifar). He has contributed, in addition, what continues to be the most important bibliography on the matter. See also the monographic volume of La corónica dedicated to the Zifar edited by Barletta and Harney. 37. The problem of the recovery of the wife and the reduplication of the name of Zifar’s two wives deserves further study in itself. In essence, Zifar assumes that his wife Grima has died and takes a new wife who has the same name. When the first wife and Zifar find each other, she decides to accept Zifar’s new marriage and take religious vows, thereby maintaining the integrity of the second family, which now includes the children of the first wife. 38. The Llibre dels feits (Book of Deeds) of Jaume I dedicates an entire chapter (495) to this specific problem: E aquí don Ferrando pres sa Muller, filla del rei de França. E féu-lo lo rei de Castella cavaller, e don Ferrando féu cavalleros a sos germans, e no a don Sanxo, car nós lo pregam que els altres germans faés cavallers et no ell. E dixnos lo rei de Castella que ell e els altres germans ho volien, e pus ells ho volien, que ben los podia ell fer cavallers. E dixem nós denant don Nuno e sos rics hòmens, que mal consell li dava qui el consellava que don Ferrando faés sos germans cavallers. E dix-nos ell que ells ho volien, e pus ells ho volien que bé ho podia ell fer. E nós dixem-li que ira e bando metia entre ells, que tos temps mentre no fossen bé, los retrauria que ell los havia feits cavallers, els altres haurien-ne endeny e ira. E nós dixem-los si ells ho querien: e ells dixeren que oc. E era prop nós don Sanxo, e dixem-li a l’orella que no lofaés per re. E ell dix que faria ço que nós li consellàssem. E nós demanam a don Sanxo denant tots: “Don Sanxo, ¿vós volets ésser cavallers de don Ferrando?” e ell dix: “Abuelo, lo que vós en querees en quiero jo.” E nós dixem: “Doncs, açò en queremos nós, que vós que predades cavalleria de vostre padre e no d’otro homne.” [And here Don Fernando [firstborn son of Alfonso X of Castile and León] took his wife, the daughter of the king of France. And the king of Castile knighted him, and Don Fernando knighted his brothers, but not Don Sancho, for I begged him to knight the other brothers, but not him. And the king of Castile told me that Don Fernando and the other brothers wished it, and since they wished it, he might well make them all knights. I told him, in front of Don Felipe, Don Nuño, and the rest of his ricos hombres [the high nobility of Castile, with Don Nuño de Lara being the highest member] that the person who had advised Don Fernando to do what they wished had given him bad advice. The

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notes to pages 49–50 king replied that all his sons desired it, and so Don Fernando should do it. I told him that he was sowing wrath and enmity among them; that whenever they did something wrong Don Fernando would remind them that it was he who had knighted them, and they would feel scorn and anger at it. I asked them if they wished it, and they said yes. Don Sancho was near me, and I whispered into his ear that he should not do it on any account. He said he would do as I advised. And I asked Don Sancho in front of them all: “Don Sancho, do you wish to be knighted by Don Fernando?” “Grandfather,” he replied, “what you want, I want.” I said, “My wish is that you be knighted by your father, and from no one else.”] (Jaume I, Crònica, o Llibre dels Feits, 384–85).

In this chapter, the political conflict is presented as observed from the outside, in the voice of someone who perceives the juridico-political strategy that is taking place through the knighting ceremonies. By remaining outside of this strategy, Sancho sheds the bond of dependence on his brother to preserve the horizontal fraternal relationship to which they are both subjected in the absence of another contracted political bond. In fact, this issue will be crucial for the political representation of Sancho as a legitimate king in the context of his rebellion against his father.

chapter 2. poetics of fr aternity 1. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, an individual could be knighted and become part of the nobility not only by the exercise of military functions but by the exercise of juridical and legal works. There will be further discussion of the issue in the next chapter. 2. Some specifics on vocabulary were made by Teofilo F. Ruiz (Sociedad y poder real, 160); the author develops similar arguments in “The Transformation of Castilian Municipalities.” Georges Martin has often concerned himself with establishing a precise vocabulary with respect to chivalry, as can be seen in his commentary on Partidas 2.21 (“La chevalerie selon Alphonse X de Castille”). 3. I am not in complete agreement with the interpretation of Teofilo F. Ruiz (Sociedad y poder real, 153 n. 16) regarding Partidas 2.10.3, in which he does not make a social categorization with respect to space, let alone urban space; in that law the term caualleria is utilized very imprecisely, only to distinguish it from “los otros omnes de armas” [“other armed men”] who are undoubtedly the laborers (the expression “omnes de armas” is almost systematically used in this sense), or to point out that “otra manera de caualleria” [“another sort of chivalry”] is the exercise of the law (something that Bartolo, years later, will clearly claim), and with it many of the non-noble (villano) knights from the cities (on this subject, see the end of Chapter 3 of the present book). I do not fully subscribe to Ruiz’s theory that Alfonso X makes a distinction between noble knights and urban knights in his letters (Real Academia de la Historia, Memorial histórico español, 1: 240). Beyond these issues, the Alfonsine texts sometimes introduce new elements of uncertainty,

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in separating, as different categories, caualleros de linage and caualleros fijosdalgo, as is the case of letters of the Andalusian population (see María Nieves Sánchez, Diccionario español de documentos alfonsíes, s.v. caballero). All these distinctions seem to be very circumstantial and not systematic. There are certain previous distinctions, or, to be more precise, one, totally isolated in the sources, in the Portuguese Fuero de Leiria (Law Code of Leiria), in which the milites per naturam are distinguished from the milites qui non fuerint per naturam (Carmela Pescador, “La caballería popular,” 121–22). 4. A lost Libro de los Engeños (Book of Arms), of which he speaks in one of his prologues, could have been dedicated to medieval strategies and tactics, probably according to his reading of the Epitoma rei militaris by Vegetius. It is unlikely that Juan Manuel would have read this book cover to cover in Latin, as there were numerous versions in circulation, summaries, rewritings (Alfonso himself incorporated it into the Partidas) from which Don Juan Manuel could have read. It is plausible that these sources are both Alfonso and De regimine principum of Giles Rome (whose third part of the third book is based in Vegetius), of which Don Juan Manuel seems to have known a French version (Li livre du gouvernement des rois). 5. Research on the subject has been under the direction of Peter Linehan (History and the Historians and “Alfonso XI of Castile and the Arm of Santiago”). We certainly cannot speculate on Alfonso XI’s thoughts regarding the new “ordo militiae.” My hypothesis is that he was not considering the possibility of creating a secular chivalrous order, as they do not have any designated territory. The most logical idea is to think that it would have to do, rather, with a military order of the Christian type or of the Reconquest, as his greatgrandfather Alfonso X had tried to do with the Order of Santa María de España (although these monastic-chivalrous orders did possess land). One would assume that the great innovation would be that of constructing a monastic-chivalrous order in royal territories and under the authority of the king, with the intention of constructing his central power also on this front, thereby limiting the enormous power of the classical military orders. 6. On this subject, see Ruiz (From Heaven to Earth). Both Ruiz and Hilario Casado Alonso (Señores, mercaderes y campesinos) agree on eliminating the radical differences that historiography has sketched between the rural and the urban universe and have worked to develop a body of research by which the points of contact might be noted. Ruiz, in this and other studies (see, for example, “Two Patrician Families in Late Medieval Burgos”), demonstrates that both bourgeoisie and hidalgos develop their activities on both sides of the walls. All this does not eliminate, however, the particularities of the urban universe (which, obviously, must be considered as an economic, social, and political center well differentiated from the periphery), nor the fact that the bourgeois population exceeds in number and power the hidalgo population. See the Chapter 3 of the present book for a discussion on the practices of space. 7. In La rebelión de los burgos, H. Salvador Martínez offers a study of the process of Europeanization within the kingdom of Alfonso VI and the importance that, in this process, the councils and fort towns (burgos) acquire, in particular those of the northeast of the Peninsula. 8. On the Council of Alba de Tormes, see Monsalvo Antón, El sistema político concejil; on the city of Cuenca, see Jara Fuente, “La ciudad y la otra caballería” and Cabañas, La

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caballería popular; on the city of Jaén, see Pérez-Prendes, “El origen de los caballeros de cuantía”; on the city of Soria, see Diago Hernando, Estructuras de poder en Soria; and on the city of Burgos, see, among many others, Casado, Señores, mercaderes y campesinos; Bonachía, El Señorío de Burgo; and Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity. In the case of Murcia, the work of Juan Torres Fontes,“La caballería de alarde murciana en el siglo XV,” is also classic. The case of the cities and Andalusian borders has been analyzed in detail by Manuel González Jiménez (see “La caballería popular en Andalucía” and “La caballería popular en la frontera”). Elena Lourie, “A Society Organized for War,” takes up many of the concepts of Pescador’s classic work, even though they are expressed in a much more synthetic way. See also James F. Powers, A Society Organized for War, on social and military organization on the Iberian Peninsula. 9. The idea of exception fulfills a very strange historiographic assumption in terms of the relationship between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe, given that this southwestern area tends to be separated from the great historiographic movements defined by nineteenth-century scientific historiography. Spain (understood to be the Iberian Peninsula as a whole, with, perhaps, the sole exception of the Hispanic Mark, and by extension, Catalonia), then, could not have had feudalism or a Renaissance period, and both deficiencies would have been considered a form of cultural belatedness, as coined by Ernst Robert Curtius and debated by Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz. Many historians have endeavored to show that it was possible to dismiss the notion of cultural delay and that, in fact, Spain (in the same sense as before) did not constitute an exception, but that the exceptional situations could be explained also by exceptional motives (for example, the long confrontation between the Christian kingdoms and al-Andalus). 10. With respect to the Italian Peninsula, see Keller, “Militia” and “Adel, Rittertum und Ritterstand”; or Salvemini, Magnati e popolani in Firenze. Also, Franco Cardini, Guerre di Primavera, Alle radici della cavalleria, and L’acciar de’ cavalieri; or Stefano Gasparri, I milites cittadini. Gasparri elaborates a detailed criticism of these studies, even though they are clearly undermined by the spectacular and ritual dimensions of chivalry (I milites cittadini). See also Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, Cavaliers et citoyens. 11. I thank Tara A. Daly, who called my attention to Soja’s book and has provided me with innumerable critical ideas on the subject. 12. I intended to make a similar argument in my research on Alfonsine chivalry and its reuse throughout the fourteenth century, especially for Alfonso XI. In my view, the invention of chivalry constituted a strategy to control the power of the high nobility of wealthy men, establishing a support system organized exclusively by the king and modeled after the chivalric court system (Rodríguez-Velasco, “De oficio a estado” and “Invención y consecuencias”). 13. For an overview of this phenomenon, see Gennaro Maria Monti, Le confraternite medievali, and Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Historia de la previsión social en España. Monti’s work includes other European regions. Rumeu de Armas’s book, albeit very concise, has important observations for a future history of some of those corporations. In his work on the Asturian brotherhoods (Las hermandades en Asturias), Eloy Benito Ruano, on the other hand, develops important methodological specifications, especially on the subject of the vocabulary of brotherhoods and related groups.

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14. Julio Puyol, Las Hermandades de Castilla y León; César González Mínguez, Contribución al estudio de las Hermandades en el reinado de Fernando IV de Castilla; Antonio Álvarez Morales, Las Hermandades, expresión del movimiento comunitario en España; Julio Valdeón Baruque, Los conflictos sociales en el reino de Castilla en los siglos XIV y XV; Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada & Manuel Fernando, “La participación de Zamora en instituciones de ámbito general de la Corona de Castilla: las Cortes y la Hermandad (siglo XV)”; Miguel Ángel Ladero Quesada, La Hermandad de Castilla: Cuentas y Memoriales, 1480–1498. Teófilo Ruiz, in Sociedad y poder real, has already called into question the theory regarding the functionality of fraternities and their supposed role in the creation of a democracy or a municipal or supramunicipal autonomy. The bibliography on fraternities is undoubtedly more extensive, as in great measure it runs parallel with the study of urban powers and their sponsors. An account of these subjects as discussed in specialized journals (Medievalismo, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, among others) far exceeds the scope of the present study. 15. The letter is published in the appendix; the book is entirely unnumbered. 16. This reference and regulation of the tasks of the ayo of the king should, to be enlightening, be tied to the regulation contained in Partidas 2.7.3, with Manueline literature (imagined during Don Juan Manuel’s time as royal tutor, set in motion during his confrontation with Alfonso XI), and with the traditions of pedagogical fables between Sancho IV and Pedro I on the subject. It is a general preoccupation of specula principum literature, and Don Juan Manuel (surely considering himself to be the ideal tutor) develops it in many of his works, but, first and foremost, in El conde Lucanor (Count Lucanor) and Libro de los estados (Book of the States). There are few interpretive and theoretical studies of political Castilian literature in the Spanish language, and the greater part of these are essentially descriptive and erudite. See the works of Marta Haro Cortés (Los compendios de castigos del siglo XIII; La prosa didáctica castellana del XIII; La imagen del poder real; and Literatura de castigos en la Edad Media). See also Bizzarri, Castigos del rey don Sancho IV. 17. I quote this cuaderno as per the edition contained in Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos de León y Castilla, I (247–72). The specific quotes appear on page 248. The edition of this cuaderno includes the original that was deposited in the council of Pancorbo—as was indicated at the end of the cuaderno itself. 18. About the relationships between theories of love, the political concept of love, and the diverse constitutions of chivalry, see Köhler, Sociologia della fin’amor; and Bumke, Höfische Kultur. From a perspective more related to the theoretical investigation of love in the Middle Ages, see Huchet, L’amour discourtois. For a more extensive bibliography on the subject, see Rodríguez-Velasco, Guía para el estudio, vol. 1, chap. 3. 19. To the same extent, courtesy and the language on which it is formed constitute the aspiration of bourgeois groups and associations from at least the twelfth century in booming commercial European cities like Arras or Toulouse. The societies of cultural action are, in the cities mentioned, of extraordinary importance. It is enough to mention the Puy d’Arras, a society of jesters and bourgeois troubadours, in full institutional peak from the end of the twelfth century, with figures as outstanding as Jean Bodel or Adam de la Halle; prominent in Toulouse, in the first third of the fourteenth century, was the Consistori del Gai Saber (Consistory of the Gay Science), whose literary prize (a gold violet) came accompanied with important texts of institutionalization (for example, the variations on the Leys d’amors

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by Guilhem Molinier), centered in the citizen bourgeoisie. The works of Marie Ungureanu (Société et littérature bourgeoises) and Roger Berger (Littérature et société arrageoises) stand out amid the small bibliography on the processes of bourgeois institutionalization around culture and, particularly, poetry and music. There is a plethora of works about concert authors or particular genres (the congés of Arras, for example), but almost nothing on the processes of institutionalization. The Tolonaso case and others are similar. The bibliography surrounding the bourgeois literary societies is scarce, even though there are various works on the Leis d’amors in its diverse variations. For a bibliography on the subject, see RodríguezVelasco (Guía para el estudio, vol. 1, chap. 3). 20. For the issue of the mesnaderos and their presence in legal codes, see Chapter 4. 21. For the centrality of the selection of dates, see Teofilo Ruiz, “Festivités, couleurs et symboles”; and Borst, The Ordering of Time. Also important is the summary Michael Shank’s review. On the theologico-political value of time, periodization, and such—a subject on which the bibliography is expansive—see Davis, Medieval Temporalities. 22. Some of the hidalgos who signed the Cuaderno de la Hermandad went on to become part of the group of nobles faithful to Alfonso XI and, around 1348, joined the knights of the Sash; among the bourgeois from Burgos were some future members of the confraternities of urban knights of Gamonal and Santiago. The orders of the Sash and Santiago arose after the Hermandad had lost its validity. Both seem to have responded to projects of reordination of the ordines and social strata, even though their political means were totally different from those of the fraternity. In the Hermandad, the will of power of these middle groups was crucial, while in later orders the authority of the king (and his intention to reconfigure the stratum according to traditional categories and ordines) would be more influential, limiting the institutional spaces where noble chivalry and urban chivalry could mix.

chapter 3. the presence of the confr aternity 1. Pardo de Guevara, “Introducción,” 14. 2. All these works have been cited in notes to previous chapters; please refer to the bibliography. 3. Cortes de Valladolid, 1325, art. 4, in Cortes de los antiguos reinos, 1: 374. 4. Ibid., 376. 5. Ladero Quesada, Fiscalidad y poder real. 6. The accumulation of documents is one of the fundamental keys of this gigantic work. 7. Pescador, “La caballería popular.” See also Cabañas, La caballería popular. 8. Pérez-Prendes, “El origen de los caballeros.” 9. Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity, chap. 8, on the problem of the “non-noble knights.” It is perhaps the most original contribution on the subject of urban knights, beyond the ledgers and the documentation of disputes. Ruiz seeks to elucidate how a social class is constructed, which is critical to an understanding of the rise of the bourgeoisie and the increasing centrality of the city as a political device. 10. The denomination is contingent on the specific cases and uses established by codices

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or by documentary groups. In documents relevant to the Cabildo de Guisados de Caballo de Cuenca the members are always referred to as hombres buenos, whether they are hidalgos or not. In the in the case of Burgos, and mainly throughout the codices, hombres buenos is always synonymous with “knights who belong to the brotherhood.” As Ruiz has shown in his Sociedad y poder real, in the documentary grouping of the Burgalese municipality, this denomination is not always consistent. 11. Cabañas, La caballería popular; Jara Fuente, Concejo, poder y elites; Pérez-Prendes, “El origen de los caballeros.” 12. For a history of the Confraternity of Gamonal, see Casado, “La Cofradía de Caballeros.” 13. This is the case of the Libro del Capítulo de los Infanzones of Biescas, an Aragonese locality approximately 100 km north of Zaragoza. Seeking revenge over the exercise of power of the infanzones, several people entered the headquarters and stabbed the book. They also left a handwritten note stating that this had been done “in lieu of the counselor.” Thus stabbing the book is akin to stabbing the counselor himself. Bouza has discussed this topic in Corre manuscrit, 116–17, as well as in his article “Por no usarse.” 14. Whenever I refer to the Libro de los caballeros de Santiago, I quote directly from the Burgalese manuscript. There are two facsimile editions of this book, both prepared by Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués. 15. The participle infinido is in fact a neologism coined by Don Juan Manuel to designate one of his books, the Libro infinido: “Et porque este libro es de cosas que yo prové, pusi en él las de que me acordé. Et porque las que daquí adelante provare non sé a qué recudrán, non las pude aquí poner, mas, con la merced de Dios, ponerlas he como las provare. Et porque esto non sé quándo se acabará, pus nombre a este libro El libro enfenido, que quiere dezir libro sin acabamiento” (Mota ed., 118–19). 16. Folios 59 and 60 respectively. 17. As we will see in the sections devoted to the Order of the Sash (Chapters 4 and 5), there is considerable difference on this issue between the Libro de la Banda (Book of the Sash) and the Segundo Ordenamiento). The latter, contrary to the former, remains closed and cloistered when it becomes incorporated into legal discourse. 18. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning. This concept refers to a cultural construction based on the articulation of a vocabulary and its corresponding ethical issues. Fashioning also signals interaction within a structure of civilization where its methods and tendencies may be identified. 19. Derrida, Mal d’archive. 20. Escalona Monge, Azcárate Aguilar-Amat, and Larrañaga Zulueta, “De la crítica diplomática a la ideología política.” 21. Weber, The City, 65–89, 91–120. 22. Harvey, The Urban Experience, 109. 23. Harvey, Spaces of Hope. 24. Casado, Señores, Mercaderes y Campesinos, 561. 25. Duby, La société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région Maconnaise and Guerriers et paysans. 26. I read the Latin text of De regimine principum libri III, ed. Hyeronimus Samaritanus,

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401; for the French text, see Molenaer’s edition, Li livres du gouvernement des rois, 267. 27. See also Prue Shaw’s introduction to Dante, De monarchia. Robert Harrison also subscribes to the idea of a “republican imperialism” in Dante in his address “Do We Need an Emperor?” 28. Ed. Diego Quaglioni, Politica e diritto nel Trecento italiano. 29. See Rodríguez-Velasco, “Pax.” 30. See, e.g., Holston, Cities and Citizenship. 31. Libro de los caballeros de Santiago, fol. 15r. 32. Ibid. 33. de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, vol. 1, Arts de faire, 180–89. 34. “And we the brothers of Santa María of Gamonal, those who are now present and those who will come after us for ever and ever, we bequeath and promise to have and to keep and to fulfill all that has been previously mentioned, and we command that all this be written in the rule. And I Gonçalo Peres, public scribe of Burgos, by command of the brethren of Santa María de Gamonal, wrote all this which has been said and is placed here in this letter, and I sign it in the three hundred and forty and third year of Cesar.” Regla de Gamonal, fols. 4–5. Although the code is dated 1285, it was in fact drafted by scribe Gonzalo Pérez in 1305. 35. A map of medieval Burgos can be found in Hilario Casado, Señores. In the contemporary map the same east-west orientation predominates even though the urban design has changed substantially. 36. Lefebvre, La production de l’espace. 37. The order of the procession and its conception of space has been abundantly studied. For a study of how to conceive cathedral space in the processional order, see Scott, The Gothic Enterprise. The procession as a liturgical instrument as well as one of meditation has been largely studied and put in relation to theater or paratheater acts, in general of the reordering of space. With regard to this, see Pedro M. Cátedra, Liturgia, poesía y teatro en al Edad Media (with an abundant bibliography). Both the city and the monastic environment were used in the Middle Ages as spaces for mediation, including in imaginary or intellectual processions that range from the representation of the Celestial Jerusalem or the City of God in general to the maps used by monks in places like Sankt Gallen in Switzerland (the plans were distributed to the monks even though the space was never constructed). The space is a devotional interior space. For more information on spaces and methods of meditation and thought in the Middle Ages, see the work of the Latin scholar Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought. 38. De Certeau, L’invention, 173. 39. I construct here the idea of the grammar of forms and expressions (adapted here from de Certeau’s idea about the practices of space and speech acts) based on the work of Jean-Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval, and, later, on much more formalist and structural works concerning metaphor and the grammar of forms and images, such as Garnier, Grammaire des gestes, and Christe, Velmans, Losowska, and Recht, La grammaire des formes et des styles. As to my own use of the concept, it is important to note that I do not believe the grammar of expressions and forms to be a fact I induce from the books I am examining, but that I consider that the books are

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constructing this grammar, and they are endowing it with rules of the production of expressions, attitudes, images, manners of dress, and so on. The book does not create the models; it does model, based on the portraits, a code of conduct for those who form part of the brotherhood. The grammar is oriented toward the production of a concrete presence in a physical environment. 40. With regard to this representation, see the second part of my “Invención y consecuencia.” 41. See Belting, Likeness and Presence; Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want, esp. 57–75; Schmitt, Le corps des images. An important work dealing with the placement of an image, its centrality within a space, is Pereira, “Le lieu et les images.” For a study of the factual character of the images, which sometimes was considered to be magical, I recommend the beautiful essay by Régis Debray, Vie et mort de l’image. 42. See Ruiz, “El siglo XIII y primera mitad del siglo XIV”; also Bonachía and Casado, “Oligarquía y patrimonializión de cargos,” in the same volume (222–24). 43. Harvey, Spaces of Hope. García Herrera has proposed various changes under the general concept of “elitization” (“Elitización”). 44. See Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity, chap. 8, on the non-noble knights, as well as in his prosopographic studies on the Bonifaz and Sarracín families. 45. The idea of presence I have taken directly from Gumbrecht, Production of Presence. 46. Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity. See also González Arce, Apariencia y poder, esp. 74– 84. 47. The problem of ostentation and representation and its political functionality was the object of various regulations in all of Europe at about the same time. Susan Mosher Stuard’s book, Gilding the Market, refers to this problem as well in different Italian citystates. The fact that Leonardo Bruni incorporates the ostentation of gold in his discussion of chivalry is, on the other hand, a proof of the need for recognition and distinction of the knights in an urban environment, which, nevertheless, rejects seeing them with their weapons, in a clearly republican fashion. 48. Cortes de Burgos, 1338, art. 37, in Cortes, 1: 454, pt. 7. 49. This petition is so important that in 1351—after the death of Alfonso, and during the Cortes convened by Pedro I, during which he issued, with corrections, the Ordenamiento de Alcalá—the book of petitions of the procurators of the cities requests from the king, in protocolary manner, that the new king uphold the liberties, exemptions, laws etc., already granted by Alfonso, and that he annul or dismiss all the rules concerning clothing practices and the ostentation of wealth. 50. Quoted from Menéndez Pidal’s 1985 edition, El libro de la cofradía de Santiago de Burgos, p. 51. The oldest manuscript of the Libro de la Banda, or Book of the Sash, is in a parchment codex in folio that was not created when the Order was founded, but later in the reign of Alfonso XI. Throughout the present study, I will refer to it as the P text and will refer to the Segundo Ordenamiento, or Second Ordinance, using the letter E. 52. Concerning this, see Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate sobre la caballería, part 3. 53. The systems of social precaution, association, and others were treated by Antonio

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Rumeu de Armas, in Historia de la previsión social en España. About the specific problem of the administration of wills and how these showed the elements of reality, see Ruíz, From Heaven to Earth. 54. Casado, “La cofradía,” 64–65. 55. See Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate, as well as Heusch and Rodríguez-Velasco, La caballería castellana. 56. Cf. Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate, part 3. 57. I deal with this issue in El debate, part 3. For Valera, in his Espejo de verdadera nobleza, the great danger of chivalry constitutes, precisely, the promotion of the bourgeois knights to the nobility. Valera is not absolutely against the concession of nobility by the prince or the king. Mexía (Nobiliario vero) or Rodríguez del Padrón (Cadira del honor) are. Neither Valera nor Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo (Espejo de la vida humana) appear to be against this new ability of the king to grant nobility by means of chivalry; both, therefore concur with Bartolo of Sassoferrato and his De dignitatis. 58. The distinction between civil and theological nobility (along with the concept of vulgar and moral nobility) pertains to the argumentation of Bartolo of Sassoferrato in De dignitatis. 59. With respect to the conditions in which this thesis is produced, see my works, El debate, esp. part 3, and also “El Tractatus de insigniis et armis,” “Teoría de la fábula caballeresca,” and “Invención y consecuencias.” See also Heusch and Rodríguez-Velasco, La caballería castellana.

chapter 4. the order of the sash 1. This book will not address the ceremonies and festivals of the royal entry in a specific manner, with the exception of the coronation of Alfonso XI in Burgos, which we will treat in this very chapter. The descriptions of royal entries to which we have access are, in the case of Castile, later than the period I am analyzing here. See Nieto Soria, Ceremonias de la realiza, 4. 2. The theme of errantry is crucial in the bibliography about chivalry, and the idea of the “knight-errant,” permanent. Nevertheless, we must point out two contributions in which the political problem that errantry entails is highlighted in a particular manner: Köhler, Ideal und Wirklichteit in der höfischen Epik; Stanesco, Jeux d’errance du chevalier médiéval. In these two works, especially Köhler, the sociological and political analysis stresses the errant movement as a process of departure and return: the knight does not only leave for adventure, but he also must substantiate the recuperation of political order in the moment in which he returns to the center of the court, to the place where the king resides. My thesis, which I simply state in these pages, is that this process of departure and return, or of delocalization and localization, is crucial to the expansion of the monarchical political model. The knight is the living representation of the monarchy, its political and jurisdictional presence, and who, in the end, upon returning to the royal court, introduces as well the voice of the exterior. The administrative mission of chivalry may be considered, then, heraldic: the knight carries the coat of arms of the king, but

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he is also the herald or spokesman for the king. We will take up matters dealing with heraldic problems in Chapter 6. 3. These notes replace and correct those presented in Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, “Alfonso XI: Ordenamiento de la Banda; Segundo Ordenamiento de la Banda.” The dating of the Book of the Sash proposed by Boulton and later by Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, lagging behind the editions of Daumet and of Villanueva, which situate it at the moment of the foundation of the order, is completely unsustainable, even though it is the one that has been perpetuated throughout the studies on the Orden de la Banda. Cf. Lorenzo Tadeo Villanueva, “Memoria sobre la orden de caballería de la Banda” (this work was Villanueva’s inaugural address in the Real Academia de la Historia in 1812; Georges Daumet, “L’Order castillan de l’Écharpe (Banda)”; Richard Barber, The Knight and Chivalry; Jole Scudieri-Ruggieri, Cavalleria e cortesia; D’Arcy J. D. Boulton, The Knights of the Crown; Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain; Alfonso Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, La orden y divisa de la Banda Real de Castilla. 4. The work is incorporated into Morales, Noticias historicas. 5. Benjamin highlights the idea of ruin as a concept for historical theory in a work which is also a ruin—the fragmentary and unfinished, but nevertheless crucial for contemporary historical theory, Das Passagen-Werk. I use the English translation, The Arcades Project. The concept of ruin is not just related to the study of a specific object. Instead it reveals the impossibility of the object itself (in this case the book) to relate in its complete contemporaneity with the cultural universe to which it has been thrown. A beautiful commentary on the concept can be found in Enrique Gavilán, “Illumination of the Ruin.” 6. All the rest of the texts are dealt with in this work. With regard to the Bienandanzas y fortunas (book 16) of Lope García de Salazar, Pero López de Ayala and the Sash are connected through the land of Álava and through the lineages that descend from the order just as they appear in the lists of manuscript P and, above all, in the Second Ordinance. 7. Jovellanos, Memoria sobre las diversas públicas. The discourse before the Real Academia was from 1790, but it was not printed until 1796. In the end it only includes a documentary appendix, in which is copied part of the rules of the Sash, specifically the part dedicated to the tournaments and jousts; the text is that of the Book of the Sash, not that of the Second Ordinance. The only modern edition that contains the appendix is that of José Lage. 8. The information is contained on a sticker from 1881, which was stuck to the inside of the binding of the codex. 9. It is formed by three quires: the first, a sexternion; second, a sexternion; and third, a quinternion. 10. The coupling of privilegio rodado and chrismon has a previous history, and it is found, for example, in the letter of population of Benavente, given in 1167 by Fernando II of León; the privilegio rodado figures a rampant lion and the chrismon is highly schematic, all of which is in black ink. The privilegios rodados in polychrome are converted into artistic pieces, or, better, into a central piece of legal aesthetic beginning with Alfonso X, who also makes copies, according to the new formal model, of letters and privileges of previous kings (whose contents he confirms and varies, while at the same time making disappear

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the original, in this movement of instinct of destruction, which constitutes the repetition of the archival documents, according to Derrida). See various examples in González Díez and Martínez Llorente, eds., Fueros y cartas pueblas de Castilla y León. 11. Rolandino, Summa artis notariae 3.10, quoted in Louis J. Bataillon, “Exemplar, Pecia, Quaternus.” 12. Benjamin, “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 13. Cf. Siete Partidas 3.18.1. 14. Here I transcribe the title in its entirety (BNM MS Vitrina 15-7, .XXVIIIº., fol. 15v, col. a): [“Título.xxviijº. por quales leyes se deuen librar los pleytos Ley.ï. como todos los pleitos se duen librar primera mente por las leyes deste libro. Et lo que por ellas non se pudiese librar / que se libre por los fueros. Et lo que por los fueros non se podiere librar / que se libre por las partidas. Nvestra entençion & nuestra uoluntad es quelos nuestros naturales & moradores delos [fol. 15v, col. b] regnos sean mantenidos en paz & en justiçia. Et como para eo sea meester dar leys çiertas por do se libren los pleitos & las contiendas que acesçieren entre ellos. Et maguer que en la nuestra corte usan del fuero delas leyes & algunas villas del nuestro señorio lo han por fuero & otras çibdades & uillas ayan otros fueros departidos por los quales se pueden librar algunos pleitos. Pero por que muchas son las contiendas & los pleitos que entre los omes acaesçen & se mueuen de cada dia que se non pueden librar por los fueros. Por ende queriendo poner remedio conuenible a esto / establesçemos & mandamos quelos dichos fueros sean guardados en aquellas cosas que se usaron. Saluo en aquello que non fallaremos que se deuen meiorar & emendar. & en lo que son contra dios & contra razon o contra las leyes que en este nuestro libro se contiene. por las quales leyes deste nuestro libro mandamos que se libren primera mente todos los pleitos ciuiles & criminales Et los pleitos & contiendas que se non podieren librar por las leyes deste libro & por los dichos fueros. mandamos que se libre por las leyes contenidas en los libros de las siete partidas que el rey don alfonso nuestro uisauuelo mando ordenar. como quier que fasta aqui non se falla que fuessen publicadas por mandado del rey / nin fueron auydas nin reçebidas por leyes. Pero nos mandamos las requerir & conçertar & emendar en algunas cosas que cumplian. Et assi conçertadas & emendadas / porque fueron sacadas & tomadas delos dichos delos sanctos padres / & delos derechos & dichos de muchos sabios antiguos & [fol. 16r, col. a] de fueros & de costumbres antiguas de es españa / damos las por nuestras leyes. Et por que sean çiertas & non ayan razon de tirar & emendar & mudar en ellas cada uno lo que quisiere / mandamos fazer dellas dos libros / uno seellado con nuestro seello de oro & otro seellado con uestro seello de plomo para tener en la nuestra camara / por que en lo que dubda ouiere quelas conçierten conellas. Et tenemos por bien que sean guardadas & ualederas de aqui adelante

note to page 128 en los pleitos & en los iuyzios & en todas las otras cosas que se en ellas contienen en aquello que non fueren contrarias alas leyes deste nuestro libro & alos fueros sobredichos. Et porque los fijos dalgo de nuestros regnos han en algunas comarcas fuero de aluedrio & otros fueros por que se iudgan ellos & sus uasallos/ tenemos por bien queles sean guardados sus fueros aellos & a sus uasallos / segund quelo an de fuero & les fueron guardados fasta aqui. Otrosi en fecho delos rieptos / que sea guardado aquel uso & aquella costumbre que fue usada & guardada en tiempo delos otros reyes & enel nuestro. Otrosi tenemos por bien que sea guardado el ordenamiento que nos agora fazemos en estas cortes para los fijos dalgo / el qual mandamos poner en fin deste nuestro libro Et porque al rey pertenesçe & ha poder de fazer fueros & leyes & delas entrepretar & declarar & emendar do uiere que cumple / tenemos por bien que si enlos dichos fueros & en los libros delas partidas sobredichas / o en eneste dicho nuetro libro / o en alguna o en algunas leyes delas que en ellas se contienen fuere meester entrepretaçion o declaraíon o emendar o eñader o tirar o mudar / que nos quelo fagamos. Et si alguna contrariedat pareçiere en las leyes sobredichas entressy |col. b| mesmas / o en los fueros o en qual quier dellos o alguna dubda fuere fallada en ellos / o algun fecho que por ellos non se pueda librar / que non que seamos requerido sobre ello por que fagamos entrepretaçion o declaraçion o emienda do entendieremos que cumple & fagamos ley nueua la que uieremos que cumple sobrello por quela iustiçia & el derecho sea guardado. Empero bien queremos & sofrimos quelos lobros delos derechos quelos sabios antiguos fizieron / que se lean en los estudios generales de nuestro señorio / por que ha en ellos mucha sabiduria / & queremos dar logar quelos nuestros naturales sean sabidores & sean por ende mas onrrados. Ley .ïj. como las leyes deste libro deuen seer guardadas en todos los regnos & tierras del señorio del rey. & quelas deuen fazer guardar cada uno en las villas & logares do han señorio. Et como las penas pertenesçen acada señor en su logar. Muchos delos nuestros regnos assi prelados como ricos omes & ordenes de caualleria & otras eglesias & monesterios & caualleros & otras personas del nuestro señorio han uillas & logares en que han señorio & iurisdiçion & en algunos logares omeziellos & caloñas. Et es nuestro de proueer que en todo el nuestro señorio sea guardada & mantenida iustiçia & derecho. Por ende tenemos por bien & mandamos que todas estas cosas contenidas en este nuestro libro sean auydas por leyes & se guarden en todos los regnos & tierras del nuestro señorio. Et quelas guarden & fagan guardar cada uno en las uillas & logares do han señorio & iurisdiçion Otrosi que aya cada uno dellos en los logares que dichos son las penas sobredichas segund quelas nos retenemos para [fol. 16v, col. a] la nuestra camara en los nuestros logares. Et qual quier delos señores quelo assi on

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note to page 128 guardare errar lo ya como aquel que non quiere guardar las leyes fechas por su rey & por su señor. Et compliremos nos la iustiçia enel logar do se menguare en la manera que deuieremos.] [Title .xxviijo . under which laws lawsuits should be brought Law.ï. how all lawsuits should be brought primarily under the laws of this book. And whatever cannot be brought under them shall be brought through the fueros. Our intent and desire is that those born and living in the [15v, col. b] kingdoms are kept in peace and justice. And to achieve this it is necessary to give precise laws under which lawsuits can be brought and the disputes that occur among them. And although in our court the fuero and the laws are used and some towns of our dominion use the fuero and in other cities and towns there are other verbal fueros under which one can bring lawsuits. But because the disputes and lawsuits and that occur between men are numerous and are active every day and cannot be brought under the fueros. Therefore, wishing to provide a proper remedy to this / we hereby establish and order that said fueros be observed in all areas in which they are used. Except where we have not decided that they must be improved and amended, and in which they are against God, against reason or against the laws contained in this book. Under such laws of this book we order that the civil and criminal lawsuits should be brought first. And the lawsuits and disputes that cannot be brought under the laws of this book and by the said fueros, we order that they shall brought under the laws contained in the books of the Siete Partidas that our king Don Alfonso wisely ordered. However as of yet it has not been decided that they were published by order of the king / nor were they supported or received by laws. But we order them to be collected, harmonized and amended in some aspects that they implemented. And thus harmonized and amended / because they were drawn and taken from the words of our holy fathers / and of those laws and words of many old wisemen and [fol. 16r, col. a] fueros and ancient customs of Spain / we take them for our laws. . And because they are precise and there is no reason to throw away and amend and change in each one what one wants / we order to make two books of them / one stamped with our stamp of gold and another stamped with our stamp of lead to keep in our chambers / because any doubts can be harmonized with them. And we consider it wise that they are observed and valid from hereon in the lawsuits and in the Cortes and in all other things contained therein which are not contrary to the laws of this book and the abovementioned fueros. And because the hidalgos of our kingdoms have fueros of free will in some districts and others fueros because they and their vassals thus decided / we have decided that they and their vassals observe the fueros / according to what they have of fuero and what was observed up to this point. Moreover in the case of the offenses / the same use and that custom may be observed that was used and

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observed in the times of other kings and in the time of ours. Moreover we have decided that the order that we now make in this court for the hidalgos be observed / which we order to be placed at the end of this, our book. And because it belongs to the king and he has the power to make fueros and laws and interpret and declare and amend them as he sees fit / we have decided that in said fueros and in the abovementioned Partidas / or in this book of ours / or in one or any of the laws contained in such were it necessary for an interpretation or declaration or amend or add or throw out or change / that we shall do so. And if any contradiction should appear among the abovementioned laws [col. b] / or in the fueros or in any of them or any doubt were to occur in them / or some fact that cannot be issued by them / that we are not bound by it because we make an interpretation or declaration or amendment of what we understand to be in compliance and we make new law which we find complies with justice and laws are observed. But we greatly desire and hope that the works of law that the ancient wisemen made / be read in the general studies of our dominion / because there is much knowledge in them / and and we want our people to be wise and therefore more honorable. Law .ïj. how the laws of this book must be observed in all the kingdoms and lands under the dominion of the king. And that they must be observed in every town and place of rule. And how the penalties pertain to each lord in his locality. Many of our kingdoms are populated with rich men and orders of knighthood and other churches and monasteries and knights and other persons of our dominion have towns and localities in which they rule and have jurisdiction and in some localities over homicides and indemnities. And it is our decision to decree that in all our dominions justice and law be observed and maintained. Therefore, we hereby decide and order that all contained in this book are supported by laws and observed in all the kingdoms and lands of our dominion. And that each one is observed and enforced in all the towns and localities where there is rule and jurisdiction. Moreover in all the said localities there shall be the abovementioned penalties which we accordingly retain for [fol. 16v, col. a] our chambers in our localities. And any of the lords who fail to observe like those who do not want to observe the laws made by their king and lord. And we fulfill the justice in place of diminishing the manner that we should. 15. See my works, “Espacio de certidumbre” and “Theorizing.” 16. Cortes, 1: 454, point 37. 17. Cf. Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, “Theorizing.” 18. Derrida’s theory of the archive (Mal d’archive) is particularly interesting to understand the dialectic of preservation/destruction, as well as the paradox that constitutes the giving of a space to document and material, and at the same time making impossible the exit of the original through any means besides through copies that carry the entropic

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mark. The notion of impression is of Freudian origin, and it refers to, among other things, the relation between imprint and memory. For Derrida, the archive is hypomnesiac, in the sense that it regulates the type of originals that form the impressions of the memory of power. Not everything enters into the archive, nor is everything that is in the interior repeated through copies. 19. See the commentary on Alonso de Cartagena. 20. The text was transcribed (with errors) by Ramírez de Arellano, La banda real de Castilla, 20–34. For the physical description of the manuscript in folio, see García y García, Cantelar Rodríguez, and Nieto Cumplido, Catálogo de los manuscritos e incunables, 7–14. 21. Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, La orden y divisa de la Banda Real does not offer any fact that can substantiate this idea and he takes it directly from the bishop of Mondoñedo. 22. López de Ayala, Crónica de Juan II, first year, 1379, chap. 1: “And later the day of Santiago of this said year was crowned in the monastery of the Dueñas of Las Huelgas, close to the city of Burgos; and on that day on which he was crowned, he armed one hundred knights of his kingdom, of the lineage of rich men, knights” (in Crónicas, 509). If the coronation of his father Enrique II also took place in Las Huelgas, it is indicative that on this day he did not make knights (Crónica de Pedro I, seventeenth year, 1366, chap. 6, in Crónicas, 319), but instead he allowed his hand to be kissed by those present. The act of arming knights is clearly linked to the coronation of Alfonso XI. 23. Cortes, 3: 283–86. 24. Codex MS BNM Vitrina 15-7, fol. 31v, line 36. This rereading of the legal texts is even more clear in the court logs elaborated during his reign. See, to this effect, the compilation in vol. 2 of the Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y Castilla. 25. “Otrosí que Pero López de Ayala aya el pendón de la banda, e que sea su alférez, asíc omo lo es agora nuestro” (López de Ayala, Crónica de Enrique III, second year, 1392, chap. 6, in Crónicas, 777). 26. The imitation is doubtful, and the brotherhood appears to be much more similar to the Burgalese confraternities that we have already discussed. The sources give very different dates for the brotherhood of Our Lady of the Salor: 1270 (improbable), 1345, and 1383 (in reality, the date of the era of 1383 would refer to 1345, but it is not clear which of the two possibilities should be held; studies regarding this do not allow us to clear up this matter). In any case it appears more sure that the foundation has been done upon the base of a hermitage or Templar church of the thirteenth century. The new brotherhood rebuilt the church. See the work of the conservator Elisabeth Fragoso Pulido, “Ermita del Salor.” The classic work in this regard is that of the local erudite Publio Hurtado, La Parroquia de San Mateo. 27. The Order of the Jarra y el Grifo, Marian symbols, was created on 15 August 1403 by Fernando de Antequera as a chivalric emblem. The orders, now as a royal distinction, were translated into Catalan after 1412. It is this version that Juan Torres Fontes edits (“Don Fernando de Antequera y la romántica caballeresca”). The Castilian text was edited by the Aragonese erudite Diego José Dormer in his Discursos varios de historia, 177–97. The orden de la Garrotera, presumably created by the King Pedro of Aragon, appears among the documents

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of the cartulary of Enrique de Villena, conserved in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, whose studies are being realized at this time under the direction of Pedro Cátedra. 28. About legal violence, see Derrida, Force de loi. 29. “Or les lois se maintiennent en crédit, non parce qu’elles sont justes, mais parce qu’elles sont lois. C’est le fondement mystique de leur autorité; elles n’en ont point d’autre. . . . Il n’est rien si lourdement et largement fautier que les lois, ni si ordinairement. Quiconque leur obéit parce qu’elles sont justes, ne leur obéit pas justement par où il doit.” Montaigne, Les essais, 3: 316. 30. For the concept of invention and its application in this chivalric universe, see Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, “Invención y consecuencias de la caballería.” 31. Cf. Rodríguez-Velasco, “Invención y consecuencias,” as well as Jerry Craddock and Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, La caballería. Both works include ample bibliographies. 32. I refer to the ephemeral order of Santa María de España, for which Alfonso surely designated as master Juan Núñez, and which did not survive later than 1280, after the battle of Moclín, and later came to be integrated in the code of Santiago. Bruno Rigalt y Nicolás speaks summarily of it in his Diccionario histórico de las órdenes de caballería, s.v. “Santa María.” Cf. Salvador de Moxó, “Santa María”; Eduardo Pardo de Guevara y Valdés, “La Orden de Santa María de España.” 33. Alain Demurger, Chevaliers du Christ. 34. The work of historian and member of the Order of Calatrava Francisco de Rades y Andrada (d. 1599), Crónica de las tres órdenes y caballerías de Santiago, Calatrava, y Alcántara, published in 1572, could be called a history whose only mission was to show the long jurisdictional path taken by the monarchy until the moment in which Felipe II was named master of each of the three orders (Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara). 35. Rafael de Ureña y Smenjaud, ed., Fuero de Cuenca. About the relationships between the Fuero de Cuenca and the Fuero de las Cabalgadas, see Carmela Pescador, “La caballería.” 36. Rodríguez-Velasco, “Invención y consecuencias.” 37. Linehan, “Alfonso XI of Castile.” 38. Francisco Rico, “Epílogo”; Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua, “Los problemas del Zifar”; Carlos Heusch, “La translation chevaleresque dans la Castille médiévale.” On the Carolingian legend and its presence in the chronicles, see Francisco Bautista, “Sobre la materia carolingia,” “La tradición épica,” and “La Crónica carolingia.” 39. Alvaro Pais, Espelho dos reis, 1: 124. “Vnde multum conuenit regibus crebro Sanctas Scripturas et sanctos libros legere uel audire et non romanços in quibus fabulae et uanitates et mendacia et carnis delectabilia continentur, ut pe exercitium sanctae lectionis et scientiae, regendi populum inueniant margaritam.” 40. Cf. Linehan, History and the Historians, and “Alfonso XI”; Rodríguez-Velasco, “El Cid y la investidura caballeresca.” See also Funes and Tenenbaum, Mocedades de Rodrigo (consult, nevertheless, my review of this book in Medieval Review (2006); also Martin, Chansons de geste espagnoles. 41. Cf. the magnificent work of homage and criticism of Francisco Bautista, “Diego Catalán: Historiografía y épica.” 42. Diego Catalán, La tradición manuscrita en la “Crónica de Alfonso XI”. See also his

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edition of the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI. 43. I quote, from the Escorial manuscript, the episode that describes how the jurisdiction of Álava was obtained: [fol. 85v, col. a] “Titulo de como el Rey cobro la tierra de Alaua et de como ordeno la caualleria de la Vanda. Acaesçio que antiguamente desde que fue conquista la tierra de Alaua e tomada de los Nauarros, sienpre ouo señorio apartado. Et este era qual se le querian tomar los fijos dalgo & labradores naturales de aquella tierra de Alaua. Et a las vezes tomauan por señor alguno de los fijos de los reys et a las vezes al señor de Vizcaya & a las vezes al de Lara, et al señor de los Cameros a las vezes. Et en todos los tienpos pasados ningun rey non ouo señorio en esta tierra nin [85vb] puso y offiçiales para fazer justiçia saluo en las villas de Bitoria et de Treuino que eran suyas. Et aquella tierra syn aquestas villas llamauase confradria de Alaua. Et aquel a quien ellos dauan el señorio dauale seruiçio muy granado de mas de los otros pechos foreros que dizian ellos el semoyo et el de março. Et el rey seyendo en Burgos venieron y a el procuradores desta confradria de Alaua, omes fijos dalgo et labradores con procuraçion çierta de todos los otros. Et dixieron al rey quel querian dar el señorio de toda la tierra de Alaua et que fuesse suyo ayuntado a la corona de los regnos. Et quel pedian merçed que fuesse reçebir el señorio daquella tierra et queles diesse fuero escripto por do fuessen judgados. et pusiesse offiçiales que fiziessen justiçia. Et el rey por esto partio luego de burgos et fue a bitoria. et estando alla veno a el don Johan obispo de calahorra. Et dixol señor qual quier que sea obispo de calahorra es dela confradia de alaua. Et yo assy como confrade desta confradia vos vengo adezir quetodos los fijos dalgo et labradores de a[fol. 86ra]laua estan yuntados enel campo darriaga que es logar do ellos acostumbran fazer yunta desde siempre aca. Et rogaron me que veniesse auos dezir et pedir merçed que vayades ala yunta do ellos estan et que vos daran el señorio de alaua segund que vos lo enbiaron dezir con sus mandaderos. Et el rey por esto fue ala yunta del campo darriaga. et todos los dijos dalgo et labradores de alaua cedieron le el señorio de aquella tierra conel pecho forero. et que ouiesse los otros pechos reales segund quelos auia enla otra de su señorio. Et pidieron le merçed queles diesse fuero escripto ca fasta alli no lo auie sino de aluedrio. Et el rey reçibio el señorio dela tierra. Et dioles que oviessen el fuero delas leyes. Et puso y alcalles que julgassen los dela tierra & meryno que fiziesse justçia.” Juan Núñez de Villasán, Crónica de Alfonso XI, ms San Lorenzo del Escorial, Y-II-10. [“Title on how the king appropriated the region of Álava and on how he constituted the knightly order of the Sash. It so happened that, in earlier times, since it was conquered and seized by the Navarrene, the region of Álava always had its own jurisdiction. Its dominion was determined by the preference of the nobles and the farmers who were natives of the Álava region. On occasion, they would select one of the sons of the kings as their lord, and sometimes the lord of Lara, or the lord of Cameros on other

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occasions. In the past there was no king with jurisdiction over this region or who could appoint his officers to secure justice, with the exception of the cities of Vitoria and Treviño, which belong to the king. Therefore, this region—with the exception of these two cities—received the name of confraternity of Álava. And the person who was assigned jurisdiction received a substantial tax, in addition to the taxes stipulated by local ordinances, such as those referred to as “semoyo” and “March tax.” Once, while in Burgos, he was visited by the advocates of this Álava confraternity, noblemen and farmers who had been designated as representatives of all the others. They proceeded to tell the king that they wanted to grant the king jurisdiction over the entire region of Álava, so the king could add it to the crown along with his other realms. And they asked that he please accompany them so that he could receive jurisdiction over that land, and that he issue them a written code of law pursuant to which their conflicts could be resolved, and that he appoint his officers to secure enforcement of the law. The king, on account of this, immediately departed from Burgos to Vitoria. While he was there, he was visited by don Juan, bishop of Calahorra, and he told him, “sir, the bishop of Calahorra is a member of the confraternity of Álava. And, as a member of this confraternity, I am here to tell you that the nobles and the farmers of Álava are gathered at the Arriaga field, which is the place where they have always assembled. They have requested that I come to see you to ask that you please attend the meeting that has brought them together and that it is there where you will be granted jurisdiction over Álava, just as their representatives have informed you. He, the king, then attended the meeting at the Arriaga field, where all of the nobles and the farmers of Álava granted him jurisdiction over the that region, along with the legal tax and the privilege of receiving the other royal taxes that he had assigned to the rest of his domain. And they asked that he please issue them a written code of law, since up to that point they had enjoyed no rights beyond the right to their will. The king thus received jurisdiction over the region. As law, he issued them the Fuero Real and appointed magistrates to rule over the people of the region, and he also appointed a delegate to enforce the law.”] 44. This is also the reason for which these two mentioned make up two of the most frequent variants in the manuscript and print tradition of the Chronicle. That which has been transcribed, I insist, corresponds with the oldest manuscript of the Chronicle, of 1376; the manuscript BNM 821, which is basically a copy of the one from the Escorial, reads like the first (fol. 60, col. a). Upon editing the Gran Crónica, Catalán reads one of the most explicit variants: “and there was an order among them of many good things which were all works of chivalry, segund which was contained in greater detail in a book that this Lord King ordered to be made of that which those of the sash were to keep and to do” (1: 501); the 1551 printed version of the Chronicle of Villasán (Núñez de Villaizán, Chronica) announces as well that he will copy the very order, something he later does not do; this indicates that the antigraph (a manuscript of the Chronicle) also transmitted the order, and

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that the printers decided not to include it, although they did keep the mention. 45. Catalán, Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, 1: 507–8. 46. Ibid., 512. 47. Cortes, 1: 454, point 37. 48. Diego Catalán, Poema de Alfonso XI: Fuentes, dialecto, estilo. 49. I quote from Yo Ten Cate’s edition of El Poema de Alfonso XI; subsequent references are to this edition, unless otherwise noted. It is impossible to quote from Juan Victorio’s Poema de Alfonso XI. Victorio’s “standardization” (which, contrary to the editor’s opinion at p. 35, entails an extraordinarily objectionable attitude) has precluded the possibility of reading many of the fundamental nuances and, in other instances, has added information that frustrates the interpretation of the poem. For example, in verse 278, he adds “all” (todos) before “his” (sus), which constitutes a significant twist of its meaning; in 1,010 (1,011 in Victorio’s edition), he eliminates the copulative conjunction, thereby rendering another meaning modification. 50. Ten Cate, Poema, 280, stanza 1,010. 51. Ibid., 435–37, stanzas 1,561–62. 52. Ibid., 467, stanzas 1,677–78. 53. Ibid., 657–59, stanzas 2,365–66. 54. Alberto y Arturo García Carraffa Carraffa, Diccionario genealógico y heráldico hispanoamericano. Also, Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, La orden. See Faustino Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, Heráldica Medieval Española, vol. 1, La Casa Real de León y Castilla. 55. The juridical-political relationship between the godfather and the one who is vested is regulated, in fact, by Alfonso X in Partidas 2.21.16; but refer to the depiction of this link in the passage of the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, quoted here. The creation and display of this symbol and others are discussed in Chapter 6. 56. Ordenamiento de Alcalá, title 28. I quote directly from manuscript BNM Vitr. 15-7, regarding the exemplar issued by Pedro I. It is a verbatim copy of the text of BNM Res. 9 (to which I have compared it), regarding the exemplar of the royal chamber of Alfonso. 57. See Ramírez de Arellano, La banda real de Castilla. 58. In fact, the Book does not specify that it is the first born, it simply refers to the sons of the king, that is, any of them. 59. López de Ayala, Crónica de Pedro I, fourth year, 1353, chap. 8, in Crónicas, 71. The Book does not mention the firstborn in particular, but ay of the king’s sons. 60. Gutierre Díaz de Games, El Victorial, ch. 39, 391; in the editio minor of the same text (Madrid: Taurus, 1994) the passage appears on p. 283. There is an instance of plagiarism from this edition to another Madrid edition that is not worth quoting. Note that it is not absolutely necessary to take into account that Pero Niño was a member of the Orden de la Banda (an item that would have been mentioned in the chronicle, anyway, as it is particularly important), but the fact that he manifests here his vassalage to the king. The assumption advanced by Rafael Beltrán that Pero Niño would not confront a squire because he was a squire himself does not suffice, since neither the set of regulations nor the rest of the mentions require the knights of the Sash to be vested as knights, so there may be squires who held the same obligations and enjoyed the same privileges as those of the Sash. By dint of being squires they would be considered knights of the Sash as members

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of the group, even it they were not knights according to the laws of the Partidas or laws concerning dignity.

chapter 5. rewriting the order 1. I use “archaeology” in the sense advanced by Foucault, in L’archéologie du savoir, as a mode of systematic writing and regulation of a discourse object. 2. On the restructuring of political society by Alfonso X, see Salvador de Moxó’s “La sociedad política.” Perhaps the most important point of this process of political society’s reordering was launched in the mid-1340s. It may have occurred between 1345—the year of the creation of the regiments in the city of Burgos, thereby consolidating the bourgeois presence in the urban power near the monarchy—and 1348, when the Ordenamiento de Alcalá was decreed. For the history of Alfonso XI’s reign, see José Sánchez-Arcilla Bernal, Alfonso XI. 3. Boulton, Knights of the Crown; Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, La orden. 4. It is significant that this is the same heraldic policy legislated in Espéculo, 3, regarding the banner worn by the knights, which, issued by the king, is only lent to the knights, as explained in full in Rodríguez-Velasco, “De oficio a estado.” 5. See De insigniis et armis, in Cavallar, Degenring, and Kirshner, Grammar of Signs; cf., on the Castilian tradition on this treaty, Rodríguez-Velasco, “El Tractatus de insigniis et armis.” 6. See Rodríguez-Velasco, “Pax.” 7. Regarding the concept of “final vocabulary,” see Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. 8. Cortes, 1: 597, article 10. It corresponds to the record of petitions of the 1348 Cortes of Alcalá. 9. Grassotti, Las instituciones feudo-vasalláticas, 696–701, provides the texts on which this synonymy is based. 10. See Salvador de Moxó, “De la nobleza vieja a la nobleza nueva,” and, more recently, the nuances introduced by Narciso Binayan Carmona, “De la nobleza vieja a la nobleza vieja.” 11. For instance, Giles of Rome, Glosa castellana al “Regimiento de Príncipes” (3.2). Gutierre Díaz de Games’s Victorial is a historical summary of the divine origins of chivalry. 12. In fact, this aspect has never been thoroughly studied. It has been approached only by Peter Linehan (History and the Historians of Medieval Spain) and Conrado Guardiola (“La mención del Amadís en el Regimiento de príncipes aclarada”). 13. See José Enrique Ruiz Doménec, La mujer que mira. 14. Cf. Ruiz Doménec, La memoria de los feudales. 15. One of the sections of the Segundo Ordenamiento, that which originates in the Escorial Monastery manuscript Z-I-9 and that follows the tradition up to Alonso de Cartagena, introduces the following variation after the phrase “against dame or damsel”: “because some of them may sometimes be abrasive” (fol. 19v ). This variation is, in any case,

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consonant with the fact, that the Segundo Ordenamiento tends to dismiss the importance that women had in the courtly chivalric concept of P. On the other hand, this exclusion of women may allow us to date the text of the Segundo Ordenamiento before Fernando de Antequera and, certainly, before Juan II. Both issue chivalric heralds to women, first the Jar and the Griffin (cf. Torres Fontes, “Don Fernando de Antequera”) herald and then the Sash’s own herald when it becomes evident that it is no longer in force and that the order has dissolved into the herald itself (cf. Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, La Orden, which offers certain information on the issuance of the Sash to women). 16. I am grateful to Noel Fallows for appraising me of the character and content of his forthcoming project, titled Jousting: The Iberian Treatises. This book will incorporate texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, from the version of the Book of the Sash copied by Cartagena in the Doctrinal de los caballeros to texts by Hernán Chacón, Quijada de Reayo, and others. 17. Ruiz Doménec, La mujer que mira. 18. Maurice Keen, Chivalry, 83. 19. See Catalán, Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, 2: 101. 20. Crónica de Alfonso XI, 364–66. 21. Nonetheless, see the vastly different interpretation advanced by I. García Díaz on this regard in “La política caballeresca.” 22. Although there is an extensive bibliography on this matter, I will limit my references here to one exhaustive source: Pedro Cátedra, El sueño caballeresco. 23. Ms. BNM 9270, which contains the version in verse of Charny’s Livre de la chevalerie, as well as Demandes pour la joute. For a work that does not take this manuscript into account, see also Michael A. Taylor’s “Critical Edition” of Charny’s Livre Charny and the Demandes pour la joute, les tournois et la guerre (revisited in Muhlberger, Jousts and Tournaments). See also Kaeuper and Kennedy, Book of Chivalry, and their intro. and trans. in Charny, Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry. The count of Haro’s library left several inventories, published by Paz y Mélia, “Biblioteca fundada por el Conde de Haro en 1455,” and Lawrance, “Nueva luz sobre la biblioteca.” 24. Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, III. Cxx. 507–8. 25. The full lists of knights, with their specific source and some biographical notes (where possible), is detailed by Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, La orden, 73–90. 26. On the monarchical uses of lay orders of knighthood, such as tournaments and displays, see Boulton, Knights of the Crown, as well as Nieto Soria, Ceremonias de la realeza. On the transformations of the tournament and its dialogue with the literary and cultural universes, see Cátedra, El sueño caballeresco; Cátedra, “Jardín de Amor”. See also Mérindol, Les fêtes de chevalerie; Stanesco, Jeux d’érrance du chevalier médiéval; Scaglione, Knights at Court; Crouch, Tournament; Fleckenstein, Das ritterliche Turnier im Mittelalter. 27. Alvaro Pais, Espelho dos reis, 1: 124; the work was created in 1341 for Alfonso XI. See also Linehan, “Alfonso XI of Castile”; García Díaz, “La política caballeresca de Alfonso XI,” 121. 28. Keen, Chivalry, chap. 5; see also Ruiz Doménec, “El torneo como espectáculo.” 29. Unfortunately, there are no specific studies regarding this dissimilarity, therefore, in this particular sphere of chivalric politics of Alfonso X to Alfonso XI there is plenty of

notes to pages 185–199

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further research to conduct. I have discussed it in my “Invención y consecuencias.” 30. Pauphilet, La Queste del Saint Graal, 4. 31. Cf. Dominique Boutet, Charlemagne et Arthur, ou le roi imaginaire. Regarding the problems of the holiness of the king, the book by Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, is a classic, as well as Alain Boureau’s answer, Le simple corps du rois; compare with Le Goff, Palazzo, Bonne, and Colette, Le sacre royal à l’époque de Saint Louis. There is much to be written regarding the problems of the holiness of the kings of Castile or Spain; the latest work on this continues to be Nieto Soria, Fundamentos ideológicos, although one should take into account arguments in Ruiz, “Une royauté,” and Linehan, History and the Historians. 32. See Rodríguez-Velasco, “Theorizing.” 33. The use of Bourdieu’s concept (noblesse d’état) is literally inappropriate, given that, obviously, we are very far from any concept of statehood, and even farther away from the structures of education Bourdieu analyzes in his book. Thus, we may only employ it metaphorically, as an abbreviation of the manner in which the power system perpetuates by means of the codification of knowledge and technology that in fact seal off the sphere of construction of power. This is more related to the particular game taking place in the social champ of education and its relationships to power. 34. Cortes, 1: 598, article 17. 35. Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, “Santillana en su laberinto de lecturas.” 36. Cf. Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate. 37. Cf. Rodríguez-Velasco, “Teoría de la fábula caballeresca.” I have dealt with the problem of the courtly subject matter in contrast to the classic subject matter in great detail in “La caballería cortés.” 38. Rodríguez-Velasco, “Santillana.” 39. See Noel Fallows, Chivalric Vision, 47–69. 40. The Tratado de la guerra is preserved in a sole manuscript from the fifteenth century, held at the Escorial Monastery, codex X-II-25 (fols. 148r–260v). . 41. Gutiérrez de Torres, Sumario, quires gvir–hiiir. 42. Runia, “Spots of Time.”

chapter 6. poetics of the chivalric emblem 1. I use “mythology” in a sense akin to that employed by Roland Barthes in Mythologies, particularly in that which concerns the need to create the contemporary myth, not the figural recreation of a myth that is beyond time. In any event, this chapter deals with myths that exist in time, all of which also exist within the same time. For Barthes, the myth is the signifier of an ideologeme whose nature is therefore ideological rather than political. In the following approach, I intend to demonstrate, rather, the political character of an element expressed by the signifier of a myth whose form has been painstakingly construed. 2. The reglamento del Purvisán, a text of heraldic theory and practice from the fifteenth century, explains functional etiology in the following manner: “Beforehand there had not been either colors, nor arms, nor knowledge of flags or banners, and people killed each

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other, some friends killed friends, resulting in great destruction and pain. Thus, they were advised to remedy the situation and appointed old knights and squires, many of whom had followed and served in the aforementioned conquests and wars of the older and wiser. They were thus made to examine and order the seven known tinctures, from which it abided and still abides by the laws of said old knights and squires that were and are named kings of arms, heralds, and counselors of the lords of the time.” In Heusch, Carlos, and RodríguezVelasco, La caballería castellana, 214. Regarding heraldry and identity, see Martín de Riquer, Heráldica castellana, and Michel Pastoureau, Traité d’héraldique. 3. Aristotle, Poetica, 1451b (ed. Valentín García Yebra, 157–58). Perhaps both activities are inseparable, as shown by Hayden White’s ambitious work in his Metahistory, centered on Leopold von Ranke’s analysis of scientific historiography, to support the thesis that writing history is a narrative act and, therefore, poetic, which may be understood from the perspective of literary theory; I will cite only one of his recent works, “Literary Theory and Historical Writing.” 4. The vast majority of emblematic interpretations is contained in a textual genre known as nobiliario, which came into being in the fifteenth century and developed at an unrelenting pace thereafter. The best known are those of Pedro de Gracia Dei, Diego de Valera (Libro de las armas), or Steve Tamborino (Armorial de Salamanca). The nobiliarios are books of stamps that narrate history in a graphic manner, teaching the reader to read and interpret the condensed historiography that is the heraldic emblem. As from the sixteenth century, chiefly, the nobiliario, or roll of arms, became indispensable along with the lineage books or blood purity records, as all of the aforementioned certify the ordination of Christian and Catholic political society. Although the bibliography is very extensive, the most fundamental aspects can be found in Riquer, Heráldica castellana. The scholarly journal Emblemata, published by the Institución Fernando el Católico, Cátedra Barón de Valdeolivos (Zaragoza, dir. Guillermo Redondo Veintemillas and Alberto Montaner Frutos) provides an annual accounting of heraldry from its origins to present day. 5. Walter of Châtillon, Alexandreis, vv. 45–50. 6. The sources of the Castilian poet are not hidden (in this specific instance, the Alexandreis of Walter of Châtillon); as Francisco Rico has said on occasion, “tradition only shackles those who have the vocation of slave,” and the poet of Alexandre continues to seem to me a master in the art of not being a slave to tradition, including when he employs his most notable findings; for that reason, generally, I will not reference his sources further, except where it is key to a certain explanation. Nevertheless, one may refer to the works of Raymond Willis, The Relationship of the Spanish “Libro de Alexandre” to the “Alexandreis,” and The Debt of the Spanish “Libro de Alexandre” to the French “Roman d’Alexandre”; Ian Michael, The Treatment of Classical Material in the “Libro de Alexandre”; see also Amaia Arizaleta, La Translation d’Alexandre. 7. Book of Alexander, Cañas Murillo, ed, sts. 21–35. 8. Ibid., sts. 26–46. 9. Ibid., st. 20. 10. All references to the O manuscript unless otherwise noted. 11. González Rolán and Saquero Suárez-Somonte, Historia novelada de Alejandro Magno, 58, Latin edition.

notes to pages 203–220

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12. Harf-Lancner and Armstrong, Le Roman d’Alexandre; but cf. La Du et al., Medieval French “Roman d’Alexandre.” 13. For multiple images of the T and O maps, see Edson and Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos. Paulus Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos, is the textual source of the greater part of the medieval descriptiones orbis; and in Spain, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada to Diego de Valera through Alfonsine and post-Alfonsine historiography, the Libro del conosçimiento de todos los reinos (see Lacarra, Lacarra Ducay, and Montaner’s edition, based on MS Z, in Munich’s Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hisp. 150) is a graphic version, a paper voyage through a descriptio orbis; the paper voyage is, in fact, an emblematic, geographical, and historical travel. 14. Libro de Alexandre, stanzas 28–29. Stanza 28 is in both the P and O manuscripts, but stanza 29 only appears in O, although more directly in relation to the text of Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis. Cañas Murillo’s is a critical edition and hampers the reading of particular codices’s utterances: they can be read in the diplomatic transcriptions of the manuscripts by Raymond Willis, Libro de Alexandre, 6–7. 15. The lion is, moreover, a figure of all forms of redemption, in that it is a form of Christ. See, for example, Charbonneau-Lassay, El bestiario de Cristo, 35–53. 16. Pliny Natural History 7.125. 17. Arizaleta, La translation d’Alexandre, 128. 18. Libro de Alexandre, 48–88. It is interesting to note that it is precisely this political passage that has the greatest representation of testimonies in the Alexandrine textual tradition. 19. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. It is well known that the problem of the future past and the weight that the narrative of the past has over the construction and practice of the present had been examined by Karl Marx in Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 20. Juan Manuel, Libro de las tres razones, in Cinco Tratados, 91. I always quote AyerbeChaux’s edition. 21. Cf. Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, “Espacio de certidumbre,” as well as “Theorizing.” 22. Ramos, “Notas al Libro de las Armas.” The article was published with innumerable errors that make it illegible at times. Ramos himself drew up a correction list that is essential in order to fully understand the article. See also Martin, “Alphonse X maudit son fils.” 23. Deyermond, “Cuentos orales y estructura formal.” 24. Juan Manuel, El conde Lucanor, ed. Gonzalo Argote de Molina. 25. For some of these inaccuracies, see Ayerbe-Chaux’s notes on the text, following the cited edition. 26. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Secunda secundœ, q.95, a.6 (“Respondeo”). 27. Erich Auerbach, Figura. 28. I quote my own transcription of the Book of the Sash. 29. Bourdieu, Raisons pratiques, 23. 30. Cf. the third part of Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate sobre la caballería. 31. Carmela Pescador has gathered information on this subject in “La caballería popular.” 32. Marta Madero, Tabula picta; Francesco Lucrezi, La «tabula picta» tra creatore e fruitore. I thank Emanuele Conte for sharing with me his work, which is still in the process of publication.

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33. His research resulted in the facsimile editions of the Libro de los caballeros de la Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos published in 1977 and 1985. I quote by the edition of 1985. 34. For the manuscript and print tradition of these works, see Rodríguez-Velasco, El debate. 35. Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, Libro, 42; Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, Catalogus gloriæ mundi. 36. Menéndez Pidal de Navascués, Libro, 44. 37. Ibid., 47. 38. Schmitt, “La culture de l’imago.” 39. Runia, “Spots of Time,” 315–16.

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index

Agamben, Giorgio, 4, 335, 337 Alfonso IX, king of León, 24, 25, 26, 209 Alfonso VI, king of Castile, 24, 52, 154, 243 Alfonso VII, king of Castile, 24 Alfonso VIII, king of Castile, 17, 19, 24, 27, 52, 90, 137 Alfonso X, king of Castile and León, 17, 19, 25, 27, 28, 31, 33, 36, 43, 44, 50, 56, 60, 78, 82, 87, 90, 101, 114–15, 119, 124, 125, 128, 133, 135–37, 142–44, 152, 155, 168, 176, 181, 186, 193, 208, 218, 221–22, 230, 239, 241–43, 251, 260–61, 263, 272–73, 278–81; Fuero Real, 17, 88, 142, 158, 221, 259; Las Siete Partidas, 9, 17, 18, 23, 28–33, 39, 40, 42, 43, 49, 50, 64, 66, 67, 75, 78, 115, 124, 125, 127–29, 131, 133, 135, 143, 152–54, 159, 164, 167, 168, 176, 181, 186–88, 221, 230, 236–43, 245, 252–55, 260, 261, 268, 272, 276, 278–80, 283 Alfonso XI, king of Castile and León, 8, 9, 11, 12, 23, 33, 36, 37, 40, 43, 48, 51, 56, 62, 63, 78, 80, 87–90, 97, 105, 119, 120–24, 127, 128, 133, 134–39, 143–45, 147, 150–55, 158–62, 167, 175, 176, 181, 183–85, 187, 189–91, 193–96, 201, 214, 222, 223, 231, 240, 243–46, 249–51, 256–63, 267, 271, 274, 278, 280, 281, 283–85; Ordenamiento de Alcalá, 87, 109, 111, 122–26, 128, 130, 133, 152, 154, 187–89, 249, 260, 261 Aristotle, 22, 97, 201, 202, 206, 234, 235, 264, 268 Arizaleta, Amaia, 21, 205, 237, 265, 268 Arthurian prose cycles (Vulgate and postVulgate), 35, 97, 178, 185, 23 Augustín of Hippo, 3, 4, 5, 94, 234, 235 Aurell, Martin, 52, 53

Bailey, Matthew, 240, 269 Barber, Malcolm, 235, 251 Barthes, Roland, 196, 263, 264 Bartolo of Sassoferrato, 2, 33, 97, 114, 116, 157, 168, 222, 250, 269, 271 Bataillon, Louis J., 252 Bautista, Francisco, 257–69 Beltrán Llavador, Rafael, 261, 273, 275 Benito Ruano, Eloy, 60 Benjamin, Walter, 122, 127, 251, 252, 269 Berger, Roger, 246, 262, 270 Bernabé, bishop of Osma, 97, 185 Bernard of Clairvaux, 27, 224 Binayan Carmona, Narciso, 261 Bodel, Jean, 245 Bohigues, Pere, 236 Bonachía Hernando, José Antonio, 89, 90, 103, 244, 249 Borst, Arno, 246, 247 Boulton, D’Arcy J. D., 166, 197, 251, 261, 262 Bourdieu, Pierre, 215, 263, 266 Boureau, Alain, 263 Boutet, Dominique, 263 Bouvet, Honoré, 222 Bouza, Fernando, 247 Bruni, Leonardo, 105, 249 Buc, Philippe, 22, 28, 237 Bumke, Joachim, 236, 245 Caballeros Cuantiosos de Jaén, 52, 54, 82, 86, 89, 111, 114, 243 Cabañas González, María Dolores, 86, 243–44, 246, 247 Cabildo de Caballeros Guisados de Caballo, Cuenca, 52–54, 82, 86, 89, 111, 114, 137, 243, 247, 257

288

index

Cabildo de San Benito, Ávila, 59, 119, 218, 251 Cacho Blecua, Juan Manuel, 241, 257 Cañas Murillo, Jesús, 21, 237 Cardini, Franco, 55, 244 Carruthers, Mary, 248 Cartagena, Alonso of, 131, 192, 193, 195, 256, 262 Catalán Menéndez-Pidal, Diego, 139, 147 Cátedra, Pedro M, 248, 257, 262, 264 Cavallar, Orlando, 261, Ceballos-Escalera y Gila, Alfonso de, 131, 144, 165, 197, 251, 256, 260–62 Charbonneau-Lassay, Louis, 265 Charles I or V, emperor, 195, 232 Charles of Anjou, 59, 236 Charny, Geoffroy de, 183, 262, 267 Chasseneuz, Barthélemy de, 223, 266 Chrétien de Troyes, 178, 236 Clement V, pope, 51 Cofradía de Santa María de Gamonal (and its ordinances), 12, 54, 62, 85, 89, 90–96, 99, 101, 102, 111, 113, 221, 223, 229, 246–48, 267 Cofradía de Santiago de Burgos (and its ordinances), 12, 38, 54, 62, 82, 85, 86, 88–102, 108–11, 113, 115, 136, 145, 183, 184, 201, 217, 218, 221–23, 225–27, 229, 240, 243, 246–49, 256, 257, 266 Conrad III Hohenstaufen, 24, 25, 26, 262 Conte, Emanuele, 220 Craddock, Jerry R., 30, 239, 257 Crónica de Alfonso XI, 37, 122, 139, 158, 181, 183, 190, 191, 194, 196, 214, 258–60, 262 Crónica de Castilla, 9, 38, 138, 268 Curtius, Ernst-Robert, 244 Dante Alighieri, 97, 248 Daumet, Georges, 177, 197, 251 Deleuze, Gilles, 237 Derrida, Jacques, 95, 130, 234, 235, 247, 252, 256, 257 Deyermond, Alan D., 40, 241, 265 Diago Hernando, Máximo, 86, 88, 243 Dionysius the Areopagite (pseudo), 3, 35 Dormer, Diego Jóse, 257 Duby, Georges, 2, 96, 235, 247

Edward I, king of England, 185 Edward II, king of England, 231 Escalona Monge, Julio, 89, 247 Estoire de Merlin, 7, 236 Fanti, Marlo, 59 Felipe II, king of Spain, 136, 232, 257 Felipe III, king of Spain, 232 Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Spain, 39 Fernando I de Antequera, king of Aragón, 133, 134, 190, 257, 262 Fernando II, king of León, 24, 223, 251 Fernando III, king of Castile and León, 17, 90, 208–10 Fernando IV, king of Castile and León, 61, 62, 74, 125, 222, 244 Flori, Jean, 17, 235–37, 269, 271, 273 Foucault, Michel, 58, 236, 237, 261 Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor, 24 Fuero de Cuenca, 137, 257 Fuero de las Cabalgadas, 137, 257 Fuero de Leiria, 243 Funes, Leonardo, 37, 40, 240, 241, 258 Galba, Martí Joan de, 236 Garnier, François, 248 Gasparri, Stefano, 52, 244 Gautier, Léon, 235 Gavilán, Enrique, 251 Geertz, Clifford, 8, 236 Giles of Rome, 97, 176, 185, 243, 261 Gómez de Sandoval, Diego, 192–94 González, Nicolás, 122, 124–26 Gracia Dei, Pedro de, 161, 235, 264 Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, 181, 183, 196, 214, 258, 260, 262 Greenblatt, Stephen, 247 Guardiola, Conrado, 262 Guattari, Félix, 237 Guevara, fray Antonio de, 131, 132, 194, 195, 197, 214, 246, 257 Guilhem de Vàroych, 236, 245 Gumbrecht, Hans-Ulrich, 11, 236, 249 Harvey, David, 95, 96, 103, 232, 247, 249 Hauf, Albert, 236

index Hegel, G. W. F., 234, 235 Henri II Plantagenêt, king of England, 10, 110 Hermandad de 1345 (and Cuaderno de la Hermandad de 1315), 12, 47, 48, 55–58, 60–70, 72, 74, 77–85, 89, 118, 131, 137, 154, 161, 176, 222, 223, 229, 244–46 Hernández, Francisco Javier, 87 Heusch, Carlos, 250, 257, 264 Historia Roderici, 24 Huntington, Archer M., 240 Isidore of Seville, 235 Jara Fuente, José Antonio, 86, 114, 243, 247 Jaume I, king of Aragón, 43, 239, 241, 242 Jiménez de Rada, Rodrigo, 24, 25, 265 Juan I, king of Castile and León, 80, 120, 133, 134, 138, 157, 165, 175, 190 Juan II, king of Castile and León, 114, 120, 133, 175, 256 Juan Manuel (don), 7, 8, 23, 33–37, 40, 43, 44, 50, 51, 75, 82, 123, 137, 139, 145, 152, 167, 185, 201, 207,–12, 217, 221, 223, 226, 227, 236, 239, 243, 245, 247, 257, 265 Justinian I, emperor, 24 Kaeuper, Richard W., 235, 262 Kant, Immanuel, 234, 263 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 263 Keen, Maurice, 56, 180, 181, 184, 235, 236, 262, 263 Köhler, Erich, 236, 245 Koselleck, Reinhardt, 206, 212, 238, 265 La Curne Saint-Palaye, Jean-Baptiste de, 235 Lacarra Ducay, María Jesús, 265 Ladero Quesada, Miguel Ángel, 60, 87, 245, 246 Lancelot en prose, 6, 186, 236 Latini, Brunetto, 97 Lawrance, Jeremy, 262 Le Goff, Jacques, 263 Lévinas, Emmanuel, 16, 44, 234, 235 Libro de Alexandre, 19, 21, 203, 205, 237, 264, 265

289

Libro del Cavallero Zifar, 7, 23, 40–44, 75, 137, 138, 236, 241, 257 Linehan, Peter E., 237, 240, 243, 251, 257, 258 Llull, Ramon, 6, 34, 44, 236, 239, 240 López de Ayala, Pero (and his Crónicas), 122, 133, 155, 157, 158, 161, 165, 190, 251, 256, 260 López, Gregorio, 237 Madero, Marta, 220 Maiolo, Francesco, 2 Map, Walter, 10, 186 Marsile of Padua, 2 Martin, Georges, 29, 66, 207, 242 Martínez de Toledo, Alonso, 110 Martorell, Joanot, 6, 78, 236 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 26 Menéndez-Pidal de Navascués, Faustino, 221, 223, 224, 247, 249, 260 Mérindol, Christian de, 262 Mocedades de Rodrigo, 23, 37, 138, 240, 241, 258 Molinier, Guilhem, 245–46 Monsalvo Antón, José María, , 86, 243 Montaigne, Michel de, 257 Montaner, Alberto, 26, 236, 264, 265 Morales, Ambrosio de, 131, 162, 177, 194 Muhammad V, king of Granada, 139, 158 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 133, 208, 236 Nicolet, Claude, 23, 238 Nieto Soria, José Manuel, 237, 250, 262, 263 O’Callaghan, Joseph F., 55 Orden de la Banda (Order of the Sash, and its ordinances), 12, 19, 23–25, 72, 79, 118–35, 137–79, 182–85, 188–98, 201, 213–17, 219, 220, 227, 229, 231, 240, 246, 247, 249–51, 259–62 Orden de Santa María de España, 136, 243, 257 Orosius, Paulus, 265 Pais, Alvaro, 138, 176, 184, 257, 263 Palacios Martín, Bonifacio, 237 Pardo de Guevara y Valdés, Eduardo, 62, 110, 246, 257

290 Passeggieri, Rolandino, 125, 252 Pastoureau, Michel, 264 Pauphilet, Albert, 263 Pérez de Tudela y Velasco, Isabel, 28 Pérez-Prendes, y Muñoz de Arracó, José Manuel, 54, 86, 88, 244, 246, 247 Pescador, Carmela, 28, 51, 52, 88, 110, 243, 244, 246, 257 Pimentel, Alonso, 195 Pizan, Christine de, 53 Poema de Alfonso XI, 143, 147, 153, 161, 190, 260 Porro Girardi, Nelly, 238, 240 Procter, Evelyn, 55 Quaglioni, Diego, 248 Quijada de Reayo, Luis, 262 Quintanilla Raso, María Concepción, 28 Rades y Andrada, Francisco de, 136, 257 Ramírez de Arellano, Rafael, 197, 256, 260 Ramos, Rafael, 207, 240, 265 Rancière, Jacques, 236 Ranke, Leopold von, 264 Riché, Pierre, 236 Rigalt y Nicolás, Bruno, 257 Riquer, Martín de, 236, 264 Rodríguez de Almela, Diego, 194 Rodríguez de Montalvo, Garci, 78 Rorty, Richard, 5, 6, 45, 235, 261 Rucquoi, Adeline, 236 Ruiz, Teófilo F., 56, 86, 88–91, 96, 103, 104, 180, 222, 223, 236–38, 242–47, 249, 250, 262, 263 Ruiz Albi, Irene, 238 Ruiz Asencio, José Manuel, 238 Ruiz Doménec, José Enrique, 180, 236, 262–64 Rumeu de Armas, Antonio, 244, 250 Runia, Eelco, 197, 227, 236, 263, 266

index Sánchez de Arévalo, Rodrigo, 110, 250 Sánchez-Albornoz, Claudio, 244 Sánchez-Arcilla Bernal, José, 62, 261 Sancho II, king of Castile and king of León, 24, 25 Sancho IV, king of Castile and León, 43, 60, 61, 108, 207, 208, 238, 239, 241, 242, 245 Scaglione, Aldo, 235, 236, 263 Schmitt, Carl, 15, 66, 70 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 102, 225, 248, 249 Scudieri-Ruggieri, Jole, 251 Shank, Michael H., 246 Sobrino Chomón, T., 59 Soja, Edward W., 53, 244 Soldevila, Ferrán, 239 Soler i Llopart, Albert, 236, 239 Stanesco, Michel, 250, 263 Stuard, Susan Mosher, 249 Taylor, Barry, 239, 262 Theodosius I, emperor, 24 Thomas Aquinas, 97, 265 Torres Fontes, Juan, 244, 257, 262 Ungureanu, Marie, 245 Ureña Smenjaud, Rafael de, 257 Valera, Diego de, 110, 222, 250, 264, 265 Vegetius, 243 Venturino da Bergamo, 59 Verger, Jacques, 236 Villanueva, Tomás, 197, 251 Villena, Enrique de, 134 Wagner, Charles-Philip, 42, 43, 256 Walter of Châtillon, 19, 203–5, 264, 265 Weber, Max, 8, 95, 96, 229, 247 Weiss, Julian, 9, 237 Willis, Raymond, 237, 264, 265

acknowledgments

This book is the last conversation between my parents and me. Both were born in a small Castilian town in 1923, and both passed away almost together—he in the summer of 2008, she in the summer of 2009. While they were here, I had the opportunity to talk to them about this book on many occasions. I could even show them some of the manuscripts with which I was working, and they looked at them with an ineffable mix of awe and intelligence. My father was an artist with a broad sense of curiosity that included the sciences, literature, politics, and the law; he had to stop studying because of the civil war (1936-39), but later, with the personal and intellectual dedication of my mother—whose studies were also cut short by the war—he (or perhaps I should say they) brilliantly obtained his degree in law at 55. My mother’s passion for the arts and literature was just as broad and deep; moreover, she had a gift for condensing complex concepts into very short, cogent, and witty utterances. I do not mention this only for the sake of a laudatio parentium or because of the pain of a recent loss; it is above all because they both gave me recommendations and ideas that are actual part of this particular work. This book is an homage to two beings with whom I had the privilege to spend more than 43 years of my existence; a humble tribute to two intelligent, generous, and extraordinarily affectionate beings. I enjoy the immense fortune of having a remarkable circle of friends and colleagues. These are, in alphabetical order, the people who in various ways, all directly related to this book, have proven fundamental throughout this research: Nicolás Agrait, Carlos Alvar, Heather Bamford, Francisco Bautista, Stanley Brandes, Juan Manuel Cacho Blecua, Pilar Carceller, Pedro Cátedra, Juan Carlos Conde, Emanuele Conte, Jerry Craddock, Tara Daly, María Jesús Díez Garretas, Dru Dougherty, Catherine Durand, Noel Fallows, Francisco Gago, Michel Garcia, Enrique Gavilán, Michael Gerli, Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, Carlos Heusch, Seth Kimmel, Germán Labrador, Jeremy Lawrance, María Luisa López Vidriero, Marta Madero, Denis Menjot, Alberto Montaner, José Manuel Nieto Soria, Chema Rabasa, Joan Ramon Resina, Miguel

292

acknowledgments

Ripoll, Tomás Rodríguez, Antoni Rossell, Israel Sanz, Jerry Singerman, and Stacey Triplette. I hope I may be forgiven should I have unwittingly omitted anyone. Of course, this is not to imply their agreement with everything that I have written, and it is indeed possible that I may have resolutely persisted in my opinions, despite their sage advice. The entire staffs of libraries in Madrid, El Escorial, Paris, London, Berkeley, and New York City deserve my respect, admiration, and appreciation. The two anonymous readers that advised the University of Pennsylvania Press made it possible for this work to be substantially enhanced. Teo F. Ruiz, Fernando Bouza, Carlos J. Alonso, Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson, and Vincent Barletta have far surpassed the expectations of the finest of friendships. I have received grants and other forms of support from the École Normale Supérieure– Lettres et Sciences Humaines, the University of Salamanca, and the University of California, Berkeley. I wish to thank Blanca and Jon as well as Dany and Alain for providing me with spaces conducive to writing. To my siblings I convey deep gratitude for so many hours of conversation and enormous doses of love, support, and intellectual inspiration. This book is dedicated to Aurélie Vialette.