The Spanish kingdoms, 1250-1516, Vol. 2 9780198225317

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
List of Maps and Genealogical Tables (page vii)
Abbreviations (page viii)
PART I THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500
I Economy (page 3)
II Society (page 46)
III Religion (page 88)
IV The Breakdown of Convivencia (page 126)
V Humanism and Traditionalism (page 170)
VI Institutions and Ideologies (page 190)
VII Two Figures of the Age: Pero Lopez de Ayala and Francese Eiximenis (page 206)
PART II: THE SPANISH KINGDOMS 1410-74
I The Compromiso de Caspe:A Castilian Dynasty in Catalonia-Aragon (page 215)
II The Trastamaras of Aragon: A revived Mediterranean Empire (page 239)
III The Confusions of Catalonia: Juan II of Aragon and the Catalan Revolution (page 267)
IV The Confusions of Castile 1416-74 (page 300)
PART III THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516
I The Succession in Castile (1474-9) (page 351)
II The Conquest of Granada (1482-92) (page 367)
III The Crown and Religion (page 394)
IV Internal Policies: Authority and Tradition (page 484)
V Foreign Policy: the Advance of Empire (page 534)
VI The End of the Reign: the Problem of the Succession (1497-1516) (page 585)
VII The End of Medieval Spain? (page 605)
Appendix: Coinage and Monetary Values (page 629)
Select Bibliography (page 634)
Addenda to Volume I (page 684)
Index (page 687)

Citation preview

THE SPANISH KINGDOMS 1250-1516

Volume II

BLANK PAGE

THE SPANISH KINGDOMS 1250-1516 by J. N. Hillgarth

VOLUME II | I410—-1516

Castilian Hegemony

CLARENDON PRESS - OXFORD 1978

Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford ox2 ODP OXFORD LONDON GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON CAPE TOWN

IBADAN NAIROBI DAR ES SALAAM LUSAKA | KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE JAKARTA HONG KONG TOKYO DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI

© fj. N. Hillgarth 1978 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hillgarth, Jocelyn Nigel | The Spanish kingdoms, 1250-1516. Vol. 2: 1410-1516, Castilian hegemony 1. Spain - History - 711-1516

I. Title

946’.02 DPo99 ISBN 0-19-822531-8

Printed in Great Britain by Cox @& Wyman Lid

London, Fakenham and Reading

Contents List of Maps and Genealogical Tables vl

Abbreviations Vill

IIIEconomy 3 Society 46 III Religion 88 PART I: THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

IV The Breakdown of Convivencia 126 V Humanism and Traditionalism 170

VI Institutions and Ideologies 190

Francesc Eiximenis 206

VII Two Figures of the Age: Pero Lépez de Ayala and

PART II: THE SPANISH KINGDOMS 1410-74 I The Compromiso de Caspe: a Castilian Dynasty in

Catalonia—Aragon O15

ranean Empire 239

II The Trastamaras of Aragon: a revived Mediter-

III The Confusions of Catalonia: Juan II of Aragon

and the Catalan Revolution 267

IV The Confusions of Castile, 1416-74 300 PART III: THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516

I The Succession in Castile (1474-9) B51 Il The Conquest of Granada (1482-92) 367

Ill The Crown and Religion 394

IV_ Internal Policies: Authority and Tradition 484 V_ Foreign Policy: the Advance of Empire 534

vi CONTENTS VI The End of the Reign: the Problem of the Suc-

cession (1497-1516) 585

VII The End of Medieval Spain? 605 Appendix : Coinage and Monetary Values 629

Select Bibliography 634

Index 687

Addenda to Volume I 684

Maps and Genealogical Tables MAPS

I The Conquest of Granada 366 II The Foreign Policy of the Catholic Monarchs 533 TABLES

Fernando II 214.

I The Aragonese Succession, from Jaume II to

II The Castilian Succession, from Juan I to Charles I 350

Abbreviations ACA Archivo de la Corona de Aragon, Barcelona. AEM Anuarwo de Estudios Medievales, Barcelona, 1964- . AESC Annales économies, sociétés, civilisations, Paris, 1946- .

AHDE Anuario de Historia del Derecho Espatiol, Madrid,

I924- .

AHES Anuario de Historia Econémica y Social, Madrid, 1968— .

AIA Archivo Ibero-Americano, Madrid, 1914- . AIEC Anuant de [Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, 1907-31.

AIEG Anales del Instituto de Estudios Gerundenses, Gerona,

1946- . AST Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia, Barcelona, 1926— . BAE Biblioteca de Autores Espatoles, Madrid. Baer, Die Juden Y.F. Baer, Die Fuden im christlichen Spanien, 2 vols., Berlin, 1929-36.

Baer, Idem, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, 2

Mstory vols., Philadelphia, 1961-6.

BBC Butllett de la Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1914-32.

BRABL Boletin de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, Barcelona, 1901— .

BRAE Boletin de la Real Academia Espafiola, Madrid, IQig- . BRAH Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, 1877— .

BSAL Bollett de la Soctetat Arqueologica Lul. liana, Palma,

1885- . BSCC Boletin de la Soctedad Castellonense de Cultura, Castellén de la Plana, 1920- .

Capmany A. de Capmany y de Monpalau, Memorias histéricas sobre la marina, comercio y artes de la antigua

ciudad de Barcelona (1st edn., 4 vols., 1779-92; new

ABBREVIATIONS ix edn., used here, by E. Giralt y Raventds and C. Batlle y Gallart, 3 vols., Barcelona, 1961-3).

Carreras T. and J. Carreras Artau, Historia de la filosofia Artau espatiola, filosofia cristiana de los siglos XII al XV, 2 vols., Madrid, 1939-43. CDIACA Coleccién de Documentos inéditos del Archivo General de la Corona de Aragon, 46 vols., Barcelona, 1849-1974.

CDIHE Coleccién de Documentos inéditos para la Historia de Espafia, 112 vols., Madrid, 1842-95.

CH Cuadernos de Historia, anexos de la revista ‘Hispania’, Madrid, 1967- . CHCA Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragon (eight published, 1909—73), Barcelona, etc.

CHE Cuadernos de Historia de Espafia, Buenos Aires, 1944- . CHEC Cuadernos de Historia Econémica de Cataluiia, Barcelona, 1968- . Cortes de Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Aragon y de Valencia y Cataluiia principado de Catalufia: Cortes de Catalufta, 26 vols., Madrid, 1896-1922. Cortes de Leén Cortes de los antiguos reinos de Leon y de Castilla, 5 vols., Madrid, 1861-1903.

DIHE Documentos inéditos para la Historia de Espaiia, vols. 7-12, Madrid, 1952-7.

Dufourq Ch.-E. Dufourcq, L’Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XIII et XIV siécles . . . (Bibliothéque de ’école des hautes études hispaniques, XX XVII), Paris, 1966 (the Catalan trans., Barcelona, 1960, is not reliable).

EEMCA Estudios de Edad Media de la Corona de Aragon, Saragossa, 1946— .

EHMed Estudis d’historia medieval, Barcelona, 1969- . EHMod Estudios de historia moderna, 6 vols., Barcelona, 1953-9-

ENC Els Nostres Classics, Barcelona.

ER Estudis romanics, Barcelona, 1947- . EUC Estudis Universitaris Catalans, 22 vols., Barcelona, 1907-36.

Finke, Acta H. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, 3 vols., Berlin— Leipzig, 1908-22.

x ABBREVIATIONS HE Mstoria de Espafia, ed. R. Menéndez Pidal, Madrid. HGLH _ EMstoria General de las Literaturas Hispdnicas, ed. G. Diaz-Plaja, Barcelona, 1949- .

HM Homenaje a Miullds-Vallicrosa, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1954-6.

HV Homenaje a Jaime Vicens Vives, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1965-7.

THE Indice Fistérico Espafiol, Barcelona, 1953- . La Torre A. de la Torre (ed.), Documentos sobre relaciones internacionales de los Reyes Catélicos, 6 vols., Barce-

lona, 1949-66.

MA Le Moyen Age, Paris, 1888— . MCV Meélanges de la Casa de Veldézquez, Madrid, 1965- . MEAH Misceldnea de Estudios Arabes y Hebraicos, Granada,

I952- . Menéndez Pelayo, M. Menéndez y Pelayo, Aniologia de poetas liricos

Antologia castellanos, 10 vols., Santander, 1944-5.

MHE Memorial Histérico Espatol, Madrid, 1851- . NBAE Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espaiioles, 26 vols., Madrid, 1905-28.

NRFH Nueva Revista de Filologia Hispdnica, Mexico, 1947- Oliveira Marques, A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Daily Life in Portugal

Daily Life in the Late Middle Ages, Madison, Wis., 1971. RABM Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, Madrid, i87i-— .

RET Revista Espanola de Teologia, Madrid, 1940-_ . RFE Revista de Filologia Espafiola, Madrid, 1914- . RHCM Revue d’histoire et de civilisation du Maghrib, Algiers, 1966— .

Riquer M. de Riquer, Misidria de la literatura catalana, 3 vols., Barcelona, 1964. Rubio, DiplomatariA. Rubiéd i Lluch, Diplomatari de VPorient catalda (1301-1409), Barcelona, 1947. Rubid, Documents Idem, Documenis per Vhistoria de la cultura catalana mig-eval, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1908-21.

, 1943- |

Rubid, Vida J. Rubid, Vida espafiola en la época gética, Barcelona,

Segura, Aplech J. Segura, ‘Aplech de Documents curiosos é

ABBREVIATIONS x1 inedits fahents per la historia de las Costums de Catalunya’, Jochs Florals, 1883-5, pp. 119-287.

SEG Spanische Forschungen der Gérresgesellschafi, 1 Reihe, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Kulturgeschichte Spaniens,

Miinster i. W. 1928- .

Tejada y J. Tejada y Ramiro, Coleccién de canones de la Ramiro iglesia espafiola, 6 vols., Madrid, 1849-59. Verlinden Ch. Verlinden, L’Esclavage dans Europe medtévdle, I (Ryksuniversiteit te Gent, Werken ultgegeven door de Faculteit van de Letteren en Whijsbegeerte, 119), Bruges, 1955.

Viajes Viajes de extranjeros por Espafia y Portugal, ed. and trans. J. Garcia Mercadal, I, Madrid, 1952.

Villanueva [J.]. Villanueva, Vzage literario a las iglesias de Espaiia, 22 vols., Madrid, 1802-52.

Vincke, J. Vincke, Documenta selecta mutuas civitatis AragoDocumenta Cathalaunicae et ecclesiae relationes illustrantia, Barcelona, 1936.

Zurita, Anales Jj. Zurita, Anales de la Corona de Aragén, 4 vols., Saragossa, 1610 (cited by book and chapters). Zurita, Historna Idem, Aistoria del Rey D. Hernando el Catolico. De

las Empresas y Ligas de Italia, vols. 5-6 of the Anales (above). (Cited in the same way.)

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PARTI

THE TIBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

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I Economy DOMINANCE OF CASTILE

Dee the the Iberian fourteenth and fifteenth centuries thewhich history of peninsula was settled upon lines were to endure until modern times. By 1500 a shift of power had occurred. Castile had emerged as dominant. Granada had been, Navarre was about to be absorbed into Castile. Most strikingly, the Crown of Aragon had undergone eclipse.

In 1300 the Crown of Aragon (particularly Catalonia) was ahead of Castile and Portugal in its maritime development. It possessed the only native navy and traded on a large scale in the western Mediterranean and North Africa. It also sent some ships to the eastern Mediterranean and through the Straits of Gibral-

tar to England and Flanders. In finance and industry Catalonia was also far ahead of Castile and Portugal.} The situation in 1500 was very different. Castile and Portugal had far surpassed Catalonia in their navies and their trade. The

great discoveries across the Atlantic and round Africa were being made by their seamen, not by Catalans. Even in the Mediterranean Catalans were rivalled by the ships of Cantabria and Seville. In finance Castile was overtaking Catalonia. Although Castilian industry had failed to develop, in the production and export of wool Castile had an ever present source of wealth and, through Flanders, a road to empire. What had happened in Castile and in the Crown of Aragon to

produce this shift of power? It is important to consider both sides of the problem, Castile as well as Aragon. It is often argued that the political eclipse of Catalonia~Aragon was the inevitable result of economic breakdown. Before looking at this argument one should consider the natural disasters and general economic changes of the times. 1See Vol. I, Part I, Ch. IT.

4 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 PLAGUES

In 1347-52 western Europe was visited by a new strain in epidemics, the ‘Black Death’, the first of a series of plagues which

returned throughout the next two centuries. It is said that Catalonia suffered so much more from these plagues than other

regions of the Iberian peninsula, that the ‘Catalan decline’ begins in 1350. The fact is that we simply know more about the plagues’ impact in Catalonia than elsewhere. The arrival of the Black Death was preceded, in Castile as much as in Catalonia, by severe famines and agrarian crises}

In the Crown of Aragon the course of the plague can be charted in detail. In Aragon and Valencia the main cities suffered as much as did Barcelona, Perpignan, and Majorca. The Black Death ravaged Portugal, Granada, and Navarre. The population of the region of Estella in Navarre declined by 63 per cent from 1330 to 1350, though this decline did not continue at such a high level north of the Ebro. The little evidence we have suggests that even Old Castile suffered severely from the Black Death. Later outbreaks of the plague affected the whole peninsula. The exact loss caused by each outbreak is unknown. It may have lessened as time went on but the cumulative effect was clearly important. For instance, in Barcelona in one year (1457) 4,060

deaths were recorded, mostly from plague, against only 600 baptisms. One finds the same attempts to combat depopulation and agrarian crisis in Castile as in Catalonia—Aragon. | RESULTS OF THE PLAGUE: ECONOMIC MEASURES

By 1349 scarcity of labour, especially in the countryside, and

_ rising prices produced a vast inflation in wage demands. 1 For Castile see J. Valdeén Baruque, Hispania, 29 (1969), 5-24; zdem, in Revista de la Universidad de Madrid, 20 (1971), 161-84.

2R. W. Emery, Speculum, 42 (1967), 611-23 (Perpignan); A. Luttrell, AEM 3 (1966), 499-514 (Aragon); F. J. Zabalo Zabalegui, in Misceldnea 7. M*. Lacarra, Estudios de Historia Medteval (Saragossa, 1968), pp. 81-7 (Navarre); N. Cabranilla, Mspania, 28 (1968), 245-58 (diocese of Palencia) ; see idem, ibid. 32 (1972), 25-323 J. Valdeén, Revista de la Universidad de Madrid, 20 (1971), 166 f. (diocese of Burgos). For the Balearics see below, p. 12, n. 2. For Castile, Cortes de Leén, ii. 66, 134; for

Andalusia, M. A. Ladero, AHES 2 (1969), 479 f. For Barcelona in 1457 see CDIACA xlvi. 237-44. For Roussillon and Conflent after 1371 see S. Sobrequés, in Mélanges offerts a Szabolcs de Vajay (Braga, 1971), 545-57.

ECONOMY s Workers in the Crown of Aragon were demanding four or five times the wages they had received the year before. The same situation existed throughout western Europe and everywhere

the monarchies reacted in the same way. To restrain the rise of wages and prices they sought to prevent free movement of labour. The laws promulgated by the Aragonese Cortes of Saragossa in 1350, those of the Castilian Cortes of 1351, and Portuguese laws of 1349-50 all sought to attain the same object, ‘to regulate prices and wages in a sense favourable to employers and consumers, that is essentially the privileged classes, bour-

geois of the towns, nobles and ecclesiastics’.1 After 1352 the Crown of Aragon ceased, because of the opposition it met with, to attempt to regulate the economy; the Castilian monarchy continued to make this attempt. The success of royal economic legislation is very doubtful. Everywhere peasants rushed into the towns and abandoned the countryside. The church inherited lands but it was difficult to get men to work them. In August 1349 the Hospitallers of Aragon were obliged to lower all their rents in order to keep any tenants. They were behaving in the same way in 1382. In Catalonia the situation was different. Cities such as Lérida

invited new settlers and offered them freedom from taxes for seven or ten years. But the Catalan nobility objected to their peasants escaping their control, and the nobles’ power was rising. Many citizens of Vich became dependent on noble families. In the 1350s jurisdiction over the city was transferred to the Cabreras. Leases were reduced to four years. The richer peasants took to usury. Payment of debts was enforced by the feudal lord. The status of the poorer peasants who remained on the land worsened.? POPULATION

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we begin to get some tax figures which can be used for rough calculations of population. 1 Ch. Verlinden, Revue belge de philologie et d’historie, 17 (1938), 113 ff, 143. For

Castile see E. Mitre Fern4ndez, AEM 7 (1970-1), 615-21 (population), and J. Valdeén, AHES 3 (1970), 325-35 (inflation, despite royal orders, in prices and

ie loc. cit., pp. 503-7; F. Carreras y Candi, JI CHCA, p. 202; J.-P.

Part IT, Ch. IT. |

Cuvillier, MCV 4 (1968), 94 ff.; 5 (1969), 159-87. See below, Ch. IT, pp. 77f., and

6 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 There are no such general, reliable figures, however, for Castile-Leén before 1528, for Granada before the end of the fifteenth century, or for Portugal before 1527. The discussion of population changes in the Iberian peninsula before that time has to be confined to the Crowns of Aragon and Navarre. In these Crowns for only a few places (Majorca, Vich, in Catalonia, a small region of Navarre) do we possess any figures earlier than the Black Death. The evidence for Aragon and Navarre will be cited later. For

purposes of comparison it may be noted that in 1500 the combined population of the Crown of Aragon—Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon, and the Balearics—was probably below a million,

if anything less than it had been in 1300. If Valencia and Aragon had grown in population, Catalonia and Majorca had

shrunk. The population of Portugal was probably about a million. In contrast, Castile-Leén, according to calculations based on the census of 1528-36, must have approached five million. A steady growth in the population of Andalusia is

visible well before this time. To this total Granada had contributed some 350,000 and Navarre perhaps 100,000 more. THE ECONOMIES OF THE PENINSULA: GENERAL CHANGES

The agricultural, pastoral, and industrial products of the peninsula, already discussed for the thirteenth century, continued to be important during the next 200 years. There were two general changes of great importance, diminution in the production of cereals and an accompanying development both of specialized crops and sheep-raising. DIMINUTION IN CEREALS

One of the most widespread changes in the economy of western

Europe from 1300 to 1500 was the contraction of the land devoted to growing cereals. The causes for this change differed widely but the general result was the same. Since most countries

could no longer support themselves in cereals they had to import them. This led both to larger-scale long distance tradein _ cereals and to more frequent regional shortages when needed 1F, Ruiz Martin, CH 1 (1967), 194; M. A. Ladero Quesada, Granada (Madrid, 1969), p. 32; for Andalusia idem, AHES 2 (1969), 489-93. For the figures often given

for Castile c. 1482, see below, Part III, Ch. IV, p. 500.

ECONOMY 7 supplies failed to arrive. These tendencies are found in the Iberian peninsula.

Catalonia and Majorca became even more dependent on other regions for cereals. Large fleets carried Sardinian wheat every year to Barcelona and Majorca. The endemic Sardinian

rebellion against Catalonia-Aragon and the sea war with Genoa often endangered these supplies. From 1365 to 1374

Majorca repeatedly seized ships bearing wheat going to Valencia. The wheat of Aragon was so necessary to Barcelona

that in 1398 the city bought a number of castles along the Ebro so as to assure safe and free transport of Aragonese wheat

coming from Saragossa. In the 1440s Barcelona spent, on an average, 20,000—-30,000 lb. a year to buy wheat abroad. In 1452

over half the city’s debt to its bank, the Yaula de Cambi, was due to the expense of buying wheat. But at times even Sara-

gossa could suffer from acute shortage of wheat. In 1471 the town council and the Cortes of Aragon had to import wheat from Navarre, France, Catalonia, Valencia, Naples, and Sicily.

Castile was better off than the Crown of Aragon. It could normally export some cereals to Portugal, Granada, and Aragon though not in great abundance. The export of Castilian cereals was often forbidden and took place illegally. The Crown’s attempt to establish maximum prices also reveals scarcity. There were years (1434-5 and 1443) when famine seemed imminent. In 1462 and 1467 wheat had to be brought to Seville from Brittany. GROWTH OF SPECIALIZED CROPS

The general European contraction of the cultivation of cereals was due in part to greater interest in more specialized crops but

also to a switch to sheep-raising. Both these developments 1 A, Campaner y Fuertes, Cronicon Mayoricense (Palma, 1881), p. 70; C. Carrére, Barcelone, centre économique a Vépoque des difficultés 1380-1462, 1 (Paris-The Hague,

1967), 326-41; E. J. Hamilton, Money, Prices, and Wages in Valencia, Aragon and Navarre, 1351-1500 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), pp. 198 f. For Valencia see E. Vidal Beltran, Valencia, pp. 185-93. For Castile, B. Blanco-Gonzalez, Del Cortesano al Discreto, i (Madrid, 1962), 305-7; Garci SAnchez, Anales, ed. J. de M. Carriazo, Anales de la Universidad Hispalense, 14. (1953), 4.7, 60. For the importation of wheat,

from North Africa see R. Vernet, to appear in Actas del I Congreso de Historia Mediterrdnea (Palma, 1973). For Portugal, R. C. Hoffmann and H. B. Johnston, AESG 26 (1971), 917-40.

8 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 appear in the peninsula. Fruit from Portugal and Granada reached England and Flanders. Sugar-cane became a main crop in Granada, Andalusia, the Portuguese Algarve, and, later, in Madeira. Saffron was developed as a main crop in Catalonia. Its export to Flanders and Germany paid for the wheat Catalonia needed.

SHEEP-RAISING

The Iberian economy also saw an enormous development of sheep-raising in Castile and, to a lesser but important extent, in the Crown of Aragon. The consequent rise in wool production had two main economic results. Wool became the main export of Castile to Flanders and of Valencia and Aragon to Italy. At the same time the textile industry developed in Majorca and Valencia and became crucial to the existence of Catalonia. The ways in which Castilian and Catalan societies developed were intimately affected by the different use they made of the wealth

wool gave them, Castilians exporting. it as raw material, Catalans employing it for industrial growth. By 1300 the Mesta of ‘all the shepherds’ of Castile was linked to the Hermandad de las Marismas, the newly formed union of

Cantabrian ports. Wool poured out from Castile to the Low Countries, from which cloth returned to Spain. I shall return to this vital economic exchange. It was enormously profitable to Castile but it meant that the country became dependent for its food supplies on cereals from the Baltic (later from France) and the Mediterranean. It also meant that a native Castilian textile industry failed to develop to match that of Catalonia.? THE CROWN OF ARAGON: TEXTILE INDUSTRY

In the early fourteenth century sheep-raising was increasing in Catalonia with a view to the growing textile industry. The first Ordinances for the textile workers of Barcelona date from 1308.

By 1321 similar Ordinances existed in Majorca, by 1336 in Valencia. Much wool was shipped from Valencia, from Tortosa in Catalonia, and from Majorca to Italy, but cloth was also an

important Valencian and Majorcan export. It became by far the main source of Catalan wealth. The cloth industry acquired a moral value in the eyes of contemporaries. The Valencian 1 Carrére, 1. 341-51. 3 See below, pp. 32 f.

ECONOMY 9 Corts of 1342 followed Catalan example when they affirmed that ‘by experience we see that the cities and places where cloth is made are ennobled and enriched and increased in population’.+

THE CROWN OF ARAGON: THE ‘DECLINE OF CATALONIA’

Controversy has raged for many years on the ‘decline of Catalonia’. After the disastrous Civil War or Catalan Revolution of 1462—72 this decline is undeniable. Recovery after the war was slow. Barcelona did not regain the position she had held before. Catalan industry regained control of the markets of the central Mediterranean but failed to recover its position farther east and did not succeed in entering the New World. One must speak here of decline.

The war, the events leading up to it, and the inability of

Catalonia to recover from it used all three to be blamed on the new Castilian dynasty, the Trastamaras, enthroned in 1412 in the Compromiso (Agreement) of Caspe. A newer interpretation

sees the decline as the inevitable result of a chain of causes going back to the Black Death of 1348. To underpopulation and agrarian troubles there succeeded internal strife in the cities, a crisis of city finances, and the decline of trade. The Civil War of 1462-72 merely completed the already pronounced economic and social breakdown of the country.

This newer interpretation is as untenable as the earlier explanation, based on the anti-Catalan bias of the Trastamaras. The causes emphasized undeniably existed but they did not operate as a mechanistic chain-belt. Recently two scholars who

have carried out the first detailed investigations of the whole problem, have come independently to the same conclusion. No inevitable chain of events can be discerned. The countryside was underpopulated but not (before 1462) the cities. Agrarian troubles did not seriously affect the towns. Civic strife was infrequent and, one may add, is found in the most flourishing cities

of contemporary Italy. City finances were in trouble. Trade underwent recessions. But the whole picture is not one of 1 Barcelona: M. Riu Riu, VII CHCA, ii. 547-59; E. Asensio Salvadé, ibid., pp. 407-16; Majorca: F. Sevillano Colom, BSAL 33 (1968), 157-78; Valencia: idem, Valencia urbana medieval a través del oficio de Mustagaf (Valencia, 1957), pp. 363 f.;

C. Carrére, Vi[T CHCA i. 1. 211-17.

10 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 continuously increasing gloom, turning into doom as 1462 draws inevitably nearer. THE POPULATION OF CATALONIA

, We have five fairly complete tax-records for Catalonia: about | 1365, about 1378, 1496-7, 1504, and 1515. In 1365, 104,000 Christian ‘hearths’ (the basis on which tax was levied) are listed.

Multiplying by the conventional five, one has about 500,000 people. Jews and Muslims (not included in the list) and nonpaying Christians might bring the total up to 530,000. (All these figures are, of course, far from exact.) In 1378 the total of Christian tax-paying hearths has sunk by 20 per cent to 83,000 (400,000 people?). In 1497 we have only

about 61,000 hearths (some 300,000 people). The records are too widely spaced for us to say that the decline had been uninterrupted, but the over-all population of Catalonia clearly sank

sharply in the fourteenth and again in the fifteenth century. In the countryside the decline began with the Black Death. For six parishes round Vich the fall has been calculated at about three-quarters of the earlier total. This decline was not universal, however. For Barcelona there are more tax registers. They show no decline between 1365 and 1378 or 1462. The population fell only in 1477, after the Civil War (from about 38,000 to 20,000). It did not rise again until

15151 |

The agrarian agitation of the remensas was intermittent. It did

not have an immediate effect on the whole Catalan economy. Catalonia—with a large urban population for the period (30 per cent)—did not depend even for its food on agriculture but on industry and the foreign trade of Barcelona. The two essen-

tial exports, saffron and cloth, continued to be produced, largely in rural centres. The remensas only seriously affected

Barcelona at the beginning of the Civil War. Professor del Treppo remarks that ‘the brutal destruction of economic prosperity depends on the Civil War’. There were signs of weakness before this (to which I shall return) but the Catalan 1 J. Iglésies Fort, Memorias de la Real Academia de Ciencias y Artes de Barcelona, 34 (1962), 247-356 (the census of 1365-70) ; for Vich see A. Pladevall, Ausa, 4 (1961-3),

361~73; for Barcelona records J.-F. Cabestany i Fort, VIIT CHCA u. |. 133-9. There was a rise in Barcelona and Perpignan in 1365-78, Abadal, HE, xiv, p. xxxlli. See now Cabestany, CH 8 (1977), 189 f.

EGONOMY 11 economy was recovering (here Del Treppo and Mlle Carrére are agreed) in 1454-62.} BARCELONA AND ITS RIVALS

While many historians remained spellbound by the picture of an

overwhelming decline extending over the whole Crown of Aragon from 1350 to 1500, Majorcan and Valencian scholars

had discovered that this picture was not true of their own regions. Contemporary evidence is, however, against the view

that Barcelona had already lost her economic leadership to Valencia in the fourteenth century. At one point Majorca provided a challenge to Barcelona but by 1400 it had fallen back. Valencia’s rise in the fifteenth century was dramatic but it came late. It did not surpass Barcelona as an economic centre until after Catalonia was ruined by the Civil War. MAJORCA: ADVANTAGES

Majorca enjoyed initial advantages compared to Barcelona. The City of Majorca (today Palma) possessed two ports. Ships could safely anchor there the whole year. At Barcelona large ships were obliged to lie far out and unprotected. Unloading or loading cargo took a long time. Majorca’s situation, almost equidistant between Provence and North Africa, between Catalonia and Sardinia, placed it on a series of converging trade routes. It was a natural port of call for Venetian and Genoese galleys on the way to the Straits of Gibraltar. The Florentine Pegolotti’s trade manual (1330-42), has a chapter on

Majorca but none on Barcelona. A slightly later Venetian manual cites Majorca (not Barcelona) among the three ports it

mentions in the western Mediterranean. In the period when Majorca was an independent kingdom (1276-1343) its ships were found in all Mediterranean ports, in Flanders, and (in 1342) in the Canaries. Barcelona’s jealousy of Majorca as an economic rival explains its support for the annexation of the island by Pere IIT of Catalonia—Aragon.? 1 See the bibliography (below, p. 638), for discussions of the problems, particularly the works of Vicens and Vilar, and the fundam@ntal recent works of Carrére (cited above), especially ii. 657—9, and M. del Treppo, I Mercanit, especially p. 585. For the remensas see below, p. 78; for civic troubles, below, p. 70. 2 See Vol. I, Part ITI, Ch. IT, pp. 363 f.; Y. Renouard, VIJ CHCA i. 247-9.

12 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 DISADVANTAGES

Majorca was even more dependent than Barcelona, however, on

favourable trading conditions. It suffered from a constant deficit in cereals. Their importation had to be paid for by exports of cloth and, especially, by acting as a centre of exchange. The island was vulnerable to any challenge to trade. From 1351 onwards it was caught in the cross-fire of the endless

naval war between Catalonia and Genoa. In Majorca, unlike Barcelona, many merchants were Jews. Majorcan trade was correspondingly hurt by the destruction of the Jewish community in 1391. But before 1391 Majorca had fallen well behind

Barcelona. In 1371 Pere III raised 150,000 gold florins from Catalonia, 75,000 from Valencia, and only demanded 40,000

from Majorca and Minorca! ©

| 7 Majorca had been very severely hit by the Black Death. For once one has figures earlier than 1348. In 1329 the tax-paying mass of the population totalled 12,389 ‘hearths’, in 1343 11,305, in 1350 9,161. Multiplying by five one has 61,945, 56,525, and 45,005 for these years. From 1343 to 1350 the heads of families

in the island paying a tax levied on all (Christians and Jews) except the nobility, the clergy, and the very poor, declined by over 2,000 (a loss of perhaps 10,000 people). This decline was mainly felt in the countryside. Jews and Christians flocked into the City. But the island’s population in general declined by a

, third from 1329 to 1427. A further, very severe, plague destroyed in 1440 some 10,000 persons, a fifth of the existing population. Only in 1573 did the population—as it is calculated from tax figures—again reach the level of 1329.” In 1449

Alfonso ITV planned to ship 45,000 measures of wheat from

Naples to Valencia, 30,000 to Barcelona, only 15,000 to Majorca. These figures probably reflect the approximate

| population of the three cities.* In Majorca, as compared to 1A, Santamaria Arandez, El Reino de Mallorca en la primera mitad del siglh XV

(Palma, 1955), pp. 25-34, 123-7; idem, AEM 7 (1970-1), 191-215; G. Todde,

Archivio Storico Sardo, 28 (1962), 234 f. |

2 A. Santamaria Arandez, VIII CHCA ii. |. 108-30, esp. 120; M. C. Giuliani,

L’ Isola di Maiorca, Studio antropoglografico (Naples, 1968), pp. 32 f. See letters (1349) in J. Vich and J. Muntaner$Pocumenta regnt Majoricarum (Palma, 1945), pp. 247-73,

and now F. Sevillano, BSAL 34 (1973), 247 ff., whose figures I follow.

Napoli, 70 (1959), 161 f. , , |

3M. del Treppo, in Atti dell’Accademia nazionale di Scienze morali e politiche in

ECONOMY 13 Barcelona, shipbuilding had never been a major industry. In 1348 a plan was made to double the space of the royal dock in the City and to cover it so that twenty galleys might be sheltered

there. This came to nothing. Majorcan resources were too slight to build docks to rival those erected in Barcelona by the city and the Crown together. In the 1390s Majorca could still arm five or six galleys against North Africa, but it possessed few large ships. After the 1360s the

island ceased to send large ships for salt to Sardinia. Majorcan

small ships traded with North Africa, but general trade had passed largely into foreign hands. Majorca was now on the defensive, building land fortifications rather than pursuing corsairs at sea. Merchants were rich, but preferred that others should take risks for them.* Italian merchants are documented in Majorca from before its

‘reconquest’ in 1229. Many Italian firms maintained branches

there. While trade between Marseille and Majorca declined sharply after 1343, the island became the most important intermediary point between North African ports and the Italian leading cities, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. Genoese ships going from Chios to Flanders left spices in Majorca and took on North

African products, especially gold. Venetian galleys carried on some of Majorca’s trade with the Iberian peninsula and took salt from Ibiza home.? In the fifteenth century Majorca was still, as a Majorcan poet

said, ‘a great mercantile city, from which great ships set out’. Unfortunately the great ships were not owned by Majorcans, but they were adopting the balaner, a light vessel imported by Basque and Portuguese seamen into the Mediterranean, which was fast enough to escape most corsairs. The textile industry was

increasing. Public debt had been reduced. But this vitality was 1M. Mollat, HV i. 561-3; Vich and Muntaner, p. 245; Villanueva, xxi. 233, 236; R.-H. Bautier, in Le Réle du sel dans Vhistoire, ed. M. Mollat (Paris, 1968), pp. 216-18; A. Santamaria Arandez, in Historia de Mallorca, ed. J. Mascaré Pasarius, iii (Palma, 1970), 138 f. 2 E. Baratier, in Histoire du commerce de Marseille, ed. G. Rambert, ii (Paris, 1951), 97-113, 124-33; F. Melis, Economia e Storia, 3 (1956), 140; J. Heers, Génes au XV® siécle (Paris, 1961), pp. 459 f.; on Venice see F. Sevillano Colom, BSAL 33 (1968), 1-33; M. Blason-Berton, VI CHCA ii. 2. 295-313. A. Santamaria, ‘La reconquista de las vias maritimas’, to appear in Actas del I Congreso de Historia Mediterranea (Palma, 1973), contains important new evidence for Majorca as an entrepét in the early fifteenth century.

14 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 undermined by discord. The same poet, Anselm Turmeda, tells

us that concord and love were banished from Majorca and replaced by rancour and envy. A modern historian speaks of a ‘climate of civil war’. A perpetual struggle for power raged

between the oligarchy of knights, ‘honoured citizens’, and merchants who controlled the City of Majorca, and the smaller towns of the island. The civic troubles of Barcelona pale in comparison. Majorcan conflicts erupted into the rising of the island against the City in 1450-3. The Catalan Civil War of 1462-72 did further damage. Fernando II’s plans to revive the Majorcan economy were frustrated by oligarchical stubbornness. PENSIONS

A pronounced feature of Catalan, Majorcan, and Valencian economy from 1350 onwards is the way in which capital was increasingly invested in the purchase of pensions paid by the local city or by some other public body. These pensions were guaranteed by the city revenues, which had to be applied first to paying them. The system was in use in Venice from 1252. It was

adopted in Barcelona in 1326. It provided capital for the city when it was needed. The same way of raising money spread throughout Catalonia and to Majorca. In 1372, 90 per cent of the money the City of Majorca actually received from taxes was absorbed by interest on its public debt. Barcelona’s debt

was also large but not crushing. More troubling than the growth of public debt in itself are the social consequences of this form of finance, the growth of the zentier class. ‘Merchants have become citizens’, a Majorcan observed in 1477, ‘and citizens knights.’ A sure way to rise socially was to exchange trade for pensions. In Majorca this was so clear that pensions could be sold for an interest of only 3 per cent. But, even so, enough capital necessary to keep the City afloat was not forthcoming locally. In 1400 Majorca was sending 32,000 lb. a year in interest to Barcelona.? 1 Anselm Turmeda, Le Présent de l’-homme letiré pour réfuter les partisans de la Croix

(1420), trans. J. Spiro, Revue de (histoire des religions, 12 (1885), 73; tdem, Cobles (1398), in Obres menor., ed. M. Olivar (ENC 10) (Barcelona, 1927), 112 f.; Santamaria, E] Reino de Mallorca, especially pp. 99, 120-36. A. Pons, Libre del Mostassaf de

Mallorca (Mallorca, 1949), pp. 130 f. :

'Y. Roustit, “La Consolidation de la dette publique 4 Barcelone au milieu du XIV® siécle’, HHMod 4 (1954), 13-156; Santamaria, pp: 42-8; idem, in Historia de Mallorca, iii. 142 f. See also A. Garcia Sanz, ‘El Censal’, BSCC 37 (1961), 281-305.

ECONOMY 15 VALENCIA

Valencia experienced a phenomenal growth of population in the fifteenth century. About 1360 the population of the whole region of Valencia is estimated as only 125,000, perhaps a

quarter of that of contemporary Catalonia. But the city of Valencia and its surrounding area had about 6,900 taxpayers. Multiplied by five, this is about 34,500 people, not far below contemporary Barcelona. In 1418 the number is estimated at about 40,000. By 1483, with 15,000 ‘hearths’ (75,000 people?),

Valencia was almost four times as populous as Barcelona, shrunken after the Civil War. By the sixteenth century the population of the whole region of Valencia, after a decline in the fifteenth century at least in several towns, had also experienced an increase, to over 400,000 people.

Valencia, compared to Majorca or Barcelona, enjoyed a stable currency and few variations in real wages. The city finances were sound. Valencia could lend or give the Crown enormous sums. That the city contributed far more than Barcelona to Alfonso IV’s campaigns in Italy may be due in part, however, to the resistance to the king’s demands shown by the Catalans.?

Valencia drew its wealth from agriculture, industry, and trade. The fruit, sugar-cane, and rice produced in the large irrigated areas round Valencia and other cities paid for the wheat and oil Valencia had to import. INDUSTRY

In 1343 the Valencian Corts persuaded the Crown to pass a law to protect the incipient textile industry. The city lacked native

merchants and artisans. Merchants from Barcelona receivéd royal permission to open workshops. The protectionist law was soon repealed. By the 1420s dues levied on textiles brought in

almost 6,000 lb. from the city and other towns. These figures 1J. C. Russell, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106 (1962), 483—

504; see above, p. 10; J. Rodrigo Pertegds, JJ CHCA 1. 279-374; Hamilton, Money, pp. 39 f., 77; F. Sevillano Colom, Préstamos de la Ciudad de Valencia a los reyes

Alfonso V » Juan IT (1426-1472) (Valencia, 1951). (For earlier Valencian ‘aids’ see M4, L. Cabanes Catala, Ligarzas, 7 (1975), 229-40.) A. Santamaria Arandez, Aportacién al estudio de la economta de Valencia durante el siglo XV (Valencia, 1966), pp.

40-7, 55-63. For the decline of population in La Plana see R. Ferrer Navarro, CH 5 (1975), 67-91.

16 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 . imply a fair-sized industry but one far smaller than that of Catalonia. Dues from Barcelona alone never fell below 10,000 Ib. from 1400 to 1428. For Catalonia as a whole in that period they varied between 32,000 and 41,000, at least five times more than Valencia.

TRADE |

One should not anticipate the growth of Valencian industry. In 1376-7 and in the 1420s Valencian exports were mainly agricul-

tural, wool, sheepskins, pottery, fruit. Dues on trade provided revenues rising from 2,000 lb. (1410) to 7,000 (1426). By the 1490s these dues had hardly risen above the last figure. In 1393 and 1404 Valencian ships were principally engaged in coastal and Balearic trade. More distant maritime trade was carried on mainly, though not entirely, by foreign ships, some Basque but principally Italian. Most of the customs dues at Valencia were

| paid by Venetian or Genoese ships which stopped there on their way to Flanders. Numbers of foreign, particularly Italian, merchants took up residence in Valencia. Valencia was import-

ant to the Italians because it was the Mediterranean port nearest to the great Castilian fairs of Medina del Campo, and to Segovia, Burgos, and Valladolid. Italians established at Valen-

cia also traded with Granada and North Africa, exchanging Valencian cloth, rice, and cheese for the wheat, horses, and gold of Africa. In 1428 Alfonso IV attempted to persuade the cities of Cata-

lonia, Valencia, and Majorca to support a navigation act to promote native shipping. Only Barcelona agreed to do so. ‘The

representatives of Valencia remarked: ‘Neither (we) nor Majorca nor Perpignan nor Tortosa have ships; we would have to depend on the ships of Barcelona alone.’ In 1453 the situation was unchanged. Valencian ships, like those of Majorca, were

small. Only Barcelona possessed the capacity to engage in large-scale maritime trade.* 1 Santamaria, pp. 88-117, 135-53; Carrére, VIII CHCA i. |. 211-17; eadem, Barcelone, i. 407, n. 3; Coses vedades en 1404, ed. Hinojosa (Valencia, 1972); Heers, Génes, pp. 492 f.; L. Piles Ros, VI CHCA, pp. 411-31; Del Treppo, I Mercantt, pp.

532, 539. See Day (cited below, p. 28, n. 1). For Venetians in Valencia see P. Lépez Elum, CH 5 (1975), 117-65 (in 1440); for trade with North Africa, J. Guiral, MCV 10 (1974), 99-131; for trade with Italy, Hinojosa, EEMCA 10 (1975)> 439-510, esp. 446-9, 490-2.

ECONOMY 17 Trade by land with Castile was more important to Valencians

themselves than maritime trade. In 1381-2, 62 per cent of Valencian exports were sent to Castile, compared to only 13 per cent sent to Majorca and Barcelona; in 1393, 75 per cent went

to Castile, 15 per cent to the rest of the Crown of Aragon. Castile could absorb the products of incipient Valencian industry. In maritime trade Valencia enjoyed the status of an ‘underdeveloped’ country for the Italian merchants who controlled its ports. BARCELONA, MAJORCA, AND VALENCIA

The records of the semi-independent Datini Company of Cata~lonia show the different valuations placed by Italian merchants on Barcelona, Valencia, and Majorca. The Company’s profits for 1396-1408 were considerable (its average return from each centre was over 24 per cent). From Valencia it reached out as

far as Seville, from Majorca to Morocco, Tlemcen (Algeria today), Tunisia. It gathered in the excellent wool of Minorca, salt from Ibiza. The agency at Barcelona made less money but it

was the necessary base from which the other branches were controlled. It was the only place in the Crown of Aragon where

financial transactions on the highest level were feasible.1 In 1460 Barcelona had long overcome the challenge of Majorca— which was now financially dependent on Catalan capital—and was not as yet threatened by Valencia. About 1300 Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret expressed the situation of Barcelona in Catalonia: “The city is supreme in all matters.’ Barcelona’s supremacy continued to grow. By 1400, with the peasants leaving the countryside, the city contained a tenth of the population of Catalonia. It was absorbing its surroundings.

Its inhabitants treated the local feudal lords with contempt. When the lord of Blanes fined its fishermen for fishing on Sunday off his beaches, the militia of Barcelona turned out to avenge the insult. Outside the immediate radius of the city its merchants controlled the economy of the whole of Catalonia and over half its external trade. 1D. Pérez Pérez and E. Pascual-Leone Pascual, VIJ CHCA ii. 529-46; for 1393,

R. Ferrer, EEMCA g (1973), 161-83; for 1422, M. I. Rincén de Arellano, IV CHCA ii. 35-47; F. Melis, Aspetti della vita economica medievale, i (Siena-Florence, 1962), 237-79, 635-729.

18 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 INDUSTRY

The fourteenth century saw the creation of the Catalan textile industry. Production was spread over the whole country but centred on Barcelona. Barcelona absorbed and exported the country’s products, especially saffron and cloth, and imported the wheat and other raw materials Catalonia needed. Hence a crisis in Barcelona meant a crisis in the whole country. Wealth from textiles lay behind the expansion and embellishment not only of Barcelona but of many Catalan cities. Between 1300 and 1400 Gerona was transformed from a Roman acropolis into a large walled town. Lérida and Tortosa spread outside their —

Muslim fortresses. All these cities were centres of textile production. ADVANCES IN COMMERCIAL METHODS

Barcelona achieved considerable advances in commercial techniques. Commercial practices drawn from Roman law and

current in Italy were rapidly taken over. Maritime loans are documented in Barcelona in 1340, maritime insurance from the

1350s. A contract of 1336 reveals a partnership between a merchant in Barcelona and one in Majorca. They have received investments from twenty-one other persons, mostly bourgeois

of Barcelona (including a tailor and a fisherman) and their wives, widows, or daughters. The ‘society’ or firm has agents who invest in it; they receive a salary and part of the profits. This is as up-to-date an example of early capitalism as can be found anywhere in 1336. Later contracts show that at Barce-

lona ships were often owned by: many partners. In 1412 twenty-two people had shares in one large ship. The majority

consisted of merchants or their relations (from Saragossa, Valencia, and Perpignan as well as Barcelona) but there was also a silversmith, a sailmaker, and a ropemaker. The profits of trade and of any incidental piracy was to be divided pro rata among the partners, whose responsibility was purely financial. 1 Baer, History, i. 217; Cortes de Catalufia, 1. 2. 455 f.; Carrére, Barcelone, i. 407-9,

423-528; N. Coll Julia, AEM 5 (1968), 339-408; F. Torrella Niubdé, Hispania, 14 (1954), 339-04; F. Carreras y Candi, Z/J CHCA i. 165-228; E. Serra Rafols, VIII CHCA ii. 1. 165-74; J. Pla Cargol, AIEG 2 (1947), 215-18.

ECONOMY 19 The pairé (who need not be a sailor) chose the cargo and directed the voyage. BANKING

In 1359 the city of Barcelona received from the Crown control over all municipal taxes. It was authorized to raise money by selling annuities secured on the city revenues. Sales of annuities became the main source of revenue. In 1381-3 all but one of the

main private banks in Barcelona failed. They had overextended their loans, mainly to the Crown. In 1401 the city created a municipal bank, the Taula de Cambdz. Its credit was to be reserved for the city though private individuals also banked there. It was intended to safeguard the city’s funds and proved able to do so. In 1412 the Taula was given control over the city budget. Despite shrinking returns from taxes and higher expen-

diture the public debt was greatly reduced. The Taula only collapsed in 1468, as a result of the Civil War. Until this ‘the first great public bank in the West’ had proved remarkably successful in an era of economic difficulty.+

The merchants of Barcelona were able to analyse the crises they confronted very acutely. They knew that their economy depended on a sound, not overvalued, currency, on industry

and trade, and on a fleet which could carry their cloth and bring in the articles of international exchange; spices, Flemish luxuries. Catalan merchants could act as well as analyse. In 1394 they

founded a Council ‘to defend mercantile affairs’, which chose two Defenedors de la Mercaderia every year. Funds were assured by

special taxes. The Council helped to begin to construct a badly needed artificial port and to pay for armed vessels to fight the corsairs, if necessary smoking them out of Marseille. The Coun-

cil sent embassies to Bruges, Genoa, and Egypt to defend Barcelona’s interests. Catalan merchants were willing to experiment. From 1434 to 1A. Garcia Sanz, EHMed 4 (1971), 123-41. A.-E. Sayous, EUC 18 (1933), 209-35; idem, Revue historique de droit frangais et étranger, 4° 8., 15 (1936), 255-301;

L. Perels, ibid. 24 (1945), 280-6; for a company’s accounts 1334-42, see J. M®. Madurell, AHDE 35 (1965), 421-535; 36 (1966), 457-546. N. Coll Julia, HV i. 377-93 (ownership of ships); A. P. Usher, The Early History of Deposit Banking in Mediterranean Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1943); on taxes, see J. Broussolle, EH Med 5 (1955). 1-164.

20 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 1455 Barcelona changed from reliance on large ships (naus) to galleys and then to the lighter and more manoeuvrable caravels and balaners. From 1438 onwards a successful effort was made to

establish the manufacture of fine cloth in Barcelona, using English wool specially imported by the city. Other interesting,

though less successful, efforts were made to establish tapestryweaving and silk manufacture in Barcelona. In 1396 an Italian

merchant in Barcelona described the Catalans as terribly ‘sharp’. “Ihe men of this country are among the most versatile

in the world,’ he wrote.1 |

In 1400 Barcelona was still a rich city. Its finances were run by sound techniques of accounting and credit. [t was successful in importing wheat to feed its population and exporting saffron and cloth to pay for the wheat. Bridges were rebuilt, squares enlarged, fountains and mills kept in good state. The city’s fleet, trading with the East, North Africa, and Italy, was owned by

native merchants. New ships were built and bought abroad. In 1401 the Corts persuaded the Crown to prohibit Italians (other than Genoese or Pisans) from living in Barcelona, Valencia, or Majorca or employing agents there. This prohibition was

repealed next year. A very small special duty was levied on importations and exportations effected by Italians, from 1420 on the transactions of Germans and Savoyards. The city of Barcelona defended the rights of foreign merchants. Naturaliza-

tion was an easy process. In 1404 Florentines and Genoese

brought in about 15 per cent of the goods imported into Barcelona. The proportion was the same in 1434, the next year for which customs records exist. Italians were involved in all the affairs of Barcelona, but they did not have the control over the

city’s trade they possessed in Valencia and Majorca (or in Castile and Granada). TRADE

Barcelona was an international centre of finance and exchange.

Maritime insurers there would cover ships touching at other ports. Barcelona re-exported Florentine damasks and Flemish 1 Carrére, Barcelone, ii. 760 f., 776-838; i. 36 f., 52-69; Del Treppo, J Mercantz, pp. 526 ff. On the port, J.-F. Cabestany i Fort and J. Sobrequés i Callicé, CHEC 7 (1972), 41-113.

ECONOMY 21 cloth to Aragon and Castile by land. It linked the Italian merchants of Avignon with the East, Flanders, and Valencia.

It sent cloth from Flanders and Constance to Alexandria, Beirut, and Cyprus, and wheat from Languedoc and Sardinia to Venice and Rhodes.! ANDALUSIA, FLANDERS, ENGLAND

In the fourteenth century Barcelona seems largely to have abandoned its earlier interest in Seville. Contact was maintained by some Andalusian merchants. Barcelona received large quantities of salt fish from Vizcaya, brought by Basque ships, but sent nothing in return. Majorcan and Valencian ships

traded with Seville and Cadiz but on a small scale.? Catalan trade with Flanders and England was more important. In 1389 Catalans received increased privileges in Flanders. In 1405 almost forty Catalan merchants were settled in Bruges alone. In 1428-9 21 per cent of the maritime insurance in Barcelona concerned trade with the north Atlantic. (The figure for other years is lower.) ‘That year over three-quarters of the trade was carried on by Italian or Flemish ships, but the goods carried were owned by Catalans. From 1426 to 1449 Catalan ships carried out the voyage almost every year. They brought back English wool for Florentine merchants, and Flemish cloth, mainly for their own city. In 1433 a direct trade connection between Alexandria and Flanders was proposed and attempted for some years. The failure to establish a regular ‘line’ was probably due to the dominance of the trade by Barcelona textile importers, who were indifferent to the nationality of the ships they used and were not interested in expanding Catalan trade from Flanders to France or England. Although saffron 1Ph. Wolff, HV i. 691~704; Cortes de Catalufia, iv. 398-401; Capmany, ii. 396401; Carrére, 1. 26-33, 282-5; Del Treppo, pp. 261-313; idem, art, cit. (p. 12, n. 3), p. 185; F. Melis, Studi in onore di A. Fanfani, iii (Milan, 1962), 219-43; M. Mitj4, SFG i. 13 (1958), 206, 211; S. Fossati Raiteri, EH Med 5 (1972), 101-13; P, Lépez Elum, Ligarzas, 7 (1975), 171-212. * Carrére, Barcelone, ii. 531-649, discusses Barcelona’s trade in general in 1380—

1462. See also the important article on trade in 1428-9 by M. del Treppo, Rivista storica italiana, 69 (1957), 508-41; 70 (1958), 44-81. For Majorca and Andalusia see F. Sevillano Colom, BSCC 46 (1970), 321-66 (1276-1343) ; idem, ‘Navegaciones

mediterraneas (siglos XI-XVI), Valor del Puerto de Mallorca’, XI Congresso Internazionale di Storia Marittima (Bari, 1969), p. 37; for Valencia, D. Pérez Pérez,

art. cit. (p. 17, n. 1). R. Carande, AHDE 2 (1925), 330.

22 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 and spices were exported to Flanders, Barcelona’s balance of trade with northern Europe seems clearly unfavourable. _

FRANCE, GERMANY Barcelona possessed a large market in southern France for its cloth and Eastern spices. At Toulouse Catalan merchants pro-

vided access to international trade. In return they found in France part of the wheat Barcelona needed. Marseille’s trade with Barcelona declined in the fourteenth century because of political conflicts. After the Catalan Civil War (1462-72) Marseille entered on increased trade with Valencia. _ Catalan merchants did not enter Germany but a German colony of artisans and merchants existed at Barcelona before 1400. Merchants from Basle, Constance, Nuremberg, Ravensburg, Cologne all appear. They imported cloth, ironwork, and glass, and exported coral and saffron, convenient substitutes for

Eastern jewels and spices. In this trade Barcelona’s exports exceeded her imports in value. After the Civil War, Valencia became more interesting to Germans than Barcelona. In the 1470s they were shipping rice, fruit, and wine from. Valencia to

' Flanders, wool, silk, and sugar to Italy. German interest in Valencia exceeded anything Germany felt for Castile or

Portugal? THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN :

In 1436 some Catalan merchants complained to the Consulate of the Sea in Barcelona that they had been attacked and robbed in the port of Rhodes by the Genoese. The city should write to Rhodes, ‘that they may know that we are not a nation to bear insults’. Catalans appear throughout the eastern Mediterranean

in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In five years’ time (1378-83) they are recorded as trading with Constantinople, 1 J. Finot, Etude historique sur les relations commerciales. entre la France et ’ Espagne au

moyen age (Paris, 1899), pp. 126-9, 345-9; Capmany, li. 411; W. B. Watson, HV 1. 785~813; C. Batlle, AEM 5 (1968), 74.7, n. 17; Del Treppo, I Mercanti, pp. 92-148. 2 Ph. Wolff, Commerces et marchands de Toulouse (vers 1950-1450) (Paris, 1954), Pp. 145-57; E. Baratier, op. cit. (p. 19, n. 2), li. 120-3; F. Reynaud, ibid. 516-44; M. Mitja, SFG i. 13 (1958), 188-228; K. Haebler, ‘Das Zollbuch der Deutschen in Barcelona (1425-1440)’, Wiirttembergische Vierteljahrschrift fiir Landesgeschichte, N. F.

esp. 1. 285-359. - ae 10 (1901), 111-60, 331-633; 11 (1902), 1-35, 352-417; A Schulte, Geschichte der

grossen Ravensburger Handelsgesellschaft 1380-1530, 3 vols. (Stuttgart—Berlin, 1923),

ECONOMY 23 Zante, and Cephalonia, and as transporting cloth and Greek wine through the Aegean, cloth, paper, and saffron to Egypt, gold pieces to Damascus, and female slaves from Ephesus to Barcelona.

Voyages to the Christian East, the dwindling Byzantine Empire, Cyprus, and Greece, were of minor importance to Catalans. Until the Catalan Duchy of Athens was swallowed up

by the Florentine banker Acciajuoli in 1388, some Majorcan ships penetrated there. But between 1390 and 1417, only eleven Catalan voyages are known to have had the Christian East as their main destination; the number diminishes in 1428-51. There was nothing resembling the separate ‘lines’ of traffic maintained by Italian cities, one with Byzantium, the other

with the Muslim East. Barcelona traded essentially with Alexandria and Beirut, via Rhodes. Between 1394 and 1408 Catalonia, with 224 ships of over 150 tons visiting Beirut was only behind Venice (278 ships) and Genoa (262). After ‘Tamer-

lane’s incursion of 1400-1, trade with Syria diminished. Rhodes became the main goal. The Eastern trade was of great interest to Barcelona. It continued despite interruptions from corsairs. Unlike the trade with

Flanders it remained in Catalan hands. The balance of trade was probably favourable. In 1433 it was proposed that one galley could take goods worth 80,000 lb. (essentially coral and Catalan cloth) and return with spices, cotton, and linen worth 100,000. In 1453 it was stated by Barcelona that trade with the East is ‘the source, head and fount of all trade’. Offshoots of this

trade are the painting presented by the Catalan Consul in Damascus to the monastery of Mount Sinai in 1387, the Catalan influence on the architecture of Cyprus and Rhodes, the echoes of Mediterranean adventure in the novels of Tirant lo Blanc and Curtal e Giielfa. The Civil War of 1462-72 ruined the Eastern trade. It only began again after 1485.1 1 LI. Nicolau d’Olwer, L’Expansié de Catalunya en la Mediterrania Oriental (Barce-

lona, 1926), pp. 199, 206 f.; AIEC 5 (1913-14), 729 ff.; Rubid, Diplomatari, pp. 467-71, 504, 588-91, 325-7, 334f., 515; Del Treppo, J Mercanti, pp. 14-92, 607-37; Carrére, Barcelone, i. 112, n. 13 ii. 851-693; Cortes de Catalufia, xvii. 416 ff. (1433); Capmany, ii. 536 (1453); see p. 320 (1381); J. Ainaud, HV i. 327-35; A. Lépez de Meneses, EEMCA 6 (1956), 83-183 (consuls in Alexandria and Damascus). On corsairs see N. Coll Julia, EH Mod 4 (1954), 159-66, 183 f. The Beirut figures (a

sunmum) in F. Melis, AEM 3 (1966), 372. For Rhodes, A. Luttrell, VIJ CHCA i. 393-90.

24, THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

NORTH AFRICA | | | The Grown of Aragon continued to exploit its naval power in the western Mediterranean by extorting what tribute it could from Muslim North Africa, When the emir of Bougie. complained in 1336 of Catalan piracy, Pere III replied that the complaint was not valid since no treaty existed between Aragon and Bougie and no tribute had been paid. Such threats had

their effect. In 1364, for instance, a Majorcan merchant

MAJORCA. , collected the tribute due from Tunis and Bougie.

Most Catalan trade with North Africa went through Majorca, and, in the fifteenth century, also through Sicily. Of the Catalan merchants recorded as trading with North Africa in 1308—

31 about three-quarters were. Majorcans. In 1284 North Africa had already been the goal of two-thirds of Majorcan trade. Even in February at least three small ships sailed every week to Tlemcen (Algeria). In 1343 Pere III asked Alfonso XI of Castile to prevent his subjects from attacking Majorcan ships

trading with Granada or North Africa, ‘for in no other way could they live; they have to gain their life from those parts’. In

the eighteen years between 1341 and 1396 for which we possess complete or partial information on ships leaving Majorca, the number of sailings to North Africa and Granada almost always exceeds that of ships going anywhere else except to Catalonia or Valencia. Rising Majorcan trade with Valencia

may also be connected with voyages to Granada. Muslim merchants could live in or visit Majorca on payment of a tax on goods. Majorcan Christian and Jewish merchants also lived in

North Africa, especially in the kingdom of Tlemcen, or had

Jewish agents there. :

Trade with Tunis was important to Barcelona as well as

Majorca. In 1444 over 500 subjects of Alfonso IV were arrested in Tunis. Many were probably Sicilians but eighty were from Barcelona. Much of the trade between Tunis and Sicily, Alex-

andria and Granada, was carried in Catalan ships. A Catalan

trade manual of 1455 adds to earlier Italian sources many details on the North African trade. It shows that Catalans took to Tunis not only their native cloth but Flemish, Florentine, and .

ECONOMY 25 Greek fabrics. They brought back wax, wheat, cotton, bars of gold, ostrich plumes, and slaves.1 NORTHERN AND CENTRAL ITALY

Catalan trade with Italy may be divided into trade with north and central Italy and that carried on with Sardinia, Sicily, and

Naples. In 1428-9 trade with Italy was more important to Barcelona than that with any other region. Over half the maritime insurance of Barcelona concerned trade with Italy (72,426]b.

out of 131,296, compared with 16,210 for the eastern Mediterranean and 27,153 for the north Atlantic). Of this sum over half concerned trade with Florence, Venice, and Genoa. The

main Catalan export was wool, sent from Barcelona and Tortosa. Italians imported far more wool from Catalonia and Valencia than from Castile. They needed it for their textile manufactures, to replace the English wool now being consumed at home. Trade with Genoa and Venice was largely in Italian hands, but, in balance, it was probably favourable to Barcelona, as it was in 1376-7, 1386, 1392-3, 1453-4. On the other hand, wool exported to Florence probably did not pay for the Florentine luxury cloths Catalans wanted.

SOUTHERN ITALY, THE ISLANDS | During a period of economic difficulty or of rivalry, Catalan trade with Genoa contracted but trade with southern Italy and the islands continued. South of Rome, and in Sardinia and Sicily, Catalans sold more cloth than wool. These relatively ‘underdeveloped’ regions were more open to Catalan economic dominion than advanced north and central Italy. In the 1320s the conquest of Sardinia, from the 1390s the reunion of Aragon and Sicily, and, in 1443, the conquest of Naples also attached these areas politically to Catalonia. The (very incomplete) records of maritime insurance at Barcelona from 1428 to 1493 list 1,981 voyages. Of these 459 (a 1 J. M®. Ramos y Loscertales, El Cautiverio en la Corona de Aragén (Saragossa,

1915), pp. 48 f. (see pp. 41 f.); Vol. I, Part IT, Ch. I, p. 267; A. Santamaria Arandez, Hispania, 25 (1965), 399-405; Dufourcq, pp. 68, 320, 596-604 (almost 300 Majorcans out of the 390 names there listed) ; CDIACA xxxi. 324 f.; F. Sevillano Colom, in Historia de Mallorca, iv (Palma, 1971), 463 f.; Ch.-E. Dufourcq, RHCAZ

6-7 (1969), 27-31; M. T. Ferrer i Mallol, AEM 5 (1968), 301 f.; Capmany, ii., 512 ff.; M. Gual Camarena, AEM 1 (1964), 431-50.

|

26 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 quarter) touched at Sicilian, 334 at Sardinian, and 212 at Neapolitan ports. Palermo, for Catalans, was by far the most favoured port in the world (220 voyages). It was followed, at a distance, by Alghero in Sardinia (186), then by Naples (137). Rhodes came fourth on the list (129). During the fourteenth century Sicily was politically independ-

ent of Catalonia but the economic monopoly enjoyed by Catalans, especially in the cloth trade, disgusted the Sicilians and almost caused a new (anti-Catalan) Vespers. When Sicily was reunited to Catalonia—Aragon the Crown was careful not to exclude Italian merchants. In 1407-8 and 1416-17 more Geno-

ese than Catalan ships traded with Palermo. But Barcelona found in Sicily much of the wheat, cotton, silk, sugar, and slaves

it wanted, in return for cloth. In 1428-9 the value of the goods exchanged was slightly above that of the eastern Mediterranean trade; in 1436-46 it was Io per cent greater. The Sardinian market was poorer. It was completely dependent on Barcelona but could absorb fewer goods. From the begin-

ning the Crown had intervened in every aspect of Sardinian economy, implanting Catalan colonies and garrisons and con-

trolling salt, silver, and lead mines. Sardinian wheat was intended to feed Catalonia and Majorca. The coral industry, very important to Sardinia, was entirely in Catalan hands. The Sardinian rebellions, endemic from the 1350s, and the war with Genoa meant that Catalonia—Aragon often only controlled the main ports of the island. The supply of grain and profits from salt both shrank. The price of salt rose after 1350, production dwindled (in 1400 it was only a quarter of that of 1350), and Italian exporters disappeared. In the fifteenth century Genoa turned for salt to Spain. Apart from its own products Sardinia was valuable to the Crown of Aragon for its geographical position. Its ports provided admirable stopping points on the way to Italy, Sicily, or farther east. Extant custom accounts show traffic reaching Sardinia from Catalonia and Montpellier, but also from Italy, 1 Heers, Génes, pp. 420 f., 462-4; idem, IV CHCA ii. 3-14; Del Treppo, I Mercanti, pp. 287-91, 149-87; idem, in Atti del 1°Congresso Storico Liguria-Catalogna (1974), 639-46. C. Trasselli, in Atti della Accademia di Sctenze, Lettere e Arti di Palermo, ser. 4, XV. 2 (1954-5), 335-89 (1407-8) ; zdem, in Les Sources de Phistotre maritime en Europe du moyen @ge au XVIII® siécle (Paris, 1962), pp. 111-13 (1416~17); zdem, in Economia e

Storia, 4. (1957), 303 ff.

ECONOMY 27 Sicily, and Cyprus. Some Catalan paintings reached Sicily and some Sicilian disciples of Catalan painters worked there. Catalan artistic influence in Sardinia went far deeper. It appears in sculpture in Oristano and Cagliari. Metalwork resembled that of Catalonia. Catalan artists executed paintings for Sardinia. The whole of local taste was moulded by Catalan models.1 Catalan trade with Naples began to be of some importance

about 1400, but in 1428-9 only concerned 3 per cent of the goods insured in Barcelona. There is no sign that Alfonso I'V’s conquest was impelled by pressure from Catalan merchants.

After the conquest was achieved (1443) Naples became of greater interest to Catalans. Their cloth found a new market and profits went into the Eastern trade. In 1457 Catalans formed the largest mercantile foreign colony at Naples. They were prominent in the local slave-trade. They took over the customs and financed Alfonso’s wars so that he could dispense with Florentine bankers. After Alfonso’s death (1458) Naples

was still considered by Barcelona part of the same Crown, although it was now ruled by a different king.” CATALAN TRADE 1350-1462: CONCLUSIONS Barcelona could not escape the economic crises of the Mediter-

ranean world after 1350 which deeply troubled the far richer Florence and Genoa. The international crisis of 1380 probably assisted the fall of Barcelona’s main banks. When other currencies had already been devalued Catalan currency had to follow suit. The ‘economic stagnation’ noted in Genoa in 1433-44 can be paralleled in Barcelona. The 1430s were a difficult decade

there. Taxes on food yielded less—a certain indication of trouble. There were many unemployed. Only one ship is known

to have been built in 1431-7. Ships trading with the East decline in numbers. Many bankruptcies are recorded. The crisis was due in part to Alfonso IV’s wars which brought 1 Manca, Aspettt, pp. 295-327; idem, Fontt, pp. 40, 91, 113-20; (see Vol. I. 423); on coral see L. Camos y Cabruja, BRABL 19 (1946), 148-51, 158, 168-89. R.-H. Bautier, in Le Réle du sel, pp. 203-25; idem, on Alghero in 1409-10 (to appear in Actas del I Congreso de Historia Mediterrénea, Palma, 1973). Del Treppo, I Mercanti,

pp. 53, 1723; J. Heers, in Le Réle, pp. 127-32; on art see J. Ainaud de Lasarte, VJ CHCA, pp. 637~—45.

2 Del Treppo, I Mercanti, pp. 187-248; on slaves see Ch. Verlinden, AHES 1 (1968), 393 f.

28 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Catalan ships into conflict with virtually all the naval powers of the western Mediterranean. That the position was far from hopeless is shown by the ability of Catalans to exploit the opportunity offered them by the conquest of Naples, by the search for solutions already alluded to, and by the recovery of the 1450s. This recovery included the successful devaluation of 1454, the ‘navigation act’ of the same year, which promoted a revival of shipbuilding, and, in 1456, a law protecting the Catalan cloth industry. The Catalan economy, compared to its rivals, had weaknesses

both geographical and technical. Barcelona did not have the vast market Venice possessed in central and northern Europe. Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian peninsula were far poorer than Germany. Catalan ships were inferior in tonnage compared to those of Genoa or Venice (an average 100-200 tons compared to the Genoese 400 or more, or to about 300 in Venice). The Catalan mercantile system was less efficient. The high price of insurance at Barcelona shows that risks were relatively high there. The mentality of the governing classes was narrower. The separation in Barcelona between the ‘honoured citizens’

and merchants (who had no political power until 1453) harmed the economy. A badly needed artificial port was begun

but not finished. That the Catalans did not attempt to compete with the

Genoese in the Black Sea and seldom traded with Constantinople was less important than the fact that their ships were outclassed as large carriers by the Genoese carracks. Nor could Barcelona compete with the Venetian convoys which travelled

regularly to Flanders and England and on three different eastern routes. Barcelona, however, survived better than Marseille and largely took over Marseille’s market for spices in

France. Catalan merchants were large exporters to Italy. Through Majorca they traded extensively with North Africa. They were still, in 1460, the dominant mercantile power in the western Mediterranean. 1J. Day, Les Douanes de Génes 1376-1977, i (Paris, 1963), pp. xxxv f.; Heers, Génes, pp. 501-7; Carrére, Barcelone, ti. 725-949; Del Treppo, pp. 91 f., 589 f., 523-5, 27 f., Heers, in Le Navire et l’économie maritime, du moyen &ge au XVIII® siécle,

principalement en Mediterranée, ed. M. Mollat (Paris, 1958), pp. 107-17; idem, Archivio Storico Italiano, 113 (1955), 157-209. On the port see J.-F. Cabestany and J. Sobrequés, p. 20, n. 1 above.

ECONOMY 29 The advanced nature of the Catalan economy, its reliance on

large-scale industry, geared to the export trade, made it vulnerable. A serious interruption to foreign trade had an immediate impact on the whole country. This sensitiveness to external political shock also characterized Majorca, which depended on its geographical position as a centre of international trade, and Granada, with its reliance on specialized crops, which needed a foreign market. A prolonged rebellion or foreign blockade could

do far more damage to these countries than to fundamentally agricultural-pastoral economies such as Castile or Aragon, or even Valencia before 1460. The raw materials of Valencia continued to attract Italian merchants. It was in the 1480s that the Majorcan authorities complained that ‘the cloth and merchandise from the Levant which were brought here and from here transferred to Barcelona ... are taken to Valencia; it is there that trade is conducted which used to be carried out here’.

It was after the Catalan Civil War that Valencia replaced Barcelona as the financial capital of the Crown of Aragon. A German visitor to both cities in 1494 recognized this. ‘About fifty years ago the greatest centre of trade in Spain was Barcelona, but because of its internal conflicts, merchants moved to

Valencia, which is now the commercial head [of the kingdom].’ Given Miinzer’s familiarity with German merchants in Spain, his is valuable testimony. The Civil War dealt a serious blow to Catalonia because its economy was based on large-scale industry, international trade,

and speculation. It depended largely on foreign capital. All these things were shattered by ten years’ conflict during which Barcelona’s trade came to a virtual halt, her main international markets were lost, and she ceased to be a vital centre of commercial exchange. The causes of the War will be discussed in a later chapter. Here it is enough to suggest that they cannot be shown to be principally economic. Nor can the “decline of Catalonia’,

which is not demonstrable before the War, be ascribed to economic causes operating over many years.’ 1 Santamaria, op. cit. (p. 15, n. 1), p. 88, n. 35; Miinzer, in Viajes de extranjeros por Espaita y Portugal, ed. J. Garcia Mercadal, i (Madrid, 1952), 339. F. Sevillano

Colom, in Hispania, 14 (1954), 532 f., points out that the trade of Flanders, Sicily, and Genoa was deliberately diverted from Barcelona to Valencia in 1462-

See below, Part II, Ch. III.

.

30 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 ARAGON, NAVARRE

Catalonia and Valencia were essentially focused towards the Mediterranean. Castile and Portugal were turned towards the Atlantic. The economies of Aragon proper, of Navarre, and of Granada, fell between these two main orientations. Aragon and Navarre were dependent on Barcelona and Valencia. They exported cereals, wine, and wool through these cities and received from them the spices, sugar, and cotton they could afford.

Navarre’s trade to the north had to go through the Castilian port of San Sebastian or through the Gascon Bayonne.

Capital accumulating in Aragon was mainly employed in farming royal and local taxes or in lending out money. Profits

were ploughed into the land. Wages were lower than in Valencia. In 1495 the Aragonese population consisted of some 50,000 ‘hearths’ (perhaps 250,000 people). Saragossa grew in numbers; it acquired colonies of merchants, printers, and artists from Germany, Italy, Gascony, and Flanders. It was still small

compared to Valencia (some 20,000 people compared to 75,000). Calatayud, the second largest city in Aragon, was still largely pastoral in its interests.

In Navarre, for a rich region near Estella, one can show a disastrous fall in population from 1330 to 1366 of 78 per cent, though this decline was not felt throughout the kingdom. Navarre was not prepared to serve the ambitious plans of her ruler Charles I] (1349-87), who was obliged to debase the

coinage, or, later, those of Juan II (1425-79). The whole population in 1366 was probably under 100,000. An ‘upheaval of

prices and wages from 1375 to 1390’ was partly caused by monetary inflations which continued in 1401-44. Navarre was without a sound currency or any cities of importance. In the fifteenth century its population continued to decline and it was drawn into the economic orbit of Castile.t 1M. A. Irurita Lusarreta, El Municipio de Pamplona en la Edad Media (Pamplona, 1959), pp. 165 f., 259 f.; J. M®. Lacarra, in Aragon, cuatro ensayos, i (Saragossa, 1960), 254-7, 280, 288, 208 ff.; J. Garulo Sancho, IV CHCA i. 301-23; M?®. D. Moreno Box, ibid. ii. 117-38; Russell (cited, p. 15, n. 1); Zabalo (cited, p. 4, n. 2), pp. 83-7; J. Carrasco Pérez, La poblacién de Navarra en el siglo XIV (Pamplona, 1973), p. 132. Hamilton, Money, pp. 122-8, 142, 193. J. Arraiza Franca, Principe de Viana, 29

(1968), 117-47. For Charles II’s economic policy, which proved unsuccessful, see

j- Gautier-Dalché, MA 79 (1973), 96; for Juan II, P. Lépez Elum, Principe de Viana, 33 (1972), 153-62.

ECONOMY gi GRANADA

Granada was a far richer country than Aragon or Navarre but its wealth was always liable to Castilian attack. Granada reached its height during the second reign of Muhammad V (1362-— g1). The main surviving splendours of the Alhambra date from this time. Muhammad was able to control the Berber cavalry from Morocco which had often ruled the emirate. For a short time he became ‘the supreme arbiter of the affairs of the Maghrib’. But the war of 1361-2 had already shown how easy it was for Castile to conquer Granada if the conquest was pressed home. After the 1340s no help was available from North Africa. In the fifteenth century Granada repeatedly appealed in vain to Egypt. Presentiments of Granada’s fall appear as early as Muhammad V’s reign. An Egyptian visitor of 1465-6 states the situation very clearly. He was as impressed as earlier visitors by the port of Malaga and by Granada, which was ‘among the most beautiful cities of Islam, if it were not that the infidels are so near’.}

The fifteenth century saw the political decline of Granada. From 1419 onwards its history is one of depositions, risings, assas-

sinations impelled by rival clans. One area or another was generally in revolt or about to rebel. This ‘internal decomposition’ was accompanied by growing financial exactions on the ordinary inhabitant. The Doctors of the Law were obliged to tolerate many taxes which were contrary to Islamic orthodoxy.

They also did their best to facilitate trade and agriculture by

‘forcing’ the letter of the law. Judicial opinions describe Granada as so overpopulated that three men shared the ownership of a tree. The Jews played a considerable role in lending

money but the Italians were more important. Florentine merchants appear in Malaga in 1402. Venetian galleys stopped

there regularly on their way to Flanders. But the dominant economic force in the emirate was Genoa.

Malaga, like Cadiz, rose to importance after 1350 with the 1L. Torres Balbas, Al-Andalus, 24 (1959), 400-8; Ibn Khaldin, Histoire des Berbéres, trans. Slane, iv. 411, 484 f.; Pero Lépez de Ayala, Crénica de Pedro I

(BAE Iixvi. 517 f.); L. Seco de Lucena Paredes, MEAH 4 (1955), 6 f.; A. M. al-Abbadi, MEAH 9 (1960), 107-25; G. Levi della Vida, Al-Andalus, 1 (1933), 307-343 for Malaga see Ibn al-Khatib, trans. E. Garcia Gémez, ibid. 2 (1934), 105-95.

32 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 end of the naval struggle between Castile (and Aragon) and Morocco for the Straits of Gibraltar. It profited from its position as the only important port between Alicante and Cadiz. Malaga exported silk to Italy, sugar, dried figs, and grapes mainly to London and Bruges, and re-exported African gold to Castile (as tribute) and to Italy. It imported Eastern spices, cloth from northern Europe, and, most important, the cereals the emirate lacked. Most of its trade was in Italian, especially Genoese hands. For Genoa Granada was ‘the ideal type of New Western colony’; 1t could partly replace lost Genoese positions in the East. It was largely because of its importance to Genoa

CASTILE |

that the emirate remained independent as long as it did. The Genoese had no wish that it should fall to Castile.

The economic expansion of Castile and Portugal preceded, and largely made possible, their political expansion. The economic growth of Castile was due to the interlocking of a series of local economies separated by formidable geographical barriers: the Cantabrian ports which needed to develop their shipping; the Meseta which needed to export wool; Andalusia which imported

the produce of the Mediterranean and North Africa. These originally separate economies became interwoven, to the north, with the markets of Flanders, England, France, and the Hansa; in the Mediterranean with Genoa, Venice, Florence, Catalonia,

and Marseille. Castilians and Italians using Castilian ports brought together the economies of the Mediterranean, Africa, and the northern Atlantic.

The rise of the Castilian economy began in the thirteenth century. In 1273 Alfonso X recognized the general Mesta, uniting all the producers of wool in Castile—Leon. In 1296 the Hermandad de las Marismas united the Cantabrian ports, the natural exporters of this wool and of other products to northern

Europe. The existence of these two forces, whose interests naturally fused, gave Castile economic weight in the world. The

Mesta had no rival operating on a comparable scale. The 1 Ladero, Granada, pp. 42-7, 56-60; idem, AEM 7 (1970-1), 279-84; on taxation see I. A. Cienfuegos, MMEAH 8 (1959), 99-124; on legal opinions, J. Lopez Ortiz, Al-Andalus, 6 (1941), 73-127; F. Melis, Economia e Storia, 3 (1956), 19-59, 139-63; J. Heers, AZA 63 (1957), 87-121.

ECONOMY 33 Hermandad was only rivalled by the German Hansa, an associa-

tion of towns which came into being at about the same time. Both Hermandad and Hansa controlled great zones of international trade, fought wars, and signed treaties as independent powers. THE MESTA

The Mesta passed through a difficult period during the troubled

reigns of Sancho [V and Fernando IV and the minority of Alfonso XI (1285-1325). Many Castilian towns and some church dignitaries obtained privileges enabling them to levy local taxes on sheep and cattle. During the personal reign of Alfonso XI (1325-50) the Mesta regained the close association with the Crown intended by Alfonso X. It became one of the greatest powers in Castile. ‘The stronger rulers of Castile favoured it, and, led by able nobles, it survived repeated struggles

with towns and other landowners during periods when the Crown was weak. By the time Fernando and Isabel became rulers of Castile in 1475 the Mesta was so strong that it had virtually ceased to pay any attention to agrarian interests. The Catholic Kings made the Mesta a department of state. In return for great privileges it gave the Crown a vast income.

In 1477 the number of sheep lable for duty (many owners were exempt from paying) was almost 2,700,000. By reducing the number of farm workers, the Black Death and later plagues had made sheep-farming an attractive alternative to the nobility and the Church. Don Gutierre de Sotomayor, Master of Alcantara, who died in 1453, left, as part of his personal property, apart from that of his Order, 505,800 hectdreas (over 1,000,000 acres), 195,000 sheep and 2,000 cows. The contemplative Religious Orders of monks which prospered in fifteenth-century Castile, the Hieronymites of Guadalupe, the Carthusians of El Paular, turned to sheep-farming with the same enthusiasm as Don Gutierre.? 1C. Vifias y Mey, AHES 1 (1968), 826-37—a review of L. Suérez Fernandez, Navegacién y comercto en el golfo de Vizcaya (Madrid, 1959); idem, in Hispania, 1. 2

(1940-1), 69, 71. 2 J. Klein, The Mesta, a Study in Spanish Economic History 1273-1836 (Cambridge,

Mass., 1920), pp. 181-209, 272 (for the earlier period see above, Vol. I, Part II, Ch. IT, p. 289); E. Hernandez Pacheco, El Solar en la historia hispana (Madrid, 1952), Pp. 354-9; 5. de Moxé6, Hispania, 30 (1970), 62.

34. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 POLITICS AND ECONOMICS: CASTILIAN NAVAL SUPREMACY

The natural market for the wool produced by the Mesta was northern Europe. The way this market was developed was due, however, as much (or more) to politics as to economic trends. The Cantabrian ports originally favoured the English alliance established by Pedro I (1350-69). It was Pedro’s usurping brother, Enrique II of Trastamara, who forced the Basques to join France against England. This political alliance opened the French economy to Castilian merchants. The successful naval war with England established Castilian supremacy in the Bay of

Biscay and the English Channel. Trade and war promoted shipbuilding. Basque ships were bought by England. France depended on Castile for naval forces. The naval victory over England at La Rochelle (1372) was followed by attacks on the English coasts which culminated in the burning of Gravesend in 1380. England was obliged to invoke Portuguese naval aid to counterbalance Castile’s aid to France. In 1405 forty Castilian ships patrolled the Channel. In 1419 the Castilians defeated the Hansa at sea. A later treaty (1443) virtually excluded Hanseatic ships from the Bay of Biscay. It was only in 1588 that Castile lost command of the northern seas to England.

The victories at sea reinforced Castile’s link with Flanders. Castilian colonies sprang up along the French coast, especially in Brittany and Normandy. Castilian trade with England itself increased.! NORTHERN CASTILE: BURGOS

The direction and development of Castilian trade ensured that from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century the Meseta con-

trolled Castile. Seville was probably the largest Castilian city. But, if not in population, in wealth, art, and trade, Seville was equalled or surpassed by Toledo, Segovia, Valladolid, Medina del Campo, and especially by Burgos. Burgos, exceptionally among Castilian cities, was dominated by merchants—not by hidalgos (though many hidalgos were turning, by 1500, to trade). In 1305 we are already told that ‘most men who live in Burgos live by merchandise’. The city was the centre of a road system

linking it, to the south, to Valladolid, Medina, and Segovia, 1 Suarez, Navegacién, p. 10, and passim.

ECONOMY 35 to Aragon in the east, Santiago in the west, Biscay and Santander in the north. Its merchants were found in Florence, London, Rouen. They helped to colonize the Canaries and appeared at Cape Verde in 1470, in Guinea in 1480. They built magnificently not only in their own city but in Seville, Cologne, Bruges.*

Burgos merchants transformed Bilbao (founded in 1300) into a great port. By 1453 Bilbao was becoming Burgos’ rival. Burgos sought to divert the wool trade to Santander but Santander

did not possess the ships of Bilbao or the iron of Vizcaya. In 1494. Burgos secured the formal recognition of its Consulate. This gave it the right to charter ships from all the Cantabrian ports and judicial power over lawsuits between merchants. Protests from Biscay, Guiptizcoa, and Alava secured a compromise in 1499-1500 by which Burgos was to fix the price of export of wool, Bilbao of iron. Burgos still controlled trade with Nantes and La Rochelle. Bilbao, not content with this compromise, secured its own Consulate in 1511. These Consulates were modelled on the earlier Consulates of the Sea of Valencia and Barcelona. In their turn they provided the models for a consulado at Seville (1543) and for later Consulates in Mexico and Peru.’ VIZCAYA

In 1470 Enrique IV of Castile declared: ‘My county of Vizcaya [Biscay] is one of the most noble provinces of my kingdoms ... In it there come together the main trade of these kingdoms.’ The medieval lordship of Vizcaya was almost the same size as the modern province. It was small, measuring only 2,100 square

kilometres. Its population—almost 70,000 in 1500—was more 1 A, Dominguez Ortiz, Boletin de la Real Sociedad Geografica, 77 (1941), 595-608,

and others, have suggested very high figures for Seville, which should be reduced.

from 1384). , N. Gonzalez, Burges, la ciudad marginal de Castilla (Burgos, 1958), pp. 133 ff., 198-41; L. Serrano, Los Reyes Catélicos » Burgos (Madrid, 1943), pp. 17-23. For Seville see now J. Gonzalez, Hispania, 35 (1975), 54 ff. (perhaps 32,000 people in 1405, a rise

2 L. Suérez, HE xv. 8; Capmany (ed.), Libro del Consulado del Mar, 2nd edn., pp. 683-94; R. S. Smith, The Spanish Guild Merchant, a History of the Consulado, 1250~-

1700 (Durham, N. C., 1940), pp. 13 ff., 69; J. A. Garcia de Cortazar y Ruiz de Aguirre, Vizcaya en el siglo XV (Bilbao, 1966), pp. 214-26; A. Garcia Sanz, BSCC 45 (1969), 225-44.

36 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 densely distributed than the peninsular average. Surrounded by

mountains separating them from the Meseta of Old Castile, and with poor soil unable to feed the people, it was natural that Biscayans should find their fortune in the sea. Their main port, Bilbao, was increasing in population. Its inhabitants only numbered about 5,700 in 1514 (Burgos had at least 10,000, Toledo 20,000) but they were almost all mariners. The main native product Vizcaya exported was iron, shipped either as metal or in the form of arms or used for shipbuilding. Iron fed Vizcaya as saffron and cloth did Catalonia. Bilbao also exported wool it received from Burgos. Biscay often provided the fleets the monarchy needed. The Biscayans (and Basques in

general) only began to be merchants about 1500. Until then they mainly exported others’ merchandise, but they did so on a giant scale, ranging from Flanders to Italy. CASTILIAN TRADE WITH THE NORTH: FLANDERS

In general the Iberian peninsula exported raw materials, northern Europe manufactured goods. The economies of Castile and Flanders complemented each other. Castile supplied Flanders with. wool, Flanders Castile with fine cloth. Political union grew naturally out of economic, social, intellectual, and artistic connections.

In 1348 the Count of Flanders granted Castilians the same privileges in Bruges already enjoyed by the German Hansa. In 1350 forty large Castilian ships returning from Flanders were attacked by an English fleet. The English failed to exclude Spanish wool from the Flemish market. After the general settlement of 1388-9 Flanders became dependent on Castilian wool. In the fifteenth century the Dukes of Burgundy continued to favour Castilian merchants both against England and the Hansa. _ Six peninsular colonies (‘nations’) existed at Bruges by 1500,

those of Catalonia, Castile and Biscay, Aragon, Navarre, Portugal. The oldest peninsular Consulate there was the _ Catalan (1330), the second oldest that of Biscay. The most numerous and important peninsular colonies were Castilian and Biscayan. In 1441-3 Castilian merchants already had six com1 Gonzalez, op. cit., p. 105; Cortazar, pp. 72, 83; the Catalan population in 1365 (larger than in 1500) is reckoned at below 13 per sq. km, compared with 30 for Vizcaya (see above, p. 10, n. 1).

ECONOMY 37 mercial houses in Bruges, each with about three agents. In 1486-7, out of seventy-five ships reaching Sluys, the port of Bruges, thirty-three, representing over half the tonnage, were Castilian (thirteen from Vizcaya). In 1484 Castilians imported over 150,000 kg of wool into Flanders by Sluys alone. In the

1490s Spanish merchants began to move from Bruges to Antwerp but the same trade continued. There do not appear to have been Flemish colonies in Castile or the Crown of Aragon to correspond with the Castilians in Flanders. Flemish cloth was imported (later also from Brabant)

mainly through Cantabrian ports. Attempts to protect the native textile industries of Catalonia and Castile had no permanent success.” ENGLAND

Spanish wool first appears in the English customs-accounts in 1303. The Basque ships exported wine from Spain and Gascony

to England, Cantabrian iron, and Andalusian oil. They imported English cloth—from 1460 to 1489 they took up to 15 per cent of the cloth exported from Bristol. ‘The main ports concerned were Bristol and Southampton. The normal voyage from

northern Spain to Bristol took less than a week. Despite the Franco-Castilian alliance and a lack of privileges Castilians enjoyed elsewhere, trade with England continued. It reached its

height with the Treaty of 1467, renewed in 1474. In 1504 the Catholic Monarchs suspended their ‘Navigation Act’ to allow English merchants to ship goods from Spain. Dr. Childs remarks: “The sheer persistence of merchants on the route against all discouragements indicates that the trade was never a negligible affair.’® FRANCE

French cloth also was exchanged with Spanish wool. In 1364 Castilian merchants received trading privileges in Normandy. 1 Finot, Etude historique, pp. 217-24; J. Maréchal, Revue du Nord, 35 (1953), 5-40; J. A. Goris, Etude sur les colonies marchandes méridionales (poriugais, espagnols, italiens) & Anvers de 1488 & 1567 (Louvain, 1925), pp. 56 ff.

* Ch. Verlinden, MA 47 (1937), 21-36; idem, BRAH 130 (1952), 307-21; tdem, AEM 3 (1966), 235-61. See Vol. I, p. 39. 3'W. R. Childs, ‘Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages’, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (Cambridge, 1960) (the quotation from p. 309).

38 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 These privileges, renewed in 1371, sprang from French need of

Castilian naval aid against England. During the Hundred Years War Castilian mercantile colonies were established at La

Rochelle, Dieppe, Harfleur, Rouen, Nantes. Basque sailors assisted the French to conquer Bordeaux and Bayonne in 1450-1.

The political situation changed in the 1450s. The Castilians lost their favoured position in France as Castile turned to the English alliance. In 1477-8 over a fifth of the 469 ships entering

Rouen were carrying Spanish or Portuguese goods. But Brittany, independent until 1491, was the main area of Castilian

trade with France from 1475 to 1500. Wool and iron were exchanged for wine and wheat.t CASTILIAN TRADE WITH THE SOUTH: SEVILLE

Seville was a rich city in 1400 but its wealth came perhaps more from the flocks, wine, figs, and oil of Andalusia than from mari-

time trade. After a setback in the repopulation of Andalusia in the late thirteenth century, the fourteenth had seen attempts to found no less than twenty-five new settlements, mainly around seville. These settlements were due to lords anxious to increase their rents and to peasants lacking land who came from nearby regions. But Seville could only contribute twelve galleys, at most, to the royal fleets of the 1380s. No mole was constructed

before the early fifteenth century; then it was built by the cathedral chapter to bring in stone for the new Gothic cathedral, Cadiz drew ahead of Seville; the large carracks now used by Genoa did not want to navigate 100 km up the Guadalquivir. Trade with Seville was carried on especially by Basque ships. Seville and Cadiz exported cereals, oil, wine, wool, skins to

northern Europe. The export of mercury, from almost the only European source, the mines of Almadén, was controlled by the Genoese Centurioni. Gold from Africa went through Seville and Cadiz as well as through Malaga to Genoa. In

the late fifteenth century the Atlantic Islands’ sugar, and slaves from the Canaries and West Africa also passed through seville.? 1 Suarez, Navegacién, pp. 125-42; M. Mollat, Le commerce normand @ la fin du moyen age (Paris, 1952), pp. 15-18, 34, 113-15, 222-40; Cortazar, op. cit., pp. 240-

R. Carande, AHDE 2 (1925), 298; M. Gonzalez Jimenez, La repoblacién de la zona de Sevilla durante el siglo XIV (Seville, 1975), pp. 41-8, 76 f. F. Pérez-Embid,

ECONOMY 39 CASTILIANS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

Castilian war fleets entering the Mediterranean attacked Bar-

celona in 1359, and appeared off Naples in 1383. Castilian pirates, preying on Catalan shipping or trading illegally with Islamic North Africa, are documented from 1296 onwards. In 1340 ship-captains from Seville were planning a voyage along North Africa to the Aegean. Pere III of Aragon was warned

they might attack Catalans as well as Muslims. Castilian merchants came mainly from Cantabrian ports. Plying to Seville for oil and wheat they often went farther afield. Seven Cantabrian ports sent forty-eight ships to Majorca in the five years for which records survive from 1321 to 1340.4

By 1400 there were Castilian consuls at Barcelona, and in Majorca and Minorca. By 1412 Biscayan large ships were taking twice as much salt from Sardinia as were Catalans. In 1400 Catalonia—Aragon no longer enjoyed even in the western

Mediterranean the naval power it had had a century before. The beleaguered Catalan garrisons in Sardinia were dependent on Castilian corsairs for their supplies. But these corsairs attacked Castilian merchants as well as the Genoese enemies of Catalonia. In 1404 Enrique III of Castile dispatched Pero Nifio with two galleys against the corsairs. From Cartagena Nifio raided the coasts of southern France, Sardinia, and Tunis.

It was the same kind of punitive expedition carried out by Catalan fleets a century earlier. Now it was, significantly, a Castilian enterprise.?

In the fifteenth century Basque ships connected Barcelona

with Alexandria and Chios and transported sugar, Italian cloth, silk, silver from Sicily to Catalonia. ‘They brought large MA 175 (1969), 482-502; M. A. Ladero, AHES 2 (1969), 74 f., 92 f.; Heers, Génes, especially pp. 459, 483 ff. 1A. Giménez Soler, BRABL 5 (1909-10), 195; CDIACA vii. 145 f.; Cortazar, p. 210; M. Durliat and J. Pons i Marqués, VI CHCA, pp. 353 f.; F. Sevillano Colom, ‘Mallorca y Castilla (1276—1343)’, BSCC 46. 2 (1970), 321-66; Ch.-E. Dufourca,

AEM 7 (1970-1), 50 fff. ,

2 J. Heers, Bulletin Hispanique, 5'7 (1955), 292-324; M. T. Ferrer 1 Mallol, AEM

1 (1964), 599-605 (Castilian consuls); eadem, ibid. 5 (1968), 265-338 (on Pero

. Nifio); R.-H. Bautier (cited, p. 13, n. 1). pp. 203-25. On Castilian pirates in 1413-14 see M. Arribas Palau, Musulmanes de Valencia apresados cerca de Ibiza en 1413

(Tetuan, 1955). For Castilians in Majorca see Santamaria (cited p. 13, n. 2); for Cartagena, E. Benito Ruano, BRAH 169 (1972), 139-69.

40 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 quantities of salt fish to Barcelona from the north. They took over much of the coastal trade of the western Mediterranean, not only for the relatively weak Marseille but for Genoa which they supplied with most ofits salt and with wheat, generally from

Sicily but at times from Flanders. They saved Majorca from famine in 1443. They connected the hostile worlds of Barcelona

and Genoa. The Basques and the Portuguese introduced new types of ships into the Mediterranean, especially the caravel whose small size and manoeuvrability assured it a future. From 1475 onwards the Basque share in Mediterranean coastal trade declined. The Basques were more interested in longer voyages. They travelled with sugar from the Canaries to Rome, from Madeira to the eastern Mediterranean. Before the discovery of the New World, Basque trade was already concentrating on the Atlantic. The Consulate of Bilbao was interested in the systematic organization of trade with northern Europe. The Mediterranean was left to individual ship-owners. The Basque experience in the Mediterranean helped to prepare, however, for later oceanic discoveries. The Basque sailors who accompanied Columbus were trained in the school of Mediterranean

piracy.} )

PORTUGAL , |

Portuguese sailors were far behind Basques. In the fifteenth century Portuguese exports to northern Europe continued to be mainly agricultural (fruit, wine, olive-oil). Salt, the one new export of importance, was exported to Germany and England almost entirely by Hanseatic ships, which brought back the cereals and wood Portugal lacked.

The Portuguese at Bruges recetved as much favour as the Castilians but the colony was smaller. The Flemish and English cloth reaching Portugal did not generally travel in Portuguese

| ships. In about 1500 there were only some twenty Portuguese merchants at Antwerp. At Barcelona the Portuguese were 1M. del Treppo, J Mercanti, p. 26; in Aiti (cited p. 26 n. 1), 634-7. ACA, reg. 2398, fo. 106: (trade with Sicily); Carrére, Barcelone, i. 322-5; F. Reynaud, in Histoire (cited, p. 13, n. 2), 545-50, 675 ff.; R. Collier, ibid. iii. 114~19; Heers, Génes, p. 282; tdem, in Revista da Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, 22, 2nd ser. 2 (1956),

86-8; idem, in Le Navire (cited, p. 28, n. 1); Cortazar, p. 268. On Majorca, R. 8. Smith, The Spanish Guild Merchant, p. 49.

ECONOMY 41 better known as pirates than as merchants. But by 1450 the Portuguese were assisting the Biscayans to carry much of the Mediterranean coastal trade. Many Portuguese ships were owned by the Crown. Not so troubled as Castile and Aragon by internal opposition, the Portuguese monarchy was able to assist maritime development

to a greater extent than Catalonia~Aragon, or than Castile before Fernando and Isabel.

EARLY DISCOVERIES , Before 1400 Genoese sailors (some in Portuguese service), Cata-

lans, or Majorcans had visited the Canaries and explored the West African coast to Rio del Oro. Under the Infante Dom Henrique (Prince Henry the Navigator), the son of King Jodo I

(1394-1460) greater funds were available. The Canaries, Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes were explored and settlements begun in the last three groups. The African coast was explored for 1,500 miles south, to Sierra Leone. Castile did little before 1477 except support claims to the Canaries, staked

by the Normans of Béthencourt in 1402-5 and later held by various Andalusian noble houses.

It seems that Prince Henry did not plan voyages beyond Africa to the Indies. His motives, according to Zurara, who knew

him well, were both economic and religious. They combined interest in unknown lands, in the promotion of trade, in contact with the Christian princes supposed to lie beyond African Islam,

and in extending the Christian faith. For the Prince religion and chivalry predominated, but his expeditions were expensive and gold from the African coast and slaves from Guinea and the Canaries were valuable. By 1450 Portugal began to siphon off the gold which had previously only reached Europe through Islamic North Africa.

At the same time Madeira was beginning to produce large quantities of sugar and the Azores cereals. By 1477 Madeira sugar was being sold in Flanders for half the price of Valencian. It was soon being taken to Chios in the eastern Mediterranean. 1A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Hansa e Portugal na Idade Média (Lisbon, 1959); idem, Ensaios de Histéria Medieval portuguesa (Lisbon, 1965), pp. 183-215, 219-67; V. Rau, A Exploagio e 0 Comércio do Sal de Setubal, i (Lisbon, 1951); Goris, op. cit., p. 533 Verlinden, AEM 3 (1966), 251-7; Carrére, i. 256 f.; J. Heers, Revista da Faculdade,

84-112; Santamaria (cited, p. 13, n. 2). |

42 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Atlantic exploration led to the expansion of Portuguese trade everywhere.} CONCLUSIONS: THE PENINSULAR ECONOMIES COMPARED

If we contrast the economy of the Crown of Aragon with those of Castile and Portugal some conclusions are possible. In 1300 Castile and Portugal were behind Catalonia in maritime development and financial expertise. The first ‘Navigation Act’, intended to foster a native merchant fleet, dates from 1227 in Barcelona, from 1398 in Castile—nor was this act of 1398 applied for a century. The letter of exchange was in use at Barcelona in 1334, almost as soon as in its country of origin, Italy. In Castile the first letter of exchange known dates from 1497."

THE ROLE OF THE ITALIANS: GENOA | The geographical advantages of Castile were bound to count, however. The decisive defeat of the Bani Marin of Morocco in the 1340s made traffic through the Straits of Gibraltar far easier

for Christian ships. The control of the Straits henceforth enjoyed by Castile helped to attract Italian merchants. Catalan rivalry with Genoa over Sardinia forced Genoa to find a western ally. In the 1350s, while Catalonia—Aragon allied with Venice, Genoa turned to Castile. The “War of the Two Peters’ between

Castile and Aragon did great damage to the latter. It also cemented the Castilian-Genoese alliance. From 1380 Genoa, defeated by Venice in the eastern Mediterranean, turned to the west for compensation.

The Italians were everywhere in the peninsula. Even in Navarre, in the 1340s, a Florentine mining engineer prospect-

ing for precious metals presented a memorial on monetary reform to the king. The Florentines were particularly powerful in Valencia. But the Genoese outdid them. Because of political hostility and Catalan competition the Genoese could not domi1R. Mauny, Les navigations médtévales sur les cétes sahariennes antérieures a la découverte portugaise (1434) (Lisbon, 1960); Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Chronique de

Guinée, trans. L. Bourdon (Ifan-Dakar, 1960), c. 7, pp. 66-8; see P. E. Russell, Prince Henry the Navigator (London, 1960); V. Magalhaes Godinho, Ensaios, ii (Lisbon, 1968), 77, 84-93, 117-26. 2H. Lapeyre, AHES 1 (1968), 109-13; A. Garcia, Miscel. lania historica Catalana (Poblet, 1970), pp. 215-35.

ECONOMY 43 nate the economy of Barcelona. They played a vital role, as has been seen, in Valencia, Majorca, and Granada, but it was in the

underdeveloped economies of Castile and Portugal that they really triumphed. The Genoese, as admirals and financiers, assisted the rise of Castile and Portugal as maritime powers and enabled these countries to surpass the peoples of north-west Europe. They— and the Castilian and Portuguese sailors whose voyages they largely financed—took over the role Catalans and Majorcans almost played, that of establishing commercial contacts between the Mediterranean and northern Europe, between Portugal and

the Atlantic Islands. In 1375 a Majorcan map first revealed to Europe the gold of West Africa: it was Portugal which tapped it. The Genoese settled in Seville, Jerez, Cadiz, San Lucar de Barrameda, Lisbon. The merchants of Burgos developed their own ‘diaspora’, possibly on the Italian model, but it was one limited to northern Europe. Genoese tentacles reached out all

over the peninsula. Genoese took part in the great fairs of Medina del Campo, directed the mint of nearby Coca, and advised the Crown how to reconstruct the port of Valencia. Their interests ranged farther afield, from the eastern Mediter-

ranean to Flanders and out into the Atlantic. | A series of royal privileges reveals the importance of the Genoese in Castile. This series begins in 1251, but grants increase in significance after 1379. The ‘Navigation Act’ of 1398

was suspended, only a year later, in their favour. They were consistently protected by the Crown against the interference of local Castilian officials and against harassment from their debtors throughout the kingdom. In 1451 they received perhaps

their greatest testimonial, when the tax-farmers of Andalusia

told the Crown that without the Genoese merchants royal revenues from customs ‘would be lost and would be worth nothing’. They were necessary to Castile. The Crown agreed and renewed its safe-conduct for them. In Portugal the Lomellini family became favourites of the Crown. They acted as consuls at Genoa and set up in Madeira. The Portuguese acquired navigational skills in their Atlantic voyages but they lacked the knowledge of how to exploit their discoveries. The Italian (and later the German) merchants of Lisbon were essential. It was due to the Genoese that Madeira

44 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 specialized in producing sugar and sweet wine. The sugar was

grown by Portuguese settlers but distributed largely by the Genoese who, in 1494, handled almost 64 per cent of the crop.

Before the discovery of India by Portugal and of the New World by Castile, these two Iberian countries were emerging as leading maritime powers. Up to the 1460s one cannot say that they had clearly outdistanced Catalonia—Aragon. It has been argued here that the ‘decline of Catalonia’ is only demonstrable

after the Civil War of 1462-72. Until then Barcelona was not only the main financial and shipping centre of the Crown of

Aragon but probably of the whole Iberian peninsula. The recent success of Catalan merchants in Naples seemed as impressive as the little-known Portuguese voyages along Africa or the Castilian victory over the German Hansa. In the event the political dissensions of Catalonia ended in a Civil War which shattered its economy. The central fact of the

peninsula from 1350 to 1500 is, however, not the ‘decline’ of Catalonia but the rise of Castile and Portugal and the conse-

quent outdistancing of the Catalans. Lacking the Atlantic opening which Castile and Portugal possessed and were already exploiting by 1460, Catalans had no chance of competing with

their Iberian rivals in the new age made possible by the discoveries.

Much of the commercial organization later applied to transoceanic discoveries existed before they were made. The convoy system had been adopted for Castilian trade with Flanders. In the expeditions to the Canaries and Guinea there had developed

patterns of trading and dealing with the natives—factories, colonial concessions, enslavement, and forcible conversion— easily adaptable on a larger scale. The weaknesses of the Castilian and Portuguese economies

were not as yet apparent. In both countries the nobility and a smaller number of rich bourgeois in a few cities (Burgos, Lisbon,

Oporto) were interested in trade. They were not interested in 1 Hamilton, Money, p. 204, n. 1; Heers, Génes, pp. 485-97; M. Mollat e¢ al., in Relazione del X Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, iii (Florence, 1955), 752-6. Documents published by I. Gonzalez Gallego in Historia, Instituciones, Documentos, i

(Seville, 1974), 331, 324, 335, 345. Gh. Verlinden, in Studi . . . A. Sapori, i (Milan, 1957), 617-28; V. Rau, ibid. 717-26; eadem, Estudos de Histéria,.i (Lisbon, 1968), 13-57, 137, 150f.; eadem, and J. de Macedo, O Actigar da Madeira nos fins de século XV

(Finchal, 1962). :

ECONOMY 45 industry. The two Crowns were persuaded or chose to pursue the course of reliance on a few exports. Castile at least had its native wool. Portugal had little except sugar, African gold, and slaves. Both countries were dependent on Italian credit. Their colonial profits were to be drained by their foreign bankers, but, for a century (1450-1550) in the case of Portugal, for longer in

that of Castile, these two Iberian lands towered above their European rivals.1 1C. Vitias y Mey, Arbor, 43 (1959), 249, 266. For sixteenth-century developments see M. Nunes Dias, O Capitalismo mondrquico portugues (1415-1549) (Coimbra,

2 vols., 1963-4); Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain (1501-1650) (Cambridge, Mass., 1934). On the latter work see, however, the criticisms summarized by J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 64 ff.

II Society A CHANGING WORLD

Rivesfound Savall, traditionally minded citizen of Barcelona, the aworld of the late fourteenth century very difficult to understand. He laments the disintegration of society. Nobles dislike good government. All they want is war. The lead-

ing bourgeois (his own class) ‘behave as if they were kings’. Merchants parade their wealth on horseback. Artisans spend their time in eating and blasphemy. Peasants unite in bands, ready to massacre anyone who provokes them. Above this scene there rose a monarchy which outraged Ramon Savall’s consti-

tutionalism, which had ceased to summon Corts Generals since 1389, violated the privileges of cities, and was swayed by a

clique of corrupt courtiers. The Cancionero de Baena contains some 600 poems by about fifty authors, who wrote from the 1370s to the 1440s. Although

these poems are written for the Castilian court and nobility they provide much information on the whole society of the age. There is less interest in love than one finds in earlier Cancionetros

and much more political and social disquiet. Ruy Paez de Ribera (of Seville), writing about 1407, is obsessed with the power of pride over the world and the abandonment of ‘Measure’ (Mesura). Hidalgos and nobles are fallen low and only riches are esteemed. The instability of Fortune, the insecurity of men’s

estates, are stressed by all serious poets of the time. Alfonso

Alvarez de Villasandino remarks on the sermons of the Dominican Vicent Ferrer: ‘Fray Vicente praises poverty in his sermons.

My own views are less austere.’ ‘Every man of estate’ needs riches to survive. Villasandino represents the poor /idalgos, whose ‘houses, for lack of means, have become dungheaps’. He is mocked ‘because I come, badly shod and clothed, to see the King’. This world is one of upstarts. Everything is for sale. Another

SOCIETY 47 poet attacks the hundreds of lawyers who confuse the kingdom. Justice should be rapid, but Roman law and lawyers frustrate it with their lies and sophistry. The court poets lament change but

their own moral standards are insecure. They celebrate their patrons’ mistresses and carefully distinguish between types of prostitutes.+

In his Book of Women (about 1396) the Catalan Franciscan Eiximenis describes the abandonment of their ancient dress by Aragonese and Castilians alike. For sheepskins or long cloaks both have adopted French fashions. French styles were intro-

duced from the top by the successive consorts of Joan I of Aragon. They and he dressed in the mode of Paris. Their musicians sang French songs and their palaces were decorated as in France. The Castilian Cortes repeatedly complain that labourers and their wives dress like noblemen. In Majorca, too, peasants went hunting with falcons on their wrist, as if they were knights, and lived as if they were rich bourgeois. Villasandino declaims:

Those who used to be poor Now feed on chickens,

Drink out of silver .. .? HIERARCHIES: CHANGE

It needs time for a society to recognize the changes taking place

within it. In the fourteenth century the old division of society into three, ‘warriors, those who pray and those who work (the land)’, was gradually being recognized as inadequate. A Castilian treatise written about 1345 remarks that ‘warriors’ are not a separate noble class. All the inhabitants of a city should defend it. The principle of Roman and canon law that what ‘touches all men’ is a matter for general discussion was already advanced in the thirteenth century. By 1400 it was commonly held that all

‘estates’ should be consulted on important questions. In the 1 Riquer, i. 586-92; Cancionero de Baena, ed. J. M®. Azaceta (Madrid, 1966), nos.

288-289 bis, 64, 200, 206, 340 (ii. 582-609; i. 139; ii. 366, 378, 762 ff.). See B. Blanco-Gonzélez, Del corte:ano al discreto, i (Madrid, 1962), 181-200, 213 f.; M. Gual Camarena, AEM 4 (1967), 613-26. 2 Kiximenis, cited A. Ivars, AIA 25 (1926), 15 ff., 28 ff.; Cortes de Ledn, e.g. iii. 343 f. (1438); A. Turmeda, Cobles, ed. M. Olivar, Obres Menors (ENC A 10) (Barcelona, 1927), pp. 115 f.; Cancionero de Baena, no. 93 (i. 193).

48. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 1460s ‘constitutional’ ideas were behind risings against the Crown in both Catalonia and Castile. This ‘constitutionalism’ was not in the least democratic. The ‘estates’ consulted in Cortes were high ecclesiastics, nobles, knights, and leading bourgeois, but this consultation meant a widening of the basis of government.} CONTINUITY

Eiximenis (c. 1340-1409) recognized very clearly the importance of merchants in society. But he placed them, like royal officials, lawyers, notaries, doctors, and master-craftsmen, in the

second estate, the medianos, as opposed to the first estate, mayores, the classes represented in Corts, and the third estate, menores, which comprised 80 per cent of the city population (hired workmen, servants, sailors, soldiers, friars, chaplains, beggars) and a higher percentage of that of the countryside.

Visible and deep barriers still existed between the three estates; it was hard, though possible, to cross them. Social distinctions were made apparent. It was necessary to display your rank. Throughout the peninsula sumptuary laws tried in vain to limit even nobles’ expenditure at wedding feasts, to prohibit, for instance, gifts of silver plate, and, in dress, the use of gold, silver, silk, and pearls. Leading poets note styles of dress and

jewels as indicating character and rank. The tombs of Miraflores outside Burgos recall the satins and jewels in which kings

were arrayed while alive. The ritual character of life appears especially in dress, so continually varied in rich men that ‘the tailors were half mad for lack of sleep’. Lesser men were to eat and dress according to their station in life and not above it. Eiximenis holds that it was right for a great

prince to eat better food than a simple knight, the knight than the bourgeois, the bourgeois than a workman, the workman than a friar. In 1348 the Castilian Cortes decreed that the wife of a man without a war-horse should not wear silk or furs. In Majorca in 1384 only knights’ wives were allowed ermine borders

on their cloaks. In 1454 ladies’ trains could be twice as long as those of craftsmen’s wives. Difference of rank should be pre1 For the thirteenth century see Vol. I, Part I, Chs. II and III. J. A. Maravall, Estudios de historia del pensamiento espaftol, Edad Media, i (Madrid, 1967), 164-75 (though the word. ‘democratic’ is there misused).

SOCIETY 49 served even after death. Friars were not to hold services in the

dead man’s house, ‘since this pertains to princes and barons and not to other persons and only serves vainglory’. These regulations were often ineffective, but that they continued to be issued shows us that social ideals had changed very little, however realities might change. THE KING AND HIS COURT

Some theorists now emphasized the king’s responsibility to act under the law. For the Catalan Eiximenis, Enrique II of Castile’s murder of his predecessor was probably an example of justi-

fiable tyrannicide: a tyrant’s presence ‘corrupts the air and makes the earth tremble’. Enrique II’s son, Juan I, in his speech to the Cortes in 1385, recognized that the king’s duties

to his people were paramount. To do justice was, both for theorists and for energetic rulers, the main duty of a king. Pedro I

of Portugal (1357-67), according to Fernao Lopes, ‘loved much to do justice’. This desire carried him (as it did his con-

temporaries Pedro I of Castile and Pere Ill of Catalonia— Aragon) to extreme measures. Pedro of Portugal perhaps deserves the name Cruel more than Pedro of Castile. He himself took part in tormenting men until they confessed their crimes. But, for their nobility, the worst offence the two Pedros com-

mitted was to exchange rebellious nobles who had received asylum from them. It seemed shocking that the good of the state should be preferred to faith in a king’s plighted word. A royal servant such as Ayala showed greater understanding ofa king’s position when he described him as a bull surrounded by courtiers who do not let him eat in peace without goading him with accounts of revolts and demands for favours. It was hardly surprising if the king-bull sometimes gored his tormentors, but

it is also not surprising that a future knight should have been warned to ‘serve the king and beware of him; he is like the lion, who kills in play and destroys as a joke’ .? 1 R. d’Abadal i de Vinyals, HE xiv, pp. xix-xxvii; Ivars, loc. cit., pp. 36-9, 301; Hechos del Condestable D. Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, ed. J. de M. Carriazo (Madrid, 1940), e.g. pp. 41 ff., 48-53, 234-51; Cortes de Ledn, i. 6243 an important collection of Majorcan sumptuary laws, ed. E. de K. Aguilé, BSAL 2 (1887-8), esp. pp. 191, 198, 297 f., 314. ® Riquer, 1. 188 f.; Cortes de Leén, ii. 329-35; Fernio Lopes, Crénica de D. Pedro I, cc. 1, 6, 31, ed. G. Macchi (Rome, 1966), pp. 92, 110, 229; Pero Lépez de Ayala,

50 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 For a noble the main duty of a king was to reward him. Clemency was the proof of greatness. Kings tried to conform to

the picture of them as fountains of largesse. Even Pedro I of Portugal ‘said that the day when the king gave nothing he

should not be held for king’. ,

ROYAL PALACES |

By splendid palaces, ceremonial, and superb dress the rulers of

the age sought to assert their position. Pere III of Aragon (1336-87) displayed constant interest in improvements in his palaces, in the painting, tapestries, and inscriptions in Barcelona, in Mudejar work at Saragossa, and in gardens at Barcelona and Perpignan. The tombs Pere had made for his ancestors at Poblet or Gerona and the nineteen alabaster statues he set

up in his palace at Barcelona glorified his dynasty and so enhanced his own authority. Pere’s Ordinances hedge the Crown around with majesty. His Chronicle describes minutely the robes and crown which he wore to take ceremonial possession of the kingdom of Majorca.? In 1466 the Alcazar at Segovia contained ‘thirty-four images of the kings [of Castile] in pure gold, each represented sitting on

a throne, holding a sceptre and orb in his hand’. This palace probably surpassed any other in the peninsula in its richly decorated ceilings and painted friezes of gold, silver, and blue, executed by Mudejar artists. One can imagine the banquets served there, the peacocks, partridges, wild boar, and salmon prepared and presented with the delicate care prescribed by Don Enrique de Villena. In Navarre Carlos III (1387-1425) erected at Olite a palace

modelled on Segovia and on the royal palaces of France. He employed tapestry workers from Arras and French sculptors, but the general effect, with walls painted and plastered by Rimado del Palacio, v. 490 (BAE lvii. 440); El Victortal, por G. Diez de Games, ed. J. de

M. Carriazo (Madrid, 1940), c. 21, p. 72. 1 Marques de Santillana, Proverbios (NBAE xix. 452); Fernaéo Lopes, c. 1 (p. 92). 2 J. Coroleu, Documents historichs catalans del sigle XIV (Barcelona, 1889), pp. 2142; on Barcelona see F. Carreras y Candi, 77 CHCA, pp. 210 f.; J. M#. Madurell y Marimon, AST 11 (1935), 371-93; 12 (1936), 491-518; 13 (1937-40), 89-1123 on Saragossa, idem, Hispania, 21 (1961), 495-548. Chronique de Pierre IV d’ Aragon, ili. 47,

ed. Pagés, pp. 149 f. A. Lépez de Meneses, CHE 13 (1950), 186; 14 (1950), 183,

187, 1915 15 (1951), 175, etc. , oo

SOCIETY 51 Mudejars in gold and colours, must have been another Alhambra within the frame of Gothic fortifications. A gardener from Valencia tended the orange parterre. Musicians for the chapel came from France, Castile, Venice, and Flanders, Carlos (unlike other peninsular rulers) claimed, as a Capetian, to heal the sick.

In the fifteenth century the great nobles of Castile built Mudejar-Gothic palaces inside their castles to rival Segovia and

Olite, Alvaro de Luna Escalona, Juan Pacheco Belmonte, the Fonsecas La Mota and Coca. The time seemed remote when a king and queen could not find room in winter for themselves and two princesses in the two palaces of Barcelona and had to use private houses. Palace gardens extended the space available within the walls for entertainment and display. The gardens of the Alcazar of Seville give one an idea of many others which have disappeared. Many rulers also had a zoo. Joan I of Aragon (1387-96) was continually sending for stags, wolves, camels, antelopes, and gazelles (from Alexandria). The royal zoo in Barcelona also contained lions, leopards, and unicorns.! HUNTING

Kings and nobles hunted as their ancestors had done. Fernando I of Portugal (1367-83) ‘had forty-five mounted falconers, apart from those on foot, and said that he would not rest until he had

settled a street in Santarem with 100 falconers’. The earlier Libro de la Monteria of Alfonso XI of Castile (1312-50) describes

hundreds of places from Galicia to Murcia where hunting, especially of bear and wild boar, was possible. In fifteenthcentury Portugal, falconry was less esteemed than pursuing these animals. The Book on Hunting of Joao I (1384-1433) com-

pares the joy when a bear bursts into sight with the vision of God in the future life, and the baying of hounds with the (to Jo&o far inferior) most celebrated chansons of the day. Jo&o’s successor, Duarte (1433-8) wrote the Ari of Riding Well which became ‘a breviary to many a young knight’, in which ‘he could

learn everything necessary for the perfect rider’. Joan I of Aragon used hounds from Brittany, Castile, and Savoy and 1 Leo of Rozmital, Travels, trans. M. Letts (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 88 f.; E. de Villena, Arie cisoria (Madrid, 1879); J. R. Castro, Carlos III el Noble, Rey de Navarra (Pamplona, 1967), pp. 435, 500-4, 518-27; Rubid, Vida, pp. 82 f., 112-18; J. Ma. Roca, Johan I d’Aragé (Barcelona, 1929), pp. 328-33.

52 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 demanded falcons from Greece, Flanders, and Tunis. Falcons

were chosen by Enrique III of Castile in 1403 as the best present to send the new conqueror of Central Asia and Turkey,

Tamerlane.

FOOD, DRINK, AND DRESS

Joan I of Aragon could eat as much, when journeying, as four partridges at a sitting. His court ordered for him cheeses and African dates from Majorca, trout from the Pyrenees, sturgeon

for fast days, Greek wine, Calabrian red, good claret, and Beaune. He drank his wine spiced after dinner. His sugar was specially prepared by a convent in Barcelona. He ordered fine

green and Indian ginger from merchants returning from

Alexandria.

Joan was not only a gourmet but a dandy. At one time he would only wear green or red. As king he wore black cloth on Good Friday, red or gold cloth (from Granada) at Easter, and Damascus silk, scarlet cloth from Brussels, and ermine from Paris, at other times. The emir of Tlemcen was asked for Muslim robes as well as for lions and jennets. MUSIC

Joan sent his musicians to study in Germany or Flanders. When

they returned they were sent at once to wherever he was, to show off their accomplishments. Joan welcomed French, Castilian, and Sicilian musicians at his court and tried to persuade musicians serving the Duke of Berri to come to him. Though he was willing to send his own musicians to foreign courts, he made the pope write letters demanding the return of one of his men who had entered foreign service without his per-

mission. In all this Joan imitated his father Pere III, who had

welcomed Mudejar minstrels and others from Portugal, Cyprus, and Bologna. Queens of Aragon protected artists and 1 Ferndo Lopes, Crénica de D. Fernando, Prol., ed. 8. Dias Arnaut, (Oporto, 1966), p. 4; idem, Pedro I, 1 (p. 91); Alfonso XI, Libro de la Monteria, ed. J. Gutiérrez de la

Vega (Madrid, 1877); Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, pp. 243-8; Joao I, Livro da Montaria, ed. F. M. E. Pereira (Coimbra, 1918), pp. 18 f.; Roca, pp. 277-314.

a17 ff. ,

Castro, Carlos III, pp. 509-12; Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo,. Embassy to Tamerlane, trans. G. Le Strange (London, 1928), pp. 169, 173. Cf. the description of a hunt staged before the royal court in Crénica de D. Alvaro de Luna, 74, ed. Carriazo, pp.

SOCIETY 53 musicians. Their jewels and plate were far richer than their furniture, which was less easily transportable.? On Maundy Thursday kings washed the feet of thirteen poor men, ‘They often distributed alms. ‘There were other less cere-

monial contacts between most rulers and their people. Carlos Ill of Navarre and his family assisted at the first masses of priests and acted as godparents at baptisms of poor children and of converts from Judaism. The terrifying Pedro I of Portugal could delight the people of Lisbon by dancing through the streets

with torches in the middle of the night. The ceremonious Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon could enjoy dancing with his people in the castle of Perpignan and drinking wine with them afterwards.? THE NOBILITY

The position of the nobility varied greatly in the different penin-

sular kingdoms. In Castile the rise of the nobles seemed to threaten the existence of the monarchy. The nobles’ importance

was far less in the Crown of Aragon. In Castile the political victory of the Catholic Monarchs did not mean the end of the nobility’s economic, social, and administrative power but its continuation. There, ‘the Civil wars produced a vast aristocratisation of economy, society, culture, life itself.’ CASTILE

Increased trade, especially in wool and honey, allowed for greater exploitation of the Mesetas of Castile—-Leon. Two-thirds

of the new lordships formed after 1350 were created in the northern Meseta, where the few cities which remained independent (Burgos, Valladolid, Medina del Campo) were ‘islands

in the ocean of the nobility’. In the southern Meseta most municipalities were absorbed by seignorial pressure. In these

areas and in Andalusia, whether the soil produced wheat, 1 Roca, pp. 251-76, 335-61; Coroleu, p. 120; A. Lépez de Meneses, CHE 13 (1950), 183; EEMCA 5 (1952), 670, 708, 736; U. Deibel, ‘La reina Elionor de Sicilia’, in Sobiranes de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1928), pp. 384-441; see R. Olivar Bertrand, CHE 33-4 (1961), 239-99; J. M®. Roca, ‘La reyna empordanesa’, Sobiranes, pp. 41-84; and, on Queen Maria, the wife of Alfonso IV, F. Soldevila, ibid., pp. 262-73. 2 Castro, pp. 503-5; Lopes, Pedro I, 14 (p. 144); Chronique de Pierre IV, iit. 199 (pp. 232 f.).

54 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 sheep, or oil and wine, the large estate was the norm. As Castile became more and more geared to the production of wool,

the nobility, through their own estates or through the Military Orders and great sees they controlled, grew richer. ‘The pastoral nature of the economy gave Castilian society its special charac-

ter. Its dominant class was one ‘without roots in the land, but living from it ... to have a commandery (encomzenda) in a Military Order, a right over pastures or over the passage of flocks meant one could maintain high social rank’. Given the absence of native industry or (outside a few cities) of a strong bourgeoisie, ‘Castile necessarily became the land of hidalgos’, which it was to remain for centuries. Any citizen or farmer who prospered aspired to become a /dalgo.+ From 1252 to 1325 the Castilian nobility had caused the monarchy continual trouble; at times it had endangered its existence. Alfonso XI, during his personal reign (1325-50), reduced rebellion to faction. Pedro I (1350-69) pursued his father’s policies to extremes. He sought to destroy the nobility and largely succeeded in doing so. He was not overthrown by his nobles. His foreign policy recoiled upon him when France and Aragon unleashed on Castile the mercenary companies trained in the Hundred Years War.? A NEW NOBILITY

Enrique II of Trastamara (1369-79), Pedro’s illegitimate halfbrother and murderer, in his endeavour to resettle his kingdom, saw a new nobility as the necessary support for the throne. Only a fifth of the old leading families of ricos hombres (seven out of thirty-four) had survived the civil wars. Only six noble families

important in 1300 received the title of Grandee of Spain in 1520. (Before 1520 almost all future Grandees had acquired titles, first counties, then dukedoms.)

The new nobility only began its rise under Enrique II. It increased in numbers with the arrival of Portuguese émigrés under Juan I (1379-90) and during the confused and weak reigns of Juan II and Enrique IV (1406-74). Much of this new iL. Suarez Fernandez, Nobleza y Monarquta (Valladolid, 1975), pp. 14, 1173 tdem, HE xv. 3-7. 2 For the period 1252-1325 see Vol. I, Part I, Ch. II, pp. 49-66; for Alfonso XI

and Pedro I, ibid., Part IIT, Chs. I and III.

SOCIETY 55 nobility was drawn from the squirearchy of the northern periphery of Castile. Five of the sixteen leading families of 1470 came from Alava, two came from the frontier between Navarre and Alava, and the rest were closely linked by intermarriage to these families. The Mendozas, who came from ‘humble hamlets

in Alava’, by the 1460s appeared to control Castile. Of the foreign mercenary captains favoured by Enrique II only one settled in the country. The Trastamara relations of Enrique on whom he bestowed great titles and estates were swept away in the troubled minority of Enrique IIT (1390-6). The lesser native families (Mendozas, Stifigas, Velascos, etc.) filled the vacuum. The new noble families absorbed the lands of older houses in Old Castile and invaded New Castile, the Tagus valley, where few lands had been granted to nobles before Enrique IT. In the sixteenth century this area contained 170 towns under seignorial jurisdiction, 165 of which were acquired by the nobility between 1369 and 1474.

The new nobility sought to construct compact territorial lordships. The grant of a mayorazgo (entail) allowed them to transmit their lands intact to one heir. Mayorazgos multiplied after 1369. They created ‘great blocks of inalienable land’, thus ‘stabilising the wealth of the titled nobility’. Lordships with full jurisdiction, in which revenue from land

was united with exercise of public governmental functions, especially justice, covered vast areas of Castile. One of the most valuable royal rights acquired by many nobles was the alcabala, a 5 per cent (later 10 per cent) tax on the sale of goods. In 1851

the House of Infantado could still raise this tax in almost 500 towns in Castile. CROWN AND NOBILITY

The economic results for the Crown of the growth of noble power from 1369 to 1474 hardly need stressing. The Crown’s revenues were greatly diminished by grants of lands and royal rights and had to be supplied by heavier taxes on the people. In 1 Suarez, Nobleza, pp. 57-85; HE xv. 16-22; 8S. de Moxd, Hispania, 30 (1970), 50-68; based on his detailed study in CH 3 (1969), 1-210; J. R. L. Highfield, in Europe in the late Middle Ages, ed. J. R. Hale, p. 384. Gonzalo Argote de Molina, Nobleza del Andaluzia (Seville, 1588), fo. 228, already noted the crucial change took

place under Pedro I.

|

|

56 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 vain the Cortes clamoured for the repeal of these grants and for

the reduction of the tax exemptions claimed by /idalgos. A strong ruler might try to impose conditions, to exact the maintenance of men-at-arms for the royal service or the payment of a share of local taxes, but more grants continued to be made and Crown revenues alienated. In 1390 the Cortes had sanctioned

the grant of many lands to the nobility in return for military service. In theory the Crown would thus have over 2,300 armed

knights, but these knights were under noble control. Many hereditary juros (annuities), secured on royal revenues, had been

sold or given away. Only in 1480 did the monarchy begin to deal with this question. The nobles possessed political power. In 1468 the Duke of Medina Sidonia could raise 4,000 horse from Seville and other towns in Andalusia. Seignorial troops were still important in the conquest of Granada. If an effective league had united the sixteen leading families of 14.70 they could have destroyed the monarchy. This league never came into being. The nobility had no clear programme other than the monopoly of higher posts at court and the refusal to allow any one of their number to attain unrestricted power.’

CATALONIA | ,

The typical Castilian noble modelled himself on the French, ‘wise, understanding in all matters that pertain to good breeding, courtesy and nobility’. The aristocratic regime of Castile tied the country to France and to the nobility of Portugal and Aragon, but made Castile antipathetic to the bourgeoisie of Barcelona and Lisbon. Nobles enjoyed less prestige in Catalonia than in Castile. In

1360 Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon told Jaume March, the head of a bourgeois family which had acquired a castle and held high royal office, that he wished to knight him. Pere told March

that, ‘although you are an honoured citizen ... the order of 1S. de Moxod, La Alcabala (Madrid, 1963), especially pp. 85-113, 201-10; Highfield, pp. 302 ff. On tax exemption and alienation of Crown revenues see E.

Mitre, CH 6 (1975), 403-10. os

2 J. de M. Carriazo, Anales de la Universidad Hispalense, 14 (1953), 60 f.; Suarez,

HE xv. 15 f. For Medinageli and Benavente see J. R. L. Highfield, “The De la

87 (1972), 495-512. | i Cerda, the Pimentel and the so-called Price Revolution’, English Historical Review,

SOCIETY 57 chivalry is much more honourable’, and would go well with March’s new castle. March hesitated, however, before accepting knighthood, probably because it would exclude him from the juridical life of the Catalan city.

In 1350 the Catalan nobility was declining around Barcelona, and in other cities. Numbering perhaps 1-5 per cent of the population, it still possessed jurisdiction over 38 per cent of the

total ‘hearths’ (homes) in Catalonia, but go per cent of these hearths were in rural areas. Here noble power was increasing. In 1364 the Barons of Santa Pau bought the royal jurisdiction over three castles near Gerona. In 1365 they acquired the right to exact feudal service from several parishes. In 1366 they bought the direct lordship of another castle and parish. In 1380 the Baron had ninety-two households of knights in his barony (perhaps a tenth of the total number of knights in Catalonia) .+ Knights were, however, refractory vassals. In 1370 the knights of Catalonia formed a military alliance directed against four leading nobles who claimed fiscal and judicial powers over the knights in their baronies. The greater nobles of Catalonia played a considerable role in

the troubled fifteenth century. They evolved into a type of ‘parliamentary magnate’, who opposed the Crown in Corts by parliamentary procedure, though he might also serve it abroad

in arms, diplomacy, and administration. ‘Parliamentary’ opposition was considered constitutional. Jaume of Urgel, the main unsuccessful candidate for the succession to the throne in 1410-12, claimed that his successful rival, Fernando I, should repay his ‘election expenses’, and the claim was allowed. Later Juan II was obliged to recognize that the ten years’ Civil War (1462-72) had been carried on by ‘good and faithful vassals’. However, the war ruined almost all the leading Catalan noble houses. Only two (Rocabertf and Cardona) survived into the sixteenth century.? We know comparatively little as yet of the position of the

nobility in 1950-1500 in other regions of the peninsula. In Navarre Carlos III (1387-1425) founded a series of families 1 Fl Victorial (cited, p. 40, n. 2), p. 2173 Suarez, Nobleza, p. 34; Riquer, 1. 543 ff.; Y. Roustit, FHMod 4 (1954), 133 f.; R. Grabolosa, Santa Pau i la seva baronia (Granollers, 1971), pp. 93-9. 2S. Sobrequés i Vidal, Els Barons de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1961), pp. 139-280;

idem, EHMed : (1970), 94 ff. ,

58 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 with feudal jurisdiction. He thus created the same trouble for his successors that Enrique II caused in Castile. The lesser nobles were invariably in trouble where, as in Navarre, wages rose faster than did prices. There was no ready remedy except marriage with a rich bourgeoise heiress. It is notable that the Valencian lesser nobility, after a century of struggle, secured a legal privilege by which (unlike non-nobles) they could retain the dowry of a wife who had died without children. THE CULTURE OF THE NOBILITY

King Duarte of Portugal (1433-8) advocated an educated aris-

tocracy, reading, writing, and speaking Latin, and studying ‘books of moral philosophy ... on instruction in war, with approved chronicles ... from which are derived great and good examples and wisdom’. The type of literature Duarte thought suitable was highly traditional. Where he was overambitious was in supposing possible general familiarity with Latin. There were still ‘many who affirm that it lowers a knight to read and write’; Enrique de Villena had to argue against this idea. It seems, however, that the nobility of 1450 were more cultivated than their predecessors of 1300. Don Juan Manuel was an exceptional figure in his time. By the fifteenth century many

nobles knew some Latin or could at least read chronicles and some classics in translation. Many nobles were poets. “The great

poets [of Castile], Gémez and Jorge Manrique, the Marquis of Santillana, Juan de Mena, Lope de Stijfiiga, belong to leading families or live at their expense.’ ROYAL AND NOBLE LIBRARIES

Libraries appeared in royal palaces and nobles’ castles. King Marti of Aragon (1396-1410) owned 300 manuscripts, apart from those used in his chapel. This collection and the seventy manuscripts of Queen Marfa, the wife of Alfonso TV (1416-58),

contained predominantly religious works, many of them in Catalan. Marti’s Latin books (perhaps inherited) were largely astronomical-astrological. Alfonso IV’s vast library in Naples with its classical and Renaissance interests had no parallel in _ the peninsula until the sixteenth century. The royal library of 1 Castro, op. cit., pp. 420 ff.; Hamilton, op. cit. (p. 7, n. 1), p. 185; M®. de los A. Belda Soler, VI CHCA, pp. 393-402.

SOCIETY 59 Castile before the time of Isabel is unknown to us, that of Portugal was far smaller than that of Aragon.

Castilian nobles formed large collections. The Marquis of Santillana (d. 1458) knew little Latin but collected translations into Italian, Castilian, and (on a smaller scale) into French and Catalan, of classical and medieval works. More typical is the collection (about 1440) of the Count of Benavente. Among the 121 entries, the twenty devoted to chronicles, whether of Castile, Troy, or Rome, stand out, though Latin and Italian literary classics are present, as well as books on hunting, chess,

and agriculture. THE READING OF NOBLES

Genealogies were among the favourite reading of most nobles. The Livro das Linhagens of Count Pedro of Barcelos (1343) ‘was

for centuries the most useful and most frequently consulted work in the peninsula, apart from the Bible’. It contains not only genealogies but exemplary stories and useful advice, such as how to abandon a castle when your overlord refuses to receive it from you, without acting against your feudal duty. —

Romances of chivalry also educated the future knight and magnate. By 1400 the main European cycles of chivalric romances had penetrated the peninsula, and native variants, such as the Historia del Caballero Cifar, had been written. In the upbringing of the famous Constable of Portugal, Nun’ Alvares

Pereira (d. 1431), ‘books of histories’ played a large role. The ‘history of Galahad, which speaks of the Round Table’ is particularly mentioned. Nun’ Alvares has been called ‘a reincarna-

tion of the purest hero of the “matter of Brittany”’. Other knights of the day seemed to contemporaries Tristram and Lancelot reborn.? AN IDEAL KNIGHT

El Victortal, the Crénica de Don Pero Nifio, written by Don Pero’s

standard-bearer Gutierre Diez de Games about 1448, is ‘a 1 Oliveira Marques, p. 236; Enrique de Villena, Los Doze Trabajos de Hercules,

ed. M. Morreale (Madrid, 1958), p. 43; Suarez, HE xv. 24; Carreras Artau, i. 87-97; for ‘Renaissance’ interests, see below, Ch. V. 2 Portugaliae Monumenta Historica, Scriptores, i (Lisbon, 1856-61), 358. See M. Rodrigues Lapa, Ligoes de literatura portuguesa, época medieval, 6th edn. (Coimbra, 1966), pp. 279-90, 248 f.

60 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 general theory of chivalry’, illustrated by the deeds of his hero.

Don Pero is the perfect unconquered knight. His intellectual training is slight but he knows how to act rapidly in an emergency. He is temperate in eating and drinking, kind to the oppressed, generous, approved in arms, in hunting wild boar, in

jousts, and in fighting bulls, an expert judge of armour, weapons, and horses, and always loyal to the king. Married early

. to a suitable bride, he learns war under an older commander, and, at twenty-five, is given the independent command of two galleys to fight corsairs. In this ‘theory of chivalry’ chivalric love has replaced erotic passion. The true knight prefers war even to

an honourable embassy and union with his beloved (not all knights are true; the author remarks that ‘many are called and few are chosen’). Games draws on the thirteenth-century Lzbro de Alixandre (it has been called ‘his breviary’); on a legendary Chronicle of the Kings of England, which gives him the story of Brutus; on a lost Story of the Kings of Castile, and on his personal knowledge of his hero, whom he had served for decades. The result is a wonderful blend of realism and the marvellous, of pious legend and adventure story, which comes straight out of the Arthurian cycle and

yet can be documented at almost every point. NOBLE OCCUPATIONS: WAR WITH ISLAM

War was the main occupation of nobles. War with ‘the Moors’

was the official justification for the Portuguese expansion in Africa. King Duarte of Portugal could declare, ‘War against the Moors is good, for Holy Church determines so.’ War against

Granada was the perquisite of Castile. It was revived by the Infante Fernando (to become Fernando I of Aragon) in 1406. Through his victories it again became ‘the unattained goal’ of Castile, and was taken up by Alvaro de Luna and others. Although official wars with Granada were more parades than crusades, in the continual frontier skirmishes carried on by local governors and town militias real blood was shed, real adventures enacted. In this war the techniques of the ambush and raid were

perfected. We have contemporary letters which display the 1 El Victorial, pp. xxxi, xlii, [xxiii-Ixxvii, 42, 74—7, 86-95. See Suérez, HE xv. 23;

Blanco-Gonz4lez (cited, p. 47, n. 1), pp. 215-32; J. Marichal, Za Voluntad de Estilo (Barcelona, 1957), pp. 53-76; M. R. Lida de Malkiel, La Idea de la Fama en la Edad Media Castellana (Mexico, 1952), pp. 230-40.

SOCIETY 61 courage and skill of the frontier commanders, without denying the valour of their antagonists. Romances that fascinated Castile sprang from the frontier with Granada. PRIVATE WAR

Much more energy was expended in the peninsula in rebellion and private war than in war with Islam. In 1472 almost all the nobles of Aragon were engaged in a major ‘private’ war. Over 1,200 armed horse were involved. In Vizcaya, where the clan structure was still strong, a quarrel between two nobles could

bring about a feud between their respective clans. Similar struggles are recorded in Valencia, Majorca, and Castilian cities. In Galicia nobles would invade walled cities to set fire to their enemies’ houses and carry them off captive. Private war

among individual knights was common. Knights refused to appear before a non-noble judge. Resort to arms—not permitted to other classes in society—seemed to them to justify their station in life. JUDICIAL DUELS

Chivalry was not a dead religion. It is attested not only by books such as Hl Victorial or the great Catalan chivalric romances

Curial e Giielfa and Tirant lo Blanc but by records of judicial duels. Rules existed by which one knight could ‘defy’ another for some recognized cause, such as an act of violence or defamation,

the misappropriation of property, a broken betrothal, or adultery. Once a defiance had been issued the challenger was free to burn his enemy’s crops or kill his slaves, the only restraint being fear of retaliation. Defiance often meant challenging his opponent to a duel; the arms employed and the judge had to be agreed between the challenged and the challenger. Clandestine encounters were not uncommon, however. The actual letters of defiance which survive

confront us with men who, on the one hand, subordinate their personality to chivalric honour, and, on the other, were capable of every kind of evil, frequently of murder . . . They show that many themes of the chivalric novel are taken from life itself... We find 1Dom Duarte, Leal Conselheiro, 18, ed. J. M. Piel (Lisbon, 1942), pp. 62 f.; Suarez, Nobleza, p. 105; idem, HE xv. 24; J. de M. Carriazo, Al-Andalus, 11 (1946),

69-130; J. Torres Fontes, AHDE 38 (1968), 31-68 (Murcia). See below, Ch. IV, pp. 126 f.

62 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 knights errant ... taking part in jousts, celebrated with a splendour which approaches fantasy; maidens and widows carried off, provoking feuds; bloody battles between the lords of the land.

The letters not only show that chivalric novels are not as far removed from reality as they seem but also that many knights modelled their lives on the novels. A chivalric vow rather than any personal reason often opposed Portuguese, Castilian, and Catalan to Burgundian, German, French, and English knights. The desire of the nobility to live as if they were in a book of chivalry appears in these letters as well as in extraordinary episodes such as the expedition undertaken by Ramon de Perellds in 1397-8 to the supposed ‘Purgatory of St. Patrick’ on Lough Derg in Ireland to try to discover if the soul of Joan I of Aragon was condemned or not. (Perelléds was accompanied by nobles whom he knighted before the door of the ‘Purgatory’.)1 Kings tried to prevent judicial duels: Pere III of Catalonia—

Aragon observed in 1377 that if a duel took place because angry words had passed between young men, this would simply

lead to further duels on a larger scale. It would be better to expend one’s energy in fighting for the Crown, preferably against Sardinian rebels. But it was impossible to prevent duels.

They had to be regulated. The bourgeoisie of Valencia were forced to pay for lists for challengers in the city. The noble denied a legal duel at home would go abroad, to Bordeaux, Granada, or Ceuta (held by Portugal) .? The Passo Honroso was the most extravagant chivalric mani-

festation of the age. For a month in 1434, from to July to 9 August, Suero de Quifiones and nine other knights held the road to Santiago against all noble challengers. Although the pretext was the defence of the fame of the ladies of these knights,

there was a political motive in that the challengers were supporters of the Constable of Castile, Alvaro de Luna. Of the sixty-eight knights errant who appeared against Suero, twentyone were from the Crown of Aragon. The one (Aragonese) knight killed, although buried outside sacred ground, was 1A. Canellas Lépez, HE xv. 449-58. Cortazar (cited above, p. 35, n. 2), pp. 314-22; A, Lépez Ferreiro, Galicia en el ultimo tercio del siglo XV, 3rd edn. (Vigo, 1968), p. 17 and passim; M. de Riquer, Lletres de Batalla, 1. 5-7, 10 f., 50, and passim; Riquer, ii. 321; Rubid, Vida, pp. 271 ff. 2 Roca (cited, p. 51, n. 1), pp. 322 ff. Ivars, AZA 24 (1925), 356, 361-3; Segura Aplech, pp. 221-7.

SOCIETY 63 known as ‘the martyr of chivalry’. The contemporary account of this episode contains a minute description of Suero’s dress, of his (French) emblems (‘devises’) and of his Milanese lance

brought in a cart driven by a dwarf and preceded by royal trumpeters and Moorish drummers and flute players.1 TRADE

The nobility were not only interested in private war and chival-

ric exploits. The most remarkable fifteenth-century chivalric novel, Tirant lo Blanc, is centred on the battle with Islam for Rhodes and the Byzantine Empire, a struggle in which Valencians such as the authors of Yzrant were much engaged. It describes realistically not only single combats in the Arthurian style but great battles on land and sea. Even more striking, however, is the knowledge of contemporary naval stratagems the authors display. The nobles of Majorca shone ‘as ship-owners or captains, sometimes acting as corsairs, sometimes in the royal

fleet or trading ... The combination of factional strife, piracy and trade is characteristic of the age’. Castilian nobles, travelling abroad, also display considerable interest in trade. Clavijo, during his embassy to Tamerlane’s court in Central Asia in 1403-6, noted that Sultanfyah was a more important ‘centre of exchange for merchants and their goods’ than Tabriz. He observed that Tamerlane always fostered trade ‘with a view of making his capital [Samarquand] the noblest of cities’. Pero Tafur, during his private travels in 1435-9, ‘was more interested

in trade than in anything else’. He notes the prosperity of Genoa, despite its unproductive soil, as due to its people’s industry and to international trade. Venice’s possessions in Greece ‘are vital to its trade’. The Venetian control of trade both of East and West gave Venice its riches.? The Castilian nobility was mainly interested in sheep-farming, 1 Juan de Pineda, Libro del Passo Honroso (Salamanca, 1588), also Riquer, Lletres, ii. 107-210; idem, Caballeros andantes espaftoles (Madrid, 1967), pp. 52-99. For another elaborate tournament, see Crénica del Halconero de Fuan I, ed. Carriazo (Madrid, 1946), pp. 154-60. 2 Tirant lo Blanc, cc. 106, 164 (Valencia, 1490; facs. New York, 1904); see Riquer,

il. 711 ff. For Majorcan nobles, Santamaria, op. cit. (p. 12, n. 1), p. 118; J. Vich y Salom, IV CHCA i. 385-422; for Catalans, M. del Treppo, J Mercanti catulani, pp. 807-25. Clavijo (cited, p. 52, n. 1), pp. 159-287; Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, trans. M. Letts (London, 1926), pp. 16, 27, 50, 172. See, however, p. 152 (on the abandonment of Salonica).

64 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 but it also launched out into commercial enterprise in northern

Europe and the Atlantic, as did the nobility of Portugal. In 1371 the Portuguese Cortes had already protested against the involvement of the nobility in trade.

The Genoese influence on the nobles of Seville drew them into trading. In 1478 the Duke of Benavente received a licence to enter the Guinea trade. The Duke of Medinaceli was ready to underwrite Columbus’s projects if Isabel had not done so.

Until 1493 a ‘wall’ of ports dominated by leading nobles existed between Jerez and Seville and the Atlantic trade. The most notable of these ports were Cadiz, controlled by the house

of Ponce de Ledn from 1467 to 1493, and Gibraltar and San licar de Barrameda, under the Duke of Medina Sidonia (Gibraltar until 1502). The importance of Cadiz is apparent from the fact that it was the only Andalusian port where Genoa had a consul.

CUSTOMS AND AMUSEMENTS | Apart from war, duels, tourneys with lance or pointed reed (cafas), hunting, and bullfighting, the nobility played dice, chess, cards, and ball-games (a type of pelota). In the 1430s the

idle young noble preferred conversation with ladies, singing, and dancing to jousting. A day at a French castle, as reported in El Victorial, with its round of riding, composing ballads and chansons, a splendid meal, music, dancing and flirtation, followed by a siesta, falconry, diner sur l’herbe, and more music and

dancing until late at night, may seem strenuous to us but appeared paradise to Castilian visitors. That they sought to imitate this life at home appears, for instance, in the account of the elaborate cycle of feasts held at Christmas, Carnival, Easter, and the other major Christian festivals at the miniature court of the Constable Miguel Lucas de Iranzo at Jaén in the 1460s. ‘The Christmas feasts were enlivened by plays represent-

ing the Nativity, the shepherds and the Magi. Other theatrical performances were given at court at royal weddings.? +H. da Gama Barros, Historia da Administragio Publica em Portugal, 2nd edn. i (Lisbon, 1945), 413; Highfield (cited, p. 56, n. 2); below, p. 576. M. A. Ladero Quesada, Cuadernos de estudios medievales 2-3 (1974-5), 85-118.

2 Gual (cited, p. 47, n. 1); El Victorial, pp. 220 ff.; Hechos del Condestable, pp. 39-61, 152-83; for Portugal see Oliveira Marques, pp. 266 ff. On the Hechos see Ch.-V. Aubrun, Bulletin hispanique, 44 (1942), 42-60.

SOCIETY 65 CITIES: THE CROWN OF ARAGON

From 1350 to 1500 Castile became more and more an aristo-

cratic society. The fullest development of city life and institutions was found in the Crown of Aragon, especially in Barcelona and Valencia.

To many medieval men a great city—Seville, Granada, or Barcelona—had its own personality. To the Catalan Franciscan Francesc Eiximenis (c. 1340-1409) the city was more than this. It was virtually self-sufficient. For him the city ‘is’, Professor Riquer remarks, ‘the essential nucleus of the commonwealth; it has its own organisation for provisioning itself, its own army for self-defense, and its rulers, elected every year and assisted

by a council’. Eiximenis believed that ‘leading citizens are usually wiser than knights for they always live in cities where _ they see and read more than knights, who dwell in small rural places among peasants’. The Aragonese magnate and scholar (who knew Valencia well), Don Enrique de Villena, agrees with this view when he says, ‘the citizen should love peace and

nourish it. For cities are ordained for peace and are ruled civilly, excluding and abhorring thefts and robberies.’ Eiximenis

apparently believed that royal power might end in the year

|,

1400. The world would then be ruled by communes, “as now in Florence and Rome and Pisa and Siena and other cities of Italy and Germany’.! It seemed reasonable to suppose this in the Crown of Aragon

in the 1380s. Barcelona by now had the right to levy its own taxes and loans, without royal permission; it was partly successful in forcing the local clergy and nobles to contribute to them. Barcelona had become almost more important to the Crown than the Crown to Barcelona. Other Catalan cities, Valencia and Majorca, sought to imitate Barcelona. In the 1450s the

monarchy undermined the urban patriciate’s control of Barcelona by allying with the merchants and craftsmen. In the 1460s the patriciate, again in control, was defeated by Juan IT in a civil war that ruined the city. Valencia, on the winning side in 1 On Seville see Cancionero de Baena, ed. Azaceta, nos. 28-31 (i. 67-73); on Granada, Rubid, Vida, p. 28. Riquer, ii. 185; Eiximenis, Crestid, xii. 755, cited J.

Webster, Fr. Hiximenis, La societat catalana al segle XIV (Barcelona, 1967), pp. 47 f.; X11. 200, cited Ivars, AIA 24 (1925), 328 f. Enrique de Villena, Los Doze Trabajos, P- 54:

66 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 the war, now replaced Barcelona as a financial centre. It did

not challenge the Crown politically.? |

URBAN PLANNING : The great age of municipal power and wealth in the Crown of Aragon—1350 to 1460 for Barcelona, to 1500 for Valencia—saw

intensive building and the beginnings of city planning. New walls were erected in both cities in the 1350s. Although much of

the larger areas these walls enclosed for the first time remained open ground, in Barcelona buildings of at least four storeys appear in a painting of 1443-5; a survey of householders

of 1365 already indicates blocks of flats.? |

In a work presented in 1383 to the city counsellors of Valencia, Eiximenis traced an ideal city plan; it was partly influenced

by his idea of a Roman military camp but probably also by cities existing near Valencia such as Castellén. The ideal city was to be square in shape, with eight fortified gates and a proper _ sewage system. The counsellors agreed (in 1393) with Eiximenis that Valencia was deplorably Islamic—‘built by Moors in their

customary narrow and niggardly way with many narrow arched streets and other defects’. But they could not tear it down and start again. They seem to have followed Eiximenis’ suggestions in beginning (in 1386) to drain the marshes round

Valencia and perhaps in the form adopted for the Puerta de Serranos (1392-7). What is more startling is the agreement between Eiximenis and contemporary authorities that a city should not merely be laid out on practical lines but should be beautiful. In 1339 Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon authorized a special tax for the Lonja of Barcelona, ‘for his honour and the ennobling of the city and citizens’. In 1403 King Marti told the Consellers of Barcelona that a large square before his palace

would add beauty to the city; he had already proposed other buildings and squares which would embellish Barcelona. | New squares were made, bridges built or repaired, watersupplies brought in, in Barcelona and Valencia. In Barcelona a series of buildings were paid for by the city. The Sala of the | Consell de Cent was begun in 1369, the docks extended from 1378, 1QOn Barcelona’s taxes and finances see J. Broussolle, HHMod 5 (1955), 27 £., 140 ff.; Y. Roustit, ibid. 4 (1954), 52. For Barcelona and Juan IT see below, Part

II, Ch, TIT* , |

2 J. C. Russell, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 106 (1962), 492 £

SOCIETY 67 the Lonja begun in 1383, the Hospital of Santa Cruz in 1401, the Diputacid in 1436. The Ramblas were laid out. In 1443 the Consellers noted that ‘the city is greatly ennobled by the Rambla’, which gave ‘the people’ great pleasure in winter and summer, ‘especially on Sundays and feast days’. Markets were held there, ceremonial processions passed by, criminals were hanged. The Ramblas were, as they remain, the centre of the life of Barcelona. Other Catalan cities imitated Barcelona, if on a smaller scale. The Consolat of Tarragona, the Paheria of Lérida, the Casa Comer-

cial of Vich were begun by 1400. Guilds began to build their

halls, and paid for many of the finest Catalan paintings to adorn altars in their parish churches. Sculptured stone crosses replaced those in iron at crossroads. Foreign visitors were vastly impressed by Barcelona. In 1457

Alonso de Palencia declared that ‘Barcelona shines with an incredible splendour, above the other cities of Spain’. It was partly the civic buildings which impressed a Castilian traveller who had no equivalent at home. Czechs and Germans were greatly impressed by the hygiene of the city. Valencia was no longer behind in this respect, and its squares and buildings began to rival Barcelona’s. The Sala daurada of the Casa de la Ciutat was finished in 1428, hospitals and the Palace of the Generalitat built, the present Lonja begun in 1483. In 1494 Valencia struck a German visitor as ‘the principal city of Spain’? THE CATALAN MIDDLE CLASS! MERCHANTS

Kiximenis divided the inhabitants of the city into three, ‘the generosos, the ma mitjana and the menestrals’. The ma mitjana, or

middle class, below the urban patriciate, although not very numerous, was the most important element in the society of the 1 Kiximenis, Crestid, xii. 110, cited by Ivars, pp. 346-50; L. Torres Balbas, in Resumen histérico del urbanismo en Espaiia (Madrid, 1954), pp. 90-107; E. Vidal Beltran, Valencia, pp. 22-40. On Barcelona, Capmany, ii. 217, ii. 2. 997; Rubid, Vida, pp. 25 f.; Carrére (cited above, p. 7, n. 1), ii. 773, n. 13 F. Carreras i Candi, Geografia General de Catalunya, La Ciutat de Barcelona (Barcelona, n.d.), pp. 380 ff.

* Carreras, IJJ CHCA, pp. 165-228; Alonso de Palencia, Tratado de la perfecién del triunfo militar, 3 (BAE cxvi. 354); Leo of Rozmital, Travels, p. 140; Miinzer, Itinerarium, trans. Viajes de extranjeros por Espafta y Portugal, ed. J. Garcia Mercadal, i

(Madrid, 1952), 333, 339. On Valencia: Santamaria (cited above, p. 15, n. 1), pp. 42-7; GC. Sanchez-Cutillas, VIZ CHCA ii. 2. 199-220.

638 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Crown of Aragon, and. one whose presence there differentiated that kingdom from Castile. It mainly consisted of merchants, lawyers and notaries, and master-craftsmen. A fifteenth-century bourgeois of Barcelona had a ‘motto’ embroidered on curtains in his house which read: “Too much work should not frighten a man.’ The ‘motto’ in its form imitated chivalric devices but it conveyed a new idea of life, very different from chivalric ideals.

The idea that the man of money was essential to the state was expressed by Eiximenis in Valencia in the 1380s. Without merchants communities collapse, princes turn tyrants, the young are lost, the poor despair . . . Princes should defend merchants by sea and land and not aggrieve them by dues of any kind but rather welcome them as sons, for princes and their subjects always receive great gain from them.?

The great merchant families of Barcelona could rise to wealth within two generations. They were often related to, and sometimes themselves became knights but continued to trade. They used their position to achieve political importance in the

city government and often allied with the Crown against the urban patriciate of ‘honoured citizens’. LAWYERS AND NOTARIES

Closely linked to merchants were other elements of the rising middle class, the lawyers and notaries so prominent in Barcelona, Valencia, and Majorca. As a moralist Eiximenis shared Ayala’s suspicion of lawyers, but he admitted that ‘the office of notary is one of honour’. The notaries of Barcelona maintained

correspondence with Valencia, Saragossa, Sicily, Naples, Majorca, and Sardinia. Nobles and bishops treated leading notaries as equals. They were often selected by the Crown as its most trusted servants and played a vital part in bringing about the peaceful solution of the agrarian problem of the remensas in

Catalonia.” |

1 Kiximenis, Crestid, xii. 115, cited Ivars, p. 328; Rubid, Vida, p. 102; J. F.

McGovern, Traditio, 26 (1970), 226-53; Eiximenis, Regiment de la cosa publica, pp.

168 f. See the amazement at Catalan merchants turned warriors expressed by the Aragonese biographer of Juan II, GDIHE Ixxxviii. 226. 2 C. Batlle, AEM 1 (1964), 471-88 (on the Deztorrent family) ; 6 (1969), 535-52 (on the Lloberas). Ayala, Rimado, vv. 314-36 (BAE lvii. 435); Eiximenis, Regiment, pp. 152-8; Epistolari del segle XV, ed. F. Martorell (ENC A g) (Barcelona, 1926); J. Vicens Vives, El Gran Sindicato Remensa (1488-1508) (Madrid, 1954), pp. 18 f.

SOCIETY 69 CULTURE

Surviving inventories show us the appearance of merchants’ houses. The ground floor might contain a stable and ware-

houses, with sugar from Palermo, linen from Alexandria, Sicilian and Syrian wine. The rooms on the floors above, where

the merchant and his family lived, might be decorated with arms, They would contain many silver objects, cups, plates, pitchers, as well as Malaga ware. The furniture could include beds or tables of Flemish oak, chairs from Pisa and Venice, coffers in ivory, amber, or Cordoban leather, a chimney in the dining-room, windows in stained glass, with religious pictures, while (in the same house) a tapestry illustrated Paris with three

naked goddesses. Most merchants owned some books. Eiximenis’ moral treatises were more popular than the Bible and far more so than chivalric romances. There was a general tendency towards the practical; religious, legal, moralizing works appear—including some Cicero and Seneca—but little poetry. Notaries and lawyers had larger and more varied collections of books than merchants. In Majorca two inventories drawn up in 1493-4 record two collections each of almost 500 books belonging, one to a notary, the other to a lawyer.} THE GUILDS

In the fourteenth century leading craftsmen—men with their own workshops and capital, and also painters, goldsmiths, sculptors, etc.—belonged to the middle class and were collectively known as artistes. It was they who controlled most of the guilds. Below them the ordinary craftsmen (menestrals) also

sought for a share in government. While in Castile guilds received no real recognition before the time of the Catholic Monarchs, in the Crown of Aragon they were assisted by the monarchy, which saw them as a means of weakening the hold

of the urban patriciate on the cities. The Crown protected

especially the textile and leather guilds.’ a

1J. M®, Casas Homs, CHEC 3 (1969-70), 9~-112 (an inventory of 1398); F. Martorell Trabal and F. Valls Taberner, ATEC 4 (1911-12), 577-656 (a lawyer’s inventory in 1430); C. Carrére, AEM 3 (1966), 263~92. For the Majorcan libraries

of 1493-4, see below, Ch. V, p. 182 n. 1. , 2R. Freitag, VIII CHCA ii. 2. 141-62 (based on his collection of documents, SFG i. 24 [1968], 41-226); M. Riu Riu, VI CHCA ii. 547-59; P. Bonnassie, La organizacién del trabajo en Barcelona (Barcelona, 1975), pp. 36 f.; see below, Part III, Ch. IV, p. 493, n. 5-

70 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

STRIFE IN THE CITIES | The middle class of merchants, lawyers, and leading craftsmen made a series of attempts to capture control of Catalan cities.

These attempts can be paralleled in Italy, Germany, and Flanders, but not in Castile. The cities of Catalonia were ruled by closed oligarchies. In Barcelona all five Consellers were chosen from some hundred families of the rentier aristocracy of ‘honoured citizens’.

In 1386 Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon tried to meet the complaints of the merchants, the artistes, and skilled workmen. (These classes were far above the majority of the population, which was too poor to affect the issue.) The king entertained a project for the reform of the city government which was directed against the monopoly of power by the ‘citizens’. The Consellers were to be six, two ‘citizens’, two merchants, and two craftsmen. The Consell de Cent was to be elected in the same proportion. But within a year Pere’s heir, Joan I (1387-96), returned power to the oligarchy. It is not surprising that the anti-Jewish riots of 1391 turned, in

Barcelona, into a general attack on the city authorities. A popular government was set up on the lines of the project of 1386. ‘l'axes on food, which particularly affected workers—and which provided most of the revenue of the city—were lowered. It was proposed to restrict rents of houses and the fees collected by lawyers, notaries, and doctors. The royal government, when

it triumphed, annulled all these measures. The popular party in Barcelona was silenced. It was to return to the attack in the fifteenth century. The decade of the 1450s was occupied by the

struggle of the Busca against the Biga, the party maintaining the oligarchy of the ‘citizens’. The Busca, organized as a syndicate

and led largely by merchants, accused the Biga of ‘public crime’, that is, of governing with no concern except for their own. interests. Among other things the Biga was accused of having brought about the financial crisis of the city, and of establishing an unjust system of taxation, which fell only on the

poorer classes. In 1453, by the help of the Crown, the Busca triumphed. It secured the aims of 1386. In addition to controlling the city government, it carried out a devaluation of the coinage and passed decrees protecting the textile industry and

SOCIETY 71 shipbuilding from foreign competition. These measures, intended to bring about the revival (redreg) of Barcelona could not be completed. Almost at once the Busca was divided into mod-

erates and extremists. This division made the victory of the Biga in 1460 possible through an alliance with the moderates of

the Busca. The struggle helped to precipitate the disastrous Civil War of 1462-72.4 The ordinary social scene was far from being always peaceful.

All classes, from the lowest upwards, took sides in the violent noble feuds. In 1350 the city of Manresa complained that there were battles in the streets between opposing parties, with no attempt by royal officials to interfere. In Aragon complaints of turbulence in city and countryside are common. In 1371 Pere

III sent a special royal judge to deal with the factions of Daroca. In 1393 Joan I authorized the citizens of Daroca to defend themselves against criminals. In the fifteenth century local Brotherhoods were necessary in Aragon, as in Castile, to

protect the roads and pursue evildoers. In the small town of Orihuela in 1411 a mission by the celebrated Dominican Vicent Ferrer produced 123 reconciliations between feuding families, sixty-six concerning murders, the rest wounds by which ‘hands, arms or other members’ had been cut off. Barcelona was better off than most cities but it took Marti I (1396-1410) three years

to pacify a quarrel there between two leading families. In Gerona’s municipal records a predominant theme is the quarrels between the local nobles, often leading to armed clashes.

In a great city such as Valencia moralists such as Eiximenis

and Vicent Ferrer admitted that brothels had to be tolerated; many municipal regulations are concerned with them. E1iximenis wished to expel bawds, usurers, gamblers, magicians, alchemists, and diviners. The city government did, as he wished,

forbid gambling hells and require beggars to be certified as genuinely poor before they could beg.

In 1501~2 Murcia was troubled by a quarrel between two apothecaries. Gaspar Vicente, armed with sword and shield, 1C, Batlle, VIT CHCA iii. 143-52 (on the project of 1386); idem, in Villes de P Europe Méditerraneénne et de l’Europe occidentale du Moyen Age au XIX® sitcle (Nice,

1969), pp. 72-9; on the Busca, eadem: EHMod 5 (1955), 167-95; HV i. 337-503

VI CCA, pp. 291-303; Carrére, op. cit. ii. 883-929. See below, Part II, Ch. II

p. 262.

72 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 attacked Juan de Medina, an older man, at a fair in Orihuela.

In the crowd he struck the wrong man. Medina had the aggressor imprisoned in Murcia. When he came out, under caution to keep the peace, Medina, seeing him pass in front of his shop, came out and attacked him with the same weapons Vicente had used, but did not succeed:in wounding him. Vicente

fled to the near-by Dominican convent. Another legal process followed. Witnesses claimed that Medina had attacked other

people. with a lance, dagger, his chemist’s mortar, or with stones. The affair shows how common it was for minor shopkeepers to carry arms and try to use them, even if they were not very expert in doing so.! FOOD AND DRINK

Life was agreeable for the rich citizen of Barcelona or Valencia. Vicent Ferrer tells us that Valencians ate so much that women were rotten and men old at forty-five; men’s beards and hands

trembled. Banquets were given on the slightest excuse. The ordinary Valencian ate four or five times a day. A Christmas dinner for the clergy of Cambrils, near Tarragona, about 1390 consisted of ‘a good supply of roast goats, boiled mutton, with separate sauces, and red wine, then turtle doves. We seemed in earthly paradise’. The next day the Cambrils clergy were reduced to eels in pastry. When Eiximenis satirizes a greedy ecclesiastic, who complains he can eat nothing because he is ‘never hungry’, he shows him beginning the day with hot bread

and wine, and later eating chicken, goat, veal, mutton, partridge, varied by game, fish, and rice, followed by cheese and washed down with white wines from Greece or Corsica and red from Calabria, Majorca, or Bordeaux.’ Smaller Catalan towns merged gradually into the countryside. They had fortifications and a few Jews. The majority of the 1 Cortes de Catalufia, i. 2. 440; T. del Campillo, Documentos histéricos de Daroca_y su comunidad (Saragossa, 1915), pp. 181, 504; A. Canellas, El Reino de Aragén en los aftos 1410-1458 (Palma, 1955), p. 17; S. H. Fages, Histoire de St. Vincent Ferrier, 1 (Paris,

1894), p. L. M.-T. Ferrer, EHMed 1 (1969), 77-94 (Barcelona); R. B. Tate, Joan Margarit 1 Pau (Manchester, 1955), p. 38 (Gerona); Eiximenis, Regiment, pp. 127,

¥33~9; Ivars, AIA 25 (1926), 308-24; on the Murcia affair, J. Torres Fontes, Murgetana, 14 (1960), 117-21.

* Santamaria (cited, p. 15, n. 1), pp. 47-50; Anselm Turmeda, Dispuia de l’Ase, Revue hispanique, 24, (1911), 453; Eiximenis, Crestid, iti. 354, in Contes 1 faules,

ed. M. Olivar (ENC A 6) (Barcelona, 1925), pp. 50-3.

SOCIETY 73 inhabitants divided their time between weaving at home and working the fields. It made little difference whether they were under noble or ecclesiastical rule.* CASTILIAN TOWNS

Castilian cities possessed few similarities to those either of Italy or the Crown of Aragon. The nobility dominated not only the countryside but the cities of Castile. They extorted from the Crown the main city magistracies and controlled the city mob. The Cortes of 1442 asked in vain that nobles with over 200 vassals should not be allowed to live in cities. In the main revolts against Juan II and Enrique IV of Castile the cities followed the nobles’ lead.

The economic success of the Castilian nobility in exploiting

the agricultural, pastoral, and maritime possibilities of the country cast the Castilian bourgeoisie into the shade. Indeed one can hardly speak of a bourgeoisie outside a few cities, such

as Medina del Campo (because of the wool trade) or Seville, where the Genoese colony overshadowed native merchants. Under Juan II (1406-54) large squares (plazas majores) were created in Valladolid, Salamanca, and in Andalusia for public spectacles, bullfights, tourneys, guild processions, plays, and for

markets. But no civic buildings arose to match those of the Crown of Aragon. BURGOS

Burgos was exceptional in Castile. An Italian who knew Burgos well before 1500, remarked that its inhabitants, both men and women, ‘gain their food with their hands’. In 1501 a nobleman from the Low Countries also attested the ‘mercantile’ character of Burgos. Both visitors were mainly impressed, however, by the city’s churches and monasteries. In 1501 there was nothing in

Burgos to compare with the Casa de la Ciutat which Lalaing admired in Valencia. The corresponding Casa Conststorial of

Burgos was built about 1788.? ,

1M. Segret and M. Riu, AEM 6 (1969), 345~—409 (Sant Llorens de Morunys, in the Pyrenees, in 1483); E. Fort i Cogul, La vida en una vila del Camp de Tarragona en el segle XIV (Barcelona, 1964) (La Selva). 2 E. Benito Ruano, Toledo en el siglh XV (Madrid, 1961), pp. 89 f., 148-513 Cortes de Leén, iii. 410 f. For the (exceptional) case of Jaén see Hechos del Condestable, pp.

74. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 MURCIA

Recent studies illuminate the history of other (possibly more typical) Castilian and Leonese cities. Murcia in the 1370s was essentially agricultural in character. Many agricultural labourers paid taxes and formed part of the municipal militia. Murcia,

with a population of about 11,000, and the smaller towns around were ruled by the lesser nobility. A group of families controlled the concejos (town councils). The local Jews were important in finance, the Christians still largely Catalan in descent. The Mudejars worked the rich irrigated land around

the cities. The city of Murcia was usually in debt. It had to guard the frontier in two directions, against Granada and Aragon. In the fifteenth century Murcia grew more prosperous. SALAMANCA

Successive Inquiries carried out by the concejo of Salamanca in 1433, 1450, and 1452 reveal the extent of the lands and juris-

diction of the city usurped by the surrounding nobles. Each inquiry produced further conflicts. The Cortes of 1432 complained that this usurpation was general. The concejos could not prevent it. The local nobles terrorized the peasantry dependent on Salamanca, threw out the city’s officials, put in their own, used stocks and chains against objectors, and erected a gallows as the sign of jurisdiction. A noble with ten men put the royal

: and municipal representatives to flight. The peasantry round Salamanca was herded into seignorial villages, while sheep roamed over the depopulated hamlets of the concejo. ‘The nobles’

income rose as the concejo’s fell. The usurping nobles had too many friends in the concejo itself to be hindered. Royal sentences

issued against offenders were waste paper. The bishop of Salamanca recognized the usurpations. The city lost its rights over the river which ran through it and over the near-by chestnut forest.

Murcia and Salamanca were two of the only seventeen cities which retained the right to be represented in Cortes, but

477-

118~21. Lucius Marinaeus Siculus, De rebus Hispaniae, iii, in A. Schott, Hispania

tllustrata, 1 (Frankfort, 1603), 312; Antoine de Lalaing, in Viajes de extranjeros, i. 448,

SOCIETY 75 this right did not assist them against the nobility. Less important towns such as Sepulveda struggled to maintain their independ-

ence of noble rule. After 1453 it was successful in this. But Sepulveda was itself deeply divided between the lesser nobles (caballeros) and the taxpayers; in this struggle the caballeros were generally victorious. SEVILLE

The situation in Seville, the largest city in Castile, was not very different from that in other towns. Denunciations of 1454 present

a picture of the same problems already recorded in the fourteenth century, and later under the Catholic Monarchs. Many of the city’s officials were tied to leading nobles. The Crown’s interference with municipal affairs was erratic and ineffectual and largely limited to insistence on the appointment of royal favourites to lucrative local office. The bridge of boats which linked Seville to Triana, and so to much of the outside world, was so neglected as often to be impassable. The city was infested by ‘ruffians’ who paraded the streets accompanied by

prostitutes. Dung heaps sprang up at every street corner. Speculation in basic commodities, wheat, meat, and fish was rife. Promises to emend all this were made but nothing effective

was done. It seems that the Castilian city did not possess the relative independence enjoyed by Barcelona or Valencia, nor, before the Catholic Monarchs, did it live under a strong central government which could have put an end to abuses. NAVARRE: PAMPLONA

The one important city of Navarre, Pamplona, was in fact two cities side by side. The Burgo resembled Burgos. Its inhabitants,

mainly French in origin, were concerned with trade and industry. The Navarreria was more rural than urban. Most of its people lived from cultivating the land near the city, though they might also work as part-time artisans.! 1J. Valdeén Baruque, CH 3 (1969), 211-54 (Murcia, 1374-5); J. Torres Fontes, AHES 1 (1968), 691-714 (1442-4); N. Cabrillana Ciezar, CH 3 (1969), 255-95 (Salamanca). Septilveda: A. Gonzalez Ruiz-Zorrilla, ibid. 297-320; J. Gautier-Dalché, MA 69 (1963), 805-28. Seville: A. Collantes de Teran SAnchez, in Historia, Instituctones, Documentos, i (Seville, 1974), 41-74. M. A. Irurita Lusarreta, El Municipio de Pamplona en la Edad Media (Pamplona, 1959), pp. 88 ff.

76 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 WOMEN

Among the lesser nobility of fifteenth-century Castile customs were rustic. It was still necessary to tell one’s daughters not to

stand around at the door or sit by the window chatting with male visitors or to allow the male servants of the house to sleep near the room they occupied. In Catalonia women possibly enjoyed greater importance than

in Castile. It was the woman who transmitted property. If a marriage proved sterile the dowry normally reverted to the wife’s family. In merchant families in Barcelona girls were usually married between fourteen and sixteen to substantially older husbands. They soon knew how to read letters of exchange

and sometimes other things; works on grammar and medicine appear in their inventories beside the Bible. They could take over the firm at their husband’s death. Eiximenis argues (against evident opposition) that women should read. Books will not only keep them from idleness and

mischief but make them ‘more apt to speak and think and advise their husband’. Books will help them to bring up their children. But ‘honourable and rich ladies’ should also spend time in embroidery and spinning, ‘by which they assist the community’. One is reminded of the suggestion in a Catalan mem-

orial of 1430-50 that ‘nuns and other gentle ladies’ could produce as finely embroidered cloth as was imported and could thus help right the balance of payments.’

There were many unhappy marriages. In 1357 a Catalan husband swore not to ‘wound his wife with illegal wounds, that

is visible ones’. In 1370 a less forthcoming Catalan chemist promised not to strike his wife so as to cause her death or give her any drink or food to cause a long illness. There were illegiti-

mate children. In 1398-1408 the Portuguese Crown granted almost sixty letters of legitimization every year to important fathers. In Catalonia, despite the prejudice against bastards, it

is common to find names denoting bastardy. |

1 Castigos y Doctrinas, in H. Kunst, Dos obras diddcticas y dos leyendas (Madrid, 1878), pp. 282 f. J.-P. Cuvillier, MCV 5 (1969), 162 f.; Carrére (cited, p. 69, n. 1), 269 ff. For women workers in Barcelona see Bonnassie, pp. 104-8. _ ® Eiximenis, Crestid, xii. 554, cited Webster, pp. 79 f.; Regiment, p. 129; Carrére

(cited, p. 7, n. 1), il. 755,.n. 2. |

SOCIETY 7 The Archpriest of Talavera inventories the possessions of the prosperous would-be lady. ‘They include the Hours of the Virgin, but greater use is made of love-poems, love-letters, gold necklaces, false tresses, hand-creams, perfume, bath salts, cloves to scent the breath. The typical flirt has her eyebrows shaved in an arc, her eyes painted, her lips rouged, her nails encased in gold,

with ten changes of make-up a day. If she goes out to church she does so to be seen, and will borrow a skirt from one friend, a green Florentine coat from another, a golden rosary from a third, a fur cloak from a fourth. She will borrow a mule, hire a boy to lift her train and three or four men on foot to prevent her from falling. While they run beside her, sweating like pigs and

covered with dust in summer, with mud in winter, she is swearing at the mule, the saddle, and her situation, ‘as if she were Magdalene’.! THE COUNTRYSIDE: PEASANTS

Almost everywhere in western Europe the fourteenth century saw a deterioration in the condition of the peasantry. Those peasants who could do so abandoned the land and fled to the cities. Those who could not or would not leave the land endured conflicts with their lords. THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM: CATALONIA

In the Iberian peninsula Catalonia and Majorca have been far more studied than have other regions. In Catalonia the problem was particularly acute. Much of the land was abandoned after the Black Death and later plagues. Many vacant farms were occupied by peasants not disposed to provide services their lords considered normal. Feudal proprietors were bound to react. The Church and the nobility derived almost all their income from the land. The city of Barcelona owned several baronies near by. Individual members of the governing oligarchies of this and other cities had acquired feudal rights; their interests were interwoven with those 1J. Segura, Revista de ciencias histéricas, 5 (1887), 329 f.; Oliveira Marques, p. 175; Arcipreste de Talavera, Corbacho, ii. 3 f., 9, ed. J. Gonzalez Muela (Madrid, 1970), pp. 135, 137, 161. On women in Valencian society, see Rubidé, Vida, pp. 225-9, 236 f.

‘

78 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 of the lesser nobility. The Church, nobles, and urban patriciates were thus united in insisting that the peasants should discharge all feudal services customary in Old Catalonia. These services

included the five ‘evil uses’ or exactions (according to one estimate these malos usos constituted a third of the revenue of many estates). The peasants subject to them were known as de remensa (remenga). They were legally unable to leave their farm without paying a fine (remensa); their eldest son was bound to

take on the farm. Their lords claimed the right to ‘maltreat’ peasants who did not comply with their demands. In 1395 there were some 20,000 remensa households, constituting about

a quarter of the Catalan population. Many other peasants not strictly remensas were subject to other feudal exactions such as contributing towards the maintenance of near-by ruined castles. About 1388 the Catalan peasants de remensa began to organize.

Their protest was due more to lack of freedom, and seignorial abuses, than to excessive poverty. Many remensa households— particularly in the plain of Vich, around Barcelona and in the Ampurdan—were comfortably off, though those of the ‘Mountain’ (the lower Pyrenees) were far poorer. The general aim was ‘to attain personal freedom while keeping the same farm’. On their side the proprietors demanded their full legal rights, or the abandonment of the land, without compensation.!

The remensas must have resented their treatment by the Church which (in 1370) forbade them to receive Holy Orders, as if they were slaves. The spokesmen of society denounced

peasants in general. The Franciscan Eiximenis denounced them as “brute beasts’: “They do not use reason and immediately

believe any absurdity . .. have no regard to law and delight in humiliating men of estate and honour.’ Peasants should keep _ to their fathers’ diet, “barley bread, onions, garlic, and occasionally a little salt meat’, washed down with water or vinegar. They should wear ‘serge or sheepskin for special feasts’, and

sleep on the ground to the music of ‘pigs, oxen and goats’. Eiximenis’ views were those of a typical citizen of the time. Only

the Crown could rise above such prejudices. In 1402 Queen Maria of Aragon implored the papacy to suppress ‘the des1E. de Hinojosa, Obras, ii (Madrid, 1955), 283; J. Vicens Vives, Historia de los Remensas en el siglo XV (Barcelona, 1945), pp. 23, 26.

SOCIETY 79 perate and execrable’ subjection of the remensas to ecclesiastical lords as hateful ‘to God and men’.! Joan I and Martti of Aragon (1387-1410) favoured the freeing of the remensas; they wished to act as arbiters in the matter and also hoped to recover royal jurisdiction over areas dominated by the nobility and church. In 1413 the feudal proprietors obtained from the first ruler of the new Trastamara dynasty a decree forbidding any change.

The remensa movement continued, however. In 1448 the peasants received from Alfonso IV the right to form a legal association and elect syndics. In 1455 Alfonso decreed the freedom of the remensas from the malos usos. This decree was sus-

pended in 1456 in return for an offer of more money than the remensas could raise from the Catalan Corts (which constantly championed the proprietors’ views); it was reimposed in 1457. Peasant agitations took on violent forms which would have seemed to Eiximenis to justify his view of peasants as beasts. Alfonso [V’s successor, Juan II (1458-79), and his elder son and opponent, Charles of Viana, both followed, hesitantly, the same

pro-remensa policy. After Charles’s death (1461) one of the immediate causes for Catalan revolt against Juan was this question. In 1462 the army of the Catalan Generalitat (the organ

of the Corts) marched from Barcelona against the remensas round Gerona and also against Queen Juana, whom they saw, erroneously, as the remensa champion.

The Civil War (1462-72) shelved the remensa question. Both Juan ITI and the Catalan authorities wooed the remensas and they

took part on both sides. The war left both the king and the ruling classes of Catalonia so exhausted that neither could impose a solution. A new remensa rising in 1484-5 was needed

before Fernando II dictated the Sentence of Guadalupe in 1486. The Sentence satisfied the remensa demands. For a moderate sum the peasants could now buy themselves free of their servile status and of the malos usos. The right to ‘maltreat’ peasants was abolished as well as other feudal claims. The

Crown exacted a large sum (50,000 lb.) in return for the Sentence. This sum was raised over twenty years by an admirably organized Syndicate. Hinojosa remarks: 1 Eiximenis, cited Riquer, ii. 178 f.; Crestid, iii. 103, 355, in his Contes i Faules, ed.

Olivar, pp. 40, 55; Hinojosa, pp. 271 f.

80 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 By virtue of [the Sentence] Catalan labourers already found them-

selves in the last third of the fifteenth century in possession of personal freedom which the Aragonese were not to attain until the beginning of the eighteenth and great masses of the rural population of other European states until the early nineteenth century.' MAJORCA

In 1450-3 Majorca experienced as serious a social revolution and civil war as Catalonia went through in the 1460s and 1480s. The causes of the Majorcan uprising were more complex than those of the remensa troubles. In Majorca the conflict was between the City (Palma today) and the rest of the island, the jJorans, small towns and peasants combined. The Majorcan peasantry was not subject to malos usos. Many rebels owned their land and the slaves who worked it. The rebels were defend-

ing their rights against the City, or rather against the City’s oligarchy, which was assisted by the oligarchical Bzga party then controlling Barcelona. The rebels were stirred up by priests (unwilling to contribute to a royal subsidy) who exalted the biblical state of peasants compared with corrupt citizens.

All classes took part in the initial outbreak but it was soon dominated by demagogues. The rising was kept alive by the stupidity of the royal government, which demanded (in 1451) recognition of guilt by the forans, ‘in sign of perpetual serfdom’.

For two years the rebels controlled the island and three times besieged the City. They failed because most craftsmen there were bought off by opportune concessions and refused to join them. In 1454, after the revolt had been crushed militarily by Italian troops, Alfonso IV dictated a settlement admirable in theory but impossible in fact since it included a fine of 150,000 lb.

(three times that levied on the far more numerous Catalan remensas in 1486). The forans also had to pay over 200,000 Ib.

more in damages and arrears of taxes. Four years’ drought made these vast payments unobtainable. In 1456 many /forans were emigrating to Sardinia.? 1 Vicens Vives, El Gran Sindicato Remensa, pp. 199-203; idem, Historia, pp. 85-93,

262-72, 347-65, and passim; Hinojosa, pp. 280-4. See below, Part II, Ch. III, pp.

7 in Santamaria Arandez, in Aiistoria de Mallorca, iii (Palma, 1970), 135-248; J. M®. Quadrado, Forenses y Ciudadanos, and edn. (Palma, 1895), pp. 343, 375 ff.

For Barcelona’s intervention, see C. Batlle, JV CHCA i. 263-300. : :

SOCIETY SI ARAGON AND VALENCIA

Similar conflicts to those of Majorca between city and country-

side existed in Minorca and in Aragon (around Teruel in the 1440s and Daroca in 1469, for instance). The condition of the Aragonese peasantry, already deteriorating sharply by 1332, continued to decline with the royal concession of full feudal jurisdiction to Aragonese lords in 1380; it became worse than that of Catalonia. In Ribagorza, a mountainous area between Catalonia and Aragon, 37 per cent of the population was classified in 1381 as ‘poor, miserable and widows’, compared to 35 per cent considered moderately well off. One cannot as yet say if these figures were typical of other areas.

The agrarian problem in both Aragon and the kingdom of Valencia was complicated by the fact that large areas were cultivated by Mudejars, whom feudal lords in general preferred to

Christian tenants. The Christian proletariat of the city of Valencia was largely employed working for the small landowners in the irrigated areas outside the walls. A special official existed to force the unemployed to go out and work every day; pauses for rest were minutely regulated and sleeping on the job

forbidden. If a daily labourer in Valencia could get regular employment he could live reasonably well on his salary.+ CASTILE

The age of the expansion of the large estate and of noble power in Castile is from 1350 to 1500. A Becerro (register) formed in

1351-2 by royal order gives us a picture of land ownership. It lists 2,070 villages, towns and cities, of which almost a third were owned by nobles. Over 600 places were behetrias. ‘The in-

habitants of these behetrias had been originally free from the special exactions which burdened most peasants. They had also been free to choose their lord. In maritime Castile behetrias con-

tinued to be more numerous than noble or ecclesiastical lordships and the Crown had considerable rights there. In central Castile only twelve royal properties remained out of 406 estates listed. Behetrias numbered almost one-third of the total, noble lordships one-seventh, ecclesiastical one-fifth. Nobles were 1 See Vol. I, p. 84. Focs y Morabatins de Ribagorza (1381-1385),ed.J.Camarena Mahiques (Valencia, 1966); see M. Gual, HEMCA 8 (1961), 741 f.; on Valencia, V. Vicent Cortina, IV CHCA ii. 99-113.

82 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 becoming predominant in other regions of Castile. Though behetrias were still numerous, the condition of their inhabitants

was deteriorating. They had lost the freedom to choose their lord outside a particular family and were now subject to a number of seignorial exactions. Statements such as ‘every time their lord wishes he takes [what he wants] by force’, or ‘they take

what they have and do them many other injuries’ abound in the Becerro.

In 1348 the inhabitants of the behetrias were forbidden to alienate their lands to men who would not take on their obligations. They were becoming assimilated to other peasants. It was

very hard for any Castilian peasant to leave the land. The Fuero Viejo of Castile (1356) states that the lord ‘can take the body of his solariego [his peasant] and all he has in the world and

he cannot appeal to anyone’. A minor cleric writing about 1400 describes the misery of such subjection. When the lord chooses to spend the night in his peasant’s house, the latter has to turn his family, ox or pigs out and give his hens to the lord’s falcon. He is as safe with his lord as a sheep with a lion.

Prices and wages in Castile in 1350-1500 have not yet been systematically studied. It seems that though prices rose, wages rose faster. The peasants were less and less free but they were

not impossibly poor. Even a day labourer in 1369 could eat meat once a day. Most families (as the poem just quoted confirms) had enough land to feed a pig, an ox, or hens. This appears to be why Castilian peasants ‘remain on the margin of seignorial violence’ and civil war. Social tensions in the country-

‘side were more prominently displayed in the northern Meseta

and in Galicia than elsewhere. In Andalusia anti-seignorial violence was rare, though it was there, in the cities, that hatred of the Jews and later of conversos was first to explode. In the

north, protests against feudal lords were normally expressed through municipal councils or Hermandades. In the Basque country and in other regions social conflicts found expression in family feuds. There were no general peasant risings to com1A. Ferrari Nufiez, Castilla dividida en dominios segtin el Libro de las Beheirtas (Madrid, 1958); C. SAnchez-Albornoz, Estudios sobre las instituciones medievales espaftolas (Mexico, 1965), pp. 92, 125, 151-57; Fuero Viejo de Castilla, I. vii, ed. I. Jordan de Asso y del Rio and M. de Manuel y Rodriguez (Madrid, 1771), p. 31.

SOCIETY 83 pare to those in England in 1381 or to the remensas in Catalonia.

It was only in Galicia that leading nobles came into conflict with peasants on a large scale. Elsewhere revolt remained local.

In Galicia relations between peasants and their lords were aggravated by increasing seignorial pressure. In 1431 a revolt

broke out which took a long time and royal support to put down. In 1467-9, in exceptionally disturbed years, when there were two kings in Castile, there was a rising against the higher nobility which is known as the Santa Hirmandade. Armies were raised by the rebels and some 130 castles torn down. But it is difficult to classify even this revolt as a class struggle. The rebels included artisans, clerics, and minor nobles as well as peasants. It took two years to defeat them.

Below the peasantry and legally above slaves, medieval Europe contained a large number of ‘poor’ persons, subsisting, though on the verge of starvation, thanks to the alms of kings, nobles, the Church, and local parishes and confraternities. ‘This very large group has only begun to be studied. It is impossible as yet to determine its size or its relative importance from one region to another, but it appears that, in Andalusia at least, the ‘settled’ poor constituted over 10 per cent of the population in the fifteenth century. There was also a large number of ‘wandering’ poor, a group which concerned the Castilian Cortes from 1351 onwards.* SLAVES

From 1350 to 1500 the slave-trade increased in importance in the Mediterranean. By 1500 other important sources of supply existed in West Africa and the Canaries. THE CROWN OF ARAGON: PROVENANCE

Slaves reached the Crown of Aragon from all the lands bordering the Mediterranean, except for southern France and Italy, and from the Black Sea. Not only Muslims but pagans, Eastern 1 Tibro de Miseria del Omne, ed. M. Artigas, Boletin de la Biblioteca Menéndez y

Pelayo, 1 (1919), 161; Blanco-Gonzalez (cited, p. 47, n. 1), 307-11; A. Lépez Ferreiro (cited, p. 62, n. 1), pp. 41-50. For Vizcaya see Cortazar (cited, ibid.), pp. 303-9; for Portugal, Oliveira Marques, pp. 188, 204 f. J. Valdeén Baruque, Los conflictos sociales (Madrid, 1975), esp. pp. 50-3, 184-200; M. A. Ladero, in A Pobreza e a Assisténcia aos Pobres na Pentnsula Ibérica durante a Idade Média, i1 (Lisbon,

1973), 896-907. For assistance to the poor, see Ch. III, below, p. 123.

84 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Orthodox Christians, and (exceptionally) Sards are found as slaves in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearics. ‘The Crown taxed sales and so tolerated slave-dealers. Catalan, Majorcan, and Valencian merchants did not enter the Black Sea but acquired slaves in large numbers at Marseille, Genoa, Naples, Palermo, and at Venetian colonies in the Aegean. Most Muslim slaves came from North Africa, though Syrians were acquired in Crete. Piracy, children born to slave mothers,

and enslavement as a punishment inflicted on Mudejars were less important as sources of supply than purchase. It was only in 1509 that large numbers of Muslims captured in war (at Oran)

reached Valencia. Black slaves, whether Muslim or not, increased in number. Slaves from Guinea appear in Barcelona in 1489, in Valencia in 1481. Before this time black slaves were brought across the Sahara and shipped from North Africa to Syracuse and thence, by Catalans, to Spain. Sometimes Catalans bought slaves directly from Libya in return for wheat.

The Genoese colonies in the Crimea shipped Tartar, Cauca-

sian, and Circassian slaves westwards. Tartars and Turks (troublesome slaves, who often escaped) appear in Catalan records from 1369, Caucasians and Russians from 1393 and 1398, respectively. The most important group of Balkan slaves were the Bulgars (recorded 1390-1445). Albanians and Bos-

nians also appear. | Russians, Balkan slaves, and the many Greeks constituted a special problem since they were Christians, though schismatics. Pope Urban V (1362-70) ordered that all Greek slaves should be freed. His bull, together with Byzantine diplomatic overtures

and large sums raised by Eastern Christian slaves, had a gradual effect. After 1400 it is rare to find Greek slaves in Spain. The Russians did not have such help. They appear in large numbers until 1453.4

Sards are the only large group of Latin Christians who appear as slaves (technically as ‘captives’), as a result of the repeated Sardinian rebellions against Catalonia—Aragon. The many Sards in Majorca were not all freed after the peace of 1 Verlinden, i. 319-545 (and below, p. 85, n. 2); V. Cortes, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Catélicos (Valencia, 1964), pp. 51 f., 56-9, 2193

eadem, ‘Los pasajes de esclavos en Valencia en tiempo de Alfonso V’, to appear in Actas del I Congreso de Historia Medtterrdnea (Palma, 1973); Del Treppo, J Mercanii, pp. 178 f.; Rubid, Diplomatari, pp. 669 f., 677 f.

|

SOCIETY 85, 1388; some Sards still appear in 1428. Others appear in Minorca (1387-1409) and in Barcelona (1374).1 NUMBERS

The slave population increased from 1300 to 1450 and declined after this time. It is difficult to know how numerous it was. In

1400 in Catalonia the lowest estimate is 4,375, far below the reality. In Majorca there were many slaves. Fairly precise figures are available. Dr. Sevillano Colom calculated that there were 2,800 male slaves in 1328 outside the City of Majorca (the number inside was probably greater). In 1428 only 1,078 male | slaves were declared outside the capital. There were certainly others undeclared, but a decline in numbers is clear. It was due to the fear inspired by so many slaves (probably about a tenth of the declining general population; a larger proportion in 1328). In 1374 the Crown tried to limit the number of slaves one proprietor could have. The same year a revolt by Muslim and Tartar slaves was only just prevented in time.? EMPLOYMENT

Slaves were owned by all classes of society: in Catalonia in 1431

by carpenters, laundrymen, blacksmiths, weavers, seamen, tailors, notaries, butchers, doctors, etc. In cities women were more numerous than men. They were obliged to dress like prostitutes and were often hired out as prostitutes to innkeepers. In the late fourteenth century male slaves began to replace free

men as rowers on the royal galleys. In 1432 they were very numerous as dockers. In the Balearics they were essential as agricultural workers but less so elsewhere. TREATMENT

In Majorca, because of their number, slaves were supposed to be

chained up at night; these orders were generally not obeyed. 1QOn Majorca, F. Sevillano Colom, in Studi Sardi, 21 (1968); E. Putzulu, VI CHCA, pp. 365-78; on Minorca, J. E. Martinez Ferrando, ibid., pp. 319-29; on Barcelona, J. M®. Madurell Marimén, ibid., pp. 285-9. 2 Verlinden, i. 427~40; M. Bonet, BSAL 7 (1897-8), 359 f. (for 1374). See also Rubid, Diplomatari, p. 688. The figures for 1328 and 1428 I owe to Dr. Sevillano Colom. They are found in AHM, LR 7, fo. 206, and AHM, A. H. 103, fos. 208-2239. See now Ch. Verlinden, Bulletin de ’ Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 42 (1972), 141~87, and his report to I Congreso de Historia Mediterrdnea. For the general population

see Ch. I, above, p. 12, n. 2.

36 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 However, in 1360 a Majorcan slave-owner killed a Christian female slave. Although he had already been accused of similar crimes, the Crown merely ordered the authorities to fine him as much as possible. Everywhere there existed special officials to prevent and punish slaves’ flight. Slaves did escape. In the 1370s

a Muslim (baptized) slave escaped from Minorca, reverted to

Islam, and returned as a pirate doing great harm to Catalan trade before he was captured. Many slaves won freedom, usually by paying for it, often on the instalment system. Once free their problems were not over.

' It was hard to enter guilds. Hence special confraternities existed for black freedmen, both in Barcelona and Valencia, while in Majorca we find Circassian, Russian, and Turkish confraternities. In Majorca no one who was a freed slave’s child could wear silks or other expensive clothes. CASTILE, PORTUGAL

Far less is known of slaves in Castile and Portugal. Raids on the Canaries provided some slaves for Andalusia before 1400 but most slaves there were Muslims—many were black (in 14.75 the Crown established a special judge for negroes and mulattoes in Seville). A recent study shows that in the 1480s many slaves in

Seville were owned by artisans; it was common for a man to own only one slave. There were slightly more women than men. In the 1490s a fair number of slaves were baptized; this did not at once confer freedom upon them. Many slaves were employed outside their owners’ houses, to gain money for them. The conquest of Granada brought with it the enslavement of almost the

whole population of Malaga, but in general the conquered Muslims were free under the capitulations they signed.

The Portuguese voyages down West Africa and into the Atlantic opened up new slave-markets. From 1444 a Portuguese company began to exploit the slave-trade. Zurara describes as an eyewitness the despair of the newly enslaved families, broken up on their arrival in Portugal. The Portuguese bourgeoisie and 1 J. Miret y Sans, Revue hispanique, 41 (1917), 91-103; J. M®@. Ramos y Loscertales, El Cautiverio en la Corona de Aragén (Saragossa, 1915), pp. 137-42; Carrére (cited above, p. 7, n. 1), 1. 726 ff.; J. Vincke, SFG i. 25 (1970), 71 f., 85; M. Gual Camarena, EEMCA 5 (1952), 457-63; E. de K. Aguilé, BSAL 2 (1887-8), 191.

For Barcelona, see also Bonnassie (cited above, p. 69. n. 2), pp. 97-103, for Majorca, apart from Aguildé, R. Juan, BSAL 34 (1975), 568-84.

SOCIETY 87 peasants who saw the scene were struck with pity. In 1444 something new had begun—the mass slave-trade. In 1466 German and Czech visitors to Portugal were told that profits from slaves, ‘sold like cattle’, were greater than the revenues of the kingdom. In 1494 a German traveller was to see a similar sight to Zurara’s in Valencia—‘in one house men, women and

children for sale, from Tenerife’, A merchant had shipped eighty-seven slaves, of whom fourteen had died on the way. Miinzer was struck by the sight, though less so than Zurara. Both agreed that enslavement brought about conversion to Christianity. “Before the conquest’, Miinzer observes of the Canarians, ‘they were as beasts; by degrees they are becoming

gentler, thanks to religious influence.’ In the meantime the Canarians were in chain-gangs, ‘forced to very hard labour’. The Portuguese used African slaves from the beginning in the plantations of their Atlantic islands.+ 1 Verlinden, 1. 551-67, 615-32; Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Chronique de Guinée, trans. L. Bourdon (Ifan-Dakar, 1960), c. 25, pp. 109 f.; Rozmital, Travels, p. 107; Viajes de extranjeros, pp. 339 f., V. Cortes, pp. 53 ff.; A. Collantes de Teran Sanchez, Homenaje al profesor Carriazo, ii (Seville, 1972), 111-21.

It!

Religion I* challenged 1400 the Catholic church in western Europe, hardly by external enemies, had become excessively rigid in form and legalistic in doctrine. A recent study underlines the theological inadequacy of an age too much taken up with canon law, more anxious to define the Church as a government than as a mystical body . . . The laity were not asked to cultivate their interior life but to observe the commandments—it even seems at times that those of the Church are more important than the Decalogue.!

THE PAPACY AND THE PENINSULA | . Long before the Great Schism of 1378-1416 the papacy had lost much of its prestige. After their removal to Avignon in 1309 the popes only once attempted to depose and appoint a king in the

Iberian peninsula. On this occasion they acted, as they did throughout the century, in the interests of France. Pope Innocent VI (1352-62) repeatedly exhorted Pedro I of Castile to take back his French queen and Pere ITI of Catalonia—Aragon to

treat the Church in his realms less harshly. But the letters concerned with these subjects are greatly outnumbered by demands for money to finance the papal court and Italian wars. In 1357 Innocent was already on friendly terms with Pedro I’s

half-brother and enemy Enrique de Trastamara. Innocent’s successor, Urban V, helped to finance Enrique’s attack on Pedro in 1366. This war, nominally a ‘crusade’, was a conveni-

ent means of removing the mercenary Companies from dangerous propinquity to Avignon.’ 1 E. Delaruelle, in Histoire de ?Eglise, ed. Fliche and Martin, xiv. 1 (Paris, 1962), pp. ix, xiii. 4J. Zunzunegui Aramburu, Bulas y Cartas secretas de Inocencio VI (Rome, 1970), esp. pp. 137 f., 305 f., 373 ff., 469 f.; Vincke, Documenta, p. 412. For the ‘crusade’ of 1366 see Vol. I, Part III, Ch. ITT.

RELIGION 89 OPPOSITION TO THE PAPACY: CAUSES

The unpopularity of the papacy in western Europe was due to two main causes, the constant demands of papal tax-collectors, and the appointment of non-resident foreigners to bishoprics and to lesser ecclesiastical benefices. John XXII (1316-34), the first pope to establish himself per-

manently at Avignon, was responsible for the creation of new

taxes on the clergy and for a more systematic use of earlier devices to raise money. During his reign the Spanish bishops were forced to promise—and probably to pay—118,035 florins to the papacy simply for the right of appointment to their sees. Other taxes included the zus spolzz, levied on the goods of de-

ceased bishops and cathedral canons; the revenue of the first year, when benefices had been vacant for three years or more, and that of vacant bishoprics and monasteries; ‘voluntary’ subsidies, and the ‘crusading tenth’, employed to finance John’s war against the king of Germany. Dispensations were granted, for money, for breaches of canon law; they helped to mitigate the rigours of episcopal visitation. Despite the obdurate resistance encountered from certain bishops, notably in Galicia, and the highway robbery of papal collectors—perpetrated on one occasion near Valladolid by a member of the royal family, assisted by an archdeacon and a Franciscan superior—papal censures were effective in the long run. Under John XXII Spain contributed very large sums to the papal treasury, though the system did not always work smoothly, even when the Crown was willing to collaborate. Papal grants of money in the form of ecclesiastical revenues to kings (for instance to Alfonso XI of Castile to support his genuine crusade against Islam) took many years to collect; the cost of collection could exceed the sum secured.

After 1378 the popes of Avignon continued to enjoy, for two decades, virtually the same revenues as before the Schism. But in order to finance their Italian expeditions and compensate for the lands no longer under their obedience, they pushed their financial exploitation of the clergy to the hilt. The Crown of Aragon contributed far more than Castile to the burden, and, after 1406, alone sustained Benedict XIII. One of the principal

go THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

system. |

results of the Great Schism was to destroy the papal financial

In 1351 a solemn embassy of the Catalan Corts (joined by envoys from Aragon and Valencia) journeyed to Avignon to protest against the continual appointment of foreigners to benefices. In 1364 Pere III of Aragon seized the revenues of all absentee clergy, but was obliged to revoke this measure.? THE GREAT SCHISM

Opposition to papal taxation and to papal ‘provisions’—appointments to benefices—could be construed as questioning papal supremacy over the Church. In 1378, however, there came the election of two popes who soon divided the Catholic world between them. By 1380 criticism of the papacy had changed from moral denunciation of the luxury of Avignon to questioning the structure of the Church.

In this criticism, and in the conciliar movement which at-

tempted not only to resolve the Schism but to reform the Church, the peninsula was far less prominent than France and England. The peninsular kingdoms varied in their allegianceg The Crown of Aragon remained neutral between the popes of Rome and Avignon until 1387. From then until 1416 it supported Avignon. Castile recognized the Avignon pope in 1381, Navarre in 1390. Portugal did so briefly in 1383—5 but remained

preponderantly loyal to Rome. In 1398 Castile renounced Avignon in an attempt to end the Schism. It renewed its obedience in 1403 and ended it (with Navarre) in 1416. The Schism dragged on until 1429 because of the refusal to abdicate of the Avignon pope, Benedict XIIT (d. 1422), and the election of his successor. That the Schism lasted as long as it did was due to

political alignments in Europe. As France supported or renounced Avignon, its allies Castile and Navarre followed suit.

England drew Portugal into the Roman camp; Pere III of Aragon exploited his ‘indifference’ to both popes (1378-87) ; his successors played on their loyalty to Avignon to extort con1¥For John XXII, J. Gotti Gaztambide, Anthologica annua, 14 (1966), 65-99, esp.

66, 77 ff., 81, n. 98. For Alfonso XI I use information given me by Dr. P. A. Linehan, who, with Dr. D. W. Lomax, is preparing a study on the Papal Collectoriae of this period. J. Favier, Les finances pontificales a V’éboque du Grand Schisme d’ Occident,

1378-1409 (Paris, 1966), pp. 689, 695, 240, 670, 675. 2 Vincke, Documenta, pp. 399-402, 419, 457; Zurita, Anales, ix. 53.

RELIGION gt cessions. The average Christian might not know the reasons why the Schism lasted for over fifty years, but he knew that it was uncertain who was the Vicar of Christ. After 1429 came the Council of Basle and a new anti-pope (1439-49).} EFFECT ON CONTEMPORARIES

The ex-Franciscan Anselm Turmeda, writing as an apostate to

Islam about 1405, remarked correctly that the Schism continued because kings wanted it to continue. Simpler men were amazed at the fall of Benedict XIII, the Aragonese Pedro de Luna. “The Benedict who was held for a saint in Spain, see where he is now hidden in Peniscola |off the coast near Valencia], a heretic, schismatic, excommunicated, abandoned by all his followers.’ A more independent mind continued to admire

‘the great shepherd Luna’: ‘Our age has not created another man by grace and name rightly called Benedictus.”?

Turmeda and the devout chancellor of Castile, Pero Lopez de Ayala, agreed that money was at the root of the evil. For Turmeda (in 1398) enough money can make a man pope. Ayala wrote (in about 1381), “Today the papacy has grown rich. No one is reluctant to take it. Even if he is old, he has the strength. One never sees a pope die poor.’

The Crown of Aragon produced violent propagandists for Avignon. More balanced minds blamed the pro-Avignon cardinals for the Schism. The general view of Christendom in 1397-8 taken by the leading Catalan Franciscan Eiximenis was very pessimistic. Only the return to earth of the founders of the Religious Orders and of a holy pope and emperor could restore Christianity. At the same time the archbishop of Toledo was exhorting Benedict XIII to ‘let the Passion of Christ burn within him’. But the Schism dragged on for another thirty

years. In a sermon of 1413 the Dominican Vicent Ferrer questioned the advisability of the supposed Donation of western Europe by Constantine to the papacy (its historicity was not yet 1L. Sudrez Fernandez, Castilla, el Cisma y la crisis conciliar (Madrid, 1960) ; for Aragon see A. Martin Rodriguez, Hispania, 19 (1959), 163-91, also Finke, Acta, Ill, p. xlv; J. Vincke, SF#G 1. 8 (1940), 263-79. 2 Turmeda, ed. R. d’Alos, Revue hispanique, 24 (1911), 483; Cancionero de Baena, ed. Azaceta, no. 339 (11. 760); Fernan Pérez de Guzman, Loores de los claros varones, vv. 382-92 (NBAE xix. 749 f.).

g2 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

in dispute) and suggested that by it ‘poison entered the Church’.* | RESULTS OF THE SCHISM

The Schism weakened the papacy. Old complaints as to papal taxes and appointments were raised in pamphlets and councils. In 1377, 1390, and 1396 the Castilian Cortes opposed the grant of any benefice to a foreigner. In 1416 the Spanish abandonment of Benedict XIII merited a reward. Alfonso IV of Aragon demanded several ecclesiastical taxes, the creation of eight new

sees, and the control of all ecclesiastical appointments. He received far less than this, and less than Castile. In 1418 and 1421 the Castilian Crown received the right to intervene in Church appointments. These concessions were reinforced in 1456-9. Only in the chaos of the 1460s did the cathedral chapters of Castile rebel against both pope and king and choose their own candidates. This rebellion was doomed. By the 1470s

theorists of royal rights, both in Castile and Aragon, were stating claims which were to be successfully asserted against both papacy and chapters by Fernando and Isabel. Strong clerical resistance, both in Catalonia and Castile, to papal financial demands strengthened the royal hand.?

Papal centralization had ‘reached a kind of paroxysm’ by 1400. Nothing could be done in the Church without the consent of the papacy but the papacy could do nothing since it was controlled by cardinals who grew steadily richer and less inclined

to reform. Hence the attempts at reforming the Church from below by bishops and popular preachers which preceded and prepared for the reforms accomplished under the Catholic Monarchs.® 1 Turmeda, Libre de bons amonestaments (ENC A 10), ed. M. Olivar (Barcelona, 1927), pp. 153 ff.; Ayala, Rimado del Palacio, v. 196 (BAE \vii. 431). For the date see E. B. Strong, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 28 (1961), 64-70. For the propagandists

see H. Finke, SFG i. 1 (1928), 174-95; for Eiximenis, A. Ivars, AIA 15 (1921), 327-9; T. Carreras y Artau, AJEG 1 (1946), 281; J. Gofii Gaztambide, Hispania Sacra, 15 (1962), 175. On Ferrer see R. Chabés, RABM g (1903), 94. 2 Ayala, Crénica de Juan I, Atio XII, 7 (BAE Ixviii. 133 f.); Gotti, Hispania Sacra, Ir (1958), 259-97; Tarsicio de Azcona, La eleccién y reforma del episcopado espaitol en tiempo de los Reyes Catélicos (Madrid, 1960), pp. 63~95. For resistance to taxes see J. Coroleu e Inglada and J. Pella y Forgas, Las Cortes Catalanas (Barcelona, 1876); N.

Lépez Martinez, Burgense, 2 (1961), 235-9. ,

8 Delaruelle, op. cit. xiv. 2. 888—g10.

RELIGION 93 SECULAR CLERGY: BISHOPS

The generally unfavourable view of bishops was expressed by the Catalan author of Curtal e Giielfa about 1450. His hero ‘gave himself up to live at ease and lasciviously, as if he were an archbishop . . . he spent his whole time in the acts of Venus’. Alfonso

de Palencia, writing in 1457-9, told his patron, Carrillo, archbishop of Toledo, ‘Your greatness is manifest both in peace and

war ... All Spain knows of your warriors.’ The Franciscan satirist Fray Ifigo de Mendoza had less admiration for such ‘bishops of cape and sword’ and told Carrillo (in 1467-8), “Your costly dishes and lavish gifts seem great virtue to worldly men but in heaven they are vices.’? The documents of the age confirm the literary evidence. In

Catalonia an incestuous archbishop of Tarragona, Pere d’Urrea, appears beside a bishop of Gerona, Bernat de Pau, whose arbitrary harshness defied royal remonstrance and extended to all his subjects, from Jews to a canon of his cathedral church and the abbots of his diocese, one of whom he may well have had poisoned. Both bishops died in possession of their sees, after long reigns, of forty-five years in d’Urrea’s case (1445-89),

of twenty-one in that of Pau (1436-57). The fifteenth-century bishops of Pamplona in Navarre were also not at the level of their predecessors. The only scholar among them (the Greek Cardinal Bessarion) never visited his diocese. From 1491 to 1507

Pamplona was in absentee Italian hands; for a year its bishop

was Cesare Borgia. The native bishops were royal servants before and after their consecration, undistinguished either in morals or scholarship.

In Castile the best churchmen deployed their main energies

at the royal or papal court—in the case of Cardinal Gil de Albornoz (c. 1300-67) at both. Archbishop Tenorio of Toledo (1367-99) ‘might have transformed the diocesan clergy . . . if his frequent absence at court had not prevented him’. He stands out as a builder of castles, bridges, and hospitals. His effect on his clergy was minuscule, A different type of prelate is represented 1 Curial e Gielfa, ed. R. Aramén i Serra, ui (ENC A 39-40) (Barcelona, 1933), 173; Alfonso de Palencia (BAE cxvi. 391); Ifigo de Mendoza, Coplas de Vita Christi, vv. 108, 115, in J. Rodriguez-Puértolas, Fray I. de M. y sus C. de V. C. (Madrid, 1968), pp. 347, 355 f.

|

94 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 by Gutierre de Toledo, bishop of Oviedo from 1377 to 1389.

| Zealous in the defence of his see’s jurisdiction, he proved successful in his struggle against the local concejos, the nobility,

and royal agents. But his success was due to the fact that he enjoyed the Crown’s constant support and he was essentially an ecclesiastical version of the rising lay nobles of his day. Conflicts between cities such as Palencia and their bishops continued in

the fifteenth century, but the rival contenders began to be eclipsed by direct royal agents, the corregidores, who intervened with increasing frequency in municipal affairs. The archbishop of Santiago was almost as rich and powerful as his colleague of Toledo. He could raise 300 men-at-arms and 3,000 foot. A would-be reforming bishop such as Don Lope de

Mendoza (1400-45) celebrated synods almost every year and tried to enforce clerical residence and prevent simony, but his

main energies were taken up with the rebellious Galician nobles and the town of Santiago. He was forced to give up many Church lands to nobles who tried to convert them into hereditary fiefs. His successors were absorbed in similar feuds. In

1466 the Bohemian noble Leo of Rozmital found the cathedral of Santiago under siege from a neighbouring lord who had im-

prisoned the archbishop and was holding him to ransom. To become free he was forced to promise to leave the diocese for ten years. Pitched battles and sieges continued until 1480, when the archbishop was prevailed on to surrender his castles to the Crown.+

Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Alonso

Tostado should have held it was almost better for a church reformer to avoid the office of bishop. Tostado’s own effectiveness as bishop of Avila (1449-55) 1s not undisputed. There were 1For Pamplona, J. Gofi Gaztambide, EEMCA 7 (1962), 358-547; 8 (1967), 265-413; for Tenorio, V. Beltran de Heredia, Cartulario de la Universidad de Salamanca, i (Salamanca, 1970), 177-84; for Oviedo, J. I. Ruiz de la Pefia, in Actas de las I Fornadas de metodologia aplicada de las ciencias histéricas, i (Santiago, 1975), 217— 29; for Palencia, R. Carande, Siete estudios de historia de Espafia (Barcelona, 1971),

pp. 85-90. A. Lépez Ferreiro, Historia de la Santa A. M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela, vii (Santiago, 1904), esp. 45, 250-6; idem, Galicia en el ultimo tercio del

siglo XV, 3rd edn. (Vigo, 1968), pp. 18, 59-65; Leo of Rozmital, Travels, trans. M. Letts (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 101 ff. J. F. O’Callaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (London, 1975), 629, refers to a Portuguese cardinal who held two archbishoprics, five bishoprics, and twelve abbeys. For Catalonia see J. Miret y Sans, Sempre han tingut béch les oques, i (Barcelona, 1905), 76-81, ii (1906), 111 f., 137-45.

RELIGION 95 reforming bishops such as Alfonso Borgia in Valencia (the future Pope Calixtus III) and the ex-rabbi Pablo de Santa Marfa and his son, successive bishops of Burgos (1414-56). Unfortunately Calixtus IIT gave Valencia a non-resident bishop for over thirty years in his nephew, Rodrigo, later Pope Alex-

ander VI, and the Santa Marfas were perhaps more scholars than reformers. However, diocesan synods were held at intervals throughout the fifteenth century in Burgos. Don Luis de Acufia (bishop 1456-95) was largely occupied for his first twenty years with political troubles. His armed men re-established order in the city on several occasions. He fought against the system by which large areas of his vast diocese were exempt from episcopal control and under the cathedral chapter, abbots, or archdeacons. He tried to reform his perhaps 75,000 ‘clergy’, many of whom had merely received the tonsure. His successor, an ardent Dominican, carried his work further.

THE LOWER CLERGY The diocesan synods of Burgos denounce evils documented for

centuries among the clergy (and laity): non-residence, ignorance, quarrels over clerical tithes, conflicts of jurisdiction, relations with Jews and Muslims, and concubinage. Don Luis de Acufia had had two illegitimate sons when a young bishop (one of them became archdeacon of Burgos). He sought to enact disciplinary measures against women living with the cathedral clergy—a custom generally tolerated by the chapter.

The popular preacher Vicent Ferrer saw the clergy of Valencia in 1400 as more interested in hunting hares than souls. Pero Lopez de Ayala remarks, ‘If he can have three dogs, a greyhound and a ferret, a village priest thinks he is a squire. His people find him a wife in some neighbour. There is not one in the village as well dressed and adorned as she.”? SEXUAL MORALITY

Reforms of the sexual morality of the clergy were proposed not

only by church councils but by lay authorities. In 1380 the 1T. de Azcona, pp. 230-5; L. Serrano, Los Reyes Catélicos y Burgos (Madrid, 1943), pp. 25-9; N. Lépez Martinez, Burgense, 2 (1961), 185-317. 2 Lépez Martinez, loc. cit.; Burgense, ‘7 (1966), 211-406; Chaba4s, RABM 9 (1903), 92 f.; Ayala, Rimado del Palacio, vv. 223 f., 227 (BAE lvii. 432).

96 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Castilian Cortes protested against the confirmation of a law of 1327 by which the children of clerics in Madrid were declared legitimate. In 1387 the Cortes decreed that barraganas (public mistresses) of clerics were to be fined. These measures were revoked or exceptions granted. In 1435 a Castilian delegate attempted to change the decrees of the Council of Basle against clerical concubinage so that they should not affect his country. It was not until the Catholic Monarchs that disciplinary meas-

ures were enforced. The situation was much the same in

Portugal, where every year many leading clerics and priests bought royal documents legitimizing their children.1

CATHEDRAL CLERGY. The cathedral clergy were often no more impressive than the village priests. Their principal duty, attendance at the choir office, was often neglected. In Majorca in 1377 numerous cathedral clergy would leave the choir before the service was over and circulate through the cathedral, eyeing and making indecent proposals to the women in the congregation. Sometimes they would wander through the streets in clerical dress. At Pamplona attempts to make the canons assist at choir produced a rebellion. At Burgos in 1468 it was stated that there were priests beneficed 1n the cathedral who had not made their confession for over ten years. Sermons were normally preached by friars. A member of the cathedral clergy preparing a sermon received ten days’ dispensation from choir. At Palencia in 1481 major cathedral posts were held by men who had only received the tonsure. Their attendance at mass and the choir office was

infrequent and seldom uninterrupted. At least 20 per cent of the cathedral clergy had concubines. The clergy of Burgos occupied themselves with dice, wore silk

clothes and their hair long, contrary to regulations, and in general lived like laymen. The archdeacon about to fight a duel with a protonotary is not an exceptional figure. The cathedral church received as little reverence as its servants. In 1462 it was

| necessary to forbid men to ‘bring into or through the church, 1 Cortes de Leén, ii. 303 f., 369 f. For Basle see Suarez Fernandez, Castilla, p. 117, n. 7. See the discussion by H. Winterer, eitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung, 83 (1966), 370-83, and, for Portugal, Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, pp. 176 f. The remarkable case of.the canon of Seville in 1455 in H. Sancho de Sopranis, Historia de Ferez de la Frontera, i (Jerez, 1964), 303.

RELIGION 97 during the choir offices, water, wine, meat, fish, birds, wood, cloth

or skins’. The bell-ringer had to be forbidden to keep pigs in the tower.! CLERICAL EDUCATION

In 1459 the cathedral chapter of Burgos granted permission and funds to its members to go to any university to study. Some did go to Bologna or Salamanca, fewer to Valladolid or Paris. ‘The

majority were content to learn Latin grammar at Burgos—a year’s course was required before ordination as priest. The teaching of theology at Coria cathedral school about 1450 consisted in a bare statement of the contents of each book of the Bible. The

standard required for rural clergy was far lower. In 1435 the archbishop of Santiago only asked ‘that they should know how to read and chant and be well-behaved and of the proper age and have some patrimony to support themselves’. In Barcelona,

on the other hand, by 1500, libraries existed in the parish churches as well as the cathedral. UNIVERSITIES

The erection of a Spanish college at Bologna in 1365 by Car-

dinal Albornoz was in part a sign that it was impossible to found such an institution in Castile at this time. The new college was mainly concerned with canon law, the favourite subject for secular clerics. In 1377 the college offered eighteen

scholarships for canon law, eight for theology and four for medicine.

The first faculty of theology in the peninsula was created in 1395-6 by Benedict XIII, to counterbalance Paris, which was

hostile to the Avignon pope. Later other faculties arose, at Valladolid (1418), Lérida (1430), Perpignan (1447), Barcelona (1450). Of these universities, Salamanca was the most important. Its development was gradual, but by 1500 it had acquired a considerable theological and classical library. Its college of san Bartolomé, founded in 1401 with statutes modelled on those

of the college at Bologna, produced the leading bishops of Castile before and during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. 1'Villanueva, xxii. 254 f.; on Pamplona, Goni, HEMCA 7 (1962), 455-66; Lépez Martinez, Burgense, 2 (1961), 254-9, 291 f. On Palencia see J. Sanchez Herrero, in Historia, Instituctones, Documentos, 3 (1976), 494, 500 f.

98 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 From 1476 to 1513 fifteen colleges were founded at different places in imitation of San Bartolomé. Works by secular clerics do not abound. Most of them were concerned with canon law. Of the few clerical writers on more general pastoral, mystical, and moral themes, half were either Catalan or of Jewish converso descent. The Spanish theologians of this age, whether secular priests or the more numerous friars,

generally had to go outside the peninsula, usually to Paris,

to make their mark, but the secular clergy did number three remarkable writers, Cardinal Juan de Torquemada (d. 1468), who played a leading role in conciliar controversies, Alonso Tostado (d. 1455), a biblical commentator, and Ruy Sanchez de Arévalo (d. 1470), a historian, moralist, and writer on political thought.? THE CLERGY AND THE LAITY

The many fifteenth-century attacks on the Church’s decadence

concentrate on the vices of the clergy. This sprang from the _ habit of seeing the Church as the clergy. The poet Juan de Mena was probably not alone in his view that if an earthquake occurred the clergy alone should be destroyed.

Anomalies persisted. In Vizcaya lay patrons continued to collect ecclesiastical revenues. No bishop could enter Vizcaya. When one did so (in the royal train) in 1476 he had to leave at once. In Navarre a synod of 1477 revealed that parishes could be reserved for small children by forcing a priest put in temporarily to swear to resign when the child grew up. In 1499 many clergy were still assuming the cure of souls with no training or canonical authority.*® 1Ldépez Martinez, pp. 251 ff.; Lépez Ferreiro, Historia, vii, Apéndices, p. 59; Fr. Stegmiiller, SFG i. 17 (1961), 234-6; Beltran de Heredia, Cariulario, 1. 162-5, 210-49, 637 f., 651 ff., 662 f., 667, 679; M. Andrés, Anthologica Annua, 2 (1954), 126-43; idem, RET 28 (1968), 319-28; T. de Azcona, pp. 224-8. Ordinations in Valencia: Dietari del Capellé d’Anfos el Magnanim, ed. J. Sanchis (Valencia, 1932), p. 429. On Barcelona, J. Rubiéd, Archioum Historicum Soc. Iesu, 25 (1956), 320. See also below, Ch. V, p. 186, n. 1. 2 Canonists of the period are listed by A. Garcia y Garcia, Repertorio de historia de las ciencias eclesidsticas en Espatia, i (Salamanca, 1967), 419—323 11 (1971), 183-2143 V

(1976), 351-402; spiritual authors by I. Rodriguez, Repertorio, 1. 175-351. See also Carreras Artau, 1. 492-8, 534-63, 595-601. § Delaruelle, xiv. 2, 887; Juan de Mena, Laberinto, vv. 95 ff., NBAE xix. 162; J. A. Garcia de Cortazar y Ruiz de Aguirre, Vizcaya en el siglo XV (Bilbao, 1966), Pp. 309-14, 391-3; Gotti, EEMCA 8 (1967), 282, 285, 328.

RELIGION 99 These local anomalies are less significant than a general reaction against clerical privileges and an attempt to control them. In 1329 the Castilian Cortes passed laws forbidding clerics to act

as lawyers or public scribes. In 1348 the Cortes attempted to restrict or annul wills favouring religious foundations. Similar

measures appear in Aragon. Juan I of Castile (1379-90) declared that the clergy should contribute to municipal taxes. A host of nominal clerics (tonsured but unordained, often married men) continued to infest society. The problem was the

same everywhere. In Valencia, in 1391, the Jurats told the archbishop: ‘Most men say that no one dares to commit a crime unless he is tonsured.’ The great Franciscan Eiximenis recog-

nized that men were tonsured ‘to avoid a hanging’. In 1346 Pere III of Aragon had to buy forgiveness for executing two ‘clerical’ merchants and a married cleric who had conspired against him. He was obliged to celebrate masses, found three perpetual chaplaincies, send large sums to several shrines, and pay for sixty torches, each weighing seven pounds, to burn during the requiem. An anti-clerical riot could start easily. In Barcelona in 1370 disputes between ecclesiastical and city jurisdictions had led to bitter feeling. The municipality complained a citizen accused of heresy had not been given an advocate. Pere [[]—engaged in a

dispute with the bishop, who had excommunicated his local officials—refused to take part in the Corpus procession. When this set out, led by two papal legates, cries were heard: ‘Set fire to the bishop’s palace!’ The procession broke up in panic.

Excommunication was often abused. In 1462 the Catalan peasants complained that some of them had been excommunicated ten or twenty times because they failed to pay their rent to

ecclesiastical lords. In 1468, when a notary in Galicia was threatened with excommunication, he replied that it was the same to him ‘to be excommunicated once as three times’. In Galicia, and probably elsewhere also, many excommunicated persons had no scruples in entering churches.? 1 Cortes de Len, i. 403, 425, 605 f.; Ivars, AJA 15 (1921), 319; Eiximenis, Regiment, 38, ed. D. de Molins de Rel, p. 180; F. J. Miquel Rosell, Regesta de letras pontificias del Archivo de la Corona de Aragén (Madrid, 1948), pp. 314 f.; C. Batlle, VU CHCA ii. 2. gi-101. 2K. de Hinojosa, Obras, ii (Madrid, 1955), 277, 322; Lépez Ferreiro, Galicia

p. 158; tdem Historia, viii. 195 f.

100 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

LACK OF PASTORAL CARE | In the diocese of Pamplona there existed rules directing how an

archdeacon should visit his charge. Apart from visiting the parish church, inspecting its possessions and inquiring into the administration of local church property, the archdeacon was to _ discover whether there were any excommunicates, any married men living with concubines, public usurers, or dangerous feuds. The laity were to be asked if their clergy had public concubines. If so, the women were to be heavily fined. The rector was to be examined if he knew the Articles of the Faith, the Ten Commandments and mortal sins, the Sacraments, the five senses of

the body, the seven virtues, the formula of absolution. If his knowledge was defective he was fined and given a year to mem-

orize the correct answers. He was required to teach the parish children to study a portion of the limited knowledge exacted from him. These rules do not refer to non-resident clergy. There were many of these. In the small Catalan parish of Santa Coloma de Queralt, with only 150 houses, there were thirty-two ecclesiastical benefices. The main interest of the young clergy was to accumulate benefices. Most rectors left their parishes to underpaid curates. In 1399 one man was Dean of Tarrega, Provost (for July) of Barcelona cathedral, Official of Gerona, Procurator of the Cardinal of Gerona, and lastly (and least) parish priest of Santa Coloma. In Portugal conditions were the same or worse. In 1466 Leo

of Rozmital and his suite were scandalized at the miserable state of the clergy, who ‘do not preach the Gospel except to repeat the Ten Commandments and observe Holy Days’. They also noted that a priest’s celebration of his first mass was accom-

panied by dancing in the streets and feasting for days with ‘women and girls who are their special friends’. (The same dances accompanied first masses in Burgos in 1511.)

More telling is the prologue to a ‘catechism for parish priests’, written about 1420 by Clemente Sanchez de Vercial, archdeacon of Valderas, where one reads: ‘many priests who have charge of souls are not only ignorant as far as teaching the faith [is concerned] ... but do not even know what any good Christian should know . . . some do not know or understand the

RELIGION 101 Scriptures, which they have to read and expound every day’. The catechism proved very popular in the fifteenth century, but the picture it painted was so black that it appears in the Index of 1559.1

THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS: MONKS

It has been shown that the situation of most monasteries in the peninsula in 1300 was far from happy. It continued to deterior-

ate in the next two centuries. Castilian monasteries, in particular, fell more and more into the hands of nobles to whom they had ‘commended’ themselves. In response to general com-

plaints from the monasteries, Juan I ordered the end of encomiendas in 1380. He told his great chamberlain Pedro Velas-

co, and other nobles, to restore to Silos the towns, villages, and vassals they had taken on the pretext of protecting the monastery. In 1445 a later Velasco acquired the temporal jurisdiction of Silos itself. Juan [Ps orders had been forgotten during periods when the Crown was weak. Papal delegates were not effective in protecting great abbeys. Ttownsmen and peas-

ants continued to persecute their local monks. In 1444 Queen Marfa of Aragon ordered that the men of Nuévalos should be punished for attacking a monastery, moving its boundary stones,

and trying to kill the monks with lances. On the other hand a study of eighteen religious houses in the kingdom of Valencia reveals a recovery in donations about 1420, after the slump of the fourteenth century, and five new foundations between 1375 and 1445." CISTERCIANS

‘The Cistercian monasteries of Castile were at a low ebb. In Galicia a visitation by the abbot of Clairvaux in 1492 revealed that in some monasteries there were no books and no monks 1 Goni, Hispania Sacra, 10 (1957), 127-33; Segura, Aplech, pp. 129-35; Rozmital, Travels, p. 113; Lopez Martinez, Burgense, 7 (1966), 399; see also Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, pp. 207 f. For the catechism see M. Andrés Martin, Historia de la teologta en Espafia, i (Rome, 1962), 231. 2 See Vol. I, Part I, Ch. IV. Ayala, Cronica de Juan I, ato II, 8, Cronica de Enrique HI, ahio IV, 2 (BAE Ixviii. 70 f., 218); M. Férotin, Recueil des chartes de lV’abbaye de Silos (Paris, 1897), pp. 441-5, 487-90; J. Pujol y Alonso, El Abadengo de Sahagtin

(Madrid, 1915), pp. 133 f. (1394); L. Redonet y Lépez-Doriga, in Estudios de historia social de Espafia, 1 (1949), 190 f.; M®. D. Cabanes Pecourt, Los monasterios valencianos, 1 (Valencia, 1974), 193.

102 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 knowing Latin or even the Rule of the Order. In Catalonia Poblet maintained its exceptional position. In about 1415 total abstinence from meat-eating was reintroduced there, against contemporary Cistercian practice. In the 1420s the Cistercian General Chapters entrusted the abbot of Poblet with reforming monasteries throughout the peninsula. Poblet about 1460 was self-supporting in cereals, wine, and wool for the monks’ habits, but its spiritual strength—shown in the exceptional fact of its large monastic community—led to heavy expenses. Its lay brothers had decreased in number and it was obliged to pay the salaries of permanent and temporary lay workers, bailiffs, lawyers, millers, etc. The economic situation was difficult, but the prestige of the abbey great. Its abbot was the royal Almoner of Aragon. Kings often stayed there. In 14.94 a German visitor observed, ‘I never saw so splendid a Cistercian monastery.’ Poblet then contained eighty monks and forty lay brothers.+ NEW ORDERS: CARTHUSIANS, HIERONYMITES

Between 1350 and 1500 two monastic orders acquired importance in the peninsula, the Carthusians and Hieronymites. The Carthusians had existed since the eleventh century but the first large group of foundations in Spain came from 1385 to 1515 (thirteen monasteries, notably Miraflores near Burgos). About 1350 an Italian ascetic, Fr. Thomas of Siena (Tomasuccio) arrived in Spain with some companions, intending to lead an eremitical life. The papal bull approving the new Order was issued in 1373. The Hieronymites, as they became known, were averse to the dialectic of the universities. Like the Spiritual Franciscans, the Carthusians, whom they resembled in austerity, and The Imitation of Christ, they stressed emotional meditation on the Passion. This type of piety attracted many rich nobles

and numerous conversos from Judaism, probably because it seemed less formalistic than most contemporary Catholicism. The monastery of Guadalupe, south of Toledo, with its famous 1L. Torres Balbas, Monasterios cistercienses de Galicia (Santiago, 1954), p. 42; A. Masoliver, Studia Monastica, 13 (1971), 313 f.3 J. M. Canivez, Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786 (Louvain, 1933~41), Iv. 319; A. Altisent, in Miscel. ldnia histérica catalana (Poblet, 1970), pp. 267-332; idem, CHEC 7 (1972), 33-40. Miinzer, in Viajes de extranjeros por Espaiia y Portugal,

ed. J. Garcia Mercadal, i (Madrid, 1952), 336.

RELIGION 103 shrine of the Virgin, given to the Order in 1389, was the main centre, but thirty-three other Hieronymite monasteries existed in the peninsula before 1516; several monasteries of other orders

were transferred to the Hieronymites. The Order became rich, and defended its riches against the Crown, but it preserved its spiritual prestige. By 1466 Guadalupe was a shrine attracting ‘a countless stream of pilgrims’, and containing ‘the most pious monks’ a German visitor had ever seen. The convent, a Czech added, ‘resembles a city 1n size’. In 1494 Miinzer devoted more

space to describing Guadalupe than to Santiago. The visitors agree that the community was more numerous than Poblet.} BENEDICTINE REFORM: THE CONGREGATION OF SAN BENITO DE VALLADOLID

In 1390 Juan I of Castile founded a Benedictine monastery at Valladolid. The first monks, who were to observe perpetual enclosure, were recruited with much difficulty. Their austere life impressed men in an age of general monastic decline, but

attempts to extend the reform to other monasteries and to subject them to San Benito met with bitter opposition, and, in 1489, only eight monasteries (two of importance) were ruled from Valladolid. The expansion of the Congregation dates from the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. During this reign the reform spread to several leading abbeys and notably to Montser-

rat in Catalonia, the most famous Marian sanctuary of the peninsula. Montserrat’s first reforming abbot, Garcia de Cisneros (1455-1510), created an ascetic school. His Exercitatorio de la vida spiritual was deeply influenced by the ‘modern devotion’

of the Low Countries and by the Franciscan Observants, who

included his cousin, the future Cardinal Cisneros. Abbot Cisneros insisted on reading and study (of a limited range of religious texts) and especially on the daily practice of meditation and mental prayer. The Exercitatorio influenced St. Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises; it continued to provide basic 1 For the papal bull see I. de Madrid, in Studia Hieronymiana, i (Madrid, 1973), 62-71. A. Castro, Aspectos de vivir hispdnico (Santiago de Chile, 1949), pp. 72-90; A. A. Sicroff, in Collected Studies in honour of A. Castro (Oxford, 1965), pp. 397-422. See Ch. F. Fraker, Jr., Hispanic Review, 34. (1966), 197-217; T. de Azcona, Isabel la Catélica (Madrid, 1964), pp. 562 f.; Rozmital, Travels, pp. 124 f., 131; Miinzer, Viajes, i. pp. 394-8. On hermits in Majorca see J. N. Hillgarth, Studia Monastica, 6 (1964), 299-328; G. Llompart, ibid. 18 (1976), 119-30.

104 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 training for novices in the Congregation until the exclaustracién of 1835.4

LACK OF MONASTIC EDUCATION

Poblet continued to send monks to study at universities and was

ordered by the Cistercian General Chapter to force other abbots to do the same. The Benedictine abbey of Sahagun in Castile had a studium, but its students were limited to monks, though the teachers included clergy and laymen.? In Portugal the Cistercians of Alcobaga received manuscripts from Rome, France, and England, brought back by students sent abroad or by travelling abbots. Some monks translated religious works into Portuguese and so largely formed the language of Portuguese spirituality. In Spain, in contrast, the number of Benedictine and Cistercian authors from 1300 to 1500 is negligible. Among the Carthusians Bonifaci Ferrer (d. 1417) translated the Bible from Latin into Catalan. Other Carthusians and more Hieronymites stand out as authors of ascetic works. Garcia de Cisneros has already been mentioned.? NUNS

As in the past, for many nuns their vocation was decided for them. A father declared in his will that his daughter should enter a convent; he could not afford to give her a dowry. Not unnaturally, many nuns felt little personal dedication. In 1440 the Cistercians of La Zaidia in Valencia were forbidden to wear gold or coral beads or to paint their faces. In 1457 a law forbade Valencian men from entering the city convents. One is reminded of the portrait of the aristocratic nuns of Curial e Giielfa, very free in conversation with men, though proper in behaviour. A number of knights in this novel appear as champions of nuns at a tourney (as they did in fact appear at contemporary tournaments). A less exalted view of nuns appears in a Catalan memorial on trade of 1430-50; here they are seen as 1G. M. Colombas and M. M. Gost, Estudios sobre el primer siglo de San Benito de Valladolid (Montserrat, 1954); Colombas, Un reformador benedictino en tiempo de los Reyes Catélicos, Garcia Jiménez de Cisneros, abad de Montserrat (Montserrat, 1955); G. J. de Cisneros, Obras completas, ed. C. Baraut, 2 vols. (Montserrat, 1965), esp. i. 3-34; A. M. Albareda, Archivum historicum Soc. Iesu, 25 (1956), 254-316. 2 Canivez, iv. 295; V. Beltran de Heredia, Ctencia tomista, 85 (1958), 687-97. 8M. Martins, Estudos de literatura medieval (Braga, 1956), pp. 245-83; Rodriguez

(cited above, p. 98, n. 2).

RELIGION 105 useful because fine embroiderers. It remains true that women continued to leave their goods, ‘for their soul’, to convents such as that of the Poor Clares of Moguer in Andalusia, or to become dependent on the convent during their lives.! THE FRIARS: DECLINE

The general view of the friars in Catalonia deteriorates sharply

in the fourteenth century. The popular literature of the time (not irreligious, though anti-monastic) sees friars as using Aristotle to justify their love-poems, and, more crudely, as using the confessional and death-bed visits to seduce any woman or nun they meet. A vision of Hell of 1419 sees it as full of friars.

Despite these satirical attacks—perhaps directed most of all against Franciscans, as the largest Order—the friars display a rigorous intellectual tradition, though this declines after 1400. They still include great figures, notably the Catalan Franciscan

Eiximenis (d. 1409) and the Valencian Dominican Vicent Ferrer (d. 1419). Vicent Ferrer was a favourite of three successive kings of Aragon and of two Avignon popes. He, Eiximenis,

and other friars played a central role in a great city such as Valencia, not only as preachers but as advisers to the municipality. Both Ferrer and Eiximenis censure very severely the friars of their time. Eiximenis remarks: ... they sin gravely in sumptuous buildings. They study not for love of God but so as to rise in the world. They are absorbed in secular affairs... They go through the streets with their eyes raised to look at the ladies .. . They can only talk of money and women.

Vicent Ferrer states that friars only bury or confess men for money. ‘Of 100 religious not one will be saved because they will not keep the Rule.’ (He adds that the same proportion of damned

(99 per cent) is true of secular priests and laymen.) A later religious reformer, the Hieronymite Fray Hernando de Talavera (1428-1507) indicated that many friars ‘do not speak the 1 Segura, Aplech, pp. 123 f.; R. Chabds, RABM 8 (1903), 293; A. Santamaria Arandez, Aportacién al estudio de la economta de Valencia (Valencia, 1966), p. 48, n. 26; M. L. Cabanes Catala, Ligarzas, 4 (1972), 273-85; Curial e Giielfa, 11 (ENC A 35-6),

39-48; Carrére (cited above, p. 76 n. 2).; M®. A. Vilaplana, La Coleccién diplomdtica de Santa Clara de Moguer, 1280-1483 (Seville, 1975), pp. 207, 352, 469. On La Zaidia in 1443 see also A. Altisent, in Los consejos evangélicos en la tradicién mondstica (Silos, 1975), pp. 143-7.

106 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 truth, for fear of not being fed [when they are begging] ... it appears that they preach in order to be fed’. Writing in 1481, Fray Hernando admitted that ‘not many years ago in these kingdoms there were few or almost no religious who kept the rules [of their Orders], although there were many thousands of friars who lived under them’. He saw a rapid and recent reform

having taken place. REFORM

The reform of the Franciscans began in Spain about 1390, though the official name of the ‘Observance’ only appears in 1415 and the first independent Chapter of Observant Convents in 1447. The Observant Franciscans were like the contemporary Hieronymites in attaching little importance to study (most of the Franciscan writers of this age were Catalan conventuals),

but their austerity and emotional piety reached the masses beyond the reach of Guadalupe or of the reformed Benedictines of Valladolid or Montserrat. The deeply religious Queen Marfa of Aragon (d. 1458) preferred the Franciscans to Dominicans ‘who wish to have great respect shown them in public and the

first seats everywhere’. The Franciscan Observance was imitated or paralleled by contemporary movements among the Dominican and Augustinian friars. All these reform movements

were to triumph within their respective Orders under the Catholic Monarchs. Throughout most of the fifteenth century, however, in each large city the old convent of San Francisco,

large and impressive, was confronted with a new Observant house in the suburbs, usually with a dedication imitated from the contemporary Italian movement, to St. Bernardino of Siena, the Passion, or Jerusalem. Even in their appearance the Observant friars differed from the conventuals, especially by their heavy wooden-soled sandals which they sought to persuade

the papacy to prohibit other groups wearing. It would be mistaken to suppose that all conventuals were irreligious or that all Observants were holy. While individual conventuals 1 Riquer, i. 514; ii. 88-91, 104-7, 109 ff. On Ferrer: J. Martinez Ferrando, AST 26 (1953), 1-143. On Valencia: Ivars, AIA 14 (1920), 96-1043 15 (1921), 294-313. Jj. Webster, Fr. Eiximenis, la societat catalana al segle XIV (Barcelona, 1967), pp. 75 f.; Vicent Ferrer, Sermons (ENC B 3) i (Barcelona, 1932), 52. For friar-scholars see Carreras Artau, li. 447-91. Hernando de Talavera, Catélica impugnacién (Barcelona, 1961), cc. 12 51s, 37, pp. 100, 158. See also the Bibliography to this Chapter.

RELIGION 104 were called on by the city authorities for sermons, individual Observants were not infrequently denounced for their vagrancy and apostate life. However, the Observance, in its spirituality and concern for missions, had within it the best hopes for the future of the Franciscans.! POPULAR RELIGION: SOURCES OF LAY PIETY

In 1300 and 1500 the Church liturgy was an external act at which the laity were obliged to assist but which had little meaning for them. What religious education lay people received was conveyed to some extent by the Bible and other books but mainly by religious drama and processions, preaching, and membership in lay confraternities. THE BIBLE

By 1400 vernacular translations of the Bible existed in Catalan

and Castilian. Queen Yolande of Aragon (d. 1431) read the Bible in Catalan as well as the Roman de la Rose. She ordered a leading Dominican to translate the Gospels for her ‘literally’. In 1422 the Grand Master of Calatrava ordered a Jewish rabbi

to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew for him. Many translations were made for (and preserved by) similar noble patrons. Vernacular Bibles circulated more widely in cities. In Valencia in 1498 the first attempt of the Inquisition to suppress all Biblical translations met with such resistance that it had to

be abandoned. Popular editions of the Psalms and of the Passion texts from the Gospels existed.” VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

Religious literature in the vernacular increased in quantity in this age. Catechisms were written in Portuguese and Catalan. A Catalan Carthusian wrote instructions as to how Christians should prepare for frequent communion. Other works on the 1Qn the Franciscan Observants see T. de Azcona, Estudios franciscanos, 71 (1970), 273 f., 322; on the Dominicans, V. Beltran de Heredia, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 28 (1958), 221-97; on the Augustinians, M. Andrés Martin, Anthologica Annua, 4 (1956), 439-62. For Queen Maria see J. Rubid, in Estudios sobre Alfonso el Magndnimo (Barcelona, 1960), p. 167.

2 J. Vielliard, EUC 15 (1930), 30-40; M. Morreale, in Cambridge History of the

Bible, ii. 473 f.; Rubid (cited, p. 98, n. 1), pp. 322 f.; idem, HGLA iii. 834 ff; R. Garcia Carcel, Origenes de la inquisicién espaftola (Barcelona, 1976), pp. 219-22.

108 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Eucharist and on confession were printed in Barcelona before 1500. Much early Franciscan literature was translated from Italian, as were Angela of Foligno’s Book of Revelations and St. Catherine of Siena’s writings. The moving realism with which Christ’s life was depicted appealed to mystics in the peninsula. The Imitation of Christ was translated into Catalan in 1482, into Castilian in 1493. The mystical encyclopaedia, Vita Christi, of

Denis the Carthusian, was translated into Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese and was imitated by the Castilian Carthusian Juan de Padilla in his popular Retablo, published four times in Neville from 1500 to 1518. Sor Isabel de Villena, in Valencia, composed her own Lzfe of Chrst in Catalan, a mystical novel on the Passion. The Church’s prohibition of usury troubled Catalan merchants. A fourteenth-century treatise on the subject justified loans in return for pensions—one of the main ways Catalan cities paid their way was by selling pensions. This treatise anticipated by a century the official papal permission accorded loans made with this object (1420). Even after this permission these loans were denounced by Franciscan preachers.? RELIGIOUS DRAMA

Religious drama in the peninsula drew on the same sources as elsewhere, the Bible and the apocryphal writings which had

accumulated round it. There is the same concentration on Christ as a Suffering Saviour (this is the age of devotion to Holy Shrouds and to relics of the Blood of Christ), and the same taste

for the spectacular and for emotionalism in processions and representations, a taste satisfied by religious drama as well as by

| the flagellants who followed Vicent Ferrer. CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSIONS

In 1385 a Church Council in Lisbon asked the local archbishop to force the laity to go to confession at least three times a year. Even a conspicuously devout noble only received communion four times a year. However, he heard two masses every day and 1 Catechisms: Martins, Estudos, pp. 60-73, 183-9; Eiximenis, Cercapou, ed. G. E. Sansone (ENC A 83-4) (Barcelona, 1957-8). Instructions for communion: J. Vives, AST 24 (1951), 9-27; Rubid, p. 324. Translations: G. M. Bertini, Studi e Ricerche Ispaniche (Milan, 1942), pp. 28-54; Carreras Artau, i. 602 ff. Usury: Y. Roustit, EH Mod 4 (1954), 42-7; for Franciscan views, Rubié, SFG i. 11 (1955), 109-21. For Catalan ascetic literature, idem, HGLH iii. 836-42.

RELIGION 109 three on Saturdays and Sundays. King Duarte of Portugal (1433-8) spent three to five hours a day in church on great feasts and fasted three days a week in Lent. The laity could not be got to receive communion frequently. They were exhorted to escort the Host when it was born to the

sick and kneel at the bell for the elevation during mass. In 1311-12 the Feast of Corpus Christi was decreed to be observed everywhere. Processions soon followed.1 These processions were among the most dramatic acts of municipal life, a transposition

to the religious sphere of processions at royal coronations. In Lisbon or Barcelona the king normally took part, together with all the guilds and trades, from fishwives to goldsmiths. Detailed descriptions of some of these processions exist. They in-

cluded floats and dances representing the main Christian doctrines. In Barcelona in 1424 the procession began with massed trumpeters. Then came the torches, banners, and crosses

of St. Eulalia, patroness of the city, of the cathedral, and the

parish churches. Friars of the different orders, the parish clergy, and cathedral canons, were followed by ‘representations’ of the Old Testament, ‘the Creation with twelve angels singing’,

‘Hell with Lucifer above, with four devils’, a Battle of 20 Angels with 24 Devils, Paradise, the Ark, etc. Then came scenes presented by the cathedral (the Nativity cycle), preceded by prophets announcing the coming of Christ. Other churches presented the Doctors of the Church, the martyrs— including St. Sebastian ‘with Turks’, ‘St. George on horseback’ —and the city, finally, the twelve Apostles. Mimicry, singing,

music, dialogue, and scenery assisted these tableaux. ‘Living sculpture passed through the streets, popular representations of the whole of sacred history.”2 PLAYS IN CHURCHES

In 1473 a Council at Toledo lamented that theatrical representations, masquerades, and ‘monstrous figures’ were introduced 1 Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, pp. 208-11, 217 ff.; Tejada y Ramiro, vi. 78, 83 (Councils of Tarragona, 1357, 1367). 2 The description of the 1424 procession in P. J. Comes, Libre de algunes coses asanyalades (Barcelona, 1878), pp. 201-6; fuller (in Spanish) in G. Matern, Zur Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Fronleichtsnamsfeier besonders in Spanien (Minster i. W.,

1962), pp. 304-8. The last quotation from A. Duran i Sanpere, in Franciscalia (Barcelona, 1928), p. 170.

110 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 into churches at Christmas and the following days. In 1500 the

bishop of Guarda in Portugal forbade representations of ‘emperors, kings, and queens’ in church at Christmas, accompanied by minstrels who took over the pulpit during mass. Other bishops tried to preserve these religious plays while con-

trolling them. In the countryside pilgrims to remote shrines passed the night in ‘blasphemous songs and plays’, in which men were sometimes disguised as women and women as men.

In Valencia cathedral and other major churches, more decorous plays were performed with the help of elaborate scenery and aerial machinery. In the late fifteenth century a leading poet Gomez Manrique wrote a Nativity play for the nuns of his sister’s convent. POPULAR PREACHING

In a world where the duty of the clergy was to administer sacra-

ments (seldom received), not to instruct the people, the preacher’s role was essential. A new type of nomadic preacher

emerged about 1400 in the Valencian Dominican Vicent (or Vicente) Ferrer. His imitators were to include St. Bernardino of Siena and Savonarola. The aim of the missions carried out by these preachers was the re-establishment of the Christian life— symbolized by the destruction of their female penitents’ jewellery and their male penitents’ renunciation of gambling at the

end of the mission. They sought to restore peace between the feuding families which infested every town. From 1399 to 1419 Vicent Ferrer’s preaching tours took him

throughout France, Flanders, north Italy, Switzerland, Castile, and his own Crown of Aragon. Vicent’s sermons emphasized

Christ’s human nature and deliberately popularized the Gospels with the help of gestures, dialogue, familiar examples, and extreme realism, for instance in describing the martyrdom of his patron St. Vincent, grilled to death. His supposed ‘gift of tongues’ was largely due to these oratorical skills.

Vicent’s sermons have an apocalyptic note. At times they resemble a Dance of Death, as this is represented in contem1 Martins, Estudos, pp. 509, 512; G. Pereira, Documentos historicos da cidade de Evora, i (Evora, 1887), 54; W. H. Shoemaker, The Multiple Stage in Spain during the

Jifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Princeton, 1935), pp. 11-39; Gémez Manrique, NBAE xxii. 53-6.

RELIGION 111 porary art: prelates, emperors, bad friars and clerics, ladies, puffed-up scholars, all to be whirled away in an instant. In a letter of 1412 to the Avignon Pope, Vicent states, ‘the time of Antichrist and the end of the world will be soon, very soon, and very rapid’. Christ the Avenger had appeared to Vicent brandishing three darts with which He was about to strike the sinning

world. In general, Vicent’s teaching on Antichrist is not very original, but he stresses the imminence of his coming, which was confirmed by numerous private revelations. He cites ‘a revela-

tion, made to a certain religious’ (himself), that he should ‘go through the world preaching apostolically’, and other ‘revelations’ proving that ‘Antichrist was already born’. These were confirmed by ‘innumerable devils’, some of whom had already appeared ‘in the habit of hermits and religious’ and ‘suddenly vanished’, when the faithful tried to lay hold of them.

Vicent often began his Lenten mission in a new town by announcing the world was ending in fire in forty-five days. By the end of Lent this had become an exhortation to prepare for

Easter communion. One can speak here with reason of a preacher adjusting his theses to his audience. In some ways Vicent resembled other less respected ‘prophets’ of the time, who claimed to be angels or archangels. Vicent

allowed others to make this claim for him. The great French theologian, Jean Gerson, compared him to one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. The effect he had was extraordinary. In 1409 in Barcelona he addressed 7,000-8,000 persons each day, and

almost the whole city joined in the procession he organized. Scaffolding had to be set up in public squares wherever he arrived so that he could address the crowds. Everywhere he settled feuds between friars and parish clergy, rival families, and even governments, and persuaded cities to pass laws against gambling, etc. He was largely responsible for settling the succession to the throne of Aragon in 1412. The lamentable effect he had on the fortunes of the Jews in the peninsula will be discussed elsewhere. FLAGELLANTS

Wherever Vicent passed he left disciples behind him and founded confraternities. He was accompanied on his tours by a nucleus of some 150-300 devout men and women, his “Company

112 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 of Penitence’, which at times he likened to the Ark of Noah in a

world drowning in sin. ‘Enter, enter,’ he cried, ‘the Ark will soon be closed, its Captain is old; open your eyes or perish.’ The ‘Company’ confessed and received communion every Sunday and lived on alms. As the Company entered a town it did so in procession, as flagellants, crying ‘Mercy!’ and scourg-

ing themselves with whips. During Vicent’s missions these flagellants would be joined by ‘many men, women and children who whipped themselves’ as they walked in procession. —

By 1400 self-flagellation was a popular form of devotion. It was found all over western Europe—the devout Benedictines of the Congregation of Valladolid whipped each other every day in Advent and Lent—but, as an institution linked with preaching, it appears to be due to Vicent Ferrer. Canonized soon after his death, Ferrer was vastly celebrated in Castile as well as in

his native Valencia. In the 1420s Valencia and Barcelona experienced the very similar preaching of a Sicilian Observant Franciscan, Matteo of Agrigento, who used local earthquakes to stir up popular piety; his sermons prevailed on Queen Marfa of

Aragon to lengthen the skirts of her ladies-in-waiting. In the

cate.’? |

1470s the Dominican Agostf Ferrandis, who claimed he had seen

and spoken with the Virgin Mary, aroused vast devotion in Valencia at a time of wars and floods. ‘The people forgave murders, injuries, everyone prepared to confess and communi-

POPULAR RELIGION IN PRACTICE | | In 1407 a Frenchman declared he was a good Christian. He ‘frequented churches, heard the Divine Office, gave alms, confessed once a year, and received friars in his house’. External activities defined the Christian. His prayers were counted and

calculated as were the indulgences he earned by them. Lay piety imitated monasticism, at an inevitable distance. The rich 1 Riquer, ii. 197-264; R. Chabés, RABM 9 (1903), 100; S. H. Fages, Histoire de St. Vincent Ferrier, i (Paris, 1894), pp. lxxxii-lxxxiv; M.-M.Gorce, St. V. Ferrier (Paris, 1923), pp. 141-6; E. Delaruelle, :La piété populaire au Moyen Age (Turin, 1975), pp. 40-4; Martinez Ferrando (cited, p. 106, n. 1); F. Vendrell de Millas, Misceldnea de textos medievales, ii (1974), 223 ff.; J. Torres Fontes, CHE 31-2 (1960), 84-7; Jj. Martinez Ortiz, JV CHCA ii. 571-631; Villanueva, i. 212-23. Colombd4s and

Gost (cited, p. 104, n. 1), p. 102; Marqués de Santillana, NBAE xix. 526-9; J. Rubid, SFG, i. 11 (1955), 109-21; Dietari del. Capella (cited, p. 98, n. 1), pp. 402-5.

RELIGION 113 layman had a vernacular Book of Hours instead of a breviary, a

rosary instead of a psalter, a scapulary instead of a habit. His utmost individualism expressed itself in founding a hospital, a chapel, an annual mass, or in choosing the confraternity he would belong to. Seven confraternities were founded in one city, Gaceres, from 1467 to 1496. They apparently gave their members a feeling of security, through mutual assistance at time of death, which was more effective than belonging to a parish. Membership in the confraternities and office within them was open to all but the poorest citizens. The saints most venerated

were not those of the region but saints with a wider appeal, such as founders of religious orders, and the Virgin Mary. The Passion also attracted much devotion. The Confraternity of the True Cross introduced the practice of self-flagellation to Caceres. CONFRATERNITIES

A recent study of 104 confraternities in the Duero Valley reveals how many different types of confraternities existed there in the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—some founded to assist in the building of churches, others linked to different trades, a few limited to men of a superior social class or to clerics. However, from the late fourteenth century onwards, many new confraternities emerged, with exclusively devotional ends. They number almost a third of those studied. United by devotion to a particular saint, they were active in charitable work, usually supporting a hospital for the poor. In cathedral cities there were foundations to care for orphans. Many other hospitals had been founded by particular individuals, from ordinary peasants to kings and noble families. In Castile—Ledén in the Duero Valley from 1300 to 1500, 143 hospitals are documented. CULT OF THE SAINTS

Some saints favoured by the bourgeoisie, such as St. Nicholas, or by the people (St. Anne) were gradually adopted by kings

and nobles. The Marquis of Santillana addresses poems. to traditional saints as well as asking for the canonization of Vicent 2 Delaruelle, xiv. 2. 728, n. 3, 871-9. For Caceres, M.-C. Gerbet, MCV 7 (1971), 975-113. For the Duero valley, J. Sanchez Herrero, Hispania, 34 (1974), 5-51. For Barcelona see P. Bonnassie, La organizacién del trabajo en Barcelona a fines del s. XV (Barcelona, 1975), pp. 121-38. See also H. Sancho de Sopranis, Historia social de

Jerez de la Frontera, ti (Jerez, 1959), 17 f. , :

114 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Ferrer and the Franciscan Observant Pedro de Villacreces (d. 1422). His poem to St. Michael expresses the fellow-feeling of a

great Castilian knight for the leader of the angelic hosts; devotion to the Guardian Angel also spread in the Crown of Aragon, as city after city adopted it as a collective remedy against the periodic plagues. THE VIRGIN MARY

The Virgin Mary was unchallenged in the devotion she received. It is to her that both the Archpriest of Hita and Pero Lopez de Ayala turn when in prison. On his deathbed Santillana disclosed that the mysterious motto “God and Yow’ (Dios e Vos),

born on his banners for many years of foreign and civil war

referred to the Virgin, not to an earthly lady. : Shrines and images of Mary continued to work wonders as in the days of Alfonso X. Ayala writes of the ‘white image of the

Virgin, which is in Toledo, where I offered myself, with my jewels and gifts’. In 1377 the wife of the heir to the Crown of Aragon asked the monks of Montserrat to place a cord seven times the width and six times the length of their celebrated image on the altar and have seven masses said in honour of the Virgin. The princess perhaps intended to wear the cord in childbirth, as an improvement on the usual crucifix or holy medal.} The theologians, rulers, and people of the Crown of Aragon

were among the leading proponents of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, which was approved by the papacy in 1476. King Duarte of Portugal (1433-8) also defended the doctrine. By 1400 the feast was celebrated throughout the peninsula.” ABERRATIONS OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT

Whether the Black Death of 1348 and later plagues brought about an increased fascination with the supernatural, which 1 J. Vincke, AST 28 (1955), 473-8; Santillana, NBAE xix, esp. 525f., 530 f. (see Fernan Pérez de Guzman, ibid., p. 697). On guardian angels see G. Llompart, in Boletin de la Cémara Oficial de Comercio . . . de Palma, 673 (1971), 147-88. R. Lapesa, La obra literaria del Marqués de Santillana (Madrid, 1957), pp. 235-9; Ayala, Rimado del Palacio, vv. 741, 744 (BAE lvii. 448); F. Carreras y Candi, Visites de nostres Reys a Montserrat (Barcelona, 1911), pp. 25 f.; J. Rubiéd, HGLA iii. 843-6. 2 J. M®. Guix, in Misceldnea Comillas, 22 (1954), 193-326; L. Frias, ibid., p. 79;

Dom Duarte Leal Conselheiro, 35, ed. J. M. Piel (Lisbon, 1942), pp. 137-40; for

Burgos see Lépez Martinez, Burgense, 2 (1961), 277-80. , ,

¥

RELIGION 135 often took on macabre forms, or whether we are simply better informed on popular religion after 1350 than before, superstition certainly flourished in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century

Europe. The almost complete lack of systematic religious instruction, noted by all historians, no doubt lies behind this. The cult of relics, magic, witchcraft, visionaries, astrology, and alchemy are documented in the peninsula as elsewhere. Clerical abuses such as the sale of forged papal bulls conveying indul-

gences for the dead, or the trickery admitted by a contemporary behind the laughing, crying, sweating images of saints, are less striking than the survival of pagan customs in countries

officially Christianized for a thousand years. In 1385 the Portuguese authorities decreed that men and women were not to ‘tear and pluck their hair in despair over the dead, a practice which comes from the Gentiles’. But in 1466 Bohemian visitors were amazed to find that Portuguese women at funerals ‘cry aloud and tear out their hair and claw their cheeks until they bleed’. In the church they lit fires and burnt wine and bread and living calves and sheep. In 1491 at a royal funeral the same mourning was observed. In 1872 funerary banquets were still being held in cemeteries in Lisbon. The other side of the picture was complete lack of reverence for the sacred symbols of Christianity. On Christmas Day 1350

the abbot of San Cugat, near Barcelona, was murdered in his abbey church while preparing to celebrate matins. He fled to the altar and seized the cross there. Another crucifix turned miraculously towards him. His murderers, unaffected by this, pursued him and cut him down with sword and lances. This is not the only case of murder or attempted murder in a Catalan church in the fourteenth century. MAGIC

In 1385 Jodo I of Portugal decreed that ‘no person may use or make fetishes, nor summon up devils, nor cast spells, ... nor 1On forged bulls: Goni, Anthologica Annua, 2 (1954), 377-91. On mages, Hernando de Talavera, Catélica impugnacién, c. 54 (pp. 189 f.). Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, pp. 220, 274 f.; Rozmital, Travels, pp. 113 f. For 1872 see T. Braga,

O Povo Portuguez, 1 (Lisbon, 1885), 219. For Castile, Menéndez y Pelayo, Heterodoxos, ii. 428 f. For San Cugat, etc., Cortes de Calalufia, i. 2. 386-94; iii. 308.

116 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

produce divinations, ... nor cast an evil eye’. In 1410 the regents of Castile issued a similar proclamation. Many men and women use divinations, by auguries through birds, sneezes, proverbs, lots, enchantments, and gaze into water or glass or

a sword or mirror. They make charms with metal and the head ofa

dead man or beast, the palm of a child or a virgin. They gather [herbs] from mountains to make cures and to attain the temporal goods they want, which God often permits the Devil that they should accomplish.

After quoting the Old Testament at length on witchcraft, the regents decreed death for magicians. The writers of fifteenth-century Castile often denounce those who invoke the devil, consult witches, and use magical amulets.

In Galicia magic took on a native Celtic air, as in the story of the noble persuaded by a friar, ‘who was a great necromancer’,

to search for buried treasure. Entering a cave with a large armed escort he reached a great river and saw across it the treasure and ‘strange beautiful people, richly dressed, playing instruments’. While the treasure-hunters hesitated, a sudden wind blew out their torches and a poisoned air breathed on them. They were all dead within a year. Less amusing fantasies are documented from this age. About 1400 the archbishop of Lisbon stated that amulets were prepared from the Host and consecrated oil. Somewhat later, in Castile, Fray Lope Barrientos speaks of priests who ‘celebrate mass of the dead for their live enemies, so that they should die soon’. The enemies of Alvaro de Luna consulted a witch to know his future, while his supporters turned to a friar with the same question, Of the interest shown by Don Enrique de Villena (d. 1434) in magic, only his treatise on the evil eye survives. It is

a remarkable ‘repertory of contemporary superstition’, which draws on the Jewish Cabala and on living Jewish and Italian masters.

In his Fortalitium fider (1459-61), the Franciscan Alonso de Espina distinguished between duendes de casa (house poltergeists),

who moved things around but did no great harm, and incubi and succubi (he believed that ‘men are born of demons, though this is rare’). Witchcraft was real and needed to be punished very severely. The Fortalitium became a popular authority in this

RELIGION 117 matter, as it did in its anti-Judaism. Its authority was no doubt reinforced by Fray Lope Barrientos, bishop of Cuenca, who asserted the existence of covens of witches. Some were discovered in Vizcaya in 1500.} The cultivated Joan I of Aragon (1387-96) shared in extreme

form all the superstitions of his time. While heir to Aragon he imprisoned a woman on the accusation of bewitching a princess in France from the distance of Valencia. Joan’s wife believed that a mysterious stone had enabled her to become pregnant.

Joan suggested that a hermit supporting the Avignon pope should prove him to be the heir of St. Peter by entering a fire. He collected books on magic and magic rings (to preserve him

from being bewitched). Unicorns’ horns were particularly precious. Joan sent as far as Cyprus to get them. They were almost on the level of a saint’s relics. As an antidote to poison they were also sought by other rulers. Joan sent one to the pope. He tried them out by poisoning dogs and condemned criminals,

and applying the horn, apparently successfully. He also believed that a stone known as serpent’s tongue made those wearing it speak the truth. Juan II of Castile (1406-54) displays the same interest in magic.” VISIONARIES

Visionaries and false prophets abounded. Joan I ridiculed ‘prophecies’ when they displeased him, but when he heard of a woman who had visions he sent for her. The practical reforming

Franciscan Eiximenis joined with the Dominican Inquisitor Eymerich in despising the beguine (supposedly heretical) type of visionary, but Eiximenis himself produced prophecies

of the future conquests of the Crown of Aragon, which included Islamic Spain, Africa, Egypt, and Mecca. Other ‘prophecies’ predicted the victory of Enrique II of Trastamara 1 Oliveira Marques, p. 227; CDIHE xix. 181-3; Lopez Ferreiro, Galicia, p. 145, n. 19; Menéndez y Pelayo, Antologia, 11. 171; Heterodoxos, 11. 433-560; E. de Villena, ed. J. Soler, Revue hispanique, 41 (1917), 182-97; Fernan Pérez de Guzman, Confesién rimada, vv. 4-6 (NBAE xix. 630); Juan de Mena, Laberinto, vv. 134, 238 ff. (ibid., pp. 166, 176). On Alonso de Espina see A. Lopez, AZA 25 (1926), 368-70.

For sixteenth-century witches in Navarre see F. Idoate, Hispania Sacra, 4 (1951), 193-218; other information in P. E. Russell, in Studia Philologica, Homenaje ofrecido a Damaso Alonso, iii (Madrid, 1963), 337-54. 2 J. M®. Roca, Johan I d’Aragé (Barcelona, 1929), pp. 363-415.

118 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

Catalonia.! | ASTROLOGY |

over Pedro I of Castile, and, later, of Juan II of Aragon over

Many apparently devout Christians were obsessed. with the dominance of man by fortune and fate. King Fernando of Portugal saw Enrique II of Castile owing his triumphs to his

birth under a lucky planet. The wheel of fortune was engraved on

the tomb of the unfortunate Dofia Ines de Castro at Alcobaga.

In the 1460s the Constable D. Pedro of Portugal, raised to the throne of Catalonia, had this wheel embroidered on his robes and tapestries. He saw himself as engaged in a ceaseless struggle with fortune. The Constable’s uncle, Prince Henry the

Navigator, also saw his career as deeply influenced by the Stars.

For Exximenis astrology should not be used to discover questions depending on human will but, ‘in natural questions, such

as which medicine to take or when to prune or plant a tree... man can, without sin, follow the conjunctions of the planets’. Rome is the capital of Christendom partly because she is under the sign of Leo which nourishes brave men. The Virgin Mary was born ‘in the 21st grade of the sign of Virgo, in demonstration of her most excellent Virginity’. A fly of pure gold, made on Mercury’s day (Wednesday), will drive out other flies.” Pere III of Aragon (1336-87), though unlike his heir, Joan I, disbelieving in black magic, always observed auguries before he

undertook anything, whether planting Greek vines, or laying the first stone of an addition to his palace in Barcelona. Court astrologers (Jewish as well as Christian) decided whether or not a day was ‘fortunate’ for a new marriage. Pere believed that astrology could aid him to ‘be fortunate and escape celestial

misfortune’. Joan would not travel without his astrolabes brought from Avignon and Majorca. Yet both kings fasted, 1 P, Bohigas, BBC 8 (1928-32), 277 f.; 6 (1920-2), 24-49; Franciscalia (Barcelona, 1928), pp. 28-38; H. Finke, SFG i. 1 (1928), 185, n. 13; J. Sanchis Sivera, AST 11 (1935), 23-35; A. M. de Barcelona, Estudis Franciscans, 11-15 (1913-15). 2 R. Lapesa, De la Edad Media a nuestros dias (Madrid, 1967), pp. 113-22; idem

46 f. oe

(cited, p. 114, n. 1), p. 33; F. Lopes, Crénica de D. Fernando, 114, ed. Arnaut (Oporto, 1966), p. 322; Rubid, Vida, p. 265; P. E. Russell, Prince Henry the Navigator

(London, 1960), p. 19; Eiximenis, cited J. Torras y Bages, La Tradicié Catalana, ne can. (Vich, 1906), pp. 389, 394 f., 408, 420; see also A. Ivars, AIA 20 (1923),

RELIGION 119 received the sacraments, and sought the prayers of celebrated

nuns.

ALCHEMY

Alchemy vied with astrology (with which it was closely linked)

in popular favour. Any alchemist who appeared in Joan I’s kingdom was summoned to court. A bishop who was an alchemist was offered the highest dignity in the land provided he could demonstrate his success. Joan’s contemporary Eiximenis considered alchemy possible but most alchemists common cheats. This view was not general. In the late fifteenth century the powerful Archbishop Carrillo of Toledo ‘spent much of his life and revenues in the art of alchemy’.? MILITANT CHRISTIANITY

In a Portuguese account of the crucial Battle of the Salado (1340) against the Bani Marin, the Christian troops, fearing defeat, ask Christ what was the use of his Incarnation, ‘since today you fail Christendom’. The Christians are comforted by

the appearance of a relic of the True Cross, whose bearers charge into the thick of the fray. Christ is seen here as a Warrior King who is obliged to prove his divinity by victory in battle as he proved it to Constantine and Clovis. In 1356 Pere III of Aragon ordered mass in honour of St. George, the greatest military martyr, to be sung daily to obtain victory over Castile. Writing about 1440 Gutierre Diez de Games cites as examples

of ‘knights who fought for the faith of God’ (among others) Joshua, Daniel, Charlemagne, Godefroid de Bouillon, the Cid. “They all saved their souls fighting against the Moors.’ A Christian knight should not believe astrologers, alchemists, or vision-

aries. He should not try to dispute over the faith but if he 1s challenged ‘to fight in single combat against whoever says the Holy Catholic Faith is not [true], he is obliged to do so’.® 1 For Pere, J. M®. Madurell y Marimén, AST 13 (1937-40), 92; for Joan, Roca, Johan I; A. Lépez de Meneses, Sefarad, 14 (1954), 99-115, 265-93. On Villena’s astrology see J. M®. Millds Vallicrosa, RFE 27 (1943), 1-29. 2 J. Coroleu, Documents historichs (Barcelona, 1889), pp. 132 f.; Eiximenis, Regiment, 23, pp. 133-7. On Carrillo, Hernando del Pulgar, Claros Varones de Castilla, 20, ed. Tate, p. 63. 8 Livros de Linhagens (Portugaliae Mon. Hist., Scriptores, i. 187); Vincke, Documenta,

pp. 425 f.; A. Canellas Lépez, in 7. Zurita, cuadernos de historia, 19-20 (1966-7), 7-23. Games, El Victorial, ed. Carriazo (Madrid, 1940), pp. 35 f., 60, 64-9.

120 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350 -1500 The Military Orders, originally fighting monks, established to combat Islam in the East or in Spain, were becoming ever more secularized. They fought Islam when they could, but also served Castile against Aragon, Aragon against Castile. In the fifteenth century they were among the main factors in Castilian power politics. The Order of Santiago was the leading Castilian Order. This was the reason that the Infante Enrique of Aragon and Alvaro de Luna sought the post of Master. The Master had great powers of patronage and an international position. During the conquest of Granada he could muster 1,760 armed horse in one year. The Order of Calatrava prospered by exploiting the

mines of Almadén. By 1500 its riches approached those of Santiago. The Order of Alcantara was third in importance, but in 1451 its Master, though celibate by his vows, could leave vast possessions among fourteen descendants by various mistresses—

he secured a papal bull to permit this. It is not surprising that the Catholic Monarchs obtained from the pope permanent

royal control of the Orders. The most important Military Order in the Crown of Aragon was the Hospital. It was as secularized as the Castilian Orders, but with concerns in the

eastern Mediterranean which they lacked.} | PILGRIMAGE

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries pilgrimage continued to be one of the main manifestations of Christian piety. The motives of individual pilgrims were no doubt mixed—tourism and, on occasion, diplomacy and trade, could be combined with religious feeling—but the main object remained the accomp-

lishment of a vow, a penance. | = Studies of the pilgrims who passed through the Crown of Aragon show some variations. Before the Crown turned against the Roman pope in the Great Schism many members of Third Orders travelled to Rome—whereas after 1387 they could not do this. Santiago was still by far the most popular shrine in the peninsula, though Guadalupe attracted the Portuguese especi1M. A. Ladero Quesada, Hispania, 30 (1970), 637-62. For Alcantara see E. Hernandez-Pacheco, El solar en la historia hispana (Madrid, 1952), pp. 355-93 E. Cabrera Mujfioz, in Actas de las I Fornadas de metodologta aplicada de las ctencias

histéricas, ti (Santiago, 1975), 247-53.. For some Hospitallers in Aragon, see

Riquer, i. 636 ff.; idem, BRABL 29 (1961-2), 205-18. .

RELIGION 121 ally and Montserrat a wider clientele. Santiago was visited by Italians, French, Flemish, Germans, Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, an occasional Greek hermit, some Ethiopians, and a bishop from Armenia.

‘In the fifteenth century a new type of knightly pilgrim appears, for whom pilgrimage was a pretext to travel, visit foreign courts and display his valour in a tourney.’ In 1387 some Germans travelled through Aragon, ‘for the pilgrimage and to see the local customs’, in 1415 a Grand Marshal of Hungary, ‘to visit various shrines and to see the world’. In 1399 a French squire going to Santiago wished to take in Valencia and even Granada on the way. Some of these ‘pilgrims’ travelled with large armed escorts, forming a contrast to the poor, on foot.

In its years of Jubilee (every eleven years and sometimes more often) the crowds at Santiago were such that altars had to

be improvised all over the cathedral. Saints and kings were among the pilgrims. In 1434 the English Crown granted permission for ships carrying 3,110 pilgrims by sea from England. In 1492 the tribute paid the church of Santiago was extended to

the newly conquered kingdom of Granada. In i501 the Catholic Monarchs began to build their great Hospital at Santiago to house the flood of pilgrims.’

Greater care seems to have been given to pilgrims to Montserrat. A brother was deputed to welcome them. The monks were to instruct the pilgrims in Christian doctrine, remind them of the promise to renounce the Devil made for them in baptism, of the imminent danger of death, and of the example of Christ’s humility. They were to recommend mental prayer during the night vigil in church. This care for pilgrims was presumably

intensified under the reforming rule of Garcia Jiménez de Cisneros (1494-1510), when a number of new miracles were reported by pilgrims as due to the intercession of Our Lady of Montserrat. In 1508 the New World appeared at Montserrat; 1 J. Vielliard, Homenatge a A. Rubié it Lluch, ii (Barcelona, 1936), 265~300; idem, Meélanges Ecole frangaise de Rome, 50 (1933), 182-93; A. Altisent, L’Almoina Reial a la Cort de Pere el Ceremoniés (Poblet, 1969), pp. xlvi ff.; Gotti, Hispania Sacra, 24 (1971), “8 Vazquez de Parga et al., Las Peregrinaciones a Santiago de Compostela, 1 (Madrid, 1948), 85, 99 (the quotations from p. 89); iii. 34; Bibliotheque de l’école des chartes, 97 (1936), 354 (for 1415); Lépez Ferreiro, Historia, vii. 150-66, 341, 402-28.

|

122 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 the crew of a ship saved from wreck while returning from the

West Indies arrived to give thanks. :

Pilgrims to the East had the same mixed motives as those to Santiago. Alfonso Mudarra set out in 1411 for Palestine by a

circuitous route via Poland and Lithuania. His motives are defined as “for his salvation and to acquire honour’. Catalans on

their way to Jerusalem could be asked to purchase at Alexandria unicorns’ horns, crocodile-skins, relics, and falcons.

Pilgrims reaching the holy places were as fascinated with sacred detail as earlier travellers. Clavijo, in Constantinople in 1403 on a diplomatic mission, saw a morsel of bread about three fingers across ‘which Christ gave Judas at the Last Supper and

he could not swallow’. In the 1430s Pero Tafur writes, of Jerusalem, ‘close by is the elder tree where Judas hanged himself’, but, though he believed all the stories he was told of India,

Tafur was sceptical about some traditions connected with statues at Constantinople.’

Criticism of pilgrimages goes back at least to the eighth century. In the fifteenth Vicent Ferrer denounced them, complaining that at times over 100 pilgrims, religious, priests, men

and women would sleep all huddled together, in darkness. ‘Many women went to Rome who returned whores.’ In 1511 the diocesan synod of Burgos denounced parish pilgrimages to near-by shrines, which produced pitched battles between the local people and another village, moving en bloc. Pilgrims were forbidden to move with ‘arms, hurdy-gurdies or drums’.

Foreign pilgrims to Santiago could be disappointed. The German knight Arnold von Harff, remarked in 1499, ‘Spain is an evil country.’ Christianity was as mocked there as in Turkey.

Von Harff suspected St. James was not buried at Santiago. The clergy there would not show him the body, telling him that any doubter ‘would immediately become mad like a mad dog’.® 1 Vielliard, Homenatge, pp. 276 f.; Albareda (cited, p. 104, n. 1). pp. 263 ff; idem, Studia Monastica, 15 (1973), 57-63; Colombds, Un reformador, pp. 333-8.

* Vielliard, pp. 269 f., 279 f.; Rubiéd, Vida, pp. 269 f.; Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane, trans. Le Strange (London, 1928), p. 81; Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, trans. Letts (London, 1926), pp. 57, 84-95, 140, 143. 7 R. Chabas, RABM g (1903), 88 f.; Lépez Martinez, Burgense, 7 (1966), 402; The Pilgrimage of A. von Harff, trans. Letts (London, 1946), pp. 268-77. See Antoine de Lalaing (in 1501), in Viajes, i. 450 f., and Rozmital, Travels, (1465-7), pp. 82,

etc. oo

RELIGION 123 GOOD WORKS

Fernan Pérez de Guzman tells us that great things were possible, given riches—‘magnificent largesse in churches and

hospitals, succour to the poor, freeing prisoners, providing dowries to poor girls of noble blood’. These great things were, increasingly, the province of laymen. Juan I and Enrique III of Castile left legacies ‘to clothe 600 poor and to feed them for the nine days the funeral rites lasted’. More effectively, Pere IIT

of Catalonia~Aragon maintained a permanent almsgiver to feed and clothe the destitute who passed through his court. An exceptional Castilian noble, the Count of Haro, had founded, by 1431, a type of bank to provide interest-free loans on security (this foundation was thirty years earlier than the earliest institution of this type documented outside Spain, in Italy). It was not only kings and great nobles who were active in this way. The Church continued its traditional mission of caring for the poor, but this work was now largely entrusted to parochial organiza~-

tions and to confraternities run by laymen rather than to monks as in the past. We have already seen the large number of new hospitals founded from 1300 onwards in the Duero Valley. The same phenomenon is visible in Cérdoba (twenty-four new

hospitals from 1300 to 1500), Seville, Burgos, Santiago, Barcelona, and elsewhere. In general, these new hospitals were controlled by lay authorities, the more important by the local municipality.1 MISSIONS

The discovery of the Canaries in the fourteenth century led to a

series of Christian expeditions. Among these Majorcan ships predominated. In 1351 the bishopric of Telde was founded in Great Canary. Its bishops were friars dependent on the Crown of Aragon. The actual missionaries were Catalan clerics and Majorcan hermits. The mission foundered because of slaveraids by other Christians. Fifteenth-century Portuguese and 1 Fernan Pérez de Guzman, in NBAE xix. 613 f. I draw here on the volumes by various authors entitled A pobreza e a assisténcia aos pobres na Peninsula Ibérica durante a

Idade Média (Lisbon, 1973). See especially ii. 889—918, on Castile in general; i. 455-81, on Pere ITT; ii. 547~—74, on the Count of Haro; a series of studies of Barcelona parochial organizations (i. 60-71, 157-218, i. 783-811); and the study of the municipality of Murcia (ii. 839-71). For the Duero Valley see above, p. 113 and

n. I.

124, THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Castilian theologians took the view that idolatry and polygamy deprived men of all rights. The lands of ‘infidels’ were vacant. Any prince had the right to conquer them. Hence the papal bull

of 1436 giving Portugal dominion over the lands conquered from the ‘pagans’ of the Saharan coast and Guinea, who could be enslaved. There were no Portuguese missions in Africa until about 1490. In the Canaries a diocese existed in Lanzarote from 1404. In 1434 the pope proclaimed the freedom of the islands’ inhabitants, but the renewed attempts to conquer the Canaries (from the 1470s) led to the enslavement of all those who resisted.! HERETICS

Christian heretics (apart from the nominal conversos from Judaism, who will be discussed elsewhere), continued to bulk small in the peninsula. Even witches were not persecuted with the brio of the sixteenth century. In 1425-45 some Observant Franciscans, led by Alfonso de Mella, attained a considerable

following among the women around Durango, in Vizcaya. They were accused of preaching against marriage; the local women abandoned their families to follow them. This group (condemned and scattered) resembled other mystically erotic cults of the time, particularly the ‘Brotherhood of the Free Spirit’, known in Italy and Aragon. Fray Alfonso, in a letter from Granada, where he had fled, told Juan IT that he was per-

secuted for advocating a freer interpretation of the Bible. Merely on the strength of this statement, it seems risky to compare him to Wyclif or Huss. He claimed he had fled to Islam because Muslims were more ‘Catholic and faithful’ in religion than Christians. It is possible that there is a connection between the heresy of Durango and the rising against the conversos in Toledo in 1449. It is also likely that the new Inquisition, first introduced into Castile—and revived in the Crown of Aragon— in the 1480s, detected a number of movements such as Jiluminism which had hidden roots going back at least a century.” In 1 J. Vincke, Hispania Sacra, 12 (1959), 193-207; A. Rumeu de Armas, El Obispado de Telde (Madrid, 1960); in Revista de Indias, 27 (1967), 285-311; in CH 1 (1967), 61-103. F. Fernandez Serrano, Anuario de estudtos atlanticos, 16 (1970), 287—

2D. Cabanelas, Al-Andalus, 15 (1950), 233-50; J. B. Avalle-Arce, Filologia, 8 (1962), 15-21; idem, in Homenaje a Rodriguez Mojftino, i (Madrid, 1966), 39-55; J.

RELIGION 125 1350 Pere III of Catalonia-Aragon informed Pope Innocent VI that heretics existed in his (as in other) realms, holding views opposed to papal rule and affirming the existence of carnal and spiritual churches, to the latter of which they themselves claimed to belong. Was Pere merely attempting to frighten Innocent, or was there some basis for his statement?! M®. Pou y Marti, Vistonarios, beguinos y fraticelos catalanes (Vich, 1930), pp. 264-88.

For Toledo in 1449 see below, Ch. IV, p. 154, n. 2. Ch. F. Fraker, Jr., Hispanic Review, 33 (1965), 97-117, points to connections between early fifteenth-century poets and sixteenth-century ideas. For Catalonia from 1350 onwards see E. Fort i Cogul, Catalunya e PInquisicié (Barcelona, 1973), pp. 84—119. 1 L. d’Arienzo, Carte reali diplomatiche di Pietro IV (Padua, 1970), p. 195. In 1359

Pere issued a royal licence to inquire into heretics fleeing from Provence to Catalonia (these were conu.rsos from Judaism), CDIACA xxvii. 378-83. For instances of

harsh punishment of sodomy (and of accusations of sodomy used for political purposes) see J. Miret y Sans, Sempre han tingut béch les oques, i. 47-57.

IV The Breakdown of Convivencia GRANADA

FTER the defeat of the Bani Marin in the 1340s North A African Islam ceased to constitute a threat to the Christians of the Iberian peninsula. The emirate of Granada remained in existence and occasional royal ‘crusades’ were Jaunched against it, but war or peace with Granada was only a

central concern for Andalusia. ‘War was almost never the struggle of one people with another.’ It was a matter of local sieges and skirmishes, a constant state of ‘semi-belligerence’, in which some sections of the frontier might enjoy relative peace while others were involved in counter-raiding. Granada could

often find Christian allies in the internal struggles of Castile. From 1344 to 1406 conflicts between Castile and Granada were on a very minor scale and matters were hardly changed by the brief triumph of Fernando de Antequera, who received no more than expressions of sympathy from the Crown of Aragon. In the mid-fifteenth century Alonso Fajardo, the victor of a battle against Granada, could tell Enrique IV, ‘You should not, Lord, press me so hard, for you know that I could give the castles I hold to the Moors and be a vassal of the king of Granada and live as a Christian there as others do.’ In 1447-8 forces from Granada took part on both sides in the civil war in Murcia. There existed ‘Judges between Christians and Moors’, established by both sides, who endeavoured to settle frontier quarrels by peaceful means. Trade was secured by peace-treaties. In these circumstances there was no ground for general Christian hostility towards Granada. Nor did the free Muslims subject to Christian rule (the Mudejars) constitute, except in a few areas, a challenge to Christian society. In general they were peasants who did not trouble the city middle class, the urban proletariat, or the friars, the three main groups responsible for the increas-

ingly violent anti-Judaism of the fourteenth and fifteenth

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 127

centuries, for the attacks on Jews—notably the pogroms of 1391— and later on conversos from Judaism.

‘Moors’ might occasionally be equated in popular speech with devils or in legend with sorcerers but there was no general anti-Muslim feeling to compare with that against the Jews. A Mushm rico ome could, by baptism, become a Christian noble on a level with any other. In about 1440 a Castilian knight saw the Arabs of North Africa as ‘very much /idalgos: they come from the lineage of those who were lords of Spain’. In the Cancionero de

Baena a poet compares the rapid justice of Islamic lands with the protracted legislation of Christian. In contrast, another poet may praise a generous converso but he adds that he acted ‘against the nature of Jewry’ .1

The picture of the Muslims of Granada in the romances fron-

tertzos, the popular ballads inspired by the frontier, is highly romanticized. The romances, though written by Castilians, often see the struggle from the ‘Moorish’ point of view. The ‘Moors’ are presented as knights on a level with Christians. They fight as equals and meet as friends over a chess game. “The

brilliantly exotic character of Muslim culture’ is perhaps most clearly expressed in ‘Abenamar, Abenamar’, a romance inspired by Juan IT’s expedition to Granada in 1431. The king is dazzled by the distant view of the high glittering towers of the Alhambra.

Juan II is made to propose marriage to the city, offering in dowry Cordoba and Seville. The poem ends with the payment of tribute in gold, the way this and most other Castilian ‘crusades’ against Granada did end.? iJ. de Mata Carriazo, Al-Andalus, 13 (1948), 35-96, at 92. See also F. Cascales, Discursos histéricos de la Ciudad de Murcia, 3rd edn. (Murcia, 1874), pp. 257, 260; E. Mitre Fernandez, Hispania, 32 (1972), 77-122; idem, Cuadernos de estudios medievales, 2-3 (1974-5), 313-20. A. Giménez Soler, La Corona de Aragén_y Granada (Barcelona, 1908), pp. 167-70; J. Torres Fontes, MEAH 10 (1961), 88-105; idem, Al-Andalus, 27 (1962), 107 ff. L. Sudrez Fernandez, Nobleza y Monarquia (Valladolid, 1975), p. 178; for the Muslim sorcerers see Rui de Pina (cited below, p. 135, n. 1). Livros de Linhagens (Portugaliae Mon. Hist., Scriptores, 1. 33). Games, El Victorial, 48, ed.

Carriazo, p. 125. Cancionero de Baena, ed. Azdceta, nos. 340, 511 f. (ii. 764, iii. 1005). See the earlier Muntaner, Crdnica, c. 8. * Menéndez Pelayo, Antologta, viii. 205-7, 216, 227-30; R. Menéndez Pidal, Romancero Hispdénico, ii (Madrid, 1953), 10 f. On ‘Abenamar’ see also E. Buceta, RFE 6 (1919), 57-9-

128 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 MUDEJARS

We know of Mudejar aljamas (communities) in at least 120 places in Castile before the conquest of Granada, but in only seven did they number more than a hundred households. Mudejars were far more numerous in the Crown of Aragon, particul-

arly Aragon proper and Valencia. TROOPS

In 1337 the young Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon (aged seventeen) scandalized the pope by being served at table by Muslim

slaves, who also acted as his instructors in archery, a skill in which Muslims had long been famed. Muslim mercenary troops from Granada appear on both sides of the war between Aragon and Castile in 1356-66. In 1388 Aragon allowed a captain to recruit ‘fifty men-at-arms and ten prostitutes, for their service, to make war on the infidels’, in the pay of the (infidel) King of Fez. Juan I of Castile employed many Mudejars from Murcia in his campaign in Portugal in 1385. Normally Mudejar troops were not used against Granada.’ ARTISANS

Most Mudejars were peasants, cultivating the soil, of Aragon, Valencia, and Murcia, especially. However, there were also many Mudejar artisans. In the 1390s they included carpenters, smiths, seamen, and shipbuilders, who knew the ports of the Balearics, Valencia, and Catalonia. In Saragossa there were

Mudejar builders, carpenters, blacksmiths, and craftsmen manufacturing arms. Mudejar boatmen monopolized the river traffic down the Ebro. In Murcia Mudejars were gardeners, shepherds, peasants,

and workers in iron, pottery, bookbinding, and building. In Seville Mudejar master-builders took a considerable share in the fortification of the city in 1384-92. The general repute of 1F¥. Fernandez y Gonzalez, Estado social y polttico de los Mudéjares de Castilla

(Madrid, 1866), p. 221; M. A. Ladero Quesada, AEM 8 (1972-3), 481-90; see also the Bibliography to this Chapter. 2F. J. Miquel Rosell, Regesta de Letras pontificias del Archivo de la Corona de Aragén

(Madrid, 1948), p. 289; Pero Lépez de Ayala, Crénica de Pedro I (BAE \xvi. 532); Zurita, Anales, ix. 43; CDIACA vi. 395 f.; Cascales, Discursos histéricos, p. 185.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 129 Mudejar workmen is expressed in a story of 1345. The Prior of Uclés, of the Order of Santiago, wished to construct a church to the Virgin. ‘He prayed to her to help him to make as honourable a dwelling for her as he could. Then he went to Uclés and

brought back Moorish master [builders] and other good Christian workmen and made the church of stone. He prayed to

God and St. Mary to take him to glory. He died on the third

day.’ CASTILE: LEGISLATION ON THE MUDEJARS

The legislation of the Castilian Cortes on the religious minorities was largely dictated by theologians and lawyers. Primarily directed against the Jews, it struck inevitably at the Mudejars

also. The Crown normally abrogated these laws or allowed extensive dispensations. Enrique II, for instance, granted the Mudejars formal freedom to acquire land (despite the Cortes of 1295). The Mudejars’ tribute continued to be collected by their own officials and cases between them to be judged by their own

judges. Along the frontier with Granada, in Murcia, Enrique III (1390-1406) continued to protect the Mudejar population and to grant them privileges in the hope of inducing them to settle deserted regions. In 1408, Enrique’s widow, the devout Queen Catalina, regent

for her son Juan IJ, ordered Mudejars to wear a distinctive sign, a blue moon on their clothes. In 1412 the queen forbade anyone to call any Jew or Mudejar ‘Don’, under penalty of 100 blows each time. Neither group was allowed to leave its place of residence. Nor were Jewish or Mudejar artisans permitted to work for or trade with Christians. They were to live in walled

ghettos, at the mercy of Christian judges—their own were removed. This virtual attempt to suppress the religious minori-

ties (due, as we shall see, to the influence of the Dominican Vicent Ferrer) was not applied by the queen’s co-regent, Fernando I of Aragon, and lasted only until the queen’s death. In 1418 tolerance returned. The Muslim office of Alcalde Mayor appears, as a superior judge over all Mudejars in Castile.’ 1 J. Vincke, SFG i. 25 (1970), 93-5; J. Cabezudo Astrain, MEAH 5 (1956), 10517; J. Torres Fontes, AHDE 32 (1962), 144-56. R. Carande, AHDE 2 (1925), 394

ff.; Bullarium ordinis S. Iacobi de Spatha (Madrid, 1719), pp. 310 f. 2 Fernandea, pp. 397-405; Torres Fontes, loc. cit.; E. Mitre Fernandez, MA 78 (1972), 516 f.

130 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 MUDEJARS IN ARAGON

The Crown of Aragon continued unchanged its policy of protecting Mudejars against both feudal lords and royal officials.

| The relations of Mudejars in Aragon proper with Christians were generally pacific. They ruled themselves, received many royal privileges, and were unrestricted as to trade and profes-

sions. They frequently had recourse to Christian arbiters, especially to the archbishop of Saragossa. The skill of Mudejars as agriculturalists explains the competition between Crown and feudal lords to favour and attract them to their lands.

VALENCIA | The situation in Valencia was very different. Whereas in Aragon most Mudejars knew little or no Arabic, in Valencia

Arabic was their normal language and romance was little spoken. This indication of the different levels of assimilation is borne out by the slight level of emigration to Islamic countries from Aragon in the mid-fourteenth century, compared with the high percentage of Valencian Mudejars who tried to emigrate,

legally or illegally. During the war of 1356-66 only one Aragonese Mudejar aljama defected to Castile, whereas many Valencian aljamas did so and it was hard to persuade them to return. The war with Castile dealt a very severe blow to the Mudejars of both Aragon and Valencia. It seems that they never recovered economically. In 1315 they only paid (with the Jews) 12 per cent of the taxes from Valencia. After the war many taxes were remitted. But the proportion of the taxes they owed which they could in fact pay continued to decline from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. By the second half of that century the major Mudejar aljamas had almost ceased to pay

taxes at all. |

In 1403 in Valencia the Crown forbade public manifestations of the Islamic religion, such as calling to prayer from minarets. That this law was not obeyed is clear from the order of 1477 to

destroy minarets (an order soon prorogued). In 1455 the 1F. Macho y Ortega, in Memorias de la Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, i (Zaragoza, 1923), 139-319; tdem, Revista de ciencias Furtdicas y Sociales, 5 (1922), 143-60, 444-04.

For Nuez (near Saragossa) in 1446 see P. Longas, Al-Andalus, 28 (1963), 431-43.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 131

Moreria in Valencia was attacked and sacked by a Christian mob. ‘The main cause of this onslaught may have been the lack

of contact between Christians and Muslims, which rendered the latter odious. Most of the rioters were artisans. The Crown

tried hard to punish those responsible and—against the hostility of the Christian population—to reconstruct the

Moreria. The attitude of the smaller town of Castellon de la Plana was different. Here Mudejar settlers were regarded as desirable. They were painfully sought after from 1404 to 1439,

when twenty families were settled there. A Brotherhood (Hermandad) existed between the Muslims and Christians of Murcia and Orihuela. MUDEJARS’ INTELLECTUAL LIFE

From 1300 onwards the Mudejars had lacked intellectual lead-

ership. Compared with the Jews they had virtually no upper class. ‘The mention of a Mudejar doctor is unusual. There were no Mudejar rent-collectors in Murcia after 1400. In the Crown

of Aragon the most important Mudejars were prosperous

merchants and a few ‘civil servants’ in a number of different towns, who sometimes served as envoys to Granada. From North Africa the émigré Malikite jurists looked down on the Mudejars as infidels. All convivencia with Christians was pro-

hibited. The Mudejars who chose to remain under Christian rule (many left Valencia every year for Islamic lands) had, however, to adjust to the situation. A legal opinion was issued by an alfaqut of Avila and endorsed by those of other cities. In 1462 Isa de Yabir of Segovia, possibly one of the Mudejar Alcaldes Mayores, issued his Breviario, a compendium of the law of Islam, in Castilian. He explained that this was necessary because of the

decline of Arabic. Isa had translated the Koran into Castilian in 1456 for Juan de Segovia. A Muhammad of Tortosa appears

in the Cancionero de Baena taking part in a discussion of 1 John Boswell, The Royal Treasure, Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the fourteenth century (Yale University Press, 1977). For taxes see W. Kichler, SFG

1. 24 (1968), 234-56. Fernandez, p. 273; for 1477, Dietari del Capella d’Anfos el Magnanim, ed. J. Sanchis (Valencia, 1932), p. 416. M. Gual Camarena, IV CHCA 1. 467-94. On Castellén: A. Garcia Sanz, BSCC 28 (1952), 94-114. P. Bellot, Anales de Orihuela, ed. J. Torres Fontes, ii (Orihuela, 1956), 191. The fragmentary evidence

for the (very few) Mudejars resident in Barcelona in 1333-1431 and for those emigrating from there in this century is collected by D. Romano, Al-Andalus, 41 (1976), 49-85.

132 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 pre-destination, and as the doctor of the Admiral of Castile. Increasingly Mudejars wrote in Castilian. In 1402 the acts of a Mudejar confraternity were already dated by the Christian era, not by the Hegira.! JEWS: BEFORE THE DELUGE

In 1357 a new synagogue was opened in Toledo by the then powerful minister of Pedro I, Samuel ha-Levi. The synagogue survives (El Transito). Its inscriptions hail ha-Levi: ‘Since the exile no other like him has arisen in Israel... . He appears before kings, standing firm in the breach . . . The design of this temple is like the plan which Bezaleel executed . . . Itis God’s House, as Bethel.’

In 1422 Rabbi Moses Arragel of Guadalajara lamented the past glories of Castilian Jewry: ‘We were the crown and diadem of the whole Hebrew emigration, in /idalgos, riches, learning, liberty.” The ex-rabbi and Christian convert Pablo de Santa Marfa agreed with this view. Writing in 1432 he remarked: The Jews [before 1391] had great estates, exercising public office among Christians and being preferred in many things to them. Even faithful [Christians] had them in great reverence and fear .. . The Jews took occasion from this to persist in their errors, saying that the prophecy of Jacob: “The sceptre shall not be removed from Judah’ [Genesis 49] was verified in that the Jews in Spain had obtained the sceptre of dominion.?

The pride of the Spanish Jews in their lineage appears in Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona (d. 1308). It was still alive in Pablo de Santa Marifa’s son and successor as bishop of Burgos, Alonso de Cartagena (d. 1456), who is made by a contemporary to remark, ‘Do not suppose you confuse me by calling the Hebrews my ancestors. They are that certainly and I delight in it, for if antiquity confers nobility, who goes so far back? If 1 Al-Wansarisi, ed. H. Monés, Revista del Instituto Egipcio de estudios tslémicos de

Madrid, 5 (1957), 273-5; Fernandez, pp. 235 f., 393-7; MHE v (1853), 248; D. Cabanelas Rodriguez, Juan de Segovia y el problema isldmico (Madrid, 1952), pp. 145-533 Cancionero de Baena, no. 522 (iii. 1038 ff.). See below, p. 163 and n. 1 2F. Cantera and J. M®. Millds, Las inscripciones hebraicas de Espaiia (Madrid, 1956), pp. 337 £.; Biblia de Mosé Arragel de Guadalfajara, ed. A. Paz y Melia (Madrid, 1920), i. 13; Paulus de Sancta Maria, Scrutinium scripturarum II. vi. 10 (Burgos, 1591), P. 523.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 133 virtue who so near? Or if, as in Spain, riches is nobility, who so

rich in their time?!

CASTILE: JEWISH INFLUENCE

Throughout the fourteenth century Jewish financiers continued to play a leading role in Castile. In the 1330s the jealousy of a Christian courtier caused the overthrow of two leading Jews, but they were replaced by others. In 1348 Alfonso XI forbade

Jews to lend money at interest. The privileges he offered in return would not have compensated for the removal of Jewish influence at court. The law was revoked in 1351. Alvaro Peldez, bishop of Silves in Portugal, complained that

Alfonso XI’s courtiers married Jewish and Muslim women. The courtiers proclaimed that salvation was possible through any religion. Alvaro declared: “The perfidious Jews devour the bodies and possessions of the kings of Spain.’ Jewish influence

increased under Pedro I (1350-69). Pablo de Santa Maria saw the decline beginning with the execution of Samuel ha-Levi (in 1360-1), a few years after the opening of his new synagogue, but Pedro employed other Jews after this.?

The Jews were particularly strong in Andalusia. The taxadministration of Seville was handled by Jews, who could still buy large landed estates round the city. The spark that ignited

the massacres of 1391 came from Seville, where Jews were already attacked in 1354. The Castilian Jews in general could point to the preference shown by Christians for Jewish doctors, officials, and craftsmen. Leading Jews adopted a type of entail

practised by Castilian nobles so as to keep their estates undivided. Looking back in the sixteenth century from his exile, Solomon

ibn Verga saw the jealousy of Christians for Jews excited by Jewish thirst for riches and power, the pride and luxury displayed in their dress, far richer than that of Christian nobles. This explanation is supported by earlier evidence. “The great who walk in the royal courts’, who challenged the rabbis’ 1A. A. Neuman, The Jews in Spain, ii (Philadelphia, 1942), 5-8; Juan de Lucena, Dialogo de vita beata (Opusculos literarios de los siglos XIV a XVI), ed. A.

Paz y Melia (Madrid, 1892), pp. 146 f. See also Salomén ben Verga, Chébut Jehuda, trans. F. Cantera Burgos (Granada, 1927), p. 71. 2 Baer, History, i. 325-7, 354-64; Alvaro Peldez, in R. Scholz, Unbekannite Kirchenpolitischen Streitschriften, ii (Rome, 1914), 493, 510, 521.

134 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 | authority and gave themselves up to sensual pleasures, were denounced by Jewish ascetics as much as by Christian nobles. Anti-

Jewish campaigns always included demands for cancellation of debts to Jews, their removal from public office and the prohibition of the use of rich clothes and jewels.* JEWISH ORGANIZATION

The Jewish aljamas of Castile were under a court rabbi, the supreme judge of Jewish cases, who presided at periodic meetings of the aljamas’ representatives. In Castile the Jewish author-

ities enjoyed criminal jurisdiction and could order the death of Jewish informers, murderers, and adulterers. Anxious not to appear lax in comparison with Christian justice, they could, and did, cut off the nose of a Jewish woman for having sexual relations with a Christian and had a blasphemer’s tongue cut out. In the Crown of Aragon local aljamas preserved their autonomy; attempts to create a general organization failed. After the 1280s Jews had ceased to hold public office. Up to 1412 some important Jewish financiers were members of the royal household but there was no Jewish hold on the financial administration of the state and of cities to correspond with Castile. Portugal was Closer to Castile. Paying very heavy taxes, the Portuguese

Jews in general enjoyed royal protection, and individual Jews held the highest financial posts. Ecclesiastical regulations

as to separate habitation were not observed in Portugal in the fourteenth century any more than in Castile. Relations between Jews and Christians were not marked by the outbreaks

of mass hatred which one finds in Spain. In 1449 Afonso V had to repress an anti-Jewish riot in Lisbon, but the converso problem did not exist in Portugal on a large scale until 1497.”

JEWISH DOCTORS | Throughout the peninsula the prestige of Jewish doctors continued unchallenged. A Portuguese story which may go back to

the fourteenth century represents Alfonso XI of Castile’s 1 Baer, i. 312, 319 f., 351, 362, 369-71; Salomdén ben Verga, pp. 65 f. 2 Baer, 1. 314 ff., 323 f. ii. 24-8. See below, p. 145, n. 1. D. Romano, BRABL 33 (1969-70), 5-41. M®. J. Pimenta Ferro, Os JFudeus em Portugal no século XIV (Lisbon, 1970), pp. 4.7£., 62-6, 85, 108-17, 123-5, and tables after p. 136. (See Vol. I, pp. 167

1965), 209-17. :

f.) Salo W. Baron, A social and religious history of the Jews, and edn. x (New York,

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 135,

mistress using a Muslim witch to kill Queen Marfa when in labour with the future Pedro I. When ‘excellent doctors and

midwives, prayers, processions and relics’ failed to save the queen, she was rescued by ‘a Jewish doctor and astrologer’. Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon would probably have believed this story. He made great use of Jewish doctors (also of astrol-

ogers), as did the municipalities, friars, and prelates of his realms and of Castile.}

JEWISH ARTISANS IN BARCELONA

In Barcelona skilled Jews were often apprenticed as workers in

coral or as tailors, though they also appear as domestic servants, wet-nurses, shoemakers, etc. They normally worked for

fellow Jews. They largely monopolized the crafts of bookbinder, silk-weaver, and silversmith. They bound and sold not only Hebrew but Christian manuscripts and worked for the royal treasury. In 1349 a Jew made a reliquary for the Hermits of St. Augustine. After 1391 these trades were continued by the Jewish conversos.?

The position of Jews in the Crown of Aragon had declined since 1250. They no longer owned large estates and their role in trade was probably not vital, except in Majorca where Jews traded with North Africa, Valencia, Seville, and Sardinia, lent money to the city, and owned land. In general the Jews of Catalonia—Aragon were better off than in Castile. Their lack of political power protected them from anti-Jewish propaganda and from attacks in the Corts. The Crown and the urban patriciate sheltered them as best it could against the isolated riots of 1348 and the 1370s. New Jewish quarters were founded in the 1350s in small Catalan towns which saw how the presence of a few Jews added to the prosperity of their neighbours. * Cronica de Ret D. Afonso IV, in C. da Silva Tarouca, Crénicas dos sete primeiros reis

de Portugal, ii (Lisbon, 1952), 158-60. On doctors in Catalonia—Aragon: A. Cardoner and F. Vendrell, Sefarad, 7 (1947), 303-48; J. Rius Serra, ibid. 12 (1952), 337-50; C. Martinez Loscos, 7. Zurita, 6-7 (1954), 43-60.

2 J. M®. Madurell Marimén, Sefarad, 16 (1956), 33-71, 369-98; 17 (1957), 73-1023 25 (1965), 247-81; 27 (1967), 290-8; J. M®. Millas, ibid. 16 (1956), 12936. In Valencia, among the conversos of the 1390s, silk-weavers, merchants, and tailors are prominent. E. Vidal Beltran, Valencia en la época de Juan I (Valencia,

Te. History, ii. 18-88; A. Santamaria Ardndez, Aportacién al estudio de la economia de Valencia durante el siglo XV (Valencia, 1966), pp. 219~22; F. Carreras y

Candi, III CHCA, pp. 205 f.

136 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 ANTI-JUDAISM (TO 1391): USURY, PREJUDICE Many Jews in small towns presumably pursued the same activities recorded for Valdeolivas in Castile, where professions listed

(in 1388) were shoemaker, carpenter, weaver, and sheepshearer. But everywhere in the peninsula the general view identified the Jew with the relatively small number of Jewish money-lenders. In Catalonia, though less obviously than in Castile, this was still the case. After the creation in the 1330s of pensions secured on capital loans to cities, the Catalan Jews ceased to play a central part in supporting municipal credit. They were reduced to lending money to individuals. In 1359-60 they arranged large loans to Barcelona, but they were normally intermediaries for Christian creditors whose identity was thus concealed. In Castile, on the other hand, the Jew known to the ordinary Christian was the taxgatherer (for Crown, noble, or Church). The Church Council of Vienne (1311-12) had forbidden Jews to practise usury. The Council’s decrees were repeated by the Church of Castile-Leon but had no more effect than the demands of the Cortes for cancellation of debts to Jews. A number of Catalan municipal decrees beginning in the fourteenth century reveal a less precisely based but very real hostility. They class Jews with prostitutes and public executioners as persons who are prohibited from touching food in the market with their hands. MANIFESTATIONS OF ANTI-JUDAISM: MAJORCA

The Majorcan kingdom, which included Perpignan, was inde-

pendent from Aragon in 1276-1343, and correspondingly dependent on France and the papacy. Its policy was much harsher towards the Jews than that of the other Spanish kingdoms. The Jews of Perpignan turned to small loans, largely to pawnbroking. Their wealth shrank correspondingly. NAVARRE, CROWN OF ARAGON | Movements from across the Pyrenees affected Navarre and Aragon. In 1320 mobs of ‘Shepherds’ from France attacked 1A, Millares Carlo, Contribuciones documentales a la historia de Madrid (Madrid,

1971), pp. 186 f.; A. Garcia, Ausa, 4 (1961-3), 247-55; Y. Roustit, EHMod 4 (1954), 32-5. M. Kriegel, AESC 31 (1976), 326-30, comments on the Catalan decrees. (See Vol. I, p. 77.) Most of Kriegel’s examples are after 1350.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 137 Jews in Aragon. The Crown found it hard to make its officials defend Jews and Muslims. In 1328 the Navarrese themselves

destroyed the aljama of Estella but severe punishment was inflicted. However, in 1336, the French rulers of Navarre ordered Pamplona to seal off the Jewish quarter from the Christian city.1

In Gerona in 1331 a mob consisting of the cathedral clergy and their hangers-on—not of the town citizens—celebrated Holy Week by setting fire to the gates of the Jewish quarter. The Black Death of 1348 brought with it serious attacks on the Jewries of Barcelona, Cervera, and Tarrega. In Gerona after 1330 no Christian could be imprisoned because of debts to Jews.

Royal taxes harmed the aljama. In 1389 the city authorities stated it was ‘completely destroyed and dead’. The City of Majorca (part of the Crown of Aragon from 1343) was particularly anti-Jewish, probably because of the unusual wealth of

the aljama. Local Christians resented the exemption from municipal charges enjoyed by the Jews, who in return contributed heavily to royal taxes. There were anti-Jewish riots in

1370 and 1374. The Crown maintained the Jews’ right to collect debts. It was known that their wealth was based on usury. In the 1370s the Jews were waging a battle for survival with the local royal officials and the city government, which con-

tinually obtained royal letters against the aljama’s privileges. Libels attributing to Jews the desecration of a consecrated Host brought about repeated trials in Catalonia and Aragon between 1367 and 1383.” CASTILE

The civil war in Castile between Pedro I and his half-brother Enrique de Trastamara led to massacres of Jews by the latter’s troops in Toledo in 1355 and in Old Castile in 1360. Enrique drew support from the anti-Jewish sentiment which his propaganda helped to kindle. He fined the aljamas of Burgos and LR. W. Emery, The Jews of Perpignan (New York, 1959), pp. 93, n. 1, 106 f.; A.

Masia, HM ii. 9-30; J. Gofti, Hispania Sacra, 12 (1959), 5-33; M. A. Irurita Lusarreta, El Municipio de Pamplona en la Edad Media (Pamplona, 1959), pp. 231 f. 2 On Gerona: J. M@. Millas and L. Batlle Prats, Sefarad, 12 (1952), 297-3353 5 (1945), 131-45 (on 1348: Baer, 11. 88-92). A. Lépez Meneses, Sefarad, 19 (1959), 92-131, 321-64. On Majorca, see my article in Revue des études juives, 120 (1961),

297-308 (with bibliography), and G. Llabrés and F. Fita, in BRAH 36 (1900).

138 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Toledo vast sums in 1366-8. But, as soon as he was established on the throne (1369-79), he resisted the demands of the Cortes for concessions on debts owed to Jews. Pablo de Santa Maria

noted that Enrique was the first ruler of Castile to make Jews wear a distinctive sign, ‘but they conversed freely with the faithful’. Many tax-farmers (not direct collectors) continued to

be Jews. Enrique preferred them because they were in his power. He could raise more from them in advance than from Christians. It was for Jews to reimburse themselves from the people. It might take them fourteen years to do so. In 1379 several leading Jewish financiers were imprisoned because they had promised the king more than they could pay. Anti-Judaism increased at the end of Enrique’s reign. Jewish converts to Christianity led the campaign. Since the 1330s they

had complained that the lenience of Christian rulers hindered the Jews’ conversion and they demanded the end of convivencia.

Social and professional contacts between Jews and Christians must cease. Persecution was necessary so that ‘some Jews [may] convert to the Christian Faith out of fear’. Anti-Jewish feelings

had been strong in Seville since the 1350s. They appear in the cathedral chapter of Seville in the 1370s. In 1378 Ferran Martinez, archdeacon of Ecija, a member of this chapter, began his anti-Jewish sermons and his interventions against Jews in local lawsuits. Neither Enrique nor his successor Juan I (1379-90) could stop him. Enrique was persuaded by the Cortes to suppress the collective fine levied on any town where a Jew was

murdered by someone unknown. Juan abolished the Jews’ criminal jurisdiction over their people. There were other signs of trouble. In Logrofio Jewish shoemakers were forbidden to exercise their trade. A royal decision in their favour provoked the rage of the municipality. In Madrid

a Jew who claimed debts due to him had to prove them with ‘good men’—documents were not enough. In 1379 the Jews of Valencia de Don Juan lost their synagogue on the ground that they had enlarged it. “The town officials went to the synagogue and ... threw out bodily the Jews there.’ This ceremony was presided over by the local bishop. Enrique IT could not hold back the tide of anti-Judaism he had largely helped to set in motion. A leading statesman such as Ayala could write: ‘Here come the Jews, ready to drink the blood of the oppressed. They

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 139

present their documents and promise jewels and gifts to | favourites. The Jews divide up the people, which dies undefended.’ As the storm increased, some of the richest Jews fled before it. In 1389-91 Isaac Golluf of Saragossa became Juan Sanchez de Calatayud, Samuel Abravanel Juan Sanchez de sevilla. They kept or acquired high office by their conversion.1 I13QI CASTILE

The storm broke in Seville on 4 June 1391. Juan I had died almost eight months before. During the minority of Enrique ITI

the Crown was weak. Egged on by Archdeacon Martinez the rabble of Seville stormed the Jewish quarter. Most Jews in

Seville became Christians to save their lives. The Jews of Toledo were attacked on 20 June, those of Burgos a few days later. Royal proclamations threatening punishment to rioters had no effect.even in Segovia, where the court was. Few were

punished. Despite a royal command, Martinez refused to restore the synagogues he had ordered to be destroyed. ‘They were ‘houses of the devil’. CROWN OF ARAGON

The agitation travelled fast, probably by sea from Seville. On g July 1391 about 250 Jews were killed in Valencia. The city authorities blamed the riot on boys, ‘recruits for the galleys, pimps, vagabonds’. They excused it on the ground of the visions

recounted by the ‘converted’ Jews of Christ Crucified and St. Christopher, whose image had now been placed in the former synagogue. These visions, miracles, and the mass baptism of the (surviving) Jews of Valencia, Jativa, Orihuela, Murcia, etc., showed that only God could have produced these events.” On 2 August 1391 300 Jews were killed in the City of Majorca.

Here peasants joined the city workers. By continuous agitation the peasants secured in October the mass baptism of most of the 1 J. Valdeén Baruque, Los Fudios de Castilla y la revolucién Trastdmara (Valladolid, 1968); idem, Hispania, 26 (1966), 103; idem, in Historia, Instituciones, Documentos, 1

(Seville, 1974), 221-38; Paulus (cited above, p. 132, n. 2); F. Cantera, Sefarad, 18

(1958), 291-313; Baer, History, i. 329-60, 378, ii. 93 f. On the synagogue: P. Floriano, El Libro Becerro de la Catedral de Oviedo (Oviedo, 1963), pp. 205 f. Ayala, Rimado de Palacio, vv. 244 ff. (BAE lvii. 432 f.).

? Baer, ii. 95-117; F. Cantera Burgos, Sinagogas espafiolas (Madrid, 1955), pp. 203-9; on Valencia: Villanueva, ii. 174-86; Vidal Beltran, pp. 52-70.

140 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 survivors. [he Barcelona aljama was attacked on 5 August, that

of Gerona five days later. There were deaths (about 400 in Barcelona) and forced conversions in these places, Lérida, and Tortosa. The presence of King Joan I in Saragossa saved the Jews of Aragon proper, though the local authorities also helped

to protect them. REACTIONS TO 1391 Hebrew lamentations for the fall of Spanish Jewry abound.

To Zamora fear has been brought. In Salamanca they exchanged the Covenant and Law for those of a strange law... In Segovia God’s anger came...

| The city of Leén is filled with Shouting, Valencia seized with trembling, Of Astorga, Majorca, and Palencia They made an utter end. Of the synagogue in Toledo called the ‘Old Temple’ we read: Strangers came to its doors, And threw out its books, And set up an idol among its ruins,

And said, “This is your God, Oh Israel.’

The convert Pablo de Santa Marfa, who became a leading Christian theologian, saw the work of God in the massacres: ‘God inspiring vengeance for the Blood of Christ, a multitude of the people rose up against [the Jews].’ A citizen of Vich saw ‘a signal miracle’ in the conversions.

A century later Abraham Zacuto put forward the explanation then accepted by Spanish Jewry: ‘According to our tradition, these sufferings were the just punishment of divine wrath. For many had taken Gentile women into their homes; children were born of these illicit unions and they later killed their own fathers.” 1 Majorca: Villanueva, xxi. 223 f.; A. Campaner y Fuertes, Cronicon Mayoricense

(Palma, 1881), pp. 77 ff On Gerona: L. Batlle Prats, AIEG 3 (1948), 194-7; on Tarazona: J. M®. Sanz Artibucilla, Sefarad, 7 (1947), 63-92. 2S. Bernstein, HM 1. 158-60; Cantera, Sinagogas, p. 40; Paulus de 5S. Maria, loc. cit. (p. 132, n. 2); Buillett del Ateneu Barcelonés, 1 (1915-17), 215. Zacuto cited by A. A. Neuman, H. A. Wolfson Fubilee Volume, 11 (Jerusalem, 1965), 622.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 141 REASONS BEHIND 1391

Some modern historians see the anti-Jewish riots of 1391 as a delayed result of the general social upheaval of western Europe

in 1378-85. In Majorca and Catalonia the peasants and city rabble who attacked the aljamas fought against the nobles and

merchants who tried to protect the Jews. In Gerona the peasants demanded the replacement of sales-taxes (which weighed on the poor) by direct taxation. In Majorca the outbreak was connected with the antagonism the rest of the island felt for the capital. However, the fact that the pressure ceased (except in Barcelona) after the forced conversion of the surviving Jews indicates that the social motive was generally subordinate to the religious. Motives behind anti-Judaism in Spain have

already been noted. The role of rich Jews as money-lenders was the more vexatious because of the conspicuous political prominence they enjoyed, especially in Castile. Solomon Alami declared: “We have received measure for measure. Because we

arrayed ourselves in their [Christian] apparel, they have clothed us in different garments.’ The rioters of 1391 wanted not only the cancellation of debts but that of a separate caste.

Archdeacon Martinez, whom no authority could check or control, was the voice of the ordinary people of Castile who were determined that only one civilization, the Christian, should exist in Spain. The same views found their voice in the Crown of Aragon in Vicent Ferrer. It was to take another century for these views to overcome the resistance of the Crown, the nobility, and the more enlightened clergy, but 1391 was a considerable step towards the spiritual ‘unification’ of Spain.+ MORE TROUBLES I139I-I1412

The interest shown by the monarchies of Castile and Aragon in reviving the shattered aljamas demonstrates the need felt for the Jews. In Castile the aljamas of Andalusia had suffered most. Renewed attacks on the Jews were prevented during Enrique III’s

reign (1390-1406) and by his brother, Fernando, after his 1 Ph. Wolff, VIII CHCA ii. |. 95 f., 98 f., Contra, Baer, History, ii. 110, see p. 240. A. Castro, Aspectos del vivir hispdnico (Santiago de Chile, 1949), pp. 95-104. For Aragon see A. Jiménez Soler, Los Fudios espaitoles a fines del siglo XIV y principios del

XV (Saragossa, 1950). On the role of foreigners see J. Riera i Sans’ communication, to appear in the Actas del I Congreso de Historia Mediterrénea (Palma, 1973).

142 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 death. Enrique III, his bishops and nobles, again employed Jews as financiers. In the Crown of Aragon, Joan I (1387-96) tried but failed to restore the aljamas of Barcelona and Valencia.

In Majorca 150 Portuguese Jews were welcomed in 1394 and

some Majorcan Jews returned there from North Africa. In Catalonia the smaller towns still harboured Jews, who were joined by immigrants from France. Gerona was now the leading community, as Murviedro (Sagunto today) was in the king-

dom of Valencia. But only in Aragon proper were Jewish communities more than shadows of their former selves.! VICENT FERRER

A new wave of persecution fell on the Jews before they could recover from 1391. To Abraham Zacuto the later protracted legal persecution was worse than the massacres of 1391. It was ‘instigated by the priest Fray Vincente’.

Many attempts have been made to clear the Valencian Dominican Vicent Ferrer from the charge of persecuting the Jews. He denounced the violence of 1391. But his preaching campaigns (described in the preceding chapter) often resulted in attacks on Jews, whom he declared from the pulpit were ‘the worst enemies’ Christians had. In 1412, after Vicent preached in one Aragonese town, Fernando I had to order its inhabitants to sell food to the Jews and not starve them to death. Jews were heavily fined if they did not assist at Vicent’s sermons or if they ventured to reply to his attacks. No wonder the Jews of Ainsa fled from the town at the news of his approach.

Vicent Ferrer desired the rapid conversion of all Jews and Muslims. Hagiographers ascribe the conversion of 25,000 Jews

and 8,000 Muslims to his sermons, though his knowledge of Islam, at least, was based on the most vulgar legends. Failing instant conversion, Vicent demanded the complete separation of Jews and Muslims from Christians, so as to protect the faith of the recent conversos to Christianity. ‘Just as prostitutes should live apart, so should Jews.’ Christians who converse with Jews

are excommunicate. |

. Vicent’s ideas were important because of the influence he 1. Mitre Fernandez, CH 3 (1969), 347-68; Baer, ii. 117-34; I. Epstein, The “Responsa’ of R. Simon b. Kemah Duran (New York, 1930), pp. 95 f.; F. Carreras, [I CHCA, pp. 206 ff.; L. Piles, Sefarad, 8 (1948), 85.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 143 enjoyed with the popes of Avignon, with successive rulers of Aragon, particularly with Fernando I (1412-16), whose succession to the throne he had promoted, and with Queen Catalina, co-regent of Castile with Fernando, from 1406 onwards.! The decrees passed by the regents of Castile in 1408 and 1412 were probably (in 1412 certainly) inspired by Vicent. In 1408 former decrees against Jews acting as royal tax-collectors were renewed and probably enforced. In 1412 Queen Catalina issued a series of laws intended to isolate and almost outlaw Jews and Muslims. Fernando forbade the application of this law in the provinces he presided over, though he ordered the Jewish quarters to be effectively separated off by walls.” THE DISPUTATION OF TORTOSA

Vicent Ferrer’s convert, Joshua Halorki (as a Christian Jerénimo de Santa Fé) was the doctor of the Aragonese Pope Benedict XIII. He persuaded Benedict to stage a Disputation at Tortosa between Christians and Jews which lasted two years (1413-14). The Jewish spokesmen were obliged to answer Jeronimo’s arguments that the Messiah had come in Christ, arguments based largely on possibly forged additions to the Talmud adduced by Ramon Marti in the thirteenth century. No real intellectual discussion was possible. The Disputation was ‘an anti-Jewish demonstration, a great political trial’. As such it was successful. Together with Vicent Ferrer’s preaching

tours (which continued during the Disputation) it led to the conversion of many Jews in Aragon. Leading Jews, notably of the de la Cavalleria family, under pressure from Fernando I and the pope, realized they must become Christians if they were to keep their worldly position. As conversos they immediately rose

to high secular office. It is in 1415-18 that one can date the conversion of several Jewish intellectuals in Perpignan, one of whom at least later returned to Judaism when safely in Italy. 1 Neuman, loc. cit., p. 623. J. M®. Mill4s, BRAH 142 (1958), 189-98. F. Vendrell, Sefarad, 10 (1950), 349-66; 13 (1953), 87-104; idem, Miusceldnea de textos medievales, ii (1974), 227; J. E. Martinez Ferrando, AST 26 (1953), 1-143; M.-M. Gorce, St. V. Ferrier (1350-1419) (Paris, 1923), pp. 237-42 (the quotations in the text from pp. 237, 239).

2See above, p. 129, n. 2; J. Torres Fontes, CHE 31-2 (1960), 60-97; F Cantera Alvar Garcia de Santa Marta y su familia de conversos (Madrid, 1952), pp. 238 Burgos, f.

144 THE. IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Earlier conversions (in 1347 and 1405) seem more voluntary in nature. Here, as with a parallel case in the 1340s from Aix-enProvence, the constant attraction exercised by a wider intellec-

tual milieu than Judaism could now offer, may have played a role. In 1415 the pope and king issued very severe laws against the

Jews, which resembled the Castilian legislation of 1412. In addition the Talmud was condemned. Copies of and commentaries on it were to be handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities. Jews were allowed to keep only the Bible, their liturgy, biblical commentaries, and some medical works. One of the Jewish spokesmen at Tortosa stated, ‘we are like a slave who despairs of ever being freed’.1

It was fortunate for the Spanish Jews that in 1416 Fernando I died, shortly after renouncing allegiance to Benedict XIII, and that Vicent Ferrer (d. 1419) disappeared into France on his last preaching tour. In 1418 the death of Queen Catalina of Castile

also improved the Jews’ lot. The new rulers—Alfonso IV in Aragon, Juan II (or rather his favourite Alvaro de Luna) in Castile—reverted very rapidly to traditional policies of tolerance. UNSURE CONVIVENCIA 1412~74: CASTILE The situation of Spanish Jewry in 1420 was greatly changed for the worse compared with that of 1390. In Castile the Jews were still numerous and they increased after 1391, but there were no

longer important aljamas in the main cities, Toledo, Seville, Burgos (Burgos only had twenty-two Jewish homes in 1440). The Jews were now largely settled in smaller towns. Tax-lists of

1450-79 mention some 400 places. Jewish doctors were still important and in most cities Jews farmed the local taxes. They also controlled a substantial proportion of tax-farms, though apparently never more (and often less) than a quarter of the total royal revenues. Don Abraham Bienveniste of Soria, one of Juan IT’s treasurers, was not the last Jew to play a leading role in Castilian royal finances. The Jewish communal organizations 1 Baer, History, ii. 170-243 (the quotations from pp. 224, 233). For Marti see Vol. I, p. 166, n. 1. For Perpignan see R. W. Emery, in Michael, iv (Tel-Aviv, 1976), 30, 36, 38, 42, 45, 48; for Aix J. Shatzmiller, ibid., 430 f. On the confiscation of Jewish books see J. M®. Millas and L. Batlle, BBC’8 (1928-32), 5-45. On the papal measures, Jiménez Soler, Los Fudios espaiioles.

THE BREAKDOWN OF COMVIVENCIA 145 still worked. In 1432 the representatives of the Castilian Jews

met and passed statutes in Hebrew and Castilian to support religious teaching, communal judges, and taxes. These statutes remained in force until 1492.1 In 1422 Rabbi Moses Arragel considered that the Castilian Jews were ‘altogether changed, for we are in great misery and poverty’. The rabbi probably exaggerated. The foreigners who visited the peninsula saw it as an exotic land, largely because of

Granada, but they also noted the extraordinary Jewish influ-

ence. In 1425 an English pilgrim to Santiago observes of Castile: ‘Jewes ben lordes of all that contray.’

From the moment Leo of Rozmital and his suite entered Spain in 1466 they were confronted, to their amazement, by ‘Christians, heathens and Jews’, living together without apparent friction. The Count of Haro, for instance, leaves each one to his belief. The count is said to be a Christian, but

no one knows what his belief is. [Enrique IV of Castile] eats and drinks and is clothed and worships in the heathen manner and is an enemy of Christians. [In Portugal also the local counts] had many heathens with them, [who] danced a rare heathen dance.?

It was all extremely upsetting to the simple Christians of Bohemia and Nuremberg. Spanish critics would have considered most of what Rozmital’s party objected to mere décor, but many types of convivencia continued at a level deeper than

court dress or festivities. |

A small Castilian town such as Riaza might refuse (in 1457) to allow Jews or Muslims to live there and forbid public office to

conversos, but this was exceptional and the first prohibition extended also to nobles. In another small town, Miranda de Ebro, in 1469, Jews formed a quarter of the male taxpaying population of 200. The Jewish population had increased since 1 Baer, li. 244-51, 260-70, modified by M. A. Ladero, CH 6 (1975), 425-8. On Burgos: Cantera, Alvar Garcta, p. 35. Tax-lists ed. Ladero, Sefarad, 31 (1971), 24964. See A. Mackay, in Past and Present, 55 (1972), 42. The Statutes of 1432 in Baer, Die Fuden, ii. 280-7; F. Fernandez y Gonzalez, BRAH 7 (1885), 145-89, 8 (1886),

10-27. A Memorial of c. 1429 demanded the restoration of Jews as tax-farmers because of their superior efficiency. M. A. Ladero, La Hacienda Real de Castilla en el siglo XV (La Laguna, 1973), p. 337. 2 Biblia (cited above, p. 132, n. 2), i. 13. G. G. King, The Way of St. James, iii (New York, 1920), 570. For other foreigners see J. Vielliard, Bibliotheque de l’ Ecole des Charies, 97 (1936), 340, 352, 355 ff, 360; Travels of Leo of Rozmital, trans. M. Letts (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 78, 81, 91, 110.

146 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 1291. In Avila the attempt to enforce the law of 1412, dictating separate quarters for Jews and Muslims, had been abandoned by 1416. There were more synagogues than in earlier periods.

The town ordenanzas of 1485 and other contemporary documents reveal Jewish men as silversmiths, shoemakers, butchers, tailors, carpenters, dyers, and blacksmiths, and Jewish women as quilt-makers, clog-makers, and fishwives. The interdependence of Jews and Christians appears especially in the form of financial transactions, but at times Jews not only rented out the

cathedral chapter’s revenues, but acted as the chapter’s doctors, and assisted the artists working in the church. The Jews of Avila were particularly important for their virtual control of

the local trade in wool. A modern historian sees them as virtually on the same level, socially and legally, as their Christian neighbours.

In Leén the Jews’ main activity was as tax or revenue col-

lectors; they lived peacefully except when dragged into a political feud. The Jewish aljama of Murcia continued to rent royal and municipal taxes, to trade in wool and provide the city

with meat. There was violent opposition to enlarging the Juderia but peace generally prevailed. In the 1470s in Cuéllar

leading Christian nobles visited the synagogue on Jewish festivals to hear sermons by a celebrated rabbi. The only people who objected were the local Franciscans. In 1449 the Jews of Seville organized a public procession against plague with the archbishop’s permission. The rolls of the Torah were borne in the place of honour where the Christians would have placed the Host. The matter reached Rome only because of one canon’s opposition. ANTI-JUDAISH IN CASTILE

Anti-Jewish feelings had not, of course, ceased to exist. About

1440 the minor noble Gutierre Diez de Games complains of 1 Coleccién diplomdtica de Riaza, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta (Segovia, 1959), pp. 141, 171; F. Cantera, Sefarad, 2 (1942), 325-75, esp. 336 f.; P. Leén Tello, Fudios de Avila (Avila, 1963), esp. p. 16; in Sefarad, 23 (1963), 36-53; Los Fudios de Palencia (n.p., n.d.), pp. 22 f.; J. Rodriguez Fernandez, La Juderia de la Ciudad de Leén

(Leén, 1969), pp. 136-9, 149 f.; J. Torres Fontes, Murgetana, 24 (1965), 79107; Baer, Die Juden, ti. 523, 315. On San Martin de Valdeiglesias see F. Cantera, Studies in honour of M. 7. Benardete (New York, 1965), pp. 303-21; on Talavera, F. Fita, BRAH 2 (1882), 317-38.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 147 the pervading Jewish influence at court. The worst enemies the Jews possessed were sincere and zealous conversos, notably the Santa Marfa family. In 1434 Alonso de Santa Maria (bishop of Burgos 1435-56) secured the renewal of Benedict XIII’s bull of 1415 which attempted to cut the Jews off from commercial con-

tact with Christians. However, in 1443, Juan II virtually annulled the bull. In 1453 the Jews of Miranda de Ebro obtained a royal order protecting them against Bishop Alonso, and especially exempting them from contributing to his addi-

tions to the cathedral. The Cortes complained in 1469 that, contrary to law, ‘the principal offices over your revenues are held by Jews’.t NAVARRE, PORTUGAL

Navarre—perhaps because of the lack of studies on Jews and

Mudejars there—appears relatively peaceful compared to Castile and Aragon. In the late fourteenth century Muslim craftsmen and Jewish women were paid about three-quarters of

corresponding Christian wages. After 1400 wages appear to have been paid for the job done, irrespective of religion. Such heavy financial contributions were exacted, however, from the Navarrese Jews that by 1435 they were almost ruined; their recovery after this time was only partial. In Portugal anti-

Judaism increased with the arrival of Jewish and forced converso refugees from Spain after 1391. It was sanctioned by the

laws of King Duarte (1433-8), which followed the model of those of 1412 in Castile.? CROWN OF ARAGON

The Jews of the Crown of Aragon did not recover from the blows of 1391 and 1413-15. The Valencian Jews had contributed 12,000s. to the Crown before 1391; in 1424 they could

only raise eighty-eight. In the whole kingdom of Valencia the | * Games, El Victorial, ed. Carriazo, p. 320 (see pp. 17, 33 f.). J. Amador de los Rios, Historia . . . de los Fudios de Espafia y Portugal, iii (Madrid, 1876), 46 f. On

avons 03. and Jews, however, F. Cantera, Alvar Garcia, pp. 31-6. Cortes de Leén, iii. 3 R. Castro, Carlos III el Noble, Rey de Navarra (Pamplona, 1967), p. 429; E. J. Hamilton, Money, prices and wages in Valencia, Aragon and Navarre, 1351-1500 (Cambridge Mass., 1936), p. 178; Amador de los Rios, Historia, ii. 449-86, 513-21, ili. 177-204.

148 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Jews were now far less rich than the Mudejars. In Catalonia the leading aljama, Gerona, was in decline. The only remaining

aljamas of importance were in Aragon proper, particularly Saragossa and Calatayud. That of Saragossa may have numbered 200 families (1,200 people?). Even this aljama was declining, as was Calatayud; its contribution fell from over 600 to 200 florins from 1404 to 1414.1 In 1419 Benedict XIII’s ordinances and Fernando I’s decrees

were revoked or modified. The old convivencia apparently returned. In Gerona and Teruel Jews inhabited the same houses as their Christian relatives. In Saragossa Jews acted as representatives of Christians and as arbiters between them. One is reminded of the Jews of Valencia before the crisis who acted

as marriage-brokers for Christians. In Aragon, whether in Saragossa or in a small town, Jews and Muslims continued to live interspersed with Christians and not to use the distinctive dress legally prescribed. The three religions could not live apart.

The Christian noble, prelate, or peasant needed the Mudejar carpenter, the Jewish banker. In Saragossa the Jews, as the general bankers, sold annuities to friars, nobles, nuns, ladies, cathedral canons, a shoemaker, a tailor, and a lawyer. In 1440 Christian and Jewish skinners agreed to control their joint production. On Good Friday 1418 in Villarreal (in the modern province of Castellén) Jews took part in the representations of the Passion, as they had done in 1376. Afterwards they were féted with wine by the town. This curious custom was probably not confined to Villarreal.? ANTI-JUDAISM

The Crown was obliged to guard against proselytizing zeal on the part of Christians. In 1423 Alfonso IV ordered the Jews to be defended against the preaching of Pere GCerdan, a companion and imitator of Vicent Ferrer. The fuel of popular resent1'W. Kiichler, SFG i. 24 (1968), 235 f.; D. Romano, IV CHCA i. 239-49; L. Piles Ros, Sefarad, 10 (1950), 73-114, 367-84; J. Gabezudo, ibid. 14. (1954), 372-84. 2 F, Vendrell de Millds, Sefarad, 20 (1960), 319-51; M. Serrano y Sanz, Orfgenes de la dominacién espafiola en América, i (NBAE xxv) (Madrid, 1918), 457 ff., 32, 42, 47, Nn. 2, 52f.; Millas (cited, p. 143, n. 1). On Villarreal: J. M#. Dofiate Sebastia, in Martinez Ferrando, archivero (Madrid, 1968), pp. 149-64. For Gerona in 1456 see

Sefarad 26, (1966), 289.

S. Sobrequés, AJEG 12 (1958), 265; on Teruel in the 1450s, M..Sanchez Moya,

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 149 ment could be easily kindled. In Saragossa the aljama had to pay a guard every year during Holy Week. In Gerona Jews were forbidden, for their own safety, to appear at the windows of their houses from Thursday to Saturday before Easter. In 1418 royal officials had severely punished an attack on the Juderia. In one small Aragonese town the alcalde’s absence at once provoked an attack on the Jews.} THE CONVERSO PROBLEM

Mass conversions of Jews took place in 1391 and again in 141215, as a result of the preaching of Vicent Ferrer and the pressure

exerted by the anti-Jewish legislation he inspired. An accurate estimate of the numbers converted seems impossible, but, given the very limited size of the Jewish population in 1300, one can hardly suppose those converted from 1391 to 1415 numbered more than some tens of thousands. However, the conversos were

numerous enough to constitute a new minority group in the peninsula beside the remaining Jews and the Mudejars, one destined to play a crucial role. They continued to exercise the skilled professions long practised by Jews. In Seville, while many forced conversos soon fled the country, many others continued to

trade and engage in financial activities.2 The conversos’ new status as Christians made it impossible to use the anti-Jewish laws against them. They could not be forced to dress differently from ‘old’ Christians or forbidden to hold public office. They prospered as the Jews declined. Their leaders soon rose to key positions in the service of the Crown, the cities, and the Church. Yet their sincerity was often questioned, both by Jews and ‘old’ Christians. Serious attacks on them began in 1449 and continued until, and long beyond, the founding of the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. 1 Jiménez Soler, Los Fudios espaftoles, pp. 56, 19 f., 52. See R. del Arco, Sefarad,

4 (1947), 288 f. On Valencia, L. Piles, ibid. 8 (1948), 78, 96. On Gerona, L. Batlle, HM i. 83-92; Villanueva, xiv. 30. Sefarad, 21 (1961), 55-7. 2 For the Jews in 1300 see, Vol. I, p. 31, nn. 1-4. The estimate given is that of Baer, History, ii. 246. The arguments of B. Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain, 2nd edn. (New York, 1973), pp. 238-48, 255-70 (on Seville), for a very much higher converso population are unconvincing. One cannot rely on Crescas, who had no direct knowledge of Seville, for the number of Jews there (p. 240), nor are round figures offered by chroniclers to be taken literally (pp. 261, 265). (See above, Ch. I, p- 35, n. I.) On Seville in the 1390s see A. Collantes de Teran Sanchez, in Historia, Instituctones, Documentos, 3 (1976), 169-85, esp. 173, 175.

|

150 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

CONVERSOS IN OFFICE | | At the invitation of Fernando I of Aragon the Cavallerias of Saragossa became Christians in 1414. They rose to posts Jews had not held in Aragon since 1283. The Santangel (formerly Chinillo) family rose to noble rank and numbered among them

Luis de Santangel, the famous secretary of the Catholic Monarchs. Other descendants of conversos, Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of Aragon, and the royal secretary Juan de Coloma, played leading roles in the same court, where, with Santangel, they controlled the finances, and acted as Columbus’s protectors. In Castile also conversos were prominent as financiers in the

service of Alvaro de Luna and of Enrique IV, whose contador. (treasurer) was Diego Arfas de Avila.} The leading converso families soon attained municipal as well as royal office. In 1421, when the conversos of the small. town of Paredes de Nava were excluded from the municipal elections

and from allocating taxes, a complaint to the feudal lord did. away with the exclusion. The Aragonese conversos controlled Saragossa, the Santa Marfa family, Burgos. The anti-converso movement in Toledo in 1449 failed to secure their exclusion from office there. Conversos were powerful in Seville and Cordoba. They were necessary to all the noble factions who dis-

puted power.2 | a a

The rise of conversos in the church was equally striking. Pablo

de Santa Marfa (the ex-rabbi Solomon ha-Levi), converted in 1390 or 1391, became a key agent of Pope Benedict XIII and of Enrique IIT of Castile and his brother Fernando I of Aragon. He became bishop of Cartagena in 1403, of Burgos in 1416, tutor and chancellor of Juan II. His brothers and sons achieved outstanding careers. His brother, Alvar Garcia de Santa Maria,

royal secretary and chronicler, enjoyed perhaps as much influence as Pablo’s two episcopal sons, one of whom, Alonso,

succeeded him at Burgos (1435-56). Another son, Pedro de Cartagena, a leading noble of Burgos, founded a mayorazgo or

entail for his family= |

1 Serrano y Sanz, passim; F. Vendrell, Sefarad, 3 (1943), 115-54; Baer, ii. 276 f. 2 P. Leén Tello, Los Fudios de.Palencia, pp. 62-5; F. Marques Villanueva, RABM

63 (1957)» 503-40. | |

*L. Serrano, Los conversos D. Pablo de Santa Marta » D.. Alfonso de Cartagena

(Madrid, 1942); Cantera, Alvar Garcta. - re |

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 151 SUSPICION OF THE CONVERSOS

The personal attitudes of the thousands of Jews converted in 1391 and later years to their new religion varied enormously. The conversos included scholars such as Pablo de Santa Marfa, whose sincerity there is no reason to doubt, but also Jewish aristocrats, whose motives were predominantly worldly, and a host of artisans, who had succumbed to force or moral pressure or had simply followed their leaders’ example. Many conversos,

particularly those of 1412-15, had probably abandoned their

Jewish faith before their baptism. Their attitude towards religion in general was sceptical. From the first the new converts encountered hostility from ‘old’ Christians as well as rejection

from Jews. For the rabbis whose opinions are recorded, a forced convert was still a Jew but he should leave Spain and travel to Islamic countries, where he could openly return to his religion. As the years passed and most conversos remained in Spain, living as Christians, the exiled rabbis in Algiers gradually

became more critical. A group of secret Jews, “devotees of Heaven’, were known to remain in Spain, but they were considered (possibly erroneously) to be a small minority.

While they were rejected by their old co-religionists the conversos were considered suspect by most ‘old’ Christians. Immediately after their baptism the authorities had been careful to prevent their leaving Spain for Islamic lands. In 1414 the future Alfonso IV of Catalonia—Aragon declared that many recent converts ‘continue most meticulously and reverently in their perversities and perfidy’. The support given by Castilian converso financiers and writers to Alvaro de Luna brought down on them accusations from his

many enemies. Juan de Duefias describes conversos as ‘more opposed to good men than death to life’. Suero de Ribera gives us a portrait of a converso courtier who managed men without appearing to do so and was always proclaiming his relationship to the Santa Marfa family. Such conversos were still Jews. They would openly return to Judaism given the chance. Villasandino satirizes another rich converso’s will and burial, with the Cross at his feet, the Koran on his chest and the Jewish Torah at his head. 1 Netanyahu, passim. For the faithful (secret) Jews, see pp. 51, 142, 146-51, 1723 for scepticism, pp. 97-121. Baer, History, ii. 158 £.; Die Fuden, i. 815.

152 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 The following exchange, reported between members of the cathedral chapter of Burgos, shows us that hatred of conversos was not confined to satirical verse. Pedro Marquez to Fernan Sanchez: ‘You are a Jew and a Marrano’ (the most insulting term for a converso). A friend of Sanchez: ‘You are a Jew your-

self; none of his relations have been burnt as yours have.’ Marquez: ‘Wait, you Jew dog, heretic, I myself will see you are burnt.’+

The last great Jewish statesman of Spain, Isaac Abravanel, summed up the position: ‘Although [the conversos| endeavoured to be like complete Gentiles, they did not achieve this aim. For the native peoples will always call them Jews . . . consider them as Jews and falsely accuse them of Judaizing in secret.’ A German

traveller to Spain in 1485 stated the common Christian view more succinctly: ‘Out of a hundred scarcely one converso 1s a

sincere Christian.’ The Jew Solomon ibn Verga quoted a Christian statement that ‘Judaism is a disease for which there is

no cure [in baptism]’. While Granada was still independent, its Great Rabbi declared that conversos were really Jews and should be treated as such by Jews in Islamic countries.” APPARENT GROUNDS FOR SUSPICION: CROWN OF ARAGON

There were apparent grounds for suspecting the conversos’ Christianity. In the 1390s the Crown of Aragon had prescribed strict separation. between conversos and Jews. They were not to

share houses or eat together, under pain of hanging. These regulations were often not observed. In 1433 Queen Maria declared that they should be considered null, ‘because of the excellent and religious life of new, as of old, Christians’. In Barcelona there were virtually no Jews left, but the artisan conversos kept themselves to themselves. ‘They had their own confraternity. Contacts between ‘old’ Christians and conversos were

rare. Conversos were important in the guild of coral-workers, 1F. Vendrell, Sefarad, 18 (1958), 108-13; 28 (1968), 40-4. F. Cantera, ibid. 27 (1967), 71-111, esp. gt f. See another satire ed. H. Pflaum, Revue des études juives, 86 (1928), 131-50. On Burgos see N. Lépez Martinez, Burgense, 2 (1961), * bs etanyahu, p. 184; Nicholas von Popplau, in Viajes, p. 322; Salomén ben Verga (cited, p. 133, n. 1), p. 222; R. Arié, L’Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides (Paris, 1973), pp. 336 f.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 153 which was possibly excluded for this reason from representation in the City Council. Converso merchants in Barcelona, excluded from politics, grew rich and intermarried with other conversos in Majorca, Valencia, and Saragossa.

In Majorca the same pattern is visible as in Barcelona. In 1404 the conversos had formed their own confraternity. By 1480 they numbered perhaps 1,500 in the island, concentrated in the

City, where they were notable as corredores (business intermediaries), as merchants, jewellers, tailors, shoemakers, workers in silk, doctors, bookbinders, and money-lenders. They intermarried very little with ‘old’ Christians. In Aragon proper, where many Jews still lived, cordial relations existed between Jews and conversos. In the small town of Tarazona there was one family where one son was a converso and two others Jews; the three agreed to share the expected paternal legacy, even if one of them was excluded from their father’s will.

In another family a Jewish son represented his Christian parents at law. Loans and contracts linked members of different religions. In 1439-42 conversos and Mudejars worked together on the local synagogue. CASTILE

In Castile, as in Catalonia, the feeling of corporate identity among educated conversos was expressed in the frequent marriages between leading converso families. A study of the converso

poet Juan Alvarez Gato (c. 1445-c. 1510)—who was known at court principally as a revenue collector—shows that he was protected by and moved almost entirely in a circle of converso bureaucrats in Madrid and Guadalajara. Juan de Lucena, a humanist diplomat, is another example of how a converso could flourish in Castile, sheltered by his own kind, until the Inquisition found him suspicious and seized on him twice. Discounting many of the allegations of judaizing put forward 1 J. M®. Madurell, Sefarad, 17 (1957), 79-102; 18 (1958), 60-82, esp. 76 f.; C. Carrére, Barcelone (Paris, 1967) i. 403 f., ii. 677-80; A. Santamaria, El Reino de Mallorca en la primera mitad del siglo XV (Palma, 1955), pp. 77-9; idem, in Historia de

Mallorca, ed. J. Mascaré Pasarius, iii (Palma, 1970), 258-68. For Tarazona, J. M®. Sanz Artibucilla, Sefarad, 9 (1949), 393-417. For intermarriage between conversos in Valencia see R. Garcia Carcel, Origenes de la inquisicién espaftola (Barcelona, 1976),

pp. 167-70.

154. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 by the Inquisition, there is considerable evidence that many apparent Christians practised or adhered secretly to Judaism, sometimes so secretly that the husband and wife were both

judaizers without the other being aware of this.1 | ATTACKS ON CONVERSOS: TOLEDO 1449

Popular dislike for conversos, like earlier anti-Judaism, appears in Castile much sooner than in the Crown of Aragon. Their use

as tax-collectors by Luna provoked a rebellion in Toledo in

1449, soon followed by a battle at Ciudad Real between conversos and ‘old’ Christians. The Toledan rebels were mainly drawn from the city workmen. They were actuated by a type of

millenarist anti-Jewish propaganda and claimed to act under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is a clear continuity between the massacres of 1391 and this revolt. The desire to exterminate open Jews was now extended to Christians of Jewish descent. The Statute issued by the rebels accused the conversos in general of judaizing; it was the first municipal de-

cree banning public office to conversos on the ground of their ‘perverse lineage’ and ‘heresies’. This attempt to extend older laws forbidding Jews to hold office over Christians to conversos provoked a reaction which lasted longer than the

rebellion.” |

A series of works, mainly by conversos, appeared attacking the Statute and the Memorial by the lawyer and rebel leader Marcos

Garcia de Mora. Mora attempted to justify the rebellion by arguing that all conversos were judaizers. Fernan Diaz de Toledo, a royal secretary, writing in October 1449, claimed that

the conversos ‘know nothing of Judaism’. The religious plea was doubled by a practical appeal to the Crown. The descen_ dants of conversos had intermarried with almost all the leading 1F, Marquez Villanueva, Investigaciones sobre Juan Alvarez Gato (Madrid, 1960), pp. 68-78. On Lucena: R. Lapesa, De la Edad Media a nuestros dias (Madrid, 1967), pp. 123~44. See the articles of A. A. Sicroff, cited below, Part ITI, Ch. III, p. 418, ” 2 The Estatuto of 1449 in Alonso de Cartagena, Defensorium unitatis Christianae, ed. M. Alonso (Madrid, 1943), pp. 357-65. E. Benito Ruano, Toledo en el siglo XV, vida polttica (Madrid, 1961), pp. 47-55; N. G. Round, Archivium [Oviedo], 16 (1966), 385— 446; L. Delgado Merchan, Historia documentada de Ciudad-Real, 2nd edn. (Ciudad

Real, 1907), pp. 159-63, 399-406. The Colegio de San Bartolomé at Salamanca banned those ‘of Jewish descent’ in 1435, if not before. E. Asensio, AEM 8 (1972-3), 384.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 155 families of Castile. How could such men be forbidden to hold office ?!

The most famous converso, Pablo de Santa Maria, bishop of

Burgos (d. 1435), had already argued that no bar could be raised against the attainment of office by converted Jews. Pablo’s son and successor and other conversos were to point out

that ‘the Church is founded on converted Jews’. A few ‘old’ Christian nobles were to take a similar view and to confess their admiration for Pablo (‘another second St. Paul’) and his son Alonso.? ANTI-CONVERSO RIOTS

The theoretical battle was won by the conversos’ defenders, but,

in the confused reign of Enrique IV (1454-74), popular agitation against them continued. In Seville in 1465 the conversos

defeated their opponents in a street battle. ‘No one dares to say a word [to the conversos| which might annoy them.’ In other riots the conversos were less fortunate. In Toledo in 1467 they

were defeated after they had bombarded the cathedral with cannon. In 1467, and again in 1485, after a plot against the new Inquisition, the Statute of 1449 was extended to exclude conversos from ecclesiastical as well as civil office in Toledo. In

1468 they were excluded from civil office in Ciudad Real by royal order. In Cérdoba in 1473 the conversos, who could raise 300 armed horse, were crushed and expelled from the city. They were slaughtered in Jaén, Carmona, and other Andalusian towns. This violence was probably connected with deterlorating economic conditions, and, particularly in Andalusia, with considerable food shortages.® 1'The Memorial, ed. E. Benito Ruano, Sefarad, 17 (1957), 314-51. On the replies, see N. Lépez Martinez, in Repertorio de historia de las ciencias eclesidsticas en Espafta, i

(Salamanca, 1967), 465-76. Fern4n Diaz, in Cartagena, Defensorium, pp. 348, 352 f. See N. G. Round, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 46 (1969), 289-319; A. A. Sicroff, Les controverses des statuts de ‘Purété de Sang’ en Espagne (Paris, 1960), pp. 3-41.

2 Paulus (cited, p. 132, n. 2), I. ii. 4 (p. 126), II. vi. 14. (pp. 532 f.); Cartagena, pp. 248 f.; Sicroff, pp. 41-62; Diego de Valera (BAE cxvi. 102, 201); Fernan Pérez de Guzman, Generaciones y semblanzas, ed. R. B. Tate (London, 1965), pp. 28-31; Gémez Manrique (NBAE xxii. 75). It is important to note that, in order to recover Toledo, Juan II persuaded the pope to annul the excommunication of the rebels of 1449 and ratified the Statute. Benito Ruano, Toledo, pp. 216-20, 222-6.

8 Garci Sanchez of Seville, ed. J. de M. Carriazo, Anales de la Universidad Hispalense, 14 (1953), 53; Benito Ruano, Toledo, pp. 93-102, 136 ff.; Delgado Merchan, p. 419; Sicroff, pp. 63-7; Mackay, Past and Present, 55, pp. 57 f., 61 £.

156 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 CONTROVERSY CONTINUES

About 1460 the Franciscan Alonso de Espina finished his Fortalitium fidet, a general work against the Church’s natural and

supernatural enemies, but aimed particularly against Judaism.

The author states that in 1459 at Medina del Campo he had heard that there were many hidden judaizers there. Espina’s sources were the anti-Jewish writers of the past, combined with current rumours about secret circumcisions, ritual murder, and desecration of the Host. Espina urged the establishment of an efficient Inquisition in Castile. His work appeared in six editions before 1500 and was translated into French and German.

The Hieronymite General Alonso de Oropesa disliked Espina’s approach. Like earlier authorities he held that complete separation between Jews and conversos (only some of whom were judaizers) would solve the problem, but he, too, advocated

an (episcopal) Inquisition as the only way of quieting the suspicions of the ‘old’ Christians and preventing their massacring all conversos, judaizers and sincere Christians alike. In 1449 Pope Nicholas V had annulled the Statute of Toledo. In 1451 he ordered an investigation into judaizers but this order was not carried out. In 1464 the old Inquisition of Valencia and a new organization in Castile were active against the convzersos. They soon discovered that many conversos were leaving Spain for

Islamic lands. Persecution was to persuade others to do the same. ATTEMPTS AT INTELLEQTUAL CONVIVENCIA

The convivencia achieved on an intellectual level in the thir-

teenth and early fourteenth centuries by Ramon Lull in Majorca and Catalonia, by Alfonso X and Don Juan Manuel in Castile, became far more difficult after 1350.

The Proverbios morales of Rabbi Sem Tob ibn Ardutiel (Santob de Carrién), written in the 1350s, are a late example of 1 Baer, History, 1. 283-99. On Espina see A. Lépez, AIA 25 (1926), 348-81; on Oropesa, J. de Sigitenza, Historia de la orden de S. Ferénimo, i (NBAE viii), 363-72; on

Nicholas V see V. Beltran de Heredia, Sefarad, 21 (1961), 22-47. See also the Bibliography to this Chapter. For earlier (1359) papal action against judaizers see j. Zunzunegui, Bulas » Cartas Secretas de Inocencio VI (Rome, 1970), pp. 415 f. Baer, Die Juden, ii. 437-44; B. Llorca, AST 12 (1936), 402~7; Sicroff, pp. 67-75. See

below, Part III, Ch. III, p. 418, n. 3.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 157

intellectual convivencia. They are ‘an attempt at moulding Jewish sapiential thought to the genius and range of expression of contemporary Spanish’. As such Santob’s verses are comparable, on a minor scale, to the creation of scientific Castilian prose by the Jewish translators of Alfonso X. Santob, who also wrote poems in Hebrew, drew, in his Castilian Proverbios, not

only on the Talmud but on Arabic anthologies and Christian works. ‘He has at times joined ... an Arabic or Jewish image and a popular Castilian saw.’ It is notable that he feels a need to apologize for daring to address Pedro I at all: “The falcon is not worthless for being born in a bad nest, nor good examples because a Jew proposes them.’ In the fifteenth century the genre of poetry created by Santob was taken up by leading Castilian poets. The Marquis of Santillana placed Santob among the great troubadours of the past. The Proverbios were transcribed by Jews as well as Christians.

A generation later than Santob another Castilian rabbi, Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas, writing in Avila in 1375-9, provided a more complete answer than any found earlier to the teachings of the converso Abner of Burgos. Rabbi Moses was familiar with the works of Aristotle and with Christian as well as Jewish scholars, ‘at ease in Spanish and Hebrew’, and with ‘some knowledge of Latin’. He had taken part in public disputa-

tions with Christians at Avila, which were apparently still possible, and his eirenic method was to consider Christians ‘as monotheists, with a law and a code of morality like Jews’. AFTER 1391: JEWISH-CHRISTIAN POLEMICS The massacres and forced conversions of 1391 made all forms of convivencia more difficult. The Spanish Jews who emigrated to

North Africa found in the communities there a far lower cultural level than they were familiar with at home. The Jews who remained now saw Christianity as wholly hostile. Instead of being content to defend Judaism against Christian controver-

sialists, Jewish polemicists, in works addressed mainly to conversos, attacked Christian doctrine. Profayt Duran of Perpignan, forced into baptism in 1391-2, attacked Christianity, in 1 Santob, Proverbios Morales, ed. I. Gonzdlez Llubera (Cambridge, 1947), pp. 1, 4, 70. Menéndez Pelayo, Antologta, 1. 324 ff.; Yehuda Shamir, Rabbi Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas and his book ’Ezer ha-Emunah (Leiden, 1975), esp. pp. 4, 70.

158 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500°

Hebrew, as a fundamentally irrational, unscientific faith. Christ’s Incarnation and the Eucharist were contrary to logic _and metaphysics. Jewish scientific achievements were vastly superior to those of Christians,+

Hasdai Crescas (d. 1410), the leading rabbi of the Crown of Aragon, also composed a Refutation of Christtan Dogma, this time

in Catalan, soon translated into Hebrew. Crescas was less rationalist in his approach than Duran. In his reaction against Aristotelian thought he was deeply influenced by Christian theologians; Joseph Albo, Crescas’ student and one of the Jewish spokesmen at Tortosa in 1413-14, was influenced by St.

Thomas Aquinas. He ‘acknowledges a common ideological basis for the debate between the two religions’ and ‘is closer to the Christian position than to that of Maimonides’. He emphasizes grace and faith as religious values.

As time passed Spanish rabbis turned more and more away from philosophical speculation. Rabbi Shemtob ibn Shemtob saw the mystical Cabala as the only salvation. Jewish Spanish philosophers of the past, even Maimonides, were useless. All Spanish Jews did not take this view, however. Down to the expulsion of 1492, there were ‘Averroists’ who considered Aristotle’s Athics superior to the Torah, and at least one rabbi, Abraham Bivach of Huesca (d. ¢c. 1480), who not only used Aquinas, but, reading Eusebius of Caesarea’s Praecparatio evangelica in Latin, claimed the usefulness of Greek philosophy in general.?

Pablo de Santa Marfa’s conversion to Christianity had perhaps been partly due to his reaction against the Averroism prevalent in cultivated Jewish circles before 1391. His Scrutinium scripturarum of 1432, a reply to Joseph Albo’s attacks on Christian doctrine, still shows much knowledge of the Talmud and its 1 Epstein, The ‘Responsa’, pp. 10-17. Netanyahu, The Marranos, pp. 80-94, 190 f. On Duran: J. M®. Mill4s, in H. A. Wolfson Jubilee Volume, ii (Jerusalem, 1965), 561-75; R. W. Emery, Jewish Quarterly Review, 58 (1967-8), 328-37; Baer, History ii. 150-8; Netanyahu, pp. 221-6. 2H. A. Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1929). The quotations referring to Joseph Albo are from E. Schweid, in IV World Congress of Fewish Studies, ii (Jerusalem, 1968), 201. Baer, ul. 162-6, 232~43, 253~9, 295 f£., 489;

G. Vajda, Isaac Albalag (Paris, 1960), pp. 267-74; 5. Pines, in Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, i (Jerusalem, 1967). Eleven Jewish ‘academ-

ies’ are mentioned by a contemporary as existing in 1492 (Jewish Quarterly Review, 20 (1908), 253 f.).

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 159

commentators as well as of Aquinas. The work achieved six editions in 1469—78.1

ESTEEM FOR HEBREW LEARNING

Despite the worsening intellectual climate, the intelligent Christian, clerical or lay, continued to esteem the learning of Jewry and Islam. For the anti-Muslim Franciscan Eiximenis, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic (not Greek) were ‘the principal languages of the world’. The Castilian noble, Fernan Pérez de Guzman, considered Cordoba ‘another Athens’ because not only Seneca and Lucan but Averroés and Maimonides had lived there.’ Specific proof of esteem for Hebrew learning appears in the translations of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, and of Judah Halevi’s Book of the Khazars into Castilian. Both translations were made by Jews or conversos, the Guide, at least, at the

request of a leading noble by 1432. This translation was probably the source for Alfonso de la Torre, whose Vistén delectable (c. 1440) borrows its essential ideas from the Guzde. The work was published several times before 1500. The most striking evidence that intellectual convivencia was still possible is provided by the Alba Bible. THE ALBA BIBLE

In 1422 Don Luis Gonzalez de Guzman, Master of the Military Order of Calatrava, informed Rabbi Moses Arragel, who was living under his jurisdiction, that ‘in the time we have free from warring on the wicked Moors [in Granada] we prefer to listen to the Bible rather than go hunting or listening to historical or poetic works or playing chess’. Since the existing biblical trans-

lations were corrupt, the Master wanted a new translation, glossed with rabbinical commentaries written since the time of

the Christian commentator Nicholas of Lyra (a century before). After some hesitation Arragel agreed to provide the Master with a new Castilian translation of the Old Testament, accompanied by an elaborate commentary. The work took him 1 Baer, History, ii. 139-150; Serrano, Los conversos, pp. 112 fff. 2 Eiximenis, Regiment de la cosa publica, Proemi (ENC A 13), p. 35; Fernan Pérez

de Guzman, NBAE xix. 738.

160 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 eleven years, and was performed with the help of two friars from Toledo. Rabbinic lore and Catholic exegesis appear side by side in the commentary.

The surviving manuscript of this remarkable translation is elaborately illustrated. Despite Arragel’s official refusal to intervene with regard to the miniature illustrations, ‘there is no

doubt that [he] gave the artists detailed instructions and furnished them with Jewish models’. Although Christian models were also used, the Bible ‘contains the largest series of rabbinically inspired miniatures in existence’. Arragel chose to emphasize the great Jewish feasts, the Temple worship—which was to

be re-established when the Messiah came—and the contemporary worship of the synagogue.

The interest shown by the Master of Calatrava in the Bible, and especially in translation from the Hebrew, was not unique

among the nobility. Other translations exist in manuscript, made by Spanish Jews for Christian patrons. Many others were probably destroyed after 1492, when it became illegal to own vernacular Bibles.+ JUAN DE SEGOVIA AND ISLAM

Fifteenth-century Castile produced a latter-day Ramon Lull in

Juan de Segovia (d. 1458). His attempts to grapple with the - problem of Islam afford a parallel to the Alba Bible. In the fourteenth century concern for the conversion of the Mudejars declined. One can cite the occasional papal exhortation to a great proprietor of Valencia to push on the good work

with Dominican assistance, but the schools of Hebrew and , Arabic founded by the friars before 1300 were not revived. In 1449 we hear that the apostasy of Christians to Islam in Andalusia was common, but this apparently had little effect in rousing Christian zeal. Intellectual controversy between Christians 1 Baer, ii. 486; on the translation of Maimonides see also D. Rosenblatt, Studies... Benadete (cited above, p. 146, n. 1), pp. 47-82. On the Visién delectable see J. P. Crawford, PMLA 28 (1913), 188-212. Biblia de Mosé Arragel (cited, p. 132, n.2), pp. 1 f.; C.-O. Nordstrém, The Duke of Alba’s Castilian Bible. A Study of the Rabbinical features of the miniatures (Uppsala, 1967), pp. 40f., 55 f., 227 ff. For the part of conversos in the Polyglot Bible of Alcala, see below, Part III, Ch. VII, p. 622. G. Sed-Rajna, Manuscrits hébreux de Lisbonne, un atélier de copistes et d’enlumineurs au

XV® siécle (Paris, 1970), p. 106, points out the influence of Christian miniature

painting (Catalan—not Castilian, as she says—and Flemish) on the Jewish illuminators she studies.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 161 and Muslims was rare. About 1390 Eiximenis imagines a discussion of the merits of the rival faiths between a Christian and Muslim merchants sailing together to the East which hinged

entirely on the ability to perform miracles. Since Muslim miracles were feigned, Christianity must be true. This simple approach was probably common. Contact at a deeper level was difficult. It took years for Juan de Segovia to find a Muslim Arabic scholar in Castile; Christian Arabic scholars were nonexistent.!

Juan had become interested in the Mudejar community in Segovia where he grew up. Educated in theology at Salamanca he taught there, and, in 1433, became the university’s representative at the Council of Basle. He adhered to the Council until

its dissolution in 1449. Through it he came to know leading thinkers of the day, Nicholas of Cusa, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. Juan’s last years, spent in retirement in Savoy, were marked by a return to his interest in Islam. In 1431 he had engaged in religious controversy with an envoy of Granada but his (lost) trilingual Koran (Arabic, Latin, Castilian) was only completed in 1456, with the help of a Muslim scholar from Segovia.

Juan saw the futility of the crusades, particularly evident after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. He also rejected the

idea of Christian missions to Islam because the missionaries sent _ were generally unprepared. It was first necessary to establish a peaceful dialogue by way of a prolonged ‘conference’ on a broad

cultural basis. The discussion of religious doctrine would follow, beginning with points of contact, not of divergence.’ Although Juan does not appear to have studied Ramon Lull’s

works, his general approach to Islam, notably his stress on the convergence of the two religions and on the need for linguistic

and cultural preparation, is that of Lull. From the twelfth century onwards, serious study of Islam in western Europe had

been centred in Spain. It was there that the Koran had been 1J. Vincke, SFG i. 25 (1970), 82 (1373); V. Beltran de Heredia, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 28 (1958), 266 f.; Fernan Diaz de Toledo, in Cartagena, Defensorium, p. 351; Eiximenis, Crestia, I. 62, in Contes i Faules, ed. M. Olivar (ENC

A 6), pp. 15-19. * Cabanelas (cited, p. 132, n. 1). See also J, Gonzalez, El Maestro Juan de Segovia y su biblioteca (Madrid, 1944); R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 86-98.

162 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 repeatedly translated and that schools for Oriental languages had been established. Compared with earlier activity Juan is an isolated figure. His trilingual Koran was not preserved by the University of Salamanca to which he left it. The scholars of fifteenth-century Granada were interested in commenting on past works and in cleaving to rigid orthodoxy. They were not interested in dialogue with Christians. The only public disputation proposed from Granada was suggested by a renegade Christian. On the Christian side, Juan’s plans found more of an echo outside than inside the peninsula. Hernando de ‘Talavera, the

first archbishop of Granada, was to attempt something

as Granada. :

similar, but even his sanctity could not triumph against the bellicose exclusivism which, by 1500, dominated Castile as well

: MEDICINE AND SCIENCE

One of the most striking examples of the convivencia of earlier

centuries had been the scientific activity in centres such as Toledo where Arabic texts had been used and had become available to Christians, largely through the work of Jewish scholars. In Valencia after the Christian conquest it was still possible for a Muslim scholar, Muhammad al-Safra, to receive

his medical training from a Christian, but the increasingly hostile atmosphere made him move to Granada about 1318. In the Crown of Aragon almost fifty medical works were translated from Arabic between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. Scientific and medical works in Arabic continued to circulate in the Jewish aljamas. They were still being taught in the Muslim

community at Saragossa at the end of the fifteenth century; this may have been an exceptional case. From the end of the previous century in Castile, presumably because of the pogroms

of 1391, later conversions, and increasing hostility, there is a sharp descent in the number and quality of the works copied. After 1400 scientific activity is reduced to a few isolated cases. There continued to be some demand for Moorish and Jewish female doctors (not merely midwives) and in Valencia a few 1 On Lull, see Vol. I, pp. 163 f., and Part I, Ch. VI; on Talavera, below, Part III, Ch. II. D. Cabanelas, Al-Andalus, 15 (1950), 233-50; L. Seco de Lucena Paredes, MEAH 8 (1959), 7-28.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 163

Muslims were licensed to practise medicine, but these were exceptions. Jewish and Muslim doctors found it difficult to obtain licences from an exclusively Christian medical tribunal. In 1487 in Huesca Jews and Mudejars were excluded from practising or studying medicine in the local university. Near Valencia in 1464 a Christian interested in Arabic science found it hard to borrow a text recently arrived from Cairo from a perhaps naturally reluctant Muslim scholar. Neither assimilation

into a Christian institution nor communication on a scientific subject were any longer proving possible.? CONVIVENCIA IN ART

By 1300 the two forms of art prevalent in the peninsula were Gothic and Mudejar. These forms continued to develop and combine in the two centuries that followed. The development of Gothic religious architecture has already been sketched. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are primarily interesting for secular architecture and for developments in Gothic sculpture and painting. SECULAR ARCHITECTURE: CATALONIA

The secular buildings of Catalonia differ sharply from those of Castile. Catalan architects forged their own secular as well as religious school. Using Gothic forms they created royal palaces and municipal buildings which are closer to Italy than anything

else in the peninsula. There is no parallel in Castile to the Tinell (1359-70), the great hall of Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon’s palace in Barcelona, a splendid Gothic background for great receptions and meetings of the Catalan Corts. Smaller

royal palaces arose at the monasteries of Poblet and Santes Creus. The urban patriciate of Barcelona co-operated and vied with

the Crown. The municipal government (Consell de Cent) had built by 1402 a town hall whose fagade was more impressive than that of most Catalan cathedrals. In 1416-34 the palace of the Generalitat (the government of Catalonia) arose to match it. 1 L. Garcia Ballester, Historia social de la medicina en la Espaita de los siglos XIII al

XVI, i (Madrid, 1976), 21 f., 30-3, 42-5, 59-64, 68-74.

164 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 The influence of Italy is particularly clear in the Lomas (Liotjas) (the mercantile exchanges) of Barcelona, Majorca, Valencia, Saragossa, Perpignan, and Tortosa. There is a vast distance from the Mudeyjar castles of Castile to the light and airy

Lonja of Valencia—the perfect example of the type—or the Gothic patio of the Generalitat of Barcelona, a distance which ‘marks in the cultural field the change in Spain from reconquest

[of Islam] by land to a world opened on the Mediterranean’. The same feeling for space, the same desire to create ‘sumptuous

and solemn buildings’, appears here and in the Hospital of Santa Creu in Barcelona as in the cathedrals of Majorca and Gerona. CASTILE

Many of the differences between Castile and Catalonia are due

to the absence of a fixed capital in medieval Castile. Since Castile possessed no equivalent to Barcelona, it lacked a native architectural school focused on a capital city such as one finds in Catalan Gothic. It had, until almost 1500, no notable civic buildings to compare with Barcelona’s or Valencia’s. Castile is

dominated, in religious architecture, sculpture, and painting by French, Flemish, and Italian influences, in its castles and palaces by the star of the Alhambra. The result is brilliant but

personality. |

the dominant note, compared with the continuity which Catalan art exhibits in every field, is discontinuity and lack of a distinct

As Castile grew rich in the fifteenth century it could afford to set the tapestries and retables of Flanders against Mudejar stucco and ceramic walls. In religious Gothic architecture, Seville cathedral, a ‘completely exotic building’ for Andalusia, which took a century to build, is principally notable for its size. Like other Castilian cathedrals it owes what distinction it has to foreign artists. Castile is invaded by Germans and Flemings. They create the flamboyant towers and spires of Burgos cathedral (1442-58), the Charterhouse of Miraflores near Burgos, and superb sepulchral chapels throughout Spain. The aristocratic society of Castile was not interested, as Italian or Catalan 11. Torres Balbas, Arguitectura gética (Ars Hispaniae, vii) (Madrid, 1952), pp. 244"6557: pp. f. 313-20. Rubid, Vida, pp. 24. f. See Vol. I, pp. 190-201, and above, Ch. IT,

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 165

urban patricians were, in building for the glory of its city. It expressed its private vision of glory in the star-patterned vaults of the Capilla de los Vélez at Murcia, of the Luna Chapel at Toledo, of the Chapels of the Presentation and the Condestable at Burgos.! GRANADA AND MUDEJAR ART

In the fourteenth century the Alhambra of Granada is ‘the great artistic form; from it irradiate the modes of domestic art, which reach the high Meseta of Castile in the North and the Atlas Mountains in the South’. The time had passed when the religious architecture of Spanish Islam could influence Christian Spain, but, in domestic architecture, no western European city in 1400, not even in Italy, could rival the refinement and richness of Granada. The interior decoration of the Alhambra is far more important than its fagades. This decoration, a blend of inscriptions with floral and geometrical interlace, executed in stucco, precious wood, and ceramics, survives today as a pale

version of the original, without its briliant blues, reds, and gold, its glass, its marble screens and capitals covered with paint-

ings, its gilded and painted stalactite cupolas, and without the exotically dressed and adorned courtiers and ladies who moved against this background.

The artists of Granada borrowed from Christian forms.

Greater naturalism appears in the representation of flowers and plants. But influence went mainly in the other direction. In the 1350s Pedro I of Castile and his Jewish treasurer Samuel ha-

Levi both borrowed from the art of Granada. The interior of the Synagogue of the Transito at Toledo, opened in 1357 by haLevi, recalls the Sala de Gomares in Granada. The Synagogue

‘seems the great room of a palace’, with stuccoes in lieu of tapestries, in which Hebrew inscriptions play the same role as Cufic script does at Granada. The interior fagade of the Alcazar of Seville seems inspired by the same building in Granada, the

work of Pedro I’s tributary ally, Muhammad V. Pedro’s successor, Enrique II, used Mudejar artists in his palace in Leén. The converso financier Juan Sanchez used them for his house in Salamanca (now Santa Marfa de las Duefias). 1 Torres Balbas, pp. 281-8, 291-308, 337 f.; Marqués de Lozoya, Historia del

arte hispdnico, 1 (Barcelona, 1934), Ch. XIV. )

166 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 In the fifteenth century the great favourite Alvaro de Luna built a Mudejar palace at Escalona, and Luna’s king Juan II another in the Alcazar at Segovia. The decoration of these palaces has gone, as has that of Olite in Navarre. One can still see the Mudejar door in an alcove in the room in which the future Isabel the Catholic was born at Madrigal in 1451. Spanish Muslims were excellent military architects. Malaga and Granada only fell to Isabel and Fernando because their defenders were starved out. In Castile Mudejars built not only palaces but bridges, hospitals, town fortifications in Burgos, Valladolid, Avila, and Toledo, and the great castles of Coca and Medina del Campo.}

‘ISABELINE’ (PLATERESQUE) ART oe In the reign of Isabel and Fernando (1474-1516) late Gothic combines with Mudejar art in a freedom. which contrasts strikingly with the royal emphasis on political and religious unification. The architects working in Castile, still generally French or German, employ Mudejars and Mudejar forms. The facades of San Pablo and San Gregorio in Valladolid (both finished by 1505) are built of stone, but the luxuriant decoration

with which they are covered recalls the Alhambra and the Alcazar of Seville as well as the tombs of Miraflores. San Juan de los Reyes at Toledo (1476-95) was built by a foreign master,

Hans Wass. It was the first Gothic stone church built there since the cathedral two centuries before, but the Mudejar

inscriptions give it a local stamp. |

The Catholic Monarchs built churches rather than palaces. Their taste in church architecture was imitated, however, in secular art by their nobles. The Mendoza palace at Guadalajara (1480-1501) was built by Hans Wass and Mudejar craftsmen. Since 1936 a more complete example of an ‘Isabeline’ palace is

the Casa de Pilatos in Seville (1492-1533), where Italian Renaissance style prevails in the fagades and columns, Mudejar

in the internal decoration?

1 Torres Balbas, Al-Andalus, 7 (1942), 416; idem, Ars Hispaniae, iv (Madrid, 1949); M. Gémez-Moreno, in Homenaje a D. Francisco Codera (Saragossa, 1904), pp.

259-70. On El Transito see Cantera, Stnagogas, pp. 65-go. On. the palaces see above, Ch. II, pp. 50 f. and Lozoya, iii (1940), Ch. ITI, also B. Pavén Maldonado, Al-Andalus, 40 (1975), 191-7, with references there given.

2 Torres Balbas, Ars Hispaniae, vii. 323-48; iv. 345-9.

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 167 GOTHIC SCULPTURE

Late fourteenth - and early fifteenth-century sculpture in Castile

and Navarre is dominated by Burgundian masters. Their greater interest in detail (particularly in dress) and attempt to capture the personality of the bishop or noble they depict were carried much further by Flemish artists after 1450. The tombs of Carlos III and Queen Leonor in Pamplona cathedral (1416) are among the finest works in the Burgundian style. In Catalonia a distinct native style exists in sculpture, as in architecture, connected with the court of Pere III of Catalonia— Aragon. Jordi de Deu began work as the Greek slave of Jaume Cascalls. Freed, as Jordi Johan, he worked at Poblet, Cervera, Tarragona, Ripoll, and in Barcelona on the town hall. Other Catalan artists worked in Saragossa and carved the choir-stalls in Barcelona cathedral. After 1400 Jordi Johan’s sons, Antoni and, especially, Pere (1398—after 1458), develop a freer and more imaginative style. Pere Johan, one of the outstanding artists of contemporary Europe, executed the portal of the Generalitat in Barcelona in 1418, worked on its patios, created the base and predella of the retable of ‘Tarragona cathedral in 1426-33, and worked at Saragossa and Naples. After the outbreak of the Civil War in Catalonia (1462-72) the most striking sculpture in the peninsula was created in Castile, again by foreign artists. More Flemish sculpture may be preserved there than in Holland and Belgium. The Portal de los

Leones at Toledo cathedral (1452-65) was due to several | German and Flemish artists. Hans Wass and his pupils created the Trasaltar of the Capilla Mayor at Toledo and San Juan de

los Reyes, where the Mudejar desire to cover all empty wall spaces is successfully combined with Flemish Gothic flamboyance. At Burgos, Gil de Siloé (fl. 1475-1505), whose style seems to come from the Lower Rhine, executed, among other

things, the tombs and the stone retable at Miraflores, the statue of Juan de Padilla, now in the Museum, and the retable of Santa Ana in the Capilla del Condestable. The facade of San Gregorio at Valladolid is the work of his school. The main aim in Siloé’s sculpture is decoration and ornamentation. There is an obsessive passion to represent details. Dress, brocades, velvets, silks, jewels, rosaries seem almost as important

168 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 as the subjects’ faces. It is ‘sensualism transferred to another world, that of stone’. The star-vault over the tomb of Juan II at Miraflores and other details show that Siloé was interested in Mudejar artistic forms. The same attention to details of dress

appears in the instructions for the posthumous portrait of Alvaro de Luna (in Toledo cathedral), drawn up in 1488. Northern European sculptors were at work everywhere in Castile and Leon but they could not satisfy the demand. Whole

altars were imported ready-made from Flanders, together with scores of small Madonnas, produced at Bruges and Malines. At the same time painting in the peninsula came under Flemish dominion.+ GOTHIC PAINTING

From 1300 onwards every Spanish guild wanted a retable for its chapel, every rich man wished to attain immortality by donating a retable to his parish church, It has been calculated that less than 1 per cent (2,000) retables survive of the perhaps 200,000 which existed in Spain in 1500. The surviving retables differ widely in quality. The painter suffered from patrons who always demanded the largest possible retable in the shortest possible time together with the greatest possible emphasis on character. The serene and monumental Piero della Francesca _ would not have prospered in Spain. After 1450, under the influence of Flanders, vertsmo sometimes becomes caricature.

The type of bourgeois painter with a large workshop under him appears clearly in Ramon Destorrents (ff. 1351-91), the court painter of Pere III of Catalonia—Aragon. The brothers Serra, Borrassa, Martorell, Huguet continue the school begun by Destorrents for over a century.

In Catalan painters Italian influence appears very early. Catalans travelled to Italy while Florentines painted in Valen-

cia and Toledo. At times the Catalans surpass their Italian masters. Lufs Borrassa (c. 1360-1426) has been considered ahead stylistically of contemporary Italians. His prestige was such that in 1401 he was commissioned to do a retable for a 1A, Duran Sanpere and J. Ainaud de Lasarte, Escultura gética (Ars Hispaniae, viii) (Madrid, 1956); Torres Balbas, Ars Hispaniae, vii. 338. H. E. Wethey, Gil de Siloe and his School (Cambridge, Mass., 1936) ; idem, Art Bulletin, 19 (1937), 381-400. For Luna’s portrait see Crénica de D. Alvaro de Luna, ed. Carriazo (Madrid, 1940),

after p. xvi (see pp. 165 f.).

THE BREAKDOWN OF CONVIVENCIA 169

Burgos merchant. At the same time Valencian masters were working in Burgo de Osma and Valladolid.

Bernat Martorell (ff. 1427-52) was probably trained by Borrassa, but in his passion for detail he appears influenced by

Flanders. His contemporary Lufs Dalmau of Valencia is certainly Flemish in his portrayal of the Consellers of Barcelona (1445). Jaume Huguet (c. 1414-92) takes over from Martorell. Native Catalan continuity is again in contrast with foreign pre-

dominance in Castile. The greatest paintings in Castile were executed by foreigners, Starnina’s at Toledo, the main retable of Ledén cathedral by Nicholas the Frenchman, that of Salamanca by a Florentine. After 1400 painting in oil became general. Tactile values are stressed and an attempt is made to attain a complete threedimensional style. Spain is open to Flemish tapestries, stained glass and paintings as well as statues. Post remarks that after 1450 Castilian and Andalusian schools ‘became little more than offshoots of Flemish painting’. In contrast Huguet in Catalonia returns to the Italian tradition. The outstanding painter of 1450-1500, Bartolomé Bermejo, cannot be assimilated to artists of other schools. Coming from

Cordoba, he painted in Valencia, Aragon, Barcelona, and Granada (1474-97). Perhaps trained in Flanders, he influenced

painters throughout the peninsula. His almost completely naturalistic landscapes set off his interest in strong personalities.

His Piedad (Barcelona Cathedral Museum), dated 1490, is successful because the emotionalism of his Madonna and Christ is sustained by the unmistakably realistic figure of Lufs Despla,

kneeling at one side. 1 J. Gudiol Ricart, Pintura gética (Ars Hispaniae, ix) (Madrid, 1955) (cited p. 55); idem, Borrassa (Barcelona, 1953); with J. Ainaud, Huguet (Barcelona, 1948); C. R. Post, A History of Spanish Painting, i (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), 21 f. Nuno Goncalves’

one great surviving painting (probably of 1465-7) ‘has more in common with medieval mystery plays’ than with Italian or Flemish contemporary art. See Reynaldo dos Santos, Nuno Gongalves (London, 1955). Archdeacon Despla is a well-

known figure. In the year of Bermejo’s picture he led the successful defence of ‘ecclesiastical liberties’ (privileges) against the city of Barcelona and Fernando the Catholic. J. Vicens Vives, Ferran II i la ciutat de Barcelona, ii (Barcelona, 1937), 77-9.

V Humanism and Traditionalism HUMANISM

E XCEPT perhaps in Italy it is difficult to draw sharp distinctions between medieval and Renaissance in western Europe

before 1500. However, one can speak of ‘humanists’ in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a fairly clear-cut small group of cultivated persons acutely conscious of forming an avant-garde opposed to the still prevalent weight of tradition.

The number of humanists was never large. What distinguished them from more traditional scholars was not the fact that they read the Latin classics (and some Greek authors, in translation). The Latin pagan classics had been well known, in

general, throughout the Middle Ages. Aristotle had been intensely studied (in Latin) since the twelfth century. But the humanists adopted new attitudes towards the classics, as they did towards everywhere else. Their point of view was not so much anti-Christian as independent of Christianity. Bernat Metge (c. 1345-1413) 1s representative of the humanist approach. Metge was not born a humanist. His early works— particularly his Lzbre de Fortuna e Prudéncia (1381)—are traditional in form and content, but his masterpiece, Lo Somni (1399),

is a humanist work. In it he is ready to discuss any theme, including the Christian dogma of personal immortality, without

religious preconceptions. That his Catalan prose style is modelled on classical Latin prose, that he displays a disinterested love of books and study, and that he combines very subtly Italian, classical, and Christian sources, are important, if minor, notes which also characterize humanists in general. The origins of humanism differed in Catalonia—Aragon and Castile. In Catalonia the first humanists were secretaries or 1J. Rubié, De [’Edat mitjana al renaixement (Barcelona, 1948), pp. 150 f. ; idem, HGLH i. 738 f.; i11. 7303 J. Ruiz i Calonja, ER 11 (1962), 1-10; Riquer, ii. 364, 418, 422 f.

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 171 ecclesiastics connected with the royal court. Jews and conversos from Judaism played relatively little part. In Castile almost all

the leading humanists, throughout the fifteenth century, were either very exceptional nobles, such as the Marquis of Santillana, or conversos. The praise of Santillana by the converso bishop Alonso de Cartagena, quoted in a work by another converso, Juan de Lucena, symbolizes the alliance between the two groups. It was other leading lettered nobles who defended the conversos from attack in Castile.

Humanism came first, outside Italy, to Catalonia. Metge’s Lo Somnz, ‘the first manifestation of humanist prose in Spain’, antedates any comparable work in Castile by decades. But frontiers

were not absolute, and mutual influences between Catalan or Valencian and Castilian writers were constant. At first Castile received more, in translations from classics and in literary models, than she gave. By 1500 the reverse was the case.} THE TRADITIONAL BACKGROUND

The humanists formed a very small minority. ‘It was only Nebrya [by his Latin Grammar of 1481 and later works] who brought humanism to the people, to the schools.’ In 1425 Latin was taught in Barcelona from the standard medieval textbooks. In 1446 an offer by a Genoese humanist to teach Seneca and

Cicero there did not even receive a reply from the city’s authorities. An essentially traditional thinker such as the Fran-

ciscan Eiximenis (d. 1409) was a standard authority. Inventories of books and the records of early printing in Spain show that he was read and consulted by far more people than his con-

temporary Bernat Metge. Eiximenis often cites classical authors, but his attitude towards them is that of Cassiodorus eight centuries earlier. Pagan authors can be used to serve the ends of Christian apologetic. They are not seen as representing an independent view of the world and they can (Ovid, for instance) lead’ to ‘carnal sins and other evils’. The humanist stress on discontinuity with the immediate past, their consciousness of living in a new age, are as lacking in Eiximenis as they

are in Alfonso X of Castile’s historical works, written over a 1 Juan Marichal, La Voluntad de Estilo, 2nd edn. (Madrid, 1971), pp. 29-32; Juan de Lucena, Libro de vida beata, in Opiisculos literarios, ed. A. Paz y Melia (Madrid, 1892), p. 159; see above, Ch. IV, p. 155, n. 2, Riquer, ii. 426.

172 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 century before. Eiximenis uses classical sources as does Alfonso,

as subsidiary materials for an entirely Christian structure. The concept of wisdom is still essentially static in Eiximenis. To wish to add to knowledge or to indulge in ‘curiosity’ seemed as

reprehensible to him as it had to Don Juan Manuel or to St. Augustine. Men ususually seen as at the beginning of humanism in the peninsula were often largely traditional in their approach. Con-

fusions were inevitable. Felip de Malla (d. 1431), canon of Barcelona, celebrated preacher and diplomat, can make the Virgin Mary speak the language of Seneca and can draw on Dante and medieval lapidaries at the same time.’ ALONSO DE CARTAGENA

Alonso de Cartagena, converso bishop of Burgos (d. 1456), had

what seem humanist interests. More than anyone else he brought Castile into touch with Italian scholars. He also translated a number of sabidores antiguos (ancient sages) into Castilian.

His choice was revealing. He translated several works of Cicero but his main interest was in Seneca. Largely because of

Cartagena Seneca became the favourite classic of Castile. Seneca’s severe morality could be incorporated without too much difficulty into the Christian world picture. To a friend and panegyrist Cartagena seemed the Seneca of his age. Cartagena opposed the new translation of Aristotle’s Ethics by Aretino because he felt the meaning of key Aristotelian terms

was already fixed by scholastic discussions based on older (inferior) versions. He remarked: ‘We should not attend to what Aristotle says but to what accords with moral philosophy.’ Some years later the prince of Viana (d. 1461), heir to Navarre

and Aragon, made a translation of the Ethics into Castilian which included ‘conclusions’ in the scholastic manner. He asked 1M. Batllori, VII CHCA i. 395; J. Rubiéd, in Documentos para la historia de la Universidad de Barcelona, i (Barcelona, 1971), 43*, 235 f.; P. Bohigas, in Mascellania

Crexells (Barcelona, 1929), pp. 77-82. For Alfonso X see M. R. Lida, Romance Philology, 12 (1958-9), 111-42, at 124. J. A. Maravall, Estudios de historia del pensamuento espaiiol, Edad Media, i (Madrid, 1967), 237 f., 248. On Eiximenis’ library see J. Monfrin, Bibliothéque de ? Humanisme et Renaissance, 29 (1967), 447-84, reviewed by

Bohigas, ER 15 (1970), 158-60. * Rubidé, De ’Edat, pp. 73 f. For Malla’s library, J. M®. Madurell, BRABL 30 (1963-4), 557-62, 566.

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 173 Spanish scholars to collate Aristotle with Christian doctrine, an idea which would have seemed ridiculous to a humanist. Cartagena’s original works display the same traditionalism. His Doctrinal de caballeros is a collection of laws on knighthood,

which includes rules on duels, jousts, etc., while condemning them. In his speech at the Council of Basle (1434), aimed to establish Castilian precedence over England, his use of history is as uncritical as that of his opponents. Other scholars in Spain share Cartagena’s approach to the classics. Enrique de Villena’s Labours of Hercules (1417) has been

compared to the Italian Salutati’s work on the same subject (1406). But Salutati’s aim was to defend ancient poetry, Villena’s to impart moral teaching. Villena’s sources are far more limited than Salutati’s. Boethius and Seneca predominate. Villena distorts these sources to form his conception of Hercules as ‘a paladin of his step-mother’s honour’, a ‘complete knight’ (caballero acabado) .*

Throughout the fifteenth century one finds works whose struc-

ture and language are humanist but whose spirit is traditional. A leading theologian such as Alonso Tostado (d. 1455) might compose a treatise on pagan gods and a work on Medea, but humanism had no influence on his ideas. In his Libro de wida beata (1463), Juan de Lucena deliberately chose as a model Bartolommeo Fazio’s De vitae felicitate, rather than Lorenzo Valla’s De voluptate, presumably because of the Stoic morality he

found in Fazio. Lucena tried to latinize his Castilian, but his style is a mixture of the erudite and the familiar, the classical and the scholastic. At a more popular level the great Catalan novel Tirant lo Blanc may use classical legends, but its inspiration is chivalric.®

FOREIGN INFLUENCES IN THE PENINSULA: FRANCE

French influences entered the peninsula before those of Italy.

In Castile they continued to be important throughout the 1 Carreras Artau, ii. 614-22, 628 f.; CDIACA xxvi. 139-22; M. Penna, in BAE cxvi, pp. xlviii f., lviii, lai ff.; Cartagena, ibid., pp. 205-33; Marichal, pp. 33~-7; NBAE xix. 676 f. 2 Enrique de Villena, Los Doze Trabajos de Hércules, ed. M. Morreale (Madrid, 1958); eadem, Studies in Philology, 51 (1954), 95-106.

8 Morreale, NRFH 9 (1955), 1-21. On Tostado, Carreras Artau, li. 542-58, 564. Rubid, De l’Edat, p. 145 (see pp. 136 ff.).

174 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA .1350-1500 fifteenth century. Military tactics, arms, and armour were modelled on those in use in France. Embassies were often inter-

changed. French fashions in dress, music, decoration, and art were everywhere. French novels were adapted and translated. Santillana takes the general plan of one of his poems from Petrarch, but the setting and atmosphere are largely French. In Catalonia French influence, expressed through the courts of Charles V (1364-80) and of the popes of Avignon, opened the

way for Italy. Tapestries from Arras illustrated scenes of the romans of the Round Table, later of the Roman de la Rose, works which were read by the court, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie, either in French or in Catalan translations.+ ITALY

Few Italian humanists are known to have visited the peninsula before the 1480s. Italian scholars had little desire to travel to a country racked by civil war which seemed to them savage and

unknown, where they would find themselves ‘far from any friend’ and where ‘letters were despised’. But many Catalans and Castilians travelled to Italy or met Italian scholars at the great church councils (Constance, Basle). The Castilian knight Pero Tafur, on his visit to Rome in 1436, noted how travellers still ‘sought out’? pagan monuments, ‘before anything else’, for their beauty. The establishment of the court of Alfonso IV of Catalonia—Aragon at Naples (1443-58) drew scholars as well as adventurers from Spain to Italy.?

CATALONIA | : ,

In Catalonia Italian influence 1s visible from about 1330 in painting and illuminated manuscripts. By 1400 it appears in literature. This literature had been enriched in the reign of Pere III by translations of Christian and pagan classics, a number of them (Livy, St. Augustine’s City of God) made from French versions. In about 1388 Bernat Metge was the first

95- ,

1R, Lapesa, La obra literaria del Marqués de Santillana (Madrid, 1957), pp. 25-30, 114 f.; Rubiéd, HGLA i. 730-4. 2 Morreale, NRFA 9g (1955), 21; A. Farinelli, Viajes por Espafia y Portugal, i (Rome, 1942), 122 ff., 1399-46; idem, Italia e Spagna, ii (Turin, 1929), 71-81; Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, trans. M. Letts (London, 1926), p. 36 (on Troy see pp. 112 f.); B. Croce, La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la Rinascenza (Bari, 1949), pp- 34-55;

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 175

author in Spain to praise Petrarch in a romance tongue. Metge was also the first to translate a work of Petrarch (Grisel-

dis) into Catalan. About 1400 the Dominican Antoni Canals translated part of Petrarch’s Africa. By then a merchant of Barcelona had translated Boccaccio’s Corbaccio. In 1429 the Decameron followed, as did Dante’s Divine Comedy.

This group of translations represents the first attempt outside

Italy to assimilate the thought of the three greatest Italian writers of the fourteenth century. There were gaps. Petrarch was prized by Metge and Canals as a moralist, not as a lyric poet, but by 1408 Catalan poets were aware of his poetry. His Latin works were translated ten years after his death (in 1374). The translation of the Dzvine Comedy was the first verse transla-

tion in Europe. The version of the Decameron was remarkably successful in transfusing the spirit of Boccaccio’s satire into Catalan.} CASTILE

The cult of Dante was perhaps first introduced into Castile at the same time as into Catalonia. Italian merchants took Dante’s works to Seville as they did to Barcelona. But broader

acquaintance with Italian authors came later in Castile. It was only in the 1440s that Alonso de Cartagena put the Marquis of Santillana and King Juan II in touch with Italian humanists and that Italian manuscripts were sent to Castile in any number.’ TRANSLATIONS OF THE CLASSICS

In a number of cases—Boethius, Valerius Maximus, the Tragedies of Seneca, and others—Catalan translations provided the basis for Castilian. Translators of medieval religious, as well as of pagan works, are conscious of the complexity of Latin and

the consequent difficulty of translation. In the fourteenth century Catalan translations were largely due to a desire to know the great ‘deeds’ of Greece and Rome, not seen as essentially different from the deeds of Roland or the crusaders. With 1 Rubié, HGLH i. 715-18; ii. 787-92; Riquer, ii. 373 fF., 455, 468 ff; 1. 606-19. On the Decameron, M. Casulla, Archivum Romanicum, 9 (1925), 383-412. Nicolau d’Olwer, EUC 2 (1908), 166—79, 306-20, is valuable for Catalan literature. , 2 Farinelli, Viajes, 1. 103; M. Schiff, La bibliothéque du Marquis de Santillane (Paris, 1905), pp. lxxxv, 449-59.

|

176 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Bernat Metge there was a new attempt to penetrate the sensibility of the ancients. The moral lessons conveyed by the classics

still attracted most attention. Summaries of Seneca appear in Catalan. ‘The Dominican Canals (d. 1419) translated Valerius

Maximus and Seneca with a didactic end in mind, but he included Seneca’s eulogy of Cato’s suicide.

The importance of the Aragonese dialect in classical and other translations was due to one man, Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Grand Master of the Hospital from 1377 to 1396. His

historical compilations were begun by 1362. Translations of ancient Greek and Byzantine historians were made for him by Greeks in his service at Rhodes or Avignon after 1379. ‘These translations included the first versions of Plutarch’s Lives and the speeches in Thucydides in a western European vernacular. The Plutarch was used in Heredia’s compilation, Grant Cronica de

Espanya (1385). Heredia’s attempt at a general history of medieval Greece, while totally uncritical in its use of sources, was something new in the West. His translations and compila-

tions reached both Italian humanists and the court of Catalonia~Aragon. Some of them were found in the library of the Marquis of Santillana (d. 1458).? Before 1500 there were almost no Greek scholars in Castile (until the 1480s none in Catalonia). Santillana knew virtually

no Latin. Lacking the classical languages, he assembled at Guadalajara translations of all the main Latin pagan classics into Castilian, Aragonese, Italian, Catalan, or French. Seneca’ had, as usual, pride of place but we also find Livy, Lucan, Ovid, Sallust, Caesar, Cicero, a fragmentary version of the I/zad, and

the first Castilian translations of the Aeneid and of Dante’s Comedy, both made by Enrique de Villena. Many of the same translations belonged to other Castilian nobles, notably Santillana’s fellow author, Fernan Pérez de Guzman; in every case medieval authors were intermingled with classical.* 1 Riquer, ii. 467; Rubiéd, De PEdat, pp. 63 ff.; idem, HGLH iu. 746-55. For translations of Livy see C. J. Wittlin, ER 13 (1963-8), 277-315. 2A, Luttrell, Speculum, 35 (1960), 401-7. See now La Grant Cronica de Espanya, I-II, ed. R. Af Geijerstam (Uppsala, 1964). L. Lépez Molina’s edition of Tuctdides romanceado en el siglo XIV (Madrid, 1960) is far less reliable. Schiff, pp. 16-29, etc. 8 Schiff, passim. See Farinelli, Italia e Spagna, i. 387-426; M. R. Lida, NRFH 5 (1951), 204-14. Fernan Pérez de Guzman, Generaciones y semblanzas, ed. R. B. Tate (London, 1965), pp. 99-101.

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 177 LIBRARIES

The changes in lesser nobles’ libraries deserve to be studied. In

1408 the Catalan poet and noble Pere de Queralt left a small collection of books; French romans stand out. In 1422 the fifteen books belonging to the Copons family, near Cervera, included Valerius Maximus and Seneca in Catalan, but there were more romans, Boethius, and Ramon Lull. But in 1484 Pedro Sanchez

Munyoz died in Majorca leaving 114 books, a wide range of translations and works in Latin, Castilian, and Catalan. They included the masterpieces of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, the leading Latin classics and—a clear sign of Castilian influence—the works of Santillana, Juan de Mena, and Villena.1 HUMANISM IN CATALONIA: TO 1410

Bernat Metge, already cited as the first humanist writer in Spain, should be seen against the background of the Royal Chancery of Catalonia—Aragon, where he worked as scribe and royal secretary from 1375 until 1410. Metge and his colleagues were ‘the first professional prose-writers’ in Catalan. Through their contacts with foreign scholars—they were often employed

as envoys to papal Avignon or farther afield—these royal ser-

vants gradually adopted in both Latin and Catalan a more polished style, modelled on Cicero. The new chancery style imposed a standard of ‘the king’s Catalan’ on writers outside official circles.”

Pere III and his elder son Joan I (1387-96) were less humanist than their secretaries. Martf (1396-1410), Pere’s younger surviving son and the last ruler of the old Catalan dynasty, was

primarily religious in his interests. But all three kings were patrons of learning and bibliophiles. Pere and Martti were cele-

brated orators and historians. Joan’s curiosity extended to Hebrew and the Koran, to Tartary and China. Joan demanded Heredia’s versions of Greek historians and encouraged a series of translations of Latin classics. In 1386 he was asking the ruler of Milan for Latin manuscripts. 1 Segura, Aplech, pp. 179-81; A. Duran, BBC 4 (1917), 128-31; C. J. Wittlin, ER 11 (1962), 11-32. See the increase in the size of some nobles’ libraries in Valencia in 14.74—1504 in P. Berger, MCV 11 (1975), 112. 2 Rubid, De ’Edat, pp. 110 ff., 130-3; idem, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 24. (1947), 89~99; Actas del VII Congreso Internacional de Lingiitsttca Romdnica, 11 (1955), 357-643

ER g (1961), 67-84.

178 THE TIBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 About 3180 royal letters take on a different note. A new concept of fame appears that year in Pere III’s legacy of historical works to Poblet,-when the king states—through a secretary—

that men’s deeds are less important than the way they are recorded by historians. The feeling for the past of Athens appears the same year, when Pere orders the Acropolis, ‘the richest jewel in the world’, to be protected. Martf’s speech to the Catalan Corts in 1406 derives its structure from the medieval sermon, but the insistence on glory and fame, borrowed from ancient Roman writers, is here transferred to Catalonia.1 | The Dominican Antoni Canals found Seneca more effectual than Christian authors because he was no ‘prophet or patriarch, speaking figuratively, but a philosopher entire, who founds all his argument on judgement and reason’. An apologetic end (disproving scepticism) is behind the use of an ancient philo-

sopher. Purely aesthetic delight in antiquity is rarer, but it existed. In Lo Somni (1399) Bernat Metge ‘sees in the tale of [Orpheus’] descent to Hades not a theme for ethical contemplation or moral edification but a beautiful fable, a symbol of the

power of poetry to move beasts and rocks and trees’.? | CATALAN HUMANISM 1410-1458

Many of the royal secretaries of Pere III and his sons continued to work for the new Trastamara dynasty, enthroned in 1412 in Catalonia—Aragon. The fact that the new rulers’ native language was Castilian was eventually to have a highly deleterious effect on Catalan literature. This effect was concealed for a time by the munificence of Alfonso [IV (1416-58). Alfonso’s love for music and books went back to his early years. During his reign

in Naples (1443-58), his literary patronage was mainly extended, however, to Italian humanists, to a lesser extent to Castilian poets, and to artists of every nation. He employed

Catalan librarians but it is not clear that he encouraged

humanism in Catalonia itself. |

1A. Rubié, EUC 10 (1917-18), 1-117; Documents, i. 287, 338; J. Rubid, De P Edat, pp. 34-8, 52, 113-15; idem, HGLH i. 734-9; iii. 734-40; SFG 1. 21 (1963), 245 ff. 2 Riquer, ii. 454; O. H. Green, The Literary Mind of Medieval and Renaissance Spain (Lexington, 1970), pp. 94 f. _ § Rubié, HGLH iii. 784-87; idem, in Estudios sobre Alfonso el Magnanimo (Barcelona,

1960), pp. 155-72; Riquer, ibid., pp. 175-96. See A. Soria, Los Humanistas de la Corte de A. el M. (Granada, 1956); Croce, op. cit. (p. 174, n. 2); Menéndez Pelayo,

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 179 However, during Alfonso’s reign, Catalan literature rose to new heights in the poems of Ausias March (c. 1397-1458) and in the novel, Tirant lo Blanc, largely written by Joannot Martorell (c. 1413-68). Both authors were of noble birth, born in Gandia,

near Valencia. Both wrote the same Catalan as Bernat Metge.

Both spent some time in Italy in the service of Alfonso. In Ausias March’s poems there are reminiscences of Petrarch and Dante, of Ovid and the Provencal troubadours, but the feeling expressed is new: the poems are addressed to real ladies, not to symbols or allegories. ‘The same naturalism appears in Tzrant, where—contrary to the usual chivalric novel—single combats, large-scale battles and love affairs are all realistically described, with a strong dose of humour and irony. CASTILIAN HUMANISM: SANTILLANA

In 1450 Castilian humanism was a recent, still very delicate

growth. Its main spokesman and patron, Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana (1398-1458), as a young man had spent six years at the court of Alfonso 1V. His library— with twenty-five surviving translations made expressly for him —has already been mentioned. In his Letter to the Constable

of Portugal Santillana speaks of northern French, Catalan, Castilian, and Galician poetry but prefers the Italians to the rest. The imitation of Dante and of the Latin classics in his poems often has a ‘purely decorative value’ but in his Bias contra Fortuna (c. 1448) he ‘was able, alone among his Spanish contem-

poraries, to create a poem faithful to the pagan [Stoic] point of view’. As he wrote to his son, ‘he was content with the materials of ancient literature, since its forms were inaccessible to him’. In his Proverbs Santillana draws directly on the Bible and pagan classics, ‘not copying them blindly but taking what he needs to develop his human ideal’. To many contemporaries Santillana

seemed to embody the ideal of the lettered prince after which

Alfonso of Aragon also strove.” :

Antologta, 11. 245-83. T. de Marinis, La Biblioteca napoletana del Re d’ Aragona, i (Milan,

tO ae. i 471 f., 545 f., 632 ff., 710-16. | 2 The Carta in Marqués de Santillana, Prose and verse, ed. J. B. Trend (London, 1940), pp. 3~18. Lapesa, op. cit. (p. 174, n. 1), pp. 121, 139, 223; idem, De la Edad Media a nuestros dias (Madrid, 1967), pp. 109 ff.; G6mez Manrique, NBAE xxii. 67.

180 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 The philosophical studies Santillana promoted were very rudimentary. The imitations of Platonic dialogues produced by his circle ‘are more formal exercises in perfecting the use of [Castilian] than authentic investigations of a problem’. Within five years of Santillana’s death two critics saw him as lacking in learning. New critical levels of appreciation were appearing.*

JUAN DE MENA , Juan de Mena (1411-56) was described by Menéndez y Pelayo as the first ‘pure man of letters’ in Castilian literary history. Coming from Cordoba, he studied in Salamanca and Rome and became ‘Secretary of Latin Letters’ to Juan II, thus occupying the same position Bernat Metge had held in Catalonia—Aragon some decades earlier. He may have been of converso descent. He was a friend of Santillana, as well as a protégé of Alvaro de Luna. He attained great fame during his life and was praised by the leading critics of later generations.

Nebrija’s Castilian Grammar (1492) takes almost all its

examples from Mena. |

Mena’s most important sources are Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, and

the Italian poets. His comments on his translation of Homer (from an earlier Latin version) are often irrelevant to the original poem, but he has a disinterested feeling for ancient beauty which enables him to see his own age more clearly. In the scene of the witch in his Laberinto Mena uses Lucan’s description of Pompey

consulting a witch before Pharsalia as the framework for describing a historical event of his own time. “Classical model, medieval superstition and the historical sense of the time unite’

in magnificent verse. Whenever he can Mena rejects words © derived from Arabic and substitutes Itahanisms. In this and in his Latinisms he is typical of the age and its excessive attempt to

model Castilian syntax on that of Latin.’ |

CHANGES: 1450-1516 | | As the fifteenth century continued, the development of printing,

the consequent growth of libraries, and improved education 1 Carreras Artau, ii. 634-40. Lapesa, op. cit., pp. 277 f. | 2 Menéndez Pelayo, Antologta, ii. 139; M. R. Lida de Malkiel, Juan de Mena

pp. 179-86. |

(Mexico, 1950), esp. pp. 529-34; A. Valbuena Prat, Historia de la literatura espaitola, i (Barcelona, 1968), 262; R. Lapesa, Historia de la lengua espaitola (Madrid, 1968),

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM i81 gradually spread abroad the humanist spirit from a tiny minority to wider circles.

Luis de Acufia, bishop of Burgos (1456-95) left 363 books at his death. The few classics are hardly visible in the mass of

legal and theological works. On the other hand Juan Arias Davila, bishop of Segovia (1460-97), of converso descent, enriched the chapter library of his see with over 100 manuscripts

and incunabula from Italy, among them a fair selection of classics. In the early sixteenth century a great ecclesiastical magnate, Alfonso de Fonseca (14'75-1534), archbishop of Santiago (later of Toledo), while not an exemplary churchman, was a devout classicist, reciting Virgil by heart, presiding over literary competitions, founding colleges and corresponding with Erasmus. This is the time when the university library of Sala-

manca received a legacy of 998 books from one canon ot Toledo.*

Notaries and lawyers were among the outstanding bibliophiles of the age. Whereas Diego Garcia (d. 1440), royal archivist of the kings of Aragon from Pere III to Alfonso IV, possessed only fourteen books, and no secular classic or work on secular history, his son, Jaume, also royal archivist, had strong classical interests, Pere Miquel Carbonell (1434-1517), Jaume’s

successor, was in touch with Italian humanists, copied and annotated classical manuscripts in a fine Italian hand, and possessed, in 1484, over fifty books, the majority classics from Italian presses. In 1493 the notary Miquel Abeyar of Majorca left 473 books, in 1494 the Majorcan lawyer Ferrer Berard 480. Both collections included a remarkable number of classical and recent Italian works.

Men such as Carbonell were not capable of criticizing the classics they adored. Carbonell’s veneration for the Latin past

led him to depreciate or ignore the great names of Catalan literature. By his time the influences of the Italian Renaissance and of Castilian hegemony were combining to cause a decline in writing in Catalan. More and more poets wrote in Castilian as well as in their native Catalan. In 1510 a Valencian writer was 1N. Lépez Martinez, Hispania, 20 (1960), 81-110; G. M. Bertini, Studi e ricerche aspanische (Milan, 1942), pp. 57-63; A. Lépez Ferreiro, Galicia en el ultimo tercio del siglo XV, 3rd edn. (Vigo, 1968), p. 278; M. Bataillon, Erasmo y» Espafia, i (Mexico, 1950), 191 f.; G. Beaujouan, Manuscrits scientifiques médiévaux de Université de

Salamanque (Bordeaux, 1962), pp. 6 f.

182 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 to see Castilian as ‘Latin, reasonant and most elegant, among other barbarous and savage tongues of Spain’. However, the group round Carbonell in Barcelona is of interest for its attempt

to stimulate scholarship. This precedes the corresponding movement in Castile by at least a decade. The Catalans and Valencians were particularly interested in the new art of printing.t

PRINTING | | SO

he first place where a classical author was printed in Spain was

probably Valencia (Sallust, 1475). Cicero, Florus, and Sallust appeared the same or the next year at Barcelona as school-texts, The first book certainly printed at Barcelona (1475) was the Latin grammar of Perotti, ‘which represented a complete renovation of teaching methods’. The motive given by the royal secretary responsible for the edition was ‘that [the fatherland] may become cultivated, instead of savage, and put on Latinity instead of barbarism’. The first surviving classical works printed in Castile appeared later, in 1490 (Burgos) and 1491 (Seville). Apart from the many books imported from abroad, the Spanish

reader had been presented, by 1501, with about 800 books printed in his own country. Another 1,300 followed in 1501-20. Up to 1501 only just over to per cent of the books published, of

which we have a record, were pre-Christian classics or even relatively recent works of philology. In 1501-20 the proportion of publications representing the texts of classical authors, commentaries on them, or introductions to Latin or Greek, rises to

18 per cent.’ Oo :

1J. Rubiéd, Cuadernos de Arqueologta e Historia de la Ciudad [Barcelona], 12 (1 968),

150; tdem, in Miscellania Crexells (Barcelona, 1929), pp. 205-22; HGLH ii. 871-5, 888-—go. For Carbonell as archivist see J. Martinez Ferrando, Studi in onore di R.

Filangieri, i (Naples, 1959), 197-212. For Abeyar’s books see E. de. K. Aguild, BSAL 7 (1897-8). The unpublished Berard inventory will appear in a book I am preparing on Majorcan libraries. For two remarkable libraries in Saragossa see BRAE 1 (1914), 470-8. A gloomier view of Catalan culture in J. Vicens, Els Trastamares (Barcelona, 1956), pp. 58-64. In Valencia in 1474-1504 no social class seems greatly to have increased its interest in reading. Berger, MCV 11 (1975), 110. 2 Rubid, De ?Edat, pp. 140-43 HGLA iii. 831 £.; (with J. Madurell y Marimén), Documentos para la historia de la Imprenta_y libreria en Barcelona 1474-1553 (Barcelona,

1955), esp. p. 61*; F. Vindel, El Arie tipografico en Espatia durante el siglo XV, v, no.

out of 793. : a SO 23; vii, no. 13; F. J. Norton, Printing in Spain 1501-1520 (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 125-8. For the earlier period I use Vindel, Indices (Madrid, 1951): about 90 works

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 183 EDUCATION

In Italy the diffusion of humanism was accompanied and made

possible by a spread of education and by a rise in the social standing of the learned. Spain was well behind Italy, but there, too, the fifteenth century saw considerable developments in education, from the elementary level to universities. In fourteenth-century Catalonia and Valencia citizens were claiming the right to hire native or foreign masters to teach their children.

The monopoly of the cathedral schools was being confined to teaching ecclesiastical chant. Private masters often appear in Catalan documents. At a higher level there were schools for grammar and sometimes also for the liberal arts. By 1301, at least, Barcelona contained a lay school for Latin grammar. Such schools prepared for higher studies in law and medicine, and, in

general, for the universities. The demand by the Castilian Cortes in 1430 that (among others) ‘masters of grammar and scribes who teach boys to read and write’ should be exempted

from military service shows that elementary education was becoming widespread in Castile also. At a higher level, leading clerical theorists were declaring that it was a king’s duty to see that all his subjects studied. RISE OF INTELLECTUALS

Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo (1404-70) tells us how crowded schools already were when he was young, with boys studying sciences—mainly law no doubt—with a view to riches and

honours. A younger contemporary, Fernando del Pulgar, lamented the rise of men of ‘base blood’, who became ‘great scholars’. Other scholars rejoiced at the change. In 1463 Juan de Laicena pointed to the fact that, through science, ‘some have become lawyers, corregidores, ambassadors, ‘chancellors, royal secretaries or of his Council, others royal chaplains, deans, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and even popes’. In Castile Diego de Valera (c. 1412-c. 1488) declared that ‘scholars’ (letrados) should handle civic affairs. In 1413 Bishop Sapera, addressing the Catalan Corts, had already stated that nobles and knights were only suited to execute orders devised by scholars. This was not pure fantasy. Scholars were behind all

nobility. | 184 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500

rulers down to the Catholic Monarchs in their struggle with the

The separation of intellectuals from knights became increasingly clear. For a knight, even the author of a remarkable novel such as Tzrant lo Blanc, writing ‘is not an act which pertains to knights but to women and jurists, whose whole defence is in

their pen and their tongue’. The prototype intellectual, Juan de Mena, is portrayed by Lucena, his ‘face pale, worn with study but not scarred or marked by a lance blow’. Intellectuals had ruled for centuries in Islamic Spain. In fifteenth-century Granada there were still intellectuals acting as ministers, but their interests were narrowly religious, as compared even to Ibn-al-Khatib a century before, or to the new intellectual class (often conversos, as with Lucena, Pulgar, Valera, and probably Mena) in Christian Spain.? |

EDUCATIONAL THEORY , The first Spanish treatise on educational theory was written by Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo about 1450. It was used in Nebri-

ja’s better known. work of 1509. Rodrigo’s main source is Plutarch. His failure to use. Quintilian distinguishes him from Italian humanist educational theory and from Nebrija, but ‘his high regard for the ancients, his manifest desire to apply their teachings to modern life, his interest in the development of the individual according to his particular aptitude’ all reveal him as ‘a pioneer of the new learning’ .®

UNIVERSITIES a

This new learning was to take longer to conquer universities than to win over individual scholars. Of the universities founded in the peninsula by 1300, there survived in Castile-—Leén, Salamanca and Valladolid; in Portugal, Lisbon—Coimbra; in the Crown of Aragon, Lérida. 1 Rubiéd (cited, p. 173, n. 1), pp. 27*-49*; Cortes. de Leén, iii. 93; Maravall, op. cit. (p. 172, n. 1), pp. 371-6. ® Riquer, ii. 635; Lucena, op. cit. (p. 171, n. 1), p. 131. For Ibn al-Khatib see Ibn Khaldiin, Histoire des Berbéres, trans. Slane, iv (Algiers, 1856), 390-414, and, for fifteenth-century Granada, L. Seco de Lucena Paredes, MEAH 2 (1953), 5-14.

259-75:- |

*H. Keniston, Bulletin hispanique, 32 (1930), 193-217, edits Rodrigo’s treatise (see pp. 199 f.). See J. Lopez de Toro, Boletin de la Universidad de Granada, 5 (1933),

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 185 These universities had in common that they were small in num-

bers, poor in endowments and professors, centred on legal studies, and ruled by students on the model of Bologna. Chairs of theology were established late (first at Salamanca in 1395-6). The only two new fourteenth-century foundations, Perpignan (1350) and Huesca (1354), were created by Pere III of Catalonia—~Aragon. They both failed for lack of funds. Perpignan was

nominally resurrected by the papacy in 1379, Huesca in 1464. The Spanish college founded at Bologna by Cardinal Albornoz (1365) was of greater importance.

In the fifteenth century foundations were attempted in the Crown of Aragon at Gerona (1446), Barcelona (1450)—-schools for arts and medicine had existed there since 1400—-2—Saragossa

(1474), and Majorca (1483). None of these attained importance until after 1500; Gerona never got off the drawing-board. Dr. Rubio’s study of the rise of the University of Barcelona reveals a conflict of interest between three powers—monarchy, Church, and city. The city gradually imposed its point of view. Valencia, where a local school for arts existed since 1412, achieved formal

papal recognition in 1500, Alexander VI declaring that ‘Greek and Latin letters’ were to be studied there. ‘This strikes a

new note; it comes a year after the foundation of Cardinal Cisneros at Alcala. In 1508 Cisneros’ new university was actually inaugurated,

with ten colleges and forty-two chairs projected. Leading scholars travelled from Paris for the occasion. Alcala received

an endowment more than twice that of Salamanca. Its bent was shown by the projected ‘trilingual’ college, the first in Europe, where Hebrew and Greek were to be on a level with Latin, and by the university press, set up in 1502, which projected a new Aristotle in Greek, and, most strikingly, produced the Polyglot Bible in the original tongues, Hebrew and Greek (as well as Latin), in 1517. Cisneros’ intention was less to revive humanist than to reform theological study. He was interested,

for instance, in introducing scholastic trends, particularly Scotism and Nominalism, to Spain. But Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic—as well as Latin—were important because through them, ‘comes the dissemination of the Word of God by the preaching of the Sacred Scriptures’. Other colleges were founded, from 1479 to 1510, at Salamanca, Valladolid, Sigiienza, ‘Toledo,

186 THE FIBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Cuenca, and Seville, but Alcala was unique. In the 1500s only in Spain could the specialists have been gathered to undertake the Polyglot Bible, a work which could not have been achieved at this date in Rome, Paris, or Louvain.1

PHILOSOPHY

Humanist ideas in philosophy and in history took long to reach the peninsula. Aristotelianism was revived at the University of Salamanca by Pedro Martinez de Osma (d. 1480) and taught there by his more orthodox disciple Diego de Deza, according

to the views of St. Thomas Aquinas. The general revival of Thomism overshadowed other philosophical schools and main-

tained orthodox Christian control over philosophy in Spain. The one fifteenth-century Spaniard whose philosophical skill impressed the world outside Spain (the University of Paris sus-

pected he was inspired by the devil), although he imitated

astic’. —— | | |

classical models, ‘continues to be an Aristotelian and a scholThe same scholastic Aristotelianism informs the Suma de la politica of Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo (about 1455). In educational theory, as has been seen, Rodrigo was an innovator. In the Suma he uses many classical examples, but as many from the Bible, the Fathers, and scholastics. His insistence on the importance of social harmony, for instance, is reinforced by the use of

Albert the Great on bees. His work may be the first formal treatise on political thought written in Castilian, but it is very close in spirit to the Eastern morality tales translated from Arabic two centuries before. - Manuscripts. of Aristotle’s Ethics, Economics, and Politics multiplied. Nine editions of the moral works were published in Spain before 1509 (six in Latin, three in the vernacular). But ‘by far the most popular version of an Aristotelian moral work to appear in Spain during the fifteenth century is devoid of any

trace of humanist influence’. This anonymous compendium _ See references, Vol. I, p. go, n. I, and above, Ch. III, p. 98, n. 1, also V. Beltran de Heredia, Bulario de la Universidad de Salamanca (1219-1549), i (Salamanca, 1966)..On Huesca, R. del Arco, IJ CHCA, pp..379 f£., see also Beltran, on

Calatayud, RET .17 (1957), 205-30. On Barcelona, Rubid, pp. 52*-64*. On Alcala, P. S. Allen, Erasmus, Lectures and Wayfaring. Sketches (Oxford, 1934), pp. 138-63; V. Beltran de Heredia, RET 5 (1945), 145-78; B. Hall, Studies in Church

History, 5 (Leiden, 1969)' 121-46. a Jl a.

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 187 of the Ethics in Castilian survives in eight manuscripts and two printed editions earlier than 1500. ‘Intended for the Christian lay public’, it alters Aristotle by ascribing to him Christian conceptions of life after death. While new, more humanist commen-

taries on Aristotle appeared in the universities from 1496 onwards, outside these institutions Aristotle was being replaced as a moralist by devotional or syncretic tracts.} HISTORY

In the fifteenth century, history attracted more attention than ever before. Vernacular history continued to be written in

Castilian and, to a much slighter extent, in Catalan. In Portugal official royal historians appeared for the first time after 1400 under the new Avis dynasty. All these historians, even the

greatest among them, Ferndo Lopes (d. ¢. 1460), are very tradi- : tional in their approach to history. Lopes’ reviser, Zurara, is much influenced by Alfonso X of Castile’s compilations; his ‘classical’ erudition is usually second or third hand.

In Castile, until Fernando and Isabel, the vernacular chroniclers vary their point of view depending on which noble faction

the author adheres to. The first attempt to see peninsular history from a humanist point of view was made by Italians under the patronage of the Aragonese court in Naples. Just as

Fazio saw Alfonso IV as Julius Caesar, so later Italian and Spanish writers saw Alfonso’s nephew Fernando as a new Augustus. By 1500 the perspective of peninsular historians had changed. Classical models or myths provided the perfect frame within which to celebrate the new union of Castile and Aragon.?

It took time for humanist historiography to penetrate the peninsula. Writing about 1440 Gutierre Diez does not compare Pero Nijio to the heroes of Rome but to the legendary Alexander and the other ‘nine peers’. Far later, the converso, Pulgar (d. c.

1493), despite his expressed intention of imitating Livy, is 1 Carreras Artau, ii. 568-85, 642-9; A. Bonilla y Sanmartin, Fernando de Cérdoba y los ortgenes del renacimiento filoséfico en Espafia (Madrid, 1911), p. 104; Suma de la politica, ed. M. Penna, BAE cxvi, e.g. p. 305. A. R. D. Pagden, Traditio, 31 (1975),

287-313, esp. 299, 301. |

— ®R.B. Tate, Ensayos sobre la historiografta peninsular del siglh XV (Madrid, 1970), pp. 281-94; J. de Carvalho, Estudos sobre a Cultura Portuguesa do século XV, i (Coim-

bra, 1949), 1-241.

188 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 closer to ‘medieval gnomic and exemplary literature’ than to his

contemporary Machiavelli. The moralist strain so clear in Ayala’s chronicles also continues to appear in the school of Latin historians of fifteenth-century Castile. Alonso de Cartagena (d. 1456), already referred to as a translator and vernacular writer, chose as a model for his Latin history the thirteenth-century Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s Historia Gothica. Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo (d. 1470) is the first to use Hero-

dotus, Polybius, and Strabo (in Latin translations) as sources for early Spanish history, but Rada remains his general model. The Catalan (writing in Latin), Joan Margarit i Pau, bishop of Gerona (c. 1421-84), was the first historian to declare Rada merely ‘tolerable’ as compared with Leonardo Bruni, and ‘to immerse himself in the histories and geographies of the ancient world’. Free of the provincialism of his Castilian contemporaries, Margarit can celebrate the distant past of Spain without denigrating the glories of Rome. His nephew Geroni Pau, perhaps the first Greek scholar in Spain, displays an even closer grasp of classical geography and mythology.

Apart from Pau, Margarit had few intellectual heirs. The Aragonese lawyer (of converso descent), Gonzalo Garcia de Santa Marfa (d. 1521), produced a life of Juan II of Aragon at the command of Juan’s son, Fernando. It has been called ‘the first humanist biography written in Spain’. The model is Sallust.

Juan becomes a Stoic overcoming adverse fortune. , For Antonio de Nebrija (d. 1522) history was less important than biblical exegesis and grammatical analysis. His historical studies illustrate his adherence to Italian ideals but he 1s less critical than Margarit and more completely at the service of the Crown. This last trait appears in the anti-Portuguese and anti-

French touches Nebrija adds to the vernacular sources he copies.”

If one attempts to sum up the themes discussed in this chapter one has to conclude that a humanist such as Bernat Metge was exceptional indeed even in Catalonia, and had few, if any, rivals in Castile in the fifteenth century. Relations with 1 Tate, Romance Philology, 13 (1960), 298-302; Ensayos, pp. 39-54, 70 f., 83 f., 125, 149; Pulgar, Crénica de los Reyes Catélicos, ed. Carriazo, i (Madrid, 1943), p. kxv; Rubid, De ’Edat, pp. 105~10. On Pulgar see F. Cantera, Sefarad, 4 (1944), 295-348.

2 Tate, Ensayos, pp. 212-48, 183-211. | | |

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 189

Italian humanism were, in general, superficial. With its ‘insistence on ethics and piety, Spanish humanism represents a widening and deepening of medieval classicism’ rather than a radically new departure.! 1 Peter Russell, in Aspects of the Renaissance, ed. A. R. Lewis (Austin, Texas, 1967),

pp. 56, 58.

VI Institutions and Ideologies INSTITUTIONS: CORTES RISE, MONARCHIES DECLINE

| N the leading monarchies of western Europe the second half of the fourteenth century saw a rise of representative institu-

tions, accompanied and made possible by a retreat of royal authority. In France especially the first half of the century had been an age of triumphant bureaucratic centralization. But, in 1345-60, here and in England, representative assemblies won

‘their first great successes’. In 1352 Edward III of England promised not to change the coinage without the Commons’ consent; in 1355 the king of France gave the same promise to the States General.

The same type of change can be seen in the Iberian peninsula. Local causes were different in each case but ‘popular’ (bourgeois and lesser noble) elements advanced here as they did in France and England. As usually happened with any European movement penetrating the peninsula, there was a notable time-lag in Castile and Portugal. ‘Europeanization’ was also far less lasting in the west than the east. In the east bureaucratic advance had gone further than in Castile and Portugal.! The inevitable reaction also came earlier in the east. In the 1340s violent revolution failed in Aragon and Valencia; in the 1350s a peaceful revolution succeeded in Catalonia, where the Corts reached a high point of power only attained in Castile and Portugal thirty years later. In every case the decline of royal authority was due to an external military crisis. The Hundred Years War delayed bureaucratization in France for a century.” The same effect was produced in the Crown of Aragon (especially in Catalonia) by the war with Castile (1355-66), in 1See Vol. I, pp. 282-4, 298~302. 2 See B. Guenée, in AESC 26 (1971), 403, 405. See also, for France, J. B. Henneman, Jr., Speculum, 43 (1968), 405-28; for England, E. B. Fryde, Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie Wilkinson (Toronto, 1969), pp. 250-69.

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 1g! Castile and Portugal by civil wars and by the struggle between these two countries in the 1380s. But, in Castile and Portugal, the forces behind the Cortes were far less powerful and united than in Catalonia. The Gatalan Corts clung for a century to the power they had acquired in the 1350s. It took ten years of civil war (1462-72) for the Crown to defeat them, and they retained (as did the Cortes of Aragon) considerable power after that time.

In Castile and Portugal the Cortes only maintained their position for a few years or decades. CATALONIA: CORTS AND CROWN

The intense interest of Catalans in their laws and traditions inspired their resistance to royal power. In 1412 the Corts demanded a new compilation of Catalan law. It appeared in Latin and Catalan, was reproduced by order of the Diputacié (the permanent delegation of the Corts), and circulated in a number of copies. The Corts of Barcelona in 1283 had established the principle

of participation in power between the ruler and the three estates—nobility, Church, and town representatives. From 1301

the Corts met, by statute, every three years. From 1299 each new count of Barcelona (who was also king of Aragon) had to swear to observe the laws of Catalonia before homage was sworn. to him. No legislation was valid unless approved by the Corts and until the grievances presented in Corts were redressed. No royal official could be a member of the Corts. Refusal to be

present at them was punishable. The liberty of deputies was infrangible. The Corts could not be dissolved without their work being completed, nor could they be moved from one place to another without their consent. All the Crown could do was prorogue them in the hope of wearing down their resistance to

its (chiefly financial) demands. When the Corts voted taxes (always called donations) they discussed their use, sometimes appointed military commanders, and controlled the revenues

voted. | | |

The way town representatives were elected ensured that they represented the governing urban patriciate. In the larger cities the representatives were chosen by the town council (Consell),

4 (1910) ). | a ce oe

, ; R. d’Abadal, Dels Visigots als Catalans, 1i (Barcelona, 1970), 381-403 (from EUC

192 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 which was overwhelmingly patrician in composition. In the smaller towns a general assembly still functioned, but the richer citizens normally controlled it. In the third estate the representatives of Barcelona preponderated, in the ecclesiastical estate the Catalan bishops, among the nobility a few great houses. The

Corts thus represented three separate oligarchies. : The work of the Corts was mainly handled within the separate estates and by the tractadors (negotiators), who represented each estate in dealing with the other two and with the Crown. Matters proceeded slowly, with the exchange of endless written

statements, which could only be answered in writing. The Corts of 1405-10, held at Perpignan, San Cugat, and Barcelona,

spent much time discussing procedure. Only sixteen statutes were passed in five years. The nobility were often at grips with the other two estates. The slowness, inefficiency, and vested interests of the Corts did not affect their perpetual readiness to challenge the Crown. In 1383-4 they demanded that Pere III of Catalonia-Aragon should remove many of his counsellors as guilty of high treason. Attempts to purge the Royal Household were again made under Joan I in 1388. When Joan ceased to hold Corts these attempts were reiterated by the cities of Barcelona and Valencia.} The fourteenth century saw a considerable expansion in royal institutions. The Crown granted greater powers to its provincial governors and sought more efficient control over local officials. The Royal Chancery grew in complexity. But these advances on the part of the Crown were overshadowed by those achieved by

the Corts and their permanent delegation (Dzputacié), with its own funds and virtual control over finances from the 1360s. The Diputacté was soon imitated in Valencia and Aragon. Given

the disparate tendencies of the three main territories of the federation (in Aragon, for instance, office could only be held by Aragonese, in Catalonia by Catalans, in Valencia by Valencians) the Crown was bound to be at an increasing disadvantage as the power of the local representative assemblies grew.” 1 J. Coroleu e Inglada and J. Pella y Forgas, Las Cortes Catalanas (Barcelona, 1876). For Joan I, see below, Part II, Ch. I. 3 J. Lalinde Abadfa, VIII CHCA ii. 2 (1970). See also Part II, Ch. I below. For Valencia: J. Camarena, AHDE 25 (1955), 529-42.

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 193 The Catalan regime in 1400 has recently been described as

‘half monarchical and half aristocratic ... a perfect political balance’. This is an unduly optimistic view. It is true that Pere III told the General Cortes of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia in 1383 that they were ‘the freest peoples in the world’ but much of his reign was spent in conflict with these peoples’

representatives. In this conflict the Cortes were largely victorious. In 1410 the Catalan Corts affirmed that their authority descended direct from God. This claim to Divine Right was bound to clash with competing royal pretensions, especially when these

were advanced by the Castilian dynasty enthroned in 1412. At the beginning of Alfonso IV’s reign (1416-58) the Corts refused the Crown any financial aid. In 1430 they claimed to act independently in foreign policy. Given the totally divergent concep-

tions of authority held by Crown and Corts, the civil war between these powers in 1462-72 was probably inevitable. CASTILE: ROYAL CENTRALIZATION: ALFONSO XI

As compared to the count-kings of Catalonia—Aragon, the Castilian monarchy was in a strong position. It was not limited by any contractual document such as the Catalan Usaiges, or Magna Carta. Under Alfonso XI’s personal rule (1325-50) and in the reigns of his sons, Pedro I and Enrique II, there was a renewed drive to apply the centralizing laws of Alfonso X (1252-84), which had been rejected by the defenders of local customs.? The Ordenamiento de Alcala of 1348 summed up Alfonso XI’s policy. It marked the triumph of Roman and canon law in Castile. Alfonso X’s Partidas, promulgated in 1348, were

welcomed by the 1360s in Aragon and Portugal, where they influenced local legislation.” THE FIRST TRASTAMARAS

Local resistance to centralized law did not vanish overnight. Local customs were still observed in many places. Pedro I 1F. E. de Tejada, Historia del pensamiento polttico cataldn,i (Seville, 1963), 49-509, 66 f.; Parlaments a les Corts Catalanes, ed. R. Albert and J. Gassiot (Barcelona, 1928), p. 543; Cortes de Catalufta, xu. 41 f., xiv. 53 f., R. d’Abadal, HE xiv, pp. clxxviii— cxcviil. See the report of 1389 on Joan I cited below, Part IT, Ch. I, p. 224. 2 See Vol. I, pp. 299, 307 f.

2R. Gibert, AHDE 30 (1961), 750 f.; J. Beneyto, ibid., pp. 266 f. See Vol. I, pp. 298, 345 f.

194. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 (1350-69) endeavoured to carry his father’s internal policy further. By so doing he provoked massive resistance, from the nobility in particular, which assisted his foreign enemies to bring him down. His half-brother, murderer, and successor, Enrique II of Trastamara (1369-79), proceeded with greater caution but along much the same lines. The old Royal Council was re-created in 1371 and reformed in 1385-7 by Juan I. It consisted principally of professional lawyers. The whole admini-

stration was dependent on the Council, which also acted as appeal court for criminal cases. The Audtencia fulfilled the same function for civil cases. Like the Council, it was created in 1371 and reorganized in 1387. From 1419 it consisted of ten judges

and a president, all paid by the Crown. It was extremely inefficient.

_ The Camara (Household) controlled the fiscal organization; by 1379 a separate Casa de Cuentas supervised tax-collection. The Chancery issued its orders. ‘The main income of the Crown came from taxes and trade, especially custom dues. When these revenues were granted to favoured nobles the Crown was corres-~

pondingly weakened. But large quantities of gold entering Castile from North Africa, partly through trade, partly through tribute from Granada, made it possible to produce a very fine gold coinage even under the weakest fifteenth-century rulers. The revenues, including grants made by the Cortes, continued to be administered by Jews until 1391, and, after the massacres

Judaism. — | |

and forced conversions of that year, by Jews and conversos from.

THE CROWN AND THE CITIES |. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the government of Castilian towns fell more and more into aristocratic hands. In.

1411 Fernando of Antequera, as regent for Juan I1, removed the lower classes from any part in town government. Conciliar posts became hereditary. Some noble families established control of towns which they kept until the nineteenth century. This control was profitable because it provided the opportunity to seize communal goods and lands and to farm out the town

revenues. |

1L, Suarez, in HE xv. 12-15; J. Valdeén, Hispania, 26 (1966), 99-134-

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 195 The independence of Castilian towns was also diminished by

the appointment of corregidores (‘reformers’ with very wide powers) either by the Crown or (by royal privilege) by a lay or ecclesiastical lord. From 1401 onwards the towns continually protested in Cortes against these officials but the Crown refused to listen. Under the Catholic Monarchs corregidores—like the rest of the institutions devised by the first ‘Trastamaras—were taken up into the system of government. HERMANDADES

Up to 1325 Hermandades (Brotherhoods) of towns had played a great part during royal minorities, with their periods of anarchy.

Alfonso XI suppressed them. They re-emerged after the civil war of the 1360s but Enrique II and Juan I were careful to maintain royal jurisdiction over them. In 1456 Enrique IV ordered the formation of a Hermandad to preserve internal peace

during his campaign against Granada. It proved successful against refractory nobles. In 1467 it was divided into separate provincial Brotherhoods with a Commander-in-Chief (Capitan superior mayor), named by the Junta General (delegate assembly). It raised sales-taxes on most articles. The Hermandad remained

neutral between Enrique IV and the pretender Don Alfonso. It was then ‘the only real state in Castile’. But its power was already in decline before the accession of Fernando and Isabel in 1474.4

THE CORTES | In the 1380s the disastrous war with Portugal forced Juan [ to make concessions to the Cortes. In 1386 he offered to show them the royal accounts. A year later the towns’ representatives were

claiming this inspection as a right. In 1388 they only voted 15,000,000 maravedis, not the. 45,000,000 demanded, and placed the subsidy under the control of four town deputies, a prelate, and a noble. They also made the grant conditional on being recalled in two years. But the division between the lesser nobility (Aidalgos) of the towns and the non-noble taxpayers 1F. Marquéz Villanueva, RABM 63 (1957), 523-30; E. Mitre Fernandez, La extensién del regimen de corregidores en el retnado de Enrique III de Castilla (Valladolid, 1969), esp. pp. 53-61; J. Puyol y Alonso, Las Hermandades de Castilla y Leén (Madrid,

1913), pp. 40-93. For the Hermandad of the Catholic Monarchs see below, Part ITI, Ch. IV; for the Santa Hirmandade of Galicia, above, Ch. II, p. 83.

196 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 over the exemption of the former group ruined the Cortes’ | hopes; many representatives were hidalgos and Juan was able to use them to neutralize the cities. In 1391 there were forty-nine

cities represented in Cortes, a number never again reached. During Enrique III’s minority (1390-5) the Cortes failed to shake the aristocratic control of government. During Enrique’s personal reign (1395-1406) their opposition to royal officials was rejected. The Cortes repeatedly failed to secure representation in the Royal Council. In 1406 they voted the largest sum

yet given (45,000,000). |

As the cities passed into noble hands, the Cortes, which drew its life from city representatives, dwindled in importance. The number of cities represented shrank. In 1425 only twelve were summoned. ‘The number claiming an exclusive right of representation came to be seventeen. Vast areas, Galicia, Asturias, the Basque country, Extremadura, were unrepresented. In 1422

Juan II began to pay the cities’ procurators. Soon the Crown would select them. In 1432 it was formally decreed that no non-

noble (i.e. no taxpayer) could be a representative. The Cortes was developing into a small gathering of pliable hirelings who only ‘represented’ the ruling class of a handful of cities and who had little compunction in spending their fellow citizens’ money at the royal behest. In 1457 Enrique IV named the representatives, who, in return, voted him 72,000,000. Even at their height, under Juan I, the Castilian Cortes had not clearly achieved the right to legislate. Laws were published in

Cortes, but issued by the king. Only crown lawyers had the technical skill to draft them. In 1469 the Cortes protested that a major change in foreign policy should not have been made without their ‘counsel’ (consejo). But the situation was undefined. The Cortes had ‘the right to complain’, not to legislate, or even

to deliberate on royal policy. Nor did they control taxation. The alcabala, for instance, a permanent sales-tax, was never voted in Cortes. The Cortes possessed no permanent organization such as the Catalan Diputacié. In every respect they worked at a lower and more primitive level than the Catalan Corts or the similar bodies in Aragon and Valencia.1

407~12. : 1L. Suarez, Nobleza y monarquia (Valladolid, 1 975), Pp. 51, 60-9, 88 f., 193; W. Piskorski, Las Cortes de Castilla. (Barcelona, 1930); Cortes de Leén, ii. 395,

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 197 NAVARRE

The powers of the Navarrese Cortes were limited. Their preser-

vation of judicial attributions—which, in the other Iberian kingdoms, had passed to royal judges—is a sign of the generally old-fashioned and undifferentiated nature of Navarrese admini-

stration. Politically, the Cortes of Navarre were controlled by the Crown, which could act in most important matters without them, and could apparently raise ‘aids’ from them without great difficulty.+ PORTUGAL

The situation in Portugal fell between that in the Crown of Aragon and that in Castile. ‘The number of Portuguese bureaucrats—judges, magistrates, royal scribes, bailiffs, etc.—only ran into a few hundred. The nobility did not possess a strangle-

hold on the towns. Throughout the fourteenth century the cities’ representatives grew in importance. The revolution of 1383 and the accession of the illegitimate Joao I in the middle of

a struggle for survival against Castile greatly strengthened the Cortes. In 1385 the assembly (like that of Catalonia in 1410) claimed the power to fill the vacant throne. From this year the taxes voted were administered by a special treasury, apart from the royal treasury. Jodo I had to promise to hold annual Cortes and to submit important questions to them. He normally did this until 1402. After that. time, with the end of the Castilian war, and with increasing wealth accruing to the Crown from overseas, the Portuguese Cortes gradually lost their commanding position.” IDEOLOGIES: ONE SPAIN OR SEVERAL?

In one of his last works, Ramon Menéndez Pidal stated that ‘the memory of the Goths animated all Spanish medieval historio-

graphy, as a high ideal of unity’. Professor Maravall has advanced similar views. Yet the evidence for contrasting and conflicting ‘nationalisms’, Castile against Catalonia—Aragon, or 1J. Zabalo Zabalegui, La administracién del reino de Navarra en el siglo XIV (Pamplona, 1973), pp. 349 f. 2 Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, pp. 203 f.; M. Caetano, in Revista da Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Lisboa, 15 (1961-2), 7-38.

198 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Portugal, seems stronger than that favouring a unitary view of the Spanish past, with Castile generally seen as continuing the Gothic monarchy. Pere III of Gatalonia~Aragon, for instance, was interested in the Goths, but the Crénica de San Juan de la Pefia (c. 1359), written at his wish, states that the history of early Asturias is to be found ‘in another volume, in the Chronicles of

Castile’. ‘his statement implies that Asturias and Castile are not Pere’s direct concern. Pere and his son, Joan I, were as interested in French (Joan in Greek) history as in Castilian, but—particularly in Pere’s case—they were primarily concerned to promulgate the glories of their own dynasty, the House of Barcelona. -The greatest Castilian historian of the fourteenth century, Pero Lopez de Ayala, recognized that each peninsular kingdom

had its own separate being. ‘All the terra (land)’ of Castile would rise up against Enrique II if he alienated any part of it to Aragon. The ‘will of those of the kingdom of Portugal’ was also

inherently distinct from that of Castile. Hence the impossi-

bility of Castile annexing Portugal. In a similar way the Valencian lawyer Pere Belluga, writing in 1441, saw the main

territories of the Crown of Aragon (Catalonia, Valencia, Aragon) as distinct entities, only united by the person of the ruler.?

The evidence for conflicting nationalisms consists both in positive assertions and, negatively, in the manifest disunity of

the peninsula, the failure of the separate kingdoms to act together, especially against Islam. CASTILIAN HISTORICAL MYTH-MAKING

The political advance of Castile was ‘heralded by a profusion o

mythological history, created to serve a definite ideological purpose’. The historians concerned have been studied in relation to early humanism.? Here they will be looked at as pro-

pagandists; it is notable that the earliest of these historianpropagandists were members of the Santa Marfa family 1R. Menéndez Pidal, in HE xv, pp. ix ff.; J. A. Maravall, El Concepto de Espaita

en la Edad Media, 2nd edn. (Madrid, 1964), Ch. 7. For Pere III and Joan I see Ch. V, above, p. 177 and Vol. I, p. 352. 2 Ayala, Crénico de Pedro I, aiio XVII, c. 21; Crénica de Fuan I, afio V, c. 7, see afio

XII, c. 2 (BAE lxvi. 548; Ixviii. 83, 126 ff.). Tejada. op. cit. iii. 279 f. 8 See above, Ch. V, pp. 187 f.

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 199 (converted Jews), though the task was soon taken up by native ‘old’ Christians and by imported Italians. The ex-rabbi Pablo de Santa Marfa, bishop of Burgos (d. 1435), was the first scholar to

attribute all the events of ancient history connected with ‘Hispania’ to Castile. His son, Alonso de Cartagena (d. 1456), carried the process much further. Cartagena’s Anacephaleosis (1455) has been called ‘one of the first explicit testimonies of

Castile’s awareness of her own past’. Alonso had defended Castile in debate as well as with his pen. At the Council of Basle

in 1434 he declared that Castile was a more ancient monarchy than England and superior to the other peninsular kingdoms. It was Castile which maintained the “divine war’ with Granada. In another speech at Basle, directed against Portuguese claims to the Canaries, Alonso stated that Castile was ‘the one legitimate heir of the Visigothic kingdom’ and that its king was ‘king of Spain’ (Rex Hispaniae). In his Anacephaleosis Alonso developed

at length the ‘neo-Gothic’ thesis last advanced c. 1250 by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, according to which the Castilian royal house descended from the Goths and all ‘the kings of Spain descend from the House of Castile’. The supremacy of Castile was ‘part of the divine scheme of things’. Alonso’s

history ‘ends with a fervent prayer that God will aid the expansion of Castile under the banner of the Holy Cross’. These views were glossed by later Castilian historians. Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo (d. 1470) even supposed that Castile had existed long before the destruction of Troy. Rodrigo is one

of many contributors to the ‘Messianic impulse’ which surrounded the beginnings of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.’

The deliberate resurrection and restatement of the ‘neo-

Gothic’ thesis was the work of a small group of Castilian scholars

in the service of the Crown. Although it bore little relation to history it proved effective propaganda, but Professor Tate has noted that this erudite myth emerged after a gap of two centuries during which the view of Castile as the heir of Visigothic iR. B. Tate, Ensayos sobre la historiografia peninsular del siglo XV (Madrid, 1970), pp. 21, 28 f., 56-73. For Alonso’s first speech at Basle see BAE cxvi. 205-33, for the second L. Suarez Ferndndez, Relaciones entre Portugal y Castilla en la época del Infante

D. Enrique, 1393-1460 (Madrid, 1960), pp. 244-72. ,

2 See Menéndez Pidal, HE xvii. 1, pp. xii ff. Tate, pp. 22, 28, 74-104. “NeoGothic’ descent was also claimed for the Aragonese (Trastamara) dynasty in Naples in 1495-6. See B. Gareth, Le Rime, ed. E. Pércopo, ii (Naples, 1892), 62.

200 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Toledo had gone into complete eclipse even in Castile itself—it had never been held anywhere else in the peninsula. The myth revived by the converso Alonso de Cartagena represents a narrow

view of history compared to that found in Alfonso X’s Primera Crénica General (let alone his General estorta). ‘The focus is now on

Castile, not on Europe as a whole, and the attempt is made to

present the other peninsular kingdoms as appendages of

Castile.* |

CATALAN PATRIOTISM Catalan patriotism, clearly expressed in the chronicles and poets

of the thirteenth century, continued to burn in the two centuries that followed. A Catalan ‘nation’ was referred to as a term needing no explanation by Pere III in an address to the Corts in the 1360s. In his Chronicle Pere emphasized the divine mission of the House of Barcelona, as opposed to the wickedness of its rivals, particularly Pedro I and Enrique IT of Castile. Some

years later the great Franciscan publicist. Eiximenis declared Catalan superiority to other peoples: “The Catalan nation lived more praiseworthily than any ‘other Christian nation in the

world.’ Of the confederation of Catalonia—Aragon ‘it is prophesied that it will.-achieve monarchy over almost all the world’, The inseparability of the territories of the Crown of Aragon appeared in fact at the Compromiso of Caspe in 1412. It

was restated in theory by fifteenth-century lawyers. Of the Crown, Catalonia was the head. Its position in the Mediterranean was still strong. In 1457 a Castilian visitor, Alonso de Palencia, marvelled at the sight of Barcelona. He considered Catalans ‘Spaniards’, but saw them as quite distinct from Castilians. Castile had richer natural resources but had made

less use of them.? | PORTUGUESE PATRIOTISM

Portuguese anti-Castilian feeling existed long before the desperate struggle of the 1380s. The Crénica of 1344 is notable for ‘systematic hostility to the royal dynasty of Castile’, and for its 1 See above, p. 198 n. 1, and Vol. I, pp. 331 f. Tate, pp. 22 f. 2 Parlaments a les Corts Catalanes, p. 39; see also pp. 58-72. Pere III, Cronica, ed. Pagés, e.g. pp. 22 f., 343, 398 £.; RABM 8 (1903), 99-101; Eiximenis, Crestza, ITT. 378, ed. A. Ivars, AIA 25 (1926), 297 f.; also cited J. Torras y Bages, La Tradicié catalana, 2nd edn., p. 395. Tejada, i. 35 f., 273-82; Palencia, BAE cxvi. 353 f.

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 201 insistence on Portugal as a separate kingdom. The later royal Portuguese chronicles, begun in 1419, resemble the Castilian authors already discussed in that they represent a narrowingdown to one kingdom, a change probably due to the ‘nationalist’ revolution of 1383—5. Fernao Lopes, in particular, presents

the anti-Castilian feeling behind this revolution with extreme clarity.} ARAGONESE PATRIOTISM

The Crénica de Aragén (1499) of the Cistercian Fabricio de Vagad

is an example of provincial patriotism. Vagad attacks Catalans for omitting the role of Aragon in their chronicles and blames them for any disaster. Valencia ‘is the creature and daughter of our Aragon’. Alfonso IV of Catalonia—Aragon’s rule in Italy (1443-58) is the climax of Aragonese glories. Vagad is as anti-

Castilian as he is anti-Catalan. This isolated specimen of propaganda no doubt expressed an attitude very general in Aragon, always jealous of her customs and privileges.”

THE FAILURE OF CHRISTIAN SOLIDARITY: THE QUESTION OF GRANADA

The continued existence of the emirate of Granada is in itself proof of the lack of real solidarity between the Christian kingdoms of the peninsula and of the failure of any ‘unitary’ view of Spain to penetrate beyond a few scholars. Christian rulers continued, as in 1300, to ally with Muslims against other Christians. In the 1340s Catalan galleys assisted

Castile against Morocco, but the Moroccan danger was soon , over. In 1357 Catalonia—Aragon promised to observe neutrality

between Morocco and Granada and Castile. In 1359 Pere ITI planned an anti-Castilian alliance with Morocco, in 1362 with

Granada. In 1369 an actual alliance was formed, Pere III declaring that he was ready to bring over Merinids by sea in order ‘to confound King Enrique [II] and remove the kingdom

from him’. In 1404 the more distant Navarre, fearing the increase of Castilian power the destruction of Granada would bring about, sent a warning to the emir to prepare in time. 1 Crénica de 1344, ed. D. Catalan, i (Madrid, 1971), pp. xxvii ff. A different view in the Livros de Linhagens (Portugaliae Mon. Hist., Scriptores, i. 186, 230) of ¢. 1340.

2 Tate, pp. 263-79.

202 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 Given Christian disunity Granada prospered. Ibn Khaldiin remarks: “The troubles which broke out between the Christians of Spain [the war between Castile and Aragon 1356-66] neutralized the power of the king of Castile and made it impossible for him to make any hostile demonstration against Al-Andalus’. Within Castile there was no appetite for war with Granada. The dreams of dividing up the country into fiefs harboured by the French and English mercenary captains serving Enrique II in 1366 were not shared by Castilians. Ayala’s account of the futile ‘crusade’ of the Master of Alcantara in 1394 represented

the general feeling. “The Master was a man who believed whatever he chose.’ After the Master and his followers had been

slaughtered at the frontier Enrique III apologized to the emir of Granada. The idea of conquering Granada by a series of annual campaigns, which would make agriculture impossible, and by a naval blockade was attributed to Enrique II (1369-79) ; in fact Enrique made no effort even to recover frontier fortresses recently lost. Like earlier rulers he appointed judges along the frontier to work with Muslim judges to keep the peace. This policy was continued by later rulers. War came in 1403, but it

was precipitated by Granada not Castile. Enrique III was forced to plan reprisals, carried out by his brother, Fernando of Antequera.” If Castilians were not over-eager to attack Granada they did not welcome other Christians intervening in Muslim areas they considered reserved for them. The capture of Ceuta by Portugal in 1415 produced mixed reactions. Fernando of Antequera (now Fernando I of Catalonia—Aragon) sent formal congratulations, but also a strong protest at the Portuguese behaviour to other Christian merchants; he lamented the reprisals Morocco had taken against Castilians and Catalans.® The papacy maintained its official enthusiasm for an anti1A. Giménez Soler, La Corona de Aragén y Granada (Barcelona, 1908), pp. 294— 303, 303 ff, 312 f. J. Valdeén, Enrique IT de Castilla (Valladolid, 1966), p. 237, n. 97; E. Mitre, in Homenaje al Prof. Alarcos (Valladolid, 1966), ii. 739; Ibn Khaldin, Fiistoire des Berbéres, trans. Slane, iv. 485. — * A. Gutiérrez de Velasco, EEMCA 4 (1951), 309 f.; Ayala, Crénica de Enrique III, afio IV, 8-11 (BAE Ixviil. 221 'f.); Abreviacién (ibid., p. 38, n. 2). For frontier judges

see J. Torres Fontes, Hispania, 20 (1960), 55-80. . $M. Arribas Palau, Tamuda, 3 (1955), 9-21.

HUMANISM AND TRADITIONALISM 203 Granada crusade. In 1455 the Valencian Pope Calixtus ITI exulted at the news that Enrique IV would attack Granada. The converso Alonso de Cartagena, whom we have seen as a leading Castilian propagandist, saw the war as a means to internal peace. Ordinary Castilian and Catalan knights continued to journey peacefully to Granada. Its emir was the most popular judge of duels between Christians. The participants in

these duels clearly saw him as part of their own chivalric pattern.!

PACTISMO OR ABSOLUTE MONARCHY Pactismo—the idea that a pact or contract between the king and his nobles (or his people, his ‘vassals’ in general) was the foundation of a monarchy—1is found in thirteenth-century Navarre, in the Fuero general, and in Aragon in the Cortes of Ejea (1265).

The idea of the Justicia of Aragon, as an official mediating between king and nobles, was greatly extended in later centuries. Pactismo was stated most fully, however, by Catalan and Valencian thinkers, who were aware of the world outside Spain. The Catalan Eiximenis’ idea of what was happening in France

and England sustained his case for control of a king by his peoples’ representatives in Cortes. In Castile the noble opposi-

tion appealed to their (undefined) fueros (laws). against the Roman lawyers of Alfonso X; similar appeals were made by fifteenth-century rebels.”

The idea that a contract was at the origin of a kingdom naturally carried with it the view that a breach of contract by the king justified rebellion. Eiximenis (d. ¢. 1409) held that ‘he should not be king who does not hold to and observe the law... a prince who does not keep faith with his vassals must die by their disloyalty’.

The great lawyers of the fifteenth century, Pere Belluga in

Valencia, Jaume Callis and Tomas Mieres in Catalonia, expounded the same views in greater detail. Belluga defended

the Fueros of Valencia against the future Juan II, whose 1 J. Rius Serra (ed.), Regesto ibérico de Calixto ITI, i (Barcelona, 1948), 67 f.; Cartagena, in BAE cxvi. 237 f.; M. de Riquer, Lletres de Batalla, i. 25-9; Giménez Soler, p. 346. 2 J. M®. Lacarra, in Aragén, cuatro ensayos, 1 (Saragossa, 1960), 216; Eiximenis, Crestid, XII. 674. £., cited Abadal, HE xiv, p. cxcviii. See Vol. I, pp. 278-80; below, Part IT, Ch. IV.

204 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 authoritarianism was to be one of the causes of the Catalan Civil

War of 1462-72. For Belluga, royal power is limited by ‘Christian ethics, Natural Law, local customs, and pacts with the people’. The people is not seen as an amorphous mass but as the mystical body of the kingdom. It would be interesting to compare these views with the contemporary conciliar movement

in the Church. The idea of the ‘Body of the Republic’ is also expressed by the contemporary opponents of Juan II of Castile, especially Diego de Valera. In his Doctrinal de principes, probably written in the 14708, Valera justified resistance to tyranny, just as his contem-

porary Thomas Basin was doing in the France of Louis XI. These views were in sharp contrast to the monarchical propaganda which, spreading out from Castile, gradually swamped

the whole peninsula.!

MONARCHIST VIEWS | As with the Castilian historical myths already analysed, so in the more general field of pro-monarchical ideology, Jews and conversos played a central role. ‘A strong current of opinion favouring a monarch with Old Testament attributes, directly responsible to God’ has been traced from the Rabbi Sem Tob of Carridén in the 1350s to Alonso de Cartagena’s speeches and histories and thence down to the converso historian of the

Catholic Monarchs, Fernando del Pulgar. The permanent insecurity afflicting both Jews and conversos in Castile inspired a desire for a strong ruler which also appears in the financial sup-

port both groups gave Fernando and Isabel in the uneasy beginning of their reign. Fernando was especially interested in using history to express

his own view of the epic mission which he believed God had given him. By 1500 most European monarchies were employing

Italian scholars to write (largely to invent) their national

histories. Fernando used the Italian Marinaeus Siculus but also

the Castilian Nebrija to write Latin historical apologias. Nebrija modified his main vernacular source in order to under1 Fiximenis, Regiment, cc. 8, 15, ed. D. de Molins de Rei (ENC A 13 )(Barcelona, 1927), pp. 69, 98; Tejada, iii. 264-86; ii. 299-326. For Belluga, F. A. Roca Traver, EEMCA 9 (1973), 101-59. J. A. Maravall, Estudios de historia del pensamiento espaitol,

Edad Medta, i (Madrid, 1967), 179-200. Valera, in BAE cxvi. 173-202; see M. Penna’s introduction, pp. cxxx—cxxxvi. Guenée (cited, p. 190, n. 2), pp. 403 f.

INSTITUTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES 205 line the figures of Fernando and Isabel. He and his disciples spread abroad ‘the new myths of the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs’, according to which ‘Spain was entirely restored to itself” (i.e. to its Gothic past). It is particularly significant that these myths should also have been expressed by a leading Aragonese lawyer (of converso descent), Gonzalo Garcfa de Santa Marfa. Gonzalo, at Fernando’s wish, wrote a biography of the king’s father, Juan IT, from an extreme monarchist point of view. The Catalans (in 1462-72) were seen as isolated rebels.

Gonzalo’s book is evidence that the Castilian exaltation of monarchy was penetrating one of the redoubts of pactismo. His

views resemble those of Joan Margarit i Pau, the Catalan historian and bishop of Gerona (d. 1484), whose monarchism saw Juan II as heir of the Goths. Margarit, however, did not, like Gonzalo, proclaim that all Spain should speak the language of Castile, and, essentially, of the Castilian court. In 1500 the

general note of the peninsula, in ideology as in institutions, remained diversity rather than unity. This is particularly clear if one looks at France. In the fourteenth century French authors already speak of the ‘French nation’. They know they live in a kingdom they call France, which is their country. This feeling had not come out of nothing. It had been carefully fostered by

the French Crown’s sustained propaganda. By 1350 there existed a national consciousness in France which doomed to failure the English efforts to conquer the country. This consciousness did not exist in Spain. The attempt to create it was first made in the fifteenth century by a small group of converso propagandists in the service of Castile. It was to take centuries for their views to become official dogma. 1 Tate, Ensayos, pp. 226 f., 228-62, 193-6, 199, 210, 28; idem, Joan Margarit i Pau

(Manchester, 1955), p- 84. See also F. Cantera Burgos, cited below, Part IT, Ch. IV, p. 309, n. 2. For Gonzalo’s and Nebrija’s ideas on language see E. Asensio, RFE 43 (1960), 399-413. For France, B. Guinée, Revue historique, 237 (1967), 21, 24-8. For Jewish views of Kings see Y. H. Yerushalmi, The Lisbon Massacre of 1506 and the Royal Image in the ‘Shebet Yehudah’ (Cincinnati, 1976).

VII Two Figures of the Age: Pero Lopez de Ayala and Francesc Eiximenis AYALA! LIFE

p= LOPEZ DE AYALA (1332-1407) is principally known today for his Chronicles, though his other works, particularly his long satirical poem, Rimado de Palacio, and his own life are perhaps as interesting.

Ayala had a long and brilliant, though at times chequered, career in politics. His father was the leading figure in the semiindependent Basque province of Alava, only incorporated into Castile by Alfonso XI in the year of Ayala’s birth. The Ayalas preserved their base in Alava when greater nobles moved south. The gradual consolidation of their patrimony was completed by the creation of a mayorazgo (entail) in 1373 and the foundation of the monastery of Quejana in 1375, which housed the family tombs. While the elder Ayala governed Murcia for Alfonso XI and Ayala himself Guipuzcoa, the growing wool trade with Flanders enriched the Ayala properties. It is worth noting that Ayala was the author of the Castilian alliance with Flanders in 1382.

As a young man Ayala, like his father, served Pedro I (1350-

69). The Ayalas’ abandonment of Pedro came very late, in 1366, during the invasion of Castile by Enrique of Trastamara and a large foreign mercenary army. It was not due to Pedro’s alleged cruelty but simply to the king’s waning star; worry over

his action explains much of Ayala’s writings. He was richly rewarded by the victorious Trastamaras, becoming Alcalde Mayor (Governor) of Toledo in 1375 and Chancellor of Castile in 1398. In return for his pro-French diplomacy he received a French pension in 1382. After 1384 he became Juan I’s principal

adviser and probably dissuaded him from the disastrous plan

TWO FIGURES OF THE AGE 207 of abdicating and dividing his kingdoms. During Enrique III’s

minority he secured a truce with Portugal and led the lesser

nobility to victory against the young king’s domineering relatives.! AYALA AS HISTORIAN

Menéndez Pelayo called Ayala’s life ‘a masterpiece of aggrandisement ... a work of art more interesting than his writings’. Yet the art with which the Chronicle of Pedro I mounts to the climax of the king’s death at Montiel is very notable. Ayala’s historical writings and his poems were intended as a “mirror for

princes’, i which the Trastamaras could learn how to rule justly (and successfully) by not imitating Pedro I. The Chronicle of Pedro, in particular, has been described as ‘a cautious attempt to justify [Ayala’s] own career, while doing as little violence as possible to historical truth’. This motive, together with the wish to write ‘a manual of political education’, accounts for the way

Ayala ‘slants’ history without appearing to do so. The apparently impartial, but implacable, account of Pedro’s executions is

enlivened by miraculous warnings conveyed to the king by mysterious shepherds or clerics, or through fictional letters attributed to a ‘wise Moor’, who betrays a surprising familiarity with

the ‘prophecies’ of Merlin. The ‘wise Moor’ also serves to portray Enrique II of Trastamara as an instrument of Divine

Providence.’ | , ,

AYALA AND DON JUAN MANUEL

Ayala’s later Chronicles are more complex. The focus is now not the wickedness of Pedro but finance, the Cortes, royal administration, and policy. Ayala is often compared to a great moralist

and statesman of an. earlier generation, Don Juan Manuel.® Ayala’s journeys outside Castile, to France, Flanders, the papal court at Avignon, gave him a greater knowledge of the world than that possessed by Don Juan, but he resembles him in

many ways. Like Don Juan Manuel, Ayala represents the

(Vitoria, 1962). ,

11. Suarez Fernandez, El Canciller Pedro Lépez de Ayala y su tiempo (1332-1407)

2 Menéndez y Pelayo, Antologta, 1. 346; P. E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), p. 183 Tate (cited, Ch. VI, p. 199, n. 1), pp. 33-54; R. Lapesa, in HGLH 1. 493-513.

8 On whom, see Vol. I, Part I, Ch. VI. |

208 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 nobility, though now the rising lesser noble, not the semi-royal dynast of the past. Ayala’s interests were similar to Don Juan’s. His works on falconry or the history of his family might have been written by his predecessor. Like Don Juan, Ayala sought to attain a balance in his life between political activity and contemplative retreat, in his case in the new Hieronymite Order.!

Ayala’s religion was more intimate than Don Juan’s, more emotional, more hostile to scholasticism. The retable presented to

Quejana (now at the Art Institute, Chicago) shows Ayala and his family confronted with the Passion of Christ.? Ayala differs principally from Don Juan Manuel in his closer approach to reality. The realism of Don Juan’s short stories, in the Libro de Patronto, is accentuated in Ayala’s Chronicles. In his Rimado de Palacio Ayala condenses and crystallizes judgements drawn from political experience, much as Don Juan does in his

didactic treatises, but without Don Juan’s optimism. Ayala’s Rimado can also be compared to the Archpriest of Hita’s poems.

He completes the picture of the age traced by the Archpriest. The Archpriest gives us the life of the people, Ayala that of its rulers.®

It is not a flattering portrait. The king of the Rzmado is ignorant of what is happening in his country. He trusts blindly to his advisers, who are unconcerned for justice or the poor. The Jews are tyrants, but blame rests on the nobles who use them, Granada is left in peace since knights find enough to eat elsewhere. Kings go to war (against fellow Christians) to the ‘great profit

of harlots and thieves’. Judges, lawyers, and merchants are thieves. With such examples it is hardly surprising if ploughmen take arms and begin to rob.*

In his moralism and his satire Ayala is the spiritual heir of Don Juan Manuel and, to an extent, of the Archpriest of Hita. His deeper pessimism reflects the disasters of an age of plague and civil war. The popular religious philosophy of Ramon Lull and the encyclopedic ambitions of Alfonso X of Castile meet in Ayala’s contemporary, Francesc Eiximenis.®

I.

1 See above, Ch. III, pp. 102 f. Ayala, Libro de la Caza de las aves (Madrid,

Hr Castro, Aspectos del vivir hispanico (Santiago de Chile, 1949), pp. 62—72. | § Lapesa, loc. cit. See Vol. I, Part I, Ch. VI. * Ayala, Rimado (BAE Wii. 425-76), especially vv. 342, 353, 235, 242, 338, 514.

5 On Lull and Alfonso X see Vol. I, Part I, Ch. VI. =

EIXIMENIS | TWO FIGURES OF THE AGE 209

Eiximenis has been well defined by Antoni Rubid 1 Lluch: ‘A profound theologian, a moralist, a master of political sciences, perhaps the first to discuss them in Spain in the vernacular ... A fully Catalan spirit, enamoured of the laws and customs of his country, of its greatness, its kings, its traditions; a kind of popular chronicler of [Catalan] political and speculative life.’ LIMITATIONS

There are gaps in this picture. Professor Sansone has noted Eiximenis’ ‘lack of a true philosophical disposition’, and of ‘a deep mystical tendency’, though his influence on later literature

on meditation and mental prayer is undeniable. His was a practical genius. Compared with Lull he has limitations. He was less original, more scholastic, and (a century later) no more of a humanist. He had the same desire to demonstrate the Christian faith as Lull but he was unconcerned with demonstrating it to Muslims or Jews, let alone to the Byzantines who also interested Lull. Eiximenis’ field of vision had shrunk to __. western Christendom. In this he did not rise above his age and is closer to Ayala than to Lull. Ayala, though he condemned the massacres of Jews in 1391, did not possess the interest in nonChristians which so impresses one in thirteenth-century Spanish

kings, in Juan Manuel, the Archpriest of Hita, and many lesser-known friars and nobles before 1350. In other ways, as we

shall see, Eiximenis does resemble Lull. As far as a private individual could do, he also resembles Alfonso X in his desire to present religion and morality in encyclopedic form, in the vernacular.} LIFE

Born in Gerona ¢. 1340, Eiximenis became a Franciscan at an early age. He spent twenty-five years (1383-1408) in Valencia. Although he never rose to high office (he only became bishop of Elne shortly before his death c. 1409), he acted as confessor to

Joan I, while he was heir to the throne of Aragon, and was a 1A. Rubié y Lluch, EUC 10 (1917-18), 92; Eiximenis, Cercapou, ed. G. E. Sansone, i. 14; C. Baraut, Studia Monastica, 2 (1960), 233-65; R. d’Abadal, HE XIV, Pp. CXVii-CXxil.

210 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 trusted adviser to his successor Marti. He was the counsellor of

: the city of Valencia, where he was constantly occupied with factional rivalry. In 1396 he intervened courageously on Valencia’s behalf with Joan I. Many manuscripts, early printed editions, and translations attest his popularity. His great (unfinished) encyclopedia, the Crestid, was asked for by Pere III, by the Consell (city government) of Barcelona, and by ‘some devout citizens of the same city, who wished to know the road to paradise’. The Regiment de la cosa publica was written

for the Jurats of Valencia. It became an official ‘manual’ of

government both there and at Barcelona. __ ,

Eiximenis wrote in Latin for clerics but he dedicated his ver-

nacular Book of the Angels and his Life of Christ to a lay noble and his Book of Women to the Countess of Prades. Even the Crestzd; ‘the last of the great medieval summae, a systematic, vast exposi-

tion of Christian doctrine and of problems of men and society’, was written in Catalan so that it could be read ‘principally by

simple and lay persons’. . In his attempts to present religion and philosophy to laymen _ 1n the vernacular, E1ximenis is Lull’s heir. Like Lull he inserted picturesque details to lure his readers on to doctrinal teaching. As a good preacher Eiximenis also often used refrains, anecdotes, legends, poetical quotations, irony, and satire, to sustain his audience’s interest. Eiximenis differed from Lull in seeing religion as based on a pact between God and his creatures. This was not a typical view in an age dominated by the despotic and arbitrary God of the Nominalists. In the same way Eiximenis saw civil society as founded on a contract. between king and

people.’ ae en , ,

Fiximenis’ insistent advocacy of trade, especially by sea, and

of industry, marks him as a mind formed in Catalonia and at work in the active Valencia of the 1390s. It is hardly surprising that Eiximenis’ works figured largely in the libraries of Catalan merchants in the fifteenth century. In Castile, in contrast, such teaching could win little honour. For Ayala, merchants were no more than cheap swindlers, ‘leagued with demons’. Eiximenis

VI. | .

210-14; Riquer, ii. 158-63. ,

1 J. Rubié, HGLH i. 720-5; A. Ivars, AIA 19 (1923), 365, 391 £.3 20 (1923),

_ ®J. Torres y Bages, La Tradicié Catalana, 2nd edn., pp. 376-440. See above, Ch.

TWO FIGURES OF THE AGE Qi knew a different sort of man, the large-scale merchant on whose.

activity the prosperity of the Crown of Aragon depended. The

idea that society could be essentially urban, very clear in Fiximenis, was inconceivable in Castile. Eiximenis not only pre-

ferred cities to the countryside, whose inhabitants (whether knights or peasants) he despised, but maritime cities to those inland, because cities on the sea were more open to the world, to news and foreigners. In the 1450s the Castilian cleric Rodrigo

Sanchez de Arévalo was to condemn maritime cities, with the throngs of merchants Eiximenis admired, as ‘contrary to good and noble policy’. For the Castilian, merchants were an inferior species, ‘not concerned with virtue’ but with riches. They should

have no place in city government. ,

The contrast between the urban emphasis of Eiximenis and the rural preferences of Castile appears even more clearly in a comparative study of E1ximenis and the Castilian poet Inigo de Mendoza (c. 1425-c. 1508). Eiximenis and Mendoza were both Franciscans, reformers, social critics. But their views of society differed radically. Mendoza, like Ayala and earlier Castilian writers, exalted the peasants Eiximenis despised and (correctly) saw Kiximenis’ merchants as the enemies of hierarchical society and as false Christians whose God is money. ‘May lords’, Fray Ifiigo writes, ‘not become merchants. Virtues, graces, honours

are not compatible with Flemish trade.’? Although Eiximenis

did not believe in a democratic regime, he considered that guilds should be consulted in cases concerning them, ‘for many see more than a few’. This element of consultation and consent is central to his thought.® AYALA AND EIXIMENIS

Ayala and Eiximenis were both traditional moralists. For both of them public good came before private interest. Eiximenis’ favoured merchant should not make money by speculation or use

a technical innovation unless it was available to all members 1 Ivars, AIA 24 (1925), 372-80; Ayala, Rimado, v. 304 (BAE lvii. 434); Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo, Suma de la politica, I. 8 (BAE cxvi. 264). 2 J. Rodriguez-Puértolas, De la Edad Media a la Edad Conflictiva (Madrid, 1972), Pp. 13-54, esp. 43-8; idem, Fray Inigo de Mendoza y sus Coplas de vita Christt (Madrid, 1968), pp. 230 f. 8 J. A. Maravall, VII CHCA iii. 285-306; Eiximenis, Regiment, ed. D. de Molins de Rei, pp. 100 f., 178.

212 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 1350-1500 of his craft. But the actual and ideal societies of these two thinkers differed as widely as possible. For Ayala, society was

ideally centred on a powerful king, served by ambassadors whose letters were properly drawn up and sealed, with a sound coinage, well-fortified and garrisoned cities, elaborate palaces, with well-equipped chapels, and an efficient Royal Council consisting of knights, bishops, and lawyers. For Eiximenis, in contrast, the ideal community was one in which the ruler was the people’s servant, controlled by a contract. Eiximenis admired the Italian city communes, from which nobles were excluded (very rightly in his view, since virtually no noble deserved salvation); at times, at least, he saw monarchies as soon withering away and leaving a world of cities, controlled by merchants.1 Within a century of the deaths of Ayala and Eiximenis aristo-

cratic and rural Castile was to dominate the bourgeois urban culture of the Crown of Aragon. Eiximenis was to have no spiritual heirs. The ideal rulers of Ayala were to materialize in Fernando and Isabel, in whom Mendoza saw the fulfilment of prophecy.? 1 Eiximenis, Doctrina Compendiosa, ed. M. de Barcelona (ENC A, 24) (Barcelona, 1929), pp. 112, 63; Crestid, XII. 470, cited J. R. Webster, Estudios franciscanos, 68 (1967), 351; Regiment, p. 175; Ayala, Rimado, vv. 603-17 (p. 444). See above, Ch.

II, p. 65, n. 1. ® Rodriguez-Puértolas, pp. 53 f.

PART II

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Foreign Policy: the Advance of Empire if was pointed problems—perhaps out many years agopreconditions that most ofwould the chief international be a more exact term—of early modern Europe became clear in the

course of the opening decades of the sixteenth century: the struggle for Italy between Spain and France, the alliance of Spain with the Habsburgs, Spanish friendship with Portugal, and enmity with the Turks.1 While all these developments can be traced back to earlier centuries, or at least—as in the case of

the Habsburg alliance—to the first years of the Catholic Monarchs, they come together in the early sixteenth century in a new way. FERNANDO THE DIRECTOR OF FOREIGN POLICY

Responsibility for Spanish foreign policy in this age has in general been accorded to Fernando rather than Isabel. The views of Zurita, echoed by Prescott, have been drawn out in detail by Doussinague. The years 1504-16, after Isabel’s death, appear the most brilliant period of Spanish policy.2, Whereas territorial acquisitions in the peninsula—Granada, acquired by both rulers, and Navarre, by Fernando alone—were eventually

joined to Castile, most of those outside the Iberian peninsula, apart from the Indies, were joined to the Crown of Aragon. It

is important to note, however, that Granada came first. Fernando’s attempt in 1483-4 to recover the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne from France proved a failure because his own Crown of Aragon refused to give him the resources he needed and Isabel insisted on unbroken continuance of the war with Granada. Thus, although the king of Aragon directed the foreign policy. of the Spanish kingdoms, he was dependent on 1See R. B. Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire, ii. 262. 2 A. Rumeu de Armas, in Curso de conferencias sobre la politica africana de los Reyes Catélicos, 6 (1953), 109.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 535

Castilian co-operation. Without it he could not have conquered Naples in Isabel’s lifetime or held it after her death. NEW METHODS

Fernando was assisted by a remarkable group of secretaries and ambassadors. The use of the resident ambassador and of leagues

between states had long been known in Italy. These practices were taken up by France and the Habsburgs at the beginning of the sixteenth century, but Spain, under Fernando, was the first European power to establish a relatively efficient diplomatic network. The reports of Fernando’s ambassadors complement

the royal instructions which poured out from the moving Spanish court, and which have recently been published in such profusion by La Torre and Suarez Fernandez. In the same way as one can trace the rise of the resident ambassador one can see successive efforts to achieve a ‘balance of power’, to stabilize

European politics. The attempt by Juan II of Aragon, Fernando’s father, to establish a permanent alliance with Burgundy and England, Naples and Portugal, in order to restrain France, though important, was an isolated precedent.? The Holy League of Venice 1n 1495, one of whose main architects was Fernando, was the first of a long series. FERNANDO’S MAIN AIMS

While most historians can agree on Fernando’s role in directing

Spanish policy and on the new methods, imitated from Italy, which he used, the aims behind his policy remain as much a matter of controversy as they were in his own day. Reacting against the view of Fernando prevalent outside Spain since Machiavelli, Doussinague has seen as his guiding ideas ‘war against the infidels’ and (as a means to this, at least until 1512), ‘peace among Christians’.? Doussinague is able to cite many 1 See the Bibliography to this Chapter. I have in mind particularly the correspondence of Fuensalida. 2 J. Vicens Vives, Juan II de Aragén (Barcelona, 1953), pp. 329 f. See G. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Penguin Books, 1965), esp. pp. 131-45; also, for the NT reny D. E. Queller, The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton, op Me, Doussinague, La polttica internacional de Fernando el Catélico (Madrid, 1944), pp. 10, 12; see p. 141, and passim. From 1512 Doussinague, El testamento polttico de Fernando el Catélico (Madrid, 1950), pp. 13, 26 f., etc., holds Fernando saw peace not

as a means but as an end in itself. (See below, p. 569.)

536 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 documents in which Fernando explicitly states these aims. This

is to ignore, however, the words of Machiavelli which are usually assumed to refer to Fernando, who, he says, ‘never preaches anything except peace and good faith, and he is.an enemy of both one and the other’. A modern Italian historian, Pontieri, has found himself unable to feel ‘the same enthusiasm’

for Fernando’s ‘Christian and European imperialism’ as that displayed by Doussinague, and has spoken of Fernando’s “ice-

cold realism . . . he passes over every consideration of an ethical, juridical, or sentimental nature to aim only at the immediate interest of his State, or better the system of States united around the Crown of Aragon’.? If, for ‘Christendom’, in Fernando’s documents, one reads ‘Mediterranean’, one has perhaps found the term which most closely defines his policy. As compared not only to England but to Maximilian of Austria, the quarrelling Italian powers, and to France—content with sending one or two small and badly directed expeditions against the Turks—Fernando stands out as pursuing a generally consistent Mediterranean policy. Given the threat from the Turks and from the pirates of North Africa, this was inevitably an anti-Islamic policy—though, as we shall see, there were exceptions to this rule. It is probably also true that Fernando was more disposed to maintain peace among Christian rulers, whenever he could, than were the French kings, the Habsburgs, or the popes, with whom he had to deal. But each of Fernando’s decisions has to be scrutinized individually in order to disentangle the strands involved. Despite the officially pacific bent of his policy towards other Christian

rulers, the reign ended with Fernando in control of two Christian kingdoms, Naples and Navarre, both of which had been independent in 14.75. While Fernando devoted considerable resources over many years to the conquest of the North African coast, and, in 1509 and 1511, was apparently planning expeditions farther afield, against Egypt and the Turks, he was 1 The Prince, 18, trans. G. Bull (Penguin Classics). See Guicciardini, Storia d’ Italia,

XII. 19, ed. S. Seidel Menchi, ii (Turin, 1971), 1267: ‘he covered almost all his desires under the colour of honest zeal for religion and holy wish for the common BOE. Pontieri, V CHCA iii. 242 f. See J. C. Bridge, A History of France from the death

oF fous Xl, v. 189: ‘the piety of the Catholic King was strangely rich in worldly

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 537

ready to employ the armies raised for this purpose against France in Italy. He presented the attacks on North Africa as a crusade and obtained a brief from Pope Julius II, which described it as such, but, at the same time, he was allying with Julius against French plans, since he saw a threat emerging to his control over Naples.!

It would seem reasonable to suggest that Fernando was neither the selfless champion of Christendom presented by Doussinague, nor merely the cynical egoist of Machiavelli (and

Pontieri), but a man preoccupied throughout his reign—as earlier kings of Aragon had been—with two main threats to his Mediterranean policy, Islam and France. At certain times one, at others the other, predominated. At the end of his reign the Memorial of his last secretary, Quintana, addressed to the future Charles V, as Fernando’s parting warning to his grandson and

heir, stressed the danger of France.? In comparison with his Mediterranean, North African, and Italian preoccupations the distant discoveries of Columbus bulked small in Fernando’s plans.* Perhaps Fernando’s policy was as well stated by Zurita as it can be: ‘in order to defend his own he did not consider war against Christians as any less just than conquests among infidels’.4 Fernando’s view of what was ‘his own’ was not always,

however, shared by others. SPECIFIC POLICIES

Many of Fernando’s specific policies were inherited by him as king of Aragon, others as king, by marriage, of Castile. In the

former category one should include his consistent effort to dominate Navarre, as his father, Juan I], had done, and to recover Roussillon and Cerdagne, which Juan had had to abandon to France. His interest in alliances with France’s enemies was inherited from Juan; the Habsburgs, because of Maximilian’s marriage to the heiress of Burgundy, were now joined to England as Fernando’s main natural allies. In Italy Fernando inherited a close relationship with his illegitimate 1 Doussinague, La polftica, pp. 649 f., 654, 461. See Mattingly, p. 158: “Do we know how much his pious phrases were meant to deceive others, and how much to appease the uneasiness of his spirit?’

2 Doussinague, pp. 675-81. § Thid., p. 493. See below, p. 583. 4 Zurita, Historia, V. 79 (speaking of 1504). In V. 83 he also notes the ‘great circumspection (tento) and artifice’ with which Fernando acted.

538 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 cousin Ferrante I of Naples; this was to develop from alliance into domination. As king of Castile, after his victory in the war of succession, Fernando was tied by treaty to his unsuccessful rival Portugal. He had also, with Isabel, inherited the mission of the Castilian Crown to conquer Granada. Finally, as king both of Castile and Aragon, he had many reasons for remaining

an obedient—if, at times independent—son of the papacy. Indispensable to the two monarchs’ plans for religious reforms,

notably for the creation of the Inquisition, essential as a principal source of funds for the conquest of Granada, the papacy was also essential to the Italian policy of Aragon. Overlord of Sardinia, 1t was also overlord of Naples. The embassy in Rome was among the most important, and most difficult, posts in Fernando’s gift.t TOOLS OF POLICY

What, apart from ambassadors, armies and fleets, were the principal tools of Spanish policy? Economic and _ political relations are hard to disentangle, ‘not’, as Suarez remarks, ‘because the economy directs policy, it is more the other way round, but because the Catholic Monarchs never lose an opportunity to obtain commercial advantages for their subjects whenever a treaty is signed’.* ‘Thus the political alliances with

England and with the Habsburgs (as rulers of Flanders), cemented and advanced economic relations with these countries which had long existed.*

To Fernando, however, princely marriages may have seemed more important in cementing policy and sealing alliances

than the Spanish merchant colonies which covered western Europe. In this he was no different from his contemporaries. Louis XII of France was ready to dispose of territories (Milan, Genoa, Brittany) gained at a vast cost of lives and treasure, as the dower of his daughters,* and Maximilian was prepared to 1See the list of Fernando’s principles of policy as stated by Suarez, Politica international de Isabel la Catélica, i. 226, here recast.

2 Suarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 43. 8 See above, Part I, Ch. I, pp. 36 f, and also M. Mollat, V CHCA, iv. 97-111 (reprinted, with errors, in AHES 3 (1970), 41-55). This article is supplemented, in certain details, by M®. del C. Carlé, CHE 21-2 (1954), 259-75. 4 See H. Lemonnier, in Histoire de France, ed. E. Lavisse, v. 1, p. 68; Bridge, A History of France, iii (Oxford, 1929), 206.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 539

embrace any scheme, however short-sighted it might be, to advance his individual descendants’ interests. From the 1480s the Catholic Monarchs adopted a series of marriage alliances outside the peninsula, the first Iberian rulers to do this systematically.1 It is in connection with a marriage alliance that the character of Fernando appears at its least attractive. If Isabel had lived it seems unlikely that Catherine ‘of Aragon’ would have had to endure years of humiliation in England waiting for her second marriage—until the accession of Henry VIII made Fernando at once yield, lest the new king should be captured by another power, on all the points he had refused to concede to

Henry VII.? In his treatment of the daughter he claimed to value most highly ‘reason of state’ is clearly evident. Until the fall of Granada in January 1492 it was impossible for Fernando to bring the full weight of Spanish power to bear outside the peninsula. ‘The years before 1492 are worth examining, however, as they reveal policies which were developed in a later period. PORTUGAL

The divided state of Castile at the beginning of the reign made the creation and maintenance of peace with Portugal a necessity. The peace of 1479 was maintained despite the difficulties

created by the continued existence in Portugal of Princess Juana, Enrique IV’s daughter, and, at one time, Afonso V of Portugal’s nominal bride, always a potential threat to Isabel’s. succession. After Joao II of Portugal’s execution of his cousins,

the Dukes of Braganza and Viseo, in 1483-4, the Catholic Monarchs sheltered and supported a large number of Portuguese émigrés, including some who were clearly rebels against Jodo. These émigrés represented a counter-threat to that presented to Castile by Dofia Juana. The marriage of Fernando and Isabel’s eldest child, Princess Isabel, to Joao II’s heir, Afonso, arranged

in 1479, took place in 1490; it had been preceded by an oath Joao was obliged to take never to permit Juana to leave either Portugal or the convent which she had been forced to enter.®

Ch. I, p. 362, n. 1. . 1 Suarez, Polttica, 11. 169. 2 Fuensalida, Correspondencia, pp. Ixxxix f.

_% Suarez, Polttica internacional, 11. 66-09, 111. 13. For the treaties of 1479 see above,

540 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 The sudden death of Afonso in 1491 and that of his father, without legitimate heirs, in 1495, was followed by the accession of the surviving Braganza, Manoel the Fortunate (1495-1521). In 1497 Manoel married the widow of his cousin Afonso and, after the death of Fernando and Isabel’s son, Juan, that year, it seemed that Manoel and the younger Isabel’s son, Miguel, might unite Castile, Aragon, and Portugal in his hands. The child’s death in 1500 ended this possibility. A widower since 1498, Manoel married the Catholic Monarchs’ fourth daughter, Marfa, in 1500, but this marriage did not affect the succession to Castile which passed to Maria’s elder sister, Juana, and her

husband, the Archduke Philip. Meanwhile Fernando and Isabel had succeeded in avoiding any violent clashes with Portugal. A peaceful settlement of possible disputes over overseas discoveries was reached in 1494; in 1509 spheres of influ-

ence were divided in North and West Africa.? Peace with Portugal, a policy begun under Juan II of Castile by Alvaro de

Luna and continued by Enrique IV, provided a base for Spanish policy elsewhere, overseas and in Europe. NAVARRE

Navarre was the only Christian kingdom in the peninsula, other than Portugal, not to be included, after 1479, in the realms ruled by Fernando and Isabel. Small in size, its strategic position between France and Spain gave it importance. Juan II

of Aragon had succeeded in clinging to the kingdom, whose heiress he had married. He was obliged to leave it at his death in 1479 away from Fernando to Leonor, his only surviving child by Blanche of Navarre, and the widow of Gaston IV of Foix.4 Since Leonor only outlived her father by a few weeks Navarre soon passed to her grandson, Francois Phoebus of Foix, though his mother, Madeleine of France, the sister of Louis XI, exercised what slight power the crown possessed. Navarre was divided between opposing factions, of which the Beaumonts were partisans of Castile, and of Fernando. Louis XI

attempted to marry Francois Phoebus to Enrique IV’s 1See Ch. VI, below. 4 See below, pp. 575, 580. 3 For Luna and Enrique IV see above, Part II, Ch. IV. * See above, Part II, Ch. IV, also, for Gaston IV, J. Regl4, EHMod 1 (1951), I-31.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 541

daughter, Dofia Juana (Joao II of Portugal was evidently sympathetic to this idea), Fernando and Isabel to their daugh-

ter, Juana. Francois died in 1483 unmarried, leaving his claims to his sister Cathérine, whom Fernando and Isabel endeavoured to marry to their son Juan. But Madeleine of France preferred a marriage with Jean d’Albret. The Fotx-

Albrets were more interested in their states in southern France than in their small kingdom.! In 1485 and later years Fernando achieved substantial concessions. A series of treaties recognized

Jean d’Albret and Cathérine as rulers of Navarre (they were crowned in Pamplona in 1494); m return Navarre became a Castilian protectorate.” FRANCE

When Fernando became king of Aragon in 1479 the counties of

Roussillon and Cerdagne, Catalan-speaking and linked for centuries to the House of Barcelona, had been in French hands

—except for one brief liberation in 1472-3—since 1462.3 There were other reasons for friction with France, in Navarre and in Italy. In 1480-1 the extinction of the Angevin line left Louis XI of France heir to the Angevin claims to Naples, which had been in the hands of the illegitimate line of the Aragonese

Trastamaras since 1458; 1t at once gave France the ports of Provence from which to challenge Catalonia at sea. But Roussillon and Cerdagne constituted in themselves a sufficient casus bells.

Fernando could not pursue war at once. He had refused to

renew his father’s alliance with Burgundy against France without guarantees from Marie of Burgundy and her husband Maximilian of Austria.* Internal troubles and, later, the war with Granada, absorbed Castile. Aragon’s treasury was empty.

Louis XI may have been persuaded, when he was dying, to return the two counties, but after his death this promise was not

honoured by his daughter Anne, regent for Charles VIII. Fernando was unable to exploit the Civil War of the regency period or to save Brittany from French conquest. The Spanish troops sent proved inadequate in numbers and England and 1 Suarez, Polttica, ii. 76-85, 93 f., 100 f.

2 Ibid. ii, 155 f., 167, ili. 41, 76, iv. 29 f. ® See above, Part II, Ch. ITT. 4 J. Calmette, Bulletin hispanique, 7 (1905), 34-7.

542 THE CATHOLIG MONARGCHS. 1474-1516 —

Maximilian unreliable allies. His throne menaced by Yorkist pretenders, Henry VII, ‘as regards Spain, was the suitor’. But the Treaty of Medina del Campo (1489), with its highly favour-

able conditions for Spain, was only partially ratified by England.! A “Triple Alliance’ of England, Spain, and Maximilian, was only arranged in 1490, too late to save Brittany. These disappointing results were largely the fault of Spain. Through-

out the 1480s Fernando had hesitated, hoping to reach a

rather than go to war.” | Politically, Spain had failed either to save Brittany or to

separate agreement with France over Roussillon and Cerdagne,

recover Roussillon. Economically, she had achieved useful terms of trade with England.? Meanwhile, by 1492, the internal

problems of Spain had neared resolution on several crucial issues: not only had the war with Granada been won but the Inquisition had been definitely established, the Jews expelled, settlement attained of the remensa problem in Catalonia, and many royal revenues recovered in Castile.* THE TREATY OF BARCELONA

Spain was almost ready to act over Roussillon when it received

it as a gift. Charles VIII, having attained his majority and ended his sister’s regency, had married the heiress of Brittany. He was free to pursue his ambition, to launch his Italian expedition. But, before doing so, he needed to assure his frontiers at home. He found it easy to secure Henry VII’s friendship by a

large payment. He bought Maximilian’s neutrality by concessions in the Low Countries. And he considered he had achieved a Spanish alliance by the Treaty of Barcelona (19 January 1493). In this Treaty Fernando and Isabel renewed the traditional Castilian alliance with France, and promised to give

preference to this alliance over any other, except that of the pope. Spain thus abandoned the Trastamaras of Naples, the object of Charles’s expedition. In return Charles freely returned

Roussillon and Cerdagne to Fernando. He and Isabel entered

Perpignan in triumph, to the joy of the population, on 13 1J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors 1485-1558 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 92, 94-7. 2 Suarez, Polttica, 111. 210-163 see ibid. uu. 87-92. 157-0, ll. 51-65. J. Calmette, Revue historique, 117 (1914), 168-82.

8 Suarez, ui. 8 f. # See above, Ch. II, II, IV.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 543

September. Perpignan, Calmette observes, ‘was a pendant to Granada’. The French had failed to delay the implementation of the treaty until they had obtained additional securities. This attempt may, though this 1s uncertain, have been due to suspicion that the exception made in the treaty of the pope might be used against France. It was to be so used in fact. The usual accusations of bad faith against Fernando seem misdirected; Fernando could not use the pope until he was sure of him as an ally, and as the feudal overlord of Naples, who could give or refuse title to the kingdom as he chose. In 1493, Fernando was not sure of Alexander VI. The treaty does contain, however, an ambiguous phrase, promising not to assist Ferrante I of Naples against Charles ‘in the recovery of any right which may belong to him [Charles] in the kingdom of Naples’. This may well indicate Fernando’s intentions to launch his own counterclaim.? ITALY

‘On the thirty-first of December 1494, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the army of Charles VIII entered Rome and its march continued into the night, lit by torches . . . The Alps’, Michelet continues, ‘no longer existed.’® As the following decades were to prove, what no longer existed was the separation of the two western peninsulas of the Mediterranean. The ephemeral triumph of Charles VIII was to prelude and prepare for centuries of Spanish domination. The odds in the struggle between France and Spain for Italy seemed at first to favour France. She had dynastic claims on Naples and Milan. She was on excellent terms with Venice and Florence, and she had frequently been asked to intervene in Italian quarrels. But it was Fernando who was to profit from the attempt of a king of France ‘to conquer and annex a state outside his realm’, an attempt for which Angevin rule over a separate kingdom of

Naples provided no real precedent.® | 1 J. Calmette, La Question des Pyrénées et la Marche d’Espagne au Moyen-Age (Paris

1947), PP. 229-45, 262-85. 2T follow Suarez, Polftica, iii. 67-88, 93 (esp. p. 85). 8 J. Michelet, Histoire de France, ix (Paris, 1898), 125, 129 (written in 1855). 4 This is noted by G. Desdevises du Dézert, Revue hispanique, 56 (1922), 287. 6 J. Calmette, Revue des Pyrénées, 16 (1904), 106.

544 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 INTERNAL DIVISIONS

It was a lack of unity in the peninsula which enabled foreign powers to conquer it. Italian armies were not always (or often) beaten in battle but Italian states were weak internally and unable to unite. Of the five principal Italian states, those of the papacy were the least powerful, and Florence, because of its divisions, the least active. By their rivalry the other three states, Venice, Milan, and Naples, let in enemies they could not expel. Neither the Turkish nor the French menace could unite Italy. While the Turks were still occupying Otranto in 1480-1 the war of Ferrara was being prepared by the papacy and Venice. That

general leagues had ceased to work became clear in this struggle. In 1482 Pope Sixtus IV (and later Venice also) asked for French aid against their enemies.” It was Milan which invited in the French in 1494. Wealthy but lacking in unity and with an exposed geographical position it was itself soon to suffer from foreign intrusion. The internal

cohesion of Venice enabled it to survive, but at the price of sacrificing its expansion overland. The greatest surprise of the 1490s concerned Naples. Lorenzo de’ Medici had seen Ferrante I

as ‘judge of Italy’. In 1486 Ferrante himself considered that ‘no past ruler of this kingdom has held it with as much obedience and security as We do now’.® Both views were soon to be proved false. More perceptively Machiavelli noted the menace

constituted by the Neapolitan barons, ‘enemies of all civil government’. Naples had suffered a century of anarchy and depopulation from 1343 to 1442. The barons’ position had grown stronger under Alfonso the Magnanimous of Aragon (1442—58). Alfonso’s successor, Ferrante I (1458-94), tried to use the lower nobility and the bourgeoisie of the cities against the barons but they did not provide the counter-balance needed. ‘A ruler of uncommon value’, as he has been called, ‘a strongly realistic and positive mind’, in another recent view, he had not succeeded in creating any group really loyal to the kingdom’s

interests.4 |

1R. Cessi, Archivio Veneto, 5th ser. 44-5 (1949), 73-6. Cessi notes (p. 67) that Naples also called on French aid in this crisis. * Calmette, Revue historique, 92 (1906), 227, 235. See La Torre, i. 408. * B. Croce, Storia del regno di Napoli, 4th edn. (Bari, 1953), p. 50; idem, Prima del Machiavelli (Bari, 1944), p. 29. 4 Machiavelli, Discorst, I. 55; Croce, Storia, pp. 62, 64, 70, 74 f.; P. Pieri, Zl

;| |

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 545

Ferrante had nearly lost his throne in the first crisis of his reign. He had to be firm to survive at all. His measures against the barons, while not surpassing Cesare Borgia’s in harshness, failed to destroy them as a group, while they left him and his successors with no moral support. Behind Neapolitan aspirations to hegemony over Italy there was only ‘the old king, with the aura of terror and gloom that emanated from him’. Further external problems beset the kingdom. The Angevin claims had passed to the French Crown. Naples was a fief of the papacy and the popes were not dependable overlords. Sixtus IV (1471-84)

and Innocent VIII (1484-92) proved hostile to Ferrante. Alexander VI was only conciliated with difficulty. And it remained to be seen how long the illegitimate branch of the Trastamaras who held Naples since 1458 could rely on their Spanish cousin Fernando. An Italian correspondent told the old king in October 1493, ‘the whole of Italy is in conspiracy against your state... France is on the way. Spain holds you in its hand, awaiting its time’.} SPAIN AND ITALY: TO 1494 At the end of his reign, in 1478-9, Fernando’s father, Juan IT of Aragon, had concluded a peace with Genoa and a mercantile truce with Provence, which had so recently supported a rival claimant to the Crown of Aragon. The suppression, in 14.78, of the last of a long series of Sardinian rebellions, with the incorporation of the Judgeship of Arborea in the Crown, was another welcome legacy left by Juan to Fernando.? The new ruler began by launching an offensive against Genoa to make good his Crown’s ancient claim to Corsica. But though Catalan troops disembarked on the island, no permanent success was achieved.? A series of truces with Genoa followed; there was no Rinascimento e la crise militare italiana (Turin, 1952), pp. 130-44; E. Pontieri, Per la Storia del regno di Ferrante I d’ Aragona, re di Napoli (Naples, 1969), p. 42. Alan Ryder, The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous (Oxford, 1976), stresses the

‘ruinous condition’ of Naples in 1442 (p. 2). He seems to me to fail to prove that Alfonso achieved an ‘irreversible adjustment’ (p. 368) of power at the expense of the barons. See above, Part II, Ch. II, p. 258 and n. 2. 1 Pontieri, pp. 92-7, 402, 409, 572 f. Zurita, Historia, I. 20, says that Fernando was intriguing with leading Neapolitan barons and cities in 1493, before the French expedition. 2 Suarez, Poltiica, i. 231 f. (See above, Part II, Ch. ITI, p. 299). 8 ¥. Martignone, in Atti del I° Congresso storico Liguria—Catalogna (1974), 513-22.

546 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 treaty until 1493. This delay was presumably due to Fernando’s

reluctance to renounce his Corsican ambitions.1 A strong inclination to resolve maritime conflicts with Venice is perceptible in Fernando’s reign. Trade continued, with both Venice

and Genoa, despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations

before the 1490s.2

The royal family and the nobility of Naples continued to be linked to Spain. ‘There were Spanish soldiers and officers in the

army. The treasury accounts continued to be drawn up in Catalan until about 1480. New immigrants arrived from Catalonia. Catalan merchants continued to enjoy a very strong position in Naples throughout Ferrante’s reign. His attempt, in

1477, to establish protectionist measures against Catalan , textiles had had to be revoked. Ferrante’s second marriage to Fernando’s sister Juana in 1477 was thus only one of the many links uniting Naples with the Crown of Aragon.?

FERNANDO’S EARLY POLICY IN ITALY | During the 1480s Fernando continued the close alliance with

Ferrante of Naples which Juan II had originated. In 1481 Spain sent a Castilian fleet to assist Ferrante against the Turks who had occupied Otranto. This expedition could be considered religious in its motivation, though Fernando was certainly also concerned for his island of Sicily. In 1482-3 Spain supported Naples and Ferrara against Venice and the papacy; the war of

Ferrara revealed both the failure of the League of Mulan, | Florence, and Naples, and the weakness of Naples itself, which suffered military defeat. ‘The attempts of the quarrelling Italian

powers to secure support from outside the peninsula were an indication of future developments.* Fernando profited. The 1 Suarez, 11. 138, 11. 31 f. The treaty is edited by Lépez Toro, Tratados, DIHE V11. 392-410.

2 Suarez, ii. 32-4; La Torre,.i. 423-5; Ch. Verlinden, V CHCA iii. 270-4. For Fernando and Lorenzo de’ Medici see La Torre, Archivio storico ttaliano, 107 (1949),

208-11 (in the 1480s relations were peaceful but not of great importance). 3B. Croce, La Spagna nella vita italiana durante la Rinascenza, 4th edn. (Bari, 1949),

79. } .

pp. 60-4; M. del Treppo, I Mercantt Catalani, 2nd edn. (Naples, 1972), pp. 248-61. P. Sposato, “Attivita commerciali degli Aragonesi nella seconda meta del quattrocento’, Studi in onore di R. Filangieri, ii (Naples, 1959), 213-31, is less useful.

*The most useful studies of the war of Ferrara are by J. Calmette, Revue

iastorique, 92 (1906), 225-53, and R. Cessi, Archivio Veneto, 5th ser. 44-5 (1949), 57~

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 547

death of Louis XI of France in 1483 prevented French inter-

vention. Fernando’s alliance with Naples became more domineering. Hardly had the war of Ferrara ended when, in 1485, the

Angevin faction of the Neapolitan baronage rose against Ferrante. The revolt was supported by Pope Innocent VIII and by Venice. As in the previous struggle Fernando supported his

cousin, more by diplomacy than by arms. However, he now proposed to mediate between Ferrante and his subjects. While the papacy could not replace Ferrante as king of Naples this was largely because the French candidate to the throne, Duke Réné II of Lorraine, favoured by Innocent, did not arrive in time.? Ferrante was more dependent than before on Spain. A party in Naples had emerged which supported Fernando’s claims to the succession.’ As a price for Spanish aid Ferrante was

obliged to promise a complete amnesty, a promise he did not keep. Fernando and Isabel expressed their indignation but they

still planned a marriage between their youngest daughter

Maria and Ferrante’s grandson.* |

ALEXANDER VI

In 1492 the Valencian Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia became Pope

Alexander VI. His reign was to be of great importance to Fernando. Pietro Martire saluted the new pope’s ‘evident signs of greatness of soul’ but noted that he was “passionate, ambitious

... and goes to insane lengths to satisfy his children’. Nine days

later Martire, as often echoing Fernando and Isabel’s views, stated that the Monarchs were disgusted by Borgia’s elevation, since ‘they fear his ambition, lust and weakness for his sons may lead to the ruin of the Christian religion’.®

In 1492 Rodrigo Borgia was sixty. Although Spanish by birth he seemed French in his sentiments. A leading modern historian of the Borgias says of his election, ‘it cannot be 1 Suarez, Polfiica, 11. 112 f. (citing La Torre, u. 164 f.). 2 Calmette, Revue historique, 110 (1912), 225-46. 8 Zurita, Anales, XX. 79. 4 Suarez, Polftica, 11. 392-8 (the promise of amnesty). It is hard to agree with Suarez (who follows Zurita), ii. 140, iil. 26 f., who sees a ‘radical change’ in Spanish

policy as due to Ferrante’s breach of promise. See La Torre, ii. 462-5. Croce, Prima del Machiavelli (Bari, 1944), edits a contemporary defence, written in Spanish, of Ferrante’s action. 5 Pietro Martire, Epistolario, V. 117, 119 (DIHE ix. 215, 218).

548 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 | | certainly proved that it was strictly simoniacal’, while, less uncertain of the simony, Ludwig von Pastor conceded that there were other reasons for the choice of Borgia, who ‘seemed to possess all the qualities of a distinguished temporal ruler’ and

was ‘looked on as the most capable member of the College’. General satisfaction with the election (except at the Neapolitan and Spanish courts) was evident and in Rome itself 5,000 leading citizens shouting ‘Spafia, Spafia, eviva, eviva papa Alessandro romano!’ filled the streets.” The central question as to Alexander VI is whether his policy was mainly intended to serve the interests of the papacy or those of his children.? Although, as Zurita said, he loved his sons, ‘without any scruple or hypocrisy’, he 1s too complex a character to be explained as simply a nepotist. After the murder of his son Juan in 1497 he evidently intended serious reforms, though, almost at once, Juan’s influence was replaced by that of Cesare Borgia.* From 1494 to 1498 Alexander was allied with Spain and Naples against France; these alliances were confirmed by marriages which established two of his sons in the world. But it can be argued that it was his concern to avoid the domination

of Italy by one power that later led him, first to support the illegitimate Trastamaras of Naples against Fernando and then to accept the partition of the kingdom as a lesser evil than its total transference to Spain or France.§ THE FRENCH INVASION OF ITALY IN 1494

The king of France in 1494 was Charles VIII, ‘very young [twenty-four], feeble in person but very wilful’, in Commynes’ words, which have been echoed by later historians, one of whom describes Charles as ‘favoured neither by nature nor by circumstance, frail of constitution, and feeble in mind’.® But if Charles 1M. Batllori, Alejandro VIy la Casa Real de Aragon, 1492-1498 (Madrid, 1958), p. 20. Compare L. Pastor, The History of the Popes, v. 382-5, V. Vazquez de Parga, HEMCA

vi (1956), 286, Suarez, iit. 92 f., and M. Mallett, The Borgias (London, 1971), pp.

105-10, who is also unconvinced of simony. ,

2 Pastor, v. 386. I cite a document published by Batllori, in Atti del Congresso

internazionale de studi sull’ eta aragonese (Bari, 1968), p. 592.

3 See the remarks of Vazquez de Parga, EEMCA vi. 290. 4 Zurita, Historia, I. 11; Pastor, v. 513-19, 558-63. 5 Batllori, Algunos momentos de expansién de la historia y cultura valencianas (Valencia,

1975), 24 £., summing up earlier interpretations.

®Ph. de Commynes, Mémoires, VII. 1, B. de Mandrot, ii (Paris, 1903), 99;

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 549

was, as Michelet put it, ‘the least imposing being in the army’

which invaded Italy, his contemporaries reported that his interest in Naples was real, in contrast to his usual apathy in regard to public affairs. A Florentine envoy reported that ‘it has

been put into his head that prophecies portend his acquisition of Naples’.+

Commynes states that it was in 1492 that Lodovico il Moro,

the de facio ruler of Milan, began to make Charles feel the ‘fumeées et gloires d’Italie’. It was earlier than this that the Neapolitan émigrés at Charles’s court began to interest him in the expedition, one of them writing historical compendia

intended to trace the king’s right to Naples down from Charlemagne, through the Normans and Angevins. The fascination with Charlemagne—then believed to have conquered not only Naples but Constantinople—also appears in Commynes’ account of Lodovico telling Charles that he would aid him to surpass the emperor’s exploits. The expedition was officially directed against the Turks.? While the claims to Naples Charles believed he had inherited from the Angevins, if objectively analysed, appear feeble, those of the illegitimate Trastamaras who ruled there were equally fragile.? Charles’s dynastic claims, however, tended to disguise the fact that his enterprise was a new one. Charles of Anjou, in

his conquest of Naples two centuries before, had acted as a younger brother of a king of France; his activities had not directly involved the French Crown. Now, in order to invade Italy, Charles VIII was obliged to take actions which affected that Crown’s vital interests, to abandon lands taken from Burgundy, and, in the Treaty of Barcelona, to return Roussillon and Cerdagne to Spain. Many of his best advisers were opposed to the expedition, especially since it entailed such heavy sacri-

fices. Commynes remarks that it seemed ‘to all wise and experienced people very unreasonable’. The rulers of Naples “were strong and rich, very experienced in war and thought Bridge, History of France, ii (Oxford, 1924), 1. See H. Lemonnier, in Histoire de France, ed. Lavisse, V. 1. p. 3: ‘une organisation nerveuse, non pas sans vigueur, mais sans équilibre’. 1 Michelet, Histoire de France, ix. 129; Bridge, ii. 71 f., 77.

2 Commynes, VII, 3, 7 (1. 117, 144). Pontieri (cited above, p. 544, n. 4), pp. 591~651, studies the compendia of Giovanni di Candida. ’ Bridge, ii. 11-17, discusses the rival claims.

550 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 brave (although the contrary was seen later)’. The Italians, including perhaps Lodovico himself, did not believe the expedition would take place. They had issued so many invitations to France to intervene in their quarrels, without any result, that they could not credit the invasion until it had occurred.+

Charles entered Italy with an army of some 22,000 men, a large but not an overwhelming force.? Charles knew, however, that only Naples and the papacy, under Alexander VI, were hostile to him. Milan had invited him to come. Venice would be neutral, Florence, though unfriendly, was unwilling to take risks. He considered he had secured the neutrality of England and of Burgundy and the Habsburgs, and the friendship of Spain. The odds in Italy proved even more favourable to him than he had expected. Piero de’ Medici’s loss of nerve gave Charles Florence, where the French king was welcomed ‘as a god on earth’. From then on the expedition became a triumphal procession. Alexander VI’s position was so weak as to make him yield, at least outwardly, to Charles, though he delayed granting him the investiture of Naples. Ferrante I had died on 25 January

1494, before the invasion began. His son and heir Alfonso II abdicated on 21 January 1495 and fled in haste to Sicily. His grandson, Ferrante II, was unable to stem the tide. An ‘epidemic of surrender’ followed.®

Charles entered Naples among rejoicing crowds on 22 February 1495. His victory seemed to him the direct work of God. But the Italians, who had, Commynes says, welcomed the French at first ‘as saints’, soon discovered their mistake. ‘It. did not seem to our people that the Italians were men.’ The French could not foresee any end to ‘this good and glorious adventure’. While Commynes, as ambassador to Venice, was watching a formidable League taking shape against France, Charles, who no longer betrayed any imtention of attacking the Turks, was being entertained at Naples by a farce mocking his enemies.

The French were mistaken in supposing that they had 1 Commynes, VII. 1, 3, 6. 19 (ii. 97, 117, 142, 2193). * Higher estimates, followed by Bridge, ii. 94, and others should be revised. See Y. Labande- Mailfert, Charles VIII et son milieu (Paris, 1975), pp- 257 f. 8 Bridge, it. 85, 173; Commynes, ii. 164, n. 2.

4 Commynes, VII. 16, 8, 17, 19 (ii. 194-9, 150, 201, 225, n. 2). For French maltreatment of the Italians see Bridge, ii. 324-32.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 55!

achieved a military triumph. Their ‘dream’ conquest, as Francis Bacon described it, had been due to the internal weakness of Naples and the disunity of Italy. Their rapid retreat was produced by the (temporary) end of this disunity. While Charles, with a much smaller French army, was successful in fighting his way back to France at the Battle of Fornovo (6 July 1495), this engagement could not prevent the rapid loss of Naples; its fortresses had fallen to Ferrante II by 17 February 1496. Charles proved unable to assist his beleaguered garrisons.?

SPANISH ARMED INTERVENTION, 1495-7

Fernando is generally seen as the architect of the Holy League against France concluded on 31 March 1495 between the pope, Maximilian of Austria, Spain, Milan, and Venice. He had been slow to respond to the appeals reaching him from the Trastamaras of Naples and from Alexander VI. His attitude to these two powers was not the same. By August 1493, after the Treaty of Barcelona, he had reached an understanding with Alexander.

This involved the acceptance of the eminently unsuitable Cesare Borgia as archbishop of Valencia and of his brother Juan

as duke of Gandia; Juan was to marry a relative of Fernando. In return Alexander evidently promised to refuse to recognize Charles VIII as king of Naples.’

In 1494-5 Alexander recognized first Ferrante’s heir, Alfonso II, and, after his abdication, Ferrante II, as kings of Naples. In this he went beyond Fernando’s wishes. Alexander had married another son to a Neapolitan Trastamara princess. He had an interest in maintaining the local dynasty. But his actions jeopardized not only French claims to Naples but also those of Fernando.? While one cannot be sure that Fernando deliberately allowed Charles VIII to destroy his Neapolitan cousins before he intervened himself, he was evidently unwilling to save them by acting against his recent ally France. To

the last he tried to negotiate. Zurita states that his price for assisting Alfonso II of Naples was the surrender of the fortresses of Naples and Gaeta, in Alfonso’s view ‘little less than the whole 1 Pieri (cited, p. 544, n. 4), 336 £., 340 f.; Bridge, ii. 285-308. * Suarez, Polttica, ili. 100, 105-7. 3 See Batllori, Alejandro VI, p. 32, followed by Suarez, iv. 60.

552 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 kingdom’. The decisive instructions to the Spanish ambassador Fonseca on 1 December 1494 stated that Fernando was inter-

vening as the ally of Alexander VI. To Charles’s claims to Naples Fernando advanced a counter-claim for himself.+

It would seem that this counter-claim was at the basis of Fernando’s intervention in Italy. He may have feared, as Commynes says he did, ‘for his islands of Sicily and Sardinia’, but to see his action as motivated by his concern for ‘the defence of the western Mediterranean against the Turkish threat’, and by a related concern for ‘the military equilibrium of Italy’, 1s to present him not only as totally disinterested but as more modern

than he was. Fernando certainly had the Turks in mind, but

not only the Turks.? |

The dispatch of an expeditionary force of some 300 light horse and 2,000 foot, under Gonzalo Fernandez de Cérdoba— destined to earn in Italy the title of Gran Capitan—took place

in March 1495. In his detailed instructions of 30 March Fernando told his general that if the French conquest of Naples was complete by the time he arrived on the scene he was to remain in Sicily and await orders. If some fortresses still held out for Ferrante II, ‘procure that the king hand over to you the strongest among them’, They were to be held, once the League Fernando was engineering was proclaimed, ‘in Our name’. It is

clear that Fernando was thinking primarily of his own interests. On 30 April Ferrante was forced to promise to hand over five Calabrian fortresses to Spain. The Gran Capitan had these and all the other fortresses which surrendered to him take oaths to Fernando.?®

Spanish troops played an important but not a dominant role in the Neapolitan campaign of 1495-6, itself a side-show com-

pared to the Battle of Fornovo and other events in northern Italy. Spanish light cavalry could not compete with French 1'The view of Fernando as a ‘Machiavellian’ is that of Calmette, Revue des Pyrénées, 16 (1904), 112. Zurita, Historia, I. 41; Suarez, iv. 71 f., 76, 271-9. 2 Commynes, VII. 19 (ii. 215). The other quotation is from Suarez, iii. 97. In a letter of 21 January 1495 (Hispania, 3 (1943), 71 f.) Fernando told the viceroy of Sicily, ‘We, seeing the war in all Italy, and because We have heard that the Turk

has a great fleet prepared’, are sending a fleet and troops. The army was in preparation in October 1494 (Suarez, iv. 67). Compare the instructions quoted

arse the numbers of the army see Suarez, iv. 105, n. 1. The instructions in RABM 20 (1909), 454. f. Zurita, Historia, II. 143 see also 5, 7.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 553

men-at-arms, nor did Spanish infantry clash as yet with the Swiss. The revolt of the city of Naples against the French and the small numbers, lack of pay, and isolation of the latter were

more decisive in determining their defeat.1 This was soon followed by the death of Ferrante II on 7 October 1496. He was succeeded by his uncle Federico, to the rage of Fernando, whose claims were passed over. Venice at once recognized Federico. Alexander VI did so later, on 11 June 1497. On 7 May of this year Fernando ordered the Gran Capitan to return to Spain but to see first that the important Calabrian fortresses surrendered

to him in 1495 were in safe custody. It was also in 1497 that Fernando first proposed, whether in earnest or not, a partition of Naples between Spain and France. It was certainly that year that a truce between the two powers was concluded, without the consent of Fernando’s allies in the League.?

ENTRACTE, 1497-8 The Italian states, notably Venice and Milan, which had supplied the troops to turn the French out of Italy, did not profit from this victory. Nor was Maximilian of Austria to reap much benefit from his membership of the League. Fernando contin-

ued, however, to cultivate an alliance with Maximilian and also with Henry VII of England, who had refused to join the League. In 1495 a double marriage alliance was arranged between Maximilian’s heir Philip and Juana of Spain, and Philip’s sister Margaret and Prince Juan, the heir of Castile and

Aragon. The actual marriages followed, in 1496 and 1497 respectively. Negotiations for the marriage of Catherine ‘of Aragon’ and Henry VII’s heir, Arthur, took until 1501 to complete.*

These negotiations did not, however, banish the threat of France, which had to be met, either by diplomacy or by force. A truce between France and Spain was proclaimed in February 1 P. Pieri, V CHCA iii. 209-25, studies the Gran Capitan’s evolution as a general. P. Stewart, Renaissance Quarterly, 28. 1 (1975), 29-37, documents the presence of Hermandad cavalry in the Spanish expedition but does not disprove Pieri’s main ints. Pt SuArer, iv. 165 f.; see Zurita, IT. 33. The instructions cited in RABM 20 (1909), 455 f.; see 34 (1916), 301-4. Commynes, VIII. 293 (ii. 367 f., 370). 8 Suarez, iv. 89-103. 1496 was also marked by negotiations for the marriage of

Isabel, the Monarchs’ eldest daughter, to the new king Manoel of Portugal (pp. 146-9), see Ch. VI, below.

554 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 1497. In November at Alcala de Henares this was prolonged indefinitely. The negotiations at Alcala may have included a

secret clause dividing Naples between the two powers, a possible model for the Treaty of Granada of 1500. Commynes states that a new French expedition to Naples was in prepara-

tion in early 1498, supposedly to act in conjunction with Maximilian and Fernando. There seems to be no documentary

proof of this triple alliance. |

In 1497-8 the position of the Catholic Monarchs became more difficult. The death of their only male heir, Prince Juan, on 4 October 1497 made the succession depend on their daughters and the latters’ alliances with Portugal and the Habsburgs. In Italy Alexander VI was turning away from Naples and Spain towards France. The death of Juan, duke of Gandia, made his brother Cesare the dominant influence on Alexander. Cesare wanted to exchange his cardinalate for a royal marriage. Since Federico of Naples refused Cesare his daughter and he had little hope of a Spanish bride he turned to

France. The sudden death of Charles VIIT on 7 April 1498 made his cousin the duke of Orléans Louis XII. In return for releasing Louis from his first wife and allowing his marriage to Charles’s widow, Anne of Brittany (thus maintaining the union

of that duchy to France), Alexander secured Cesare a French

princess and fortune.? | LOUIS KII AND MILAN

Louis XJ] was more interested in Milan—to which he asserted

his own dynastic claims—than in Naples. He proceeded as Charles had done, attempting to secure general consent to his enterprise. He was successful with England and with Maximilian’s son, the Archduke Philip—divided in this from his father. He also secured a treaty with Spain at Marcoussis on 5 August 1498. Italy was left an open region; no allies were ‘reserved’ there by either side.® 1 J. Calmette, MA 17 (1904), 201-7. Suarez, v. 47, denies the existence of any secret agreement at Alcala. The text of the truce, in La Torre, v. 553 f., does not refer to it. Commynes, VIII. 25 (ii. 378). 2 Zurita, Historia, III. 22; Pietro Martire, epist. XI. 196, XIT. 201 (DIAE ix. 372, 382), and especially F. Fita, BRAH 20 (1892), 165 f. ’ Bridge, History of France, iil. 44-51. The treaty in Lépez de Toro, Tratados (DIHE viii. 116~30). See Suarez, v. 61-71.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 555 Lodovico il Moro had become officially duke of Milan during

Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy in 1494. “A supreme intriguer and mediocre politician’, he was left with no real allies against Louis XII. In February 1499 Venice joined France against him. He called in the Turks and (with Florentine aid) paid them to invade Venetian territory. Their devastating raids did not save him. His duchy was conquered by France in a month (August-—

September 1499). His rapid restoration in 1500 was achieved

through Swiss mercenaries who soon betrayed him. The capture of Lodovico in April 1500 meant the end, except for one

later interlude, of Sforza rule in Milan. In 1500, in control of Milan, allied to Alexander VI and Cesare Borgia—who was already active in the Romagna— France was preponderant in north and central Italy. Louis’s attempt to extend his conquest to Naples failed, however. This was not because of the local dynasty. Naples’ revenues had sunk

from 800,000 ducats in Ferrante’s time to 240,000 in 1500. ‘If

internally,’ Pontierl remarks, ‘instability was the dominant note, externally independence was threatened by France, the Turks, the Borgias, and the Venetians.’ Weaker than his nephew Ferrante IJ in 1495, Federico could not resist a second invasion, which now came from both France and Spain.? THE PARTITION OF NAPLES

The partition of Naples between these two powers, suggested as

early as 1497, was formally decided upon in the Treaty of Granada of 11 November 1500, which, in 1501, received the approbation of Pope Alexander VI. The basis for partition was

stated in the treaty to be the fact that both France and Spain had claims on Naples. Federico’s alliance with the Turks was

alleged as justification for dethroning him. This alliance was stressed in Spanish diplomatic correspondence.*® There was

some substance to it. Like Lodovico il Moro in 1499, Federico did appeal to the Turks. On 1 June 1501 he told his envoy to the Turks that, if necessary, he would ‘allow 15,000 and 20,000’ Turks to cross the Adriatic to his assistance, though he would 1 Pieri (cited, p. 544, n. 4), p. 384; Bridge, iii. 79-120. * Zurita, 1V. 17; Pontieri, V CHCA iii. 243. 8’ Lépez de Toro, Tratados (DIHE viii. 173-84, esp. 178); Calendar of Letters,

nial and State Papers (Spanish), 1 (London, 1862), 259-61 (Letter of 29 July 1501).

556 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 prefer a smaller number. The Turks did not come, presumably because they did not wish to fight France and Spain at the same

time—they had just been defeated by the Gran Capitan at Cephalonia. It is, however, fair to say that Federico only called in the Turks when he was faced with overwhelming odds. In 1500, when the Treaty of Granada was concluded, Federico had a Turkish ambassador at his court, but it does not seem that he had yet committed himself to seeking Turkish aid.1 That the partition surprised contemporaries appears from the ineffectual attempts by Spanish writers to find other justifications for it, generally by emphasizing Federico’s ‘ingratitude’ to

Fernando and his attempts to negotiate separately with France, perhaps against Spain. The Gran Capitan is represented

as unhappy at having to combat a ruler he had assisted a few years before. One may ask whether, if Federico was as irremediable an ally of infidels as was stated in 1500, both France and

Spain would at different times have proposed to restore Naples to him.? Francesco Guicciardini, looking back, saw Fernando in the

1490s disguising his claims ‘with Spanish astuteness and patience’. A modern Italian historian sees the final result of the long evolution from alliance, through protectorate and partition, to the conquest of 1502-3, as ‘the consequences of calculations going far back in time’. Perhaps it is safest to conclude, with the slightly later chronicler Alfonso de Santa Cruz, that Fernando and Isabel ‘thought that at some time, with God’s aid, all would come into their power’.® 1L. Volpicella, Federico d’Aragona e la fine del regno di Napoli nel MD1 (Naples, 1908), pp. 31-4; Zurita, ITT. 46. 2 Cronica general del Gran Cajitan, II. 8, 19 (NBAEx. 61 f., 78); Crénica manuscrita,

Ill. 1 (ibid. 305). For the Gran Capitan’s own attitude see ibid. III. 20 (p. 317). Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (NBAE x, p. Ixiii) took a favourable view of Federico. For Fernando’s proposal to restore Federico, in 1503-4, see Zurita, V. 29, 32, 82. Pietro Martire, XIV. 218, XV. 252 (DIHE ix. 419 f., x. 39), says that partition was a lesser evil, to prevent all Naples going to France. The view that Fernando tried to mediate between Federico and France and only turned against the former when he was shown to be allying with the Turks is based on a post factum

document of 1503 (NBAE x, pp. xxxii f.). Bernaldez (before 1513) makes a particularly elaborate attempt to justify Fernando’s conquest by tracing his descent back to Manfred (cc. 193-5, pp. 458-72). See also the references to Federico’s Francophile tendencies and ‘ingratitude’ (cc. 161, 167, pp. 388, 401). § Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, V. 3, ed. Seidel Menchi, i. 458; Pontieri, V CHCA iii. 243; Alfonso de Santa Cruz, Crénica de los Reyes Catélicos, ed. J. de Mata Carriazo,

i. 229 (perhaps inspired by Pietro Martire, XTV. 218).

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 557 It is more difficult to understand why Louis XII agreed to the partition of Naples. In 1500 France was far the strongest power

in Italy. It is hard not to agree with Machiavelli that it was a fatal blunder to let in Spain. “The greatness of the Church [the Papal States] and of Spain has been caused by France.’! It has been suggested that the Treaty of Granada was drawn up by Fernando to trap Louis. Its terms—particularly the impracticable lines of delineation between the spheres allocated to the French and Spanish—certainly made it hard to carry out. But, if Fernando was plotting to use the Treaty as a stepping-stone to complete conquest, he was not prepared for action when the split with France came.? SPANISH CONQUEST OF NAPLES

The Gran Capitan had been sent to Sicily early in 1500 with a reasonably large fleet but a small army (300 men-at-arms, 300 light cavalry, and 4,000 foot). He was directed first against the Turks and succeeded in saving Corfu from them and in conquering Cephalonia (in December 1500). It was not until the summer of 1501 that the Spaniards invaded Calabria. Months after Federico had surrendered to French troops (26 September)

and Naples and most of the kingdom had passed into their hands, the Gran Capitan was still besieging Federico’s heir, the duke of Calabria, in Tarento. By the time Tarento fell (1 March 1502), a breach with France was inevitable. The French were wise to begin it, given their superior forces. Fernando, for his

part, was not anxious to fight, but unwilling to make concessions. The war began without being declared. For over eight

months the Gran Capitan was blockaded in Barletta, short of money and men. It was during this period (September 1502April 1503) that he developed a new type of infantry, following the German model. This infantry, combining pikemen, short swords, and increased use of fire-arms; a good defensive position

from which to counter-attack; the advice of a leading Italian condottrere; and the Gran Capitan’s refusal to lead his army into

battle in the chivalric manner, as the French general did, were among the factors responsible for the victory of Cerignola (28 1 Machiavelli, The Prince, 3, trans. G. Bull. Bridge, iii. 136, speaks of Louis as ‘swallowing [Fernando’s] bait’. * Calmette, Journal des Savants (April 1930), 152. Compare the pro-Fernando view of Suarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 524. ;

558 - THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 April 1503). In half an hour the French army, with its dreaded heavy cavalry and Swiss pikemen, was destroyed. Cerignola created ‘a new phase in the art of war, making Spain a great European power’.! Cerignola determined the fall of Naples on 16 May 1503.

Louis XII had endeavoured to negotiate. Manipulating Fernando’s inexperienced son-in-law the Archduke Philip, he had achieved a settlement favourable to France, only to have it disavowed by Fernando. No French reinforcements were sent to

Naples to match those received by the Gran Capitan. After Cerignola Louis prepared a massive revanche. Much effort was

wasted, however, in campaigns on the Spanish frontier. In Italy Louis relied on Cesare Borgia. After Alexander VI’s death on 18 August 1503, a French army was kept round Rome in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a French pope. When the French reached the kingdom of Naples the Gran Capitan was

again forced to adopt a defensive position. As at Barletta he maintained this under difficult conditions until he was ready to surprise the French. The Battle of the Garigliano on 28 December 1503 proved definitive. On 30 January 1504 Louis XII agreed to a truce, ‘an admission that [Naples] was lost beyond the hope of recovery’. The last centres of French and baronial resistance were reduced in the course of the year.? The truce of 1504 was for three years. Fernando wanted peace, on the basis of Milan for France, Naples for himself. Isabel was

seriously ill, her death increasingly probable. Enough trouble could be foreseen inside Spain without continuing war with France. Peace was delayed by the question of Pisa and, in general, by the independent policy of the Gran Capitan. The latter’s achievements had apparently elicited an embassy to Naples from the Turks, which may have been followed by at least an informal truce. In Italy the Gran Capitan (and also the Spanish ambassador to the papacy) urged expansion. Pisa, which had been free of Florence since 1494, hoped to remain so

by coming under Spanish protection. | In his newly won kingdom of Naples Fernando was anxious 1RABM 20 (1909), 458. See Suarez, pp. 544-72, 587-94. Pieri, V CHCA iii. 213-21, See above, Ch. IV, p. 488, n. 2. * Bridge, 11. 180-203; Pieri, 221 f. For Philip’s negotiations with Louis XII see F. Fita, BRAH 20 (1892), 170-5. Zurita, V. 10, 18, 23, 29; A. Rodriguez Villa, La reina Dofia Juana La Loca (Madrid, 1892), pp. 416-24.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 559

to secure the loyalty of the local barons and the Church and to

re-establish trade. But he also ordered the installation of a Spanish-type Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews. The Gran Capitan paid no attention to these orders, issued immedi-

ately after Cerignola. Fernando soon discovered that Naples cost money and did not support an army of occupation. As early

as 1504 he was trying to reduce the troops there. He had no intention of agreeing to further expansion. The protection the Gran Capitan had extended to Pisa was withdrawn by Fernando. FERNANDO ALLIES WITH FRANCE (1505) Isabel’s death on 26 November 1504. confronted Fernando with grave internal and external problems. Before Isabel’s death the

Treaty of Blois (22 September) had joined the Archduke Philip, Fernando’s son-in-law, and his father Maximilian to France. It was agreed that Naples should go to Philip, whose elder son Charles would marry Louis’s daughter Claude, the heiress of Brittany as well as Milan. After Isabel’s death -Philip claimed Castile by right of his wife Juana. In England Catherine of Aragon, Prince Arthur’s widow since 1502, was not yet within

reach of marrying the future Henry VIII. Henry VII was making Philip substantial loans; in 1506 he promised him an English army would support his claims in Spain. Fernando desperately needed to break up the coalition forming against

him. He did so by offering an alliance to Louis XII. This included Fernando’s second marriage to Louis’s niece, Germaine de Fotx, who brought with her the French claims to

Naples. The Neapolitan barons who had supported France were to receive back their lands. Louis was to be paid a million

gold ducats, over ten years. These terms appear in a second Treaty of Blois of 12 October 1505. Louis probably agreed to Fernando’s offer because he was anxious to escape from the Habsburg marriage he had arranged for his daughter. On 31 May he had made a secret will directing Claude to marry the heir to the French throne, Francois of Angouléme.? 1 Suarez, HE xvii. 2, pp. 615-19, 595; 5. Cirac, SFG i. 15 (1960), 230-40; NBAE x, p. xxxv. On Pisa see E. Dupré-Theseider, V CHCA iti. 21-41. RABM 25 (1911),

er D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, pp. 180-5; Lépez de Toro, Tratados (DIHE Vili. 238-47); Bridge, ii1. 204-25, 242-51.

560 THE CATHOLIC. MONARCHS 1474-1516 Fernando accepted the new treaty as a necessity. He did not intend to observe the clauses which directed that a claim to Naples should return to France if Germaine de Foix had not surviving children, or the prescriptions that Fernando and Germaine’s joint rights to Naples should be publicly recognized,

both there and in the papal investiture of the kingdom. These points he repudiated in a secret document of 19 April 1506.1 FERNANDO IN NAPLES: THE GRAN CAPITAN -

After he had been forced by Philip to leave Castile in July 1506

Fernando departed almost at once for Naples, accompanied mainly by nobles from his own Crown of Aragon.? Perhaps his

main purpose in visiting Naples was to remove the Gran Capitan from office. Fernando’s treatment of the commander who had won him his new kingdom is often censured by historians. Guicciardini’s remark, ‘no reproach attaches to [Fernando] except his faithlessness to his word’ appears to be borne out here.® A real difficulty existed. Naples had been conquered in the name of both Fernando and Isabel, with mainly Castilian

resources, and by a Castilian general. Fernando’s second marriage and intended separation of Naples from Castile—now ruled by a new and hostile king, Philip I—posed a problem of

loyalty. From 1500 onwards Fernando and Isabel had found the Gran Capitan exasperating in many ways. His slowness in informing

them of his achievements was perhaps less serious than his tendency to act independently.® After Isabel’s death Fernando’s

suspicions deepened. In March 1505 he complained that the Gran Capitan was delaying disbanding the unnecessarily large army in Naples, that he was engaging in new adventures over Pisa, and that he was granting away royal lands. In April, when 83J: f.M2®. Doussinague, Fernando el Catélico y Germana de Foix (Madrid, 1944), pp.

° i See below, Ch. VI, pp. 596 f. For Fernando’s voyage and arrival at Naples see A. Capmany, Ordenanzas de las armadas navales (Madrid 1787), appendix, pp. 28-31;

R. Filangieri, V CHCA ii. 311-14. 8 Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, XII. 19, ed. Seidel Menchi, ii. 1266. Machiavelli felt the same. See L. Diaz del Corral, La monarquta hispdnica (Madrid, 1976) pp. Tg,

a Zurita, VI. 17 (and see also V. 73, VI. 9, X. 28). 5 See the documents in BRAH 79 (1921), 227-30, 239 ff., also Suarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 622, n. 128.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 561

he told his general he had complete confidence in him, he was

concerned at the news that he was corresponding with the Archduke Philip—he did in fact receive letters from the latter.)

In 1506 Fernando ordered the Gran Capitan to return to Spain. He was afraid he would seize the strategic island of Ischia, off Naples.” That these fears proved groundless did not disarm Fernando.

When he returned to Spain in 1507 he took the Gran Capitan with him. The promised post of Master of Santiago was not conferred on him. The town of Loja, near Granada, and a large pension were not a substitute for active employment. As a contemporary remarked, he spent his last years ‘a discontented exile’. His resentment appeared in 1509 when he revealed the secret treaty of Cambrai to the representatives of Venice.? The dismissal of the Gran Capitan removed too independent

a servant. Fernando was henceforth to work through the viceroys of Naples and Sicily and his ambassador to Rome. During his brief stay in Naples (October 1506—June 1507) he was occupied in carrying out the restoration of estates to former rebels agreed to in the Treaty of Blois. He had realized the need for compromise with the Neapolitan barons and with the great

Roman houses, the Colonnas and Orsinis, who had estates in the kingdom. The main benefits Naples as a whole received from Spanish rule were internal peace and protection from the Turks.4

JULIUS If AND THE LEAGUE OF CAMBRAI

The division and conquest of Italy by foreign powers, begun before 1500, was completed in the decades that followed. ‘The Italian powers which had united to chase Charles VIII out of Italy in 1495, allowed Louis XII to return in 1499. By 1504 Naples was in the hands of Spain, Milan of France. The only powerful Italian state remaining was Venice. In 1509 Spain, France, and Austria combined to crush Venice.® The main immediate cause for the renewed convulsions of 1 RABM 28 (1913), 371—3, 380, 383. 2 RABM 29 (1913), 467 f.; BRAH 28 (1896), 449, 453.

8 Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, NBAE x, p. |xix; Bridge, iv. 16 f. See the Crénica manuscrita XI. 1-4, XII. 4 (NBAE x. 436-9, 456 f£.). 4 Zurita, VII. 40; Croce, Storia del regno di Napoli, pp. 105 f. 5 See Pieri (cited, p. 544, n. 4), pp. 613 f.

562 : THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516_ Italy was the ambition of Pope Julius II (1503-13), the all-butimmediate successor of Alexander VI. As against earlier popes

Julius had the apparent advantage that two major Italian rivals, Naples and Milan, had disappeared; the despots of the Romagna had been swept away by Cesare Borgia and Borgia himself, from 1504, was imprisoned in Spain. Julius intended to move against the foreign threat, but his first enemy was Venice, which had hoped to inherit Borgia’s position in the Romagna.

In 1504 the pope was already planning a league against Venice. In 1505 he took Perugia and Bologna from their local rulers. In 1506—7 France successfully crushed a revolt of Genoa

against its authority. The meeting at Savona in June 1507 between Louis XII and Fernando (who was returning to Spain to resume rule over Castile after the death of Philip I), cemented

an alliance now directed against Venice.* |

The League of Cambrai was concluded in 1508. It included France, Maximilian of Austria, the papacy, and Spain. Its aim was the general spoliation of Venice. Fernando adhered to the League not only so as to recover the cities Venice held since

1495 in the kingdom of Naples but to escape a diplomatic isolation in which his one ally was France. For the present he also assured the non-interference of Maximilian—Philip I’s father and the guardian of his grandson, the future Charles V—

in the government of Castile. In the event Fernando gained most from the League. After defeating Venice militarily, Louis XIT did not press home the attack. Maximilian soon lost

the cities he had gained. Without fighting, Fernando had regained the ports Venice held in Apulia. He did not want Venice destroyed. She could still serve as a counterbalance to France.? THE SCHISM OF PISA

The League of Cambrai scarcely survived the defeat of Venice.

A new anti-French league began to emerge, led by Julius IT. Fernando had no desire to see France dominate central as well 1 Bridge, iii. 252-94. While the conferences between the two kings were secret, the conclusion reached can be deduced from later events; see also the advice given to Fernando by his Council beforehand in J. M®. Doussinague, BRAH 108 (1936), —140.

a idee, iv (1929), 4f., 12, 53 f. :

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 563 as northern Italy. By the end of 1509 Fernando, in alliance with the new king of England, Henry VIII, who had just become his

son-in-law, was preparing to try to save Venice. He was reluctant, however, to break with France.1 When Louis XII made the mistake—noted by Machiavelli—of committing himself on spiritual grounds to an opposition to the pope, and began to support the ‘Schism of Pisa’ led by a few refractory cardinals, Fernando was able to assume the welcome role of champion of Christendom. It should be noted that he refused, in so many words, to join the new Holy League against France until he had first received the formal papal investiture of the kingdom of Naples.? The bull was granted on 7 July 1510. Even

then Fernando succeeded in remaining neutral between the papacy and France. It was not until France stood alone, except for the dubious aid of Maximilian, that Fernando, allied with

Venice, the papacy, and England, began to commit troops against her. By late 1511 it was clear that Louis XII’s threat to the Papal States constituted an eventual menace to Naples. On 16 November 1511, at an imposing ceremony in the cathedral

of Burgos, Fernando solemnly adhered to Julius II’s Fifth Council of the Lateran, the bishop of Oviedo proclaiming in his sermon that Louis XII was a principal foe to the Catholic Church.? While the Lateran Council proved an answer to the Pisan Schism, the French military victory at Ravenna (11 April 1512) produced no results. The French losses were so great that they were soon forced to retire. Within a few months they had had to evacuate even the duchy of Milan. Fernando’s

diplomacy—which also threatened France with invasion by English troops—was successful.4

Once the immediate danger had passed, this League, like its predecessors, began to dissolve. Julius I], Venice, and the Swiss had installed Maximiliano Sforza, Lodovico’s son, as duke of

Milan but he could not hold the position. By January 1513 1 Doussinague, La politica internacional, pp. 242-58, 305-26, 569-72; Calendar of Letters .. . (Spanish), 11. 46, 49-51 (May and June 1510). * See the letter of 13 May 1510 in Baron de Terrateig, Politica en Italia del Rey Catélico, 1507-16, 11 (Madrid, 1963), 120 f.

8 Doussinague, La politica, pp. 620-35, 392 f., 471, 481 f.; Zurita, TX. 40; Doussinague, Fernando el Catélico y el cisma de Pisa (Madrid, 1946), pp. 504-12 (partly in Bernaldez, 227, pp. 575-83). See Bridge, iv. 85~119, and, for the attitude of the Spanish Church to the Schism, above, Ch. ITI, p. 397, n. 1. 4 Doussinague, El cisma, pp. 287-93, 316-21.

564 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 Fernando was ready to give Milan back to France. His allies

were insecure, his position in Castile unsafe. He began to negotiate on the basis of a marriage between his grandson Ferdinand—the younger brother of Charles—and Louis XIT’s daughter Rénée, who were to receive Milan as an independent state, though, significantly, it was to remain in Fernando’s own hands for some years.! THE CONQUEST OF NAVARRE

Fernando had no reason to regret his adherence to the League

against the Schism of Pisa. It had given him Navarre. The conquest of that kingdom was an immediate result of Fernando’s

clash with France in Italy. Its roots go farther back. Since the accession of a French dynasty to its throne in 1234 Navarre had been forced to play the difficult role of a buffer state between France and Castile. ‘The best ruler Navarre possessed in the later Middle Ages, Charles IIT (1387-1425) has been called ‘par excellence, un prince francais’. Remaining a peer of France, he spent much time in that country. French and Flemish jewellers,

musicians, tapestry-workers, carpenters, bulk large in his accounts. But, at the same time, he was deeply involved in Castilian politics.? This situation was prolonged throughout the fifteenth century. It was aggravated by the Civil War between Juan II of Aragon and his son Charles of Viana.®

As has been seen, the young queen of Navarre, Cathérine (1483-1514), heiress also of the county of Foix, Béarn, and Bigorre, and her husband, Jean d’Albret, had had, by 1494, to accept a Castilian protectorate.* But it was difficult for Castile to maintain control over a country ruled by a dynasty whose other lands were subject to the king of France. Nor could France control Navarre without causing an intolerable threat to Spain.® In the thirteenth century the problem presented by Navarre had been temporarily solved by its union, from 1285 to 1 Ibid., pp. 449 f.; idem, El testamento polttico de Fernando, pp. 201 f. 2 J. Calmette, Histoire du Moyen Age, ed. G. Glotz, vii. 2 (Paris, 1939), 323. See J. R. Castro, Carlos LIT el Noble, rey de Navarra (Pamplona, 1967), pp. 313-18, 501 f., 507, 521, etc. 3 See Part IT, Ch. ITT, p. 268, n. 2, above. 4 See above, p. 541, and n. 2. P 5 P. Boissonade, Histoire de la réunion de la Navarre a la Castille (Paris, 1893), pp. 20 -) 271.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 565

1328, with the Crown of France; in the fourteenth century by the loss by Navarre of its French possessions. After 1483 the

problem returned with redoubled force. The French Crown was as interested as ever in controlling the kingdom, whose rulers now possessed not only much of the French Pyrenees but most of Gascony, Périgord, and Limousin: some 43,000 square

kilometres, compared to only 12,000 in Navarre proper.' Castile, in its turn, was greatly strengthened by its union with Aragon, while this very union was leading it into a conflict with France of unprecedented proportions. The Navarrese monarchy did not recover its authority after

1494. The population was small, ‘the administration disorganized, royal domains alienated or mortgaged. There was no army, almost no treasure.’? The very large extent of the Foix-Albret lands in France itself increased their rulers’ problems, while the revenues they provided were very limited. Jean and Cathérine were outclassed on personal as well as every other ground by their mighty neighbours, Louis XII of France

(from 1498) and Fernando.? While theoretically neutral between Castile and France, until 1506 Navarre was tied by a series of treaties to Castile. In 1498 Commynes had observed

that the Catholic Monarchs ‘do what they please [with Navarre|’.* The alliance of France and Fernando in 1505 presented Jean

and Cathérine with an apparently insoluble problem. ‘They turned to Fernando’s enemy, Philip I, as the one avenue of escape.° Unfortunately for them Philip’s reign over Castile was

short, the distant friendship of Maximilian of Austria of little avail. Louis XII was supporting the lawsuits of Gaston de Foix, duke of Nemours, against his cousin Cathérine. Fernando, while not friendly to her, was unwilling to hand Navarre over to a close supporter of Louis. It was Gaston’s death in the Battle of Ravenna in April 1512 which precipitated the crisis. Gaston died without children. His claim passed to Fernando’s queen, 1Tbid., pp. 3, 17. * Ibid., pp. 6-9; P. Lépez Elum, Principe de Viana, 33 (1972), 162-7. 5 Boissonade, pp. 160-83. *Commynes, Mémoires, VIII. 24 (ii. 374). For the treaties see Boissonade, pp. 96-9, 113-15, 132, 155-7, 191 f. For the crisis of 1503 see T. de Azcona, Isabel la

Catélica, pp. 723 f. : 5 Boissonade, pp. 21o f.

566 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 Germaine. While Louis turned towards Jean and Cathérine, Fernando saw his opportunity. The occupation of Navarre by Fernando’s troops in 1512 is generally viewed by Spanish historians as the result of an unreasonable refusal of Jean and Cathérine to give Fernando possession of key fortresses so that his army, in concert with an English expeditionary force dispatched by his ally Henry VIII,

could attack Bayonne. Fernando has been seen by others as using Henry VIII and the Holy League as a ‘stalking-horse, covering his approach to his own prey ... Navarre’. As Pietro

Martire observed at the time, the rulers of Navarre were between two fires. If they allowed Fernando’s troops to pass through their kingdom to attack Guienne they would lose their fiefs in France, which were more extensive than their kingdom. They attempted to negotiate with both sides to maintain their neutrality, only to be deceived by both. On 18 July 1512 their

representatives signed a secret treaty at Blois with France, which Louis XII could interpret as a defensive alliance against Fernando and Henry VIII.?

Fernando had seen the way things were bound to go. The same day as that of the treaty Pietro Martire reported that in the Spanish court ‘the story was’ that secret dispatches contain-

ing the Franco-Navarrese alliance had been discovered. The terms described correspond to those contained in an official letter of Fernando of 25 July. They differ widely, however, from the actual Treaty of Blois. Instead of a defensive alliance,

| Navarre is said to promise to attack Castile and France to support the conquest of broad regions of both Castile and Aragon.® This ingenious forgery has deceived many historians since Pietro Martire.* While believing in the authenticity of the forgery, Zurita had long ago perceived that Fernando was less interested in winning 1 Contrast Doussinague, El cisma, pp. 322~5, and Bridge, iv. 173. 2 Martire, XXV. 488 (DJHE xi. 399). For the treaty see Boissonade, pp. 316-21.

3 Martire, XXV. 491 (xi. 45 f.). See Bernaldez, 236 (pp. 616 f.); Santa Cruz, Crénica, ed. Carriazo,, ii. 194 f. (embroidering on Martire and reproducing Bernaldez). 4 Down to Doussinague, p. 328, and even to M. Fernandez Alvarez, HE xvii. 2 (1969), 722, who, while speaking of propaganda, says that Fernando ‘had the terms

of the alliance published’. The demonstration by Boissonade (in 1893) of the forgery (pp. 289-94, 316-21) seems not to be known to these historians.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 567

Bayonne for England than Navarre for himself.1 While, in March and April 1512, he was demanding the re-establishment of the Spanish protectorate over Navarre, he was also (on 17 April) writing to Rome for a papal bull excommunicating all those in Navarre supporting France. On 5 June he asked for a new bull to justify action against Jean and Cathérine, should this prove necessary.? Julius II duly granted bulls which were

promulgated in Spain in August. They did not, however, excommunicate or depose the rulers of Navarre by name. A bull

of deposition was only issued on 18 February 1513, and its authenticity is dubious.®

Propaganda, internal or papal, was useful, but the fat accompli was even more so. On 21 July the Duke of Alba led the

Spanish army into Navarre. Pamplona surrendered four days later and the other fortresses of the kingdom within a few weeks.

It is doubtful, however, if one should conclude from this that the Navarrese ‘preferred peace under Castilian rule to anarchy under the French dynasty’. Navarre had been taken by surprise. Its Cortes had voted money to raise troops on 20 June. This, like the levy en masse decreed in July, was too late to be of use. If troops had been raised they would have been far inferior in numbers to the invading army, which numbered, by August,

some 17,000; the English, while not intervening, kept the French at Bayonne from doing so.5 Even the contemporary Spanish chronicler Luis Correa, who took part in the conquest, declares that the citizens of Pamplona were ‘ready to die’ with

their king. When Jean d’Albret returned with French troops later in the year he almost reconquered his kingdom. A number of towns rose for him and Alba was obliged to take measures against his supporters in Pamplona and Estella.’ The failure of the siege of Pamplona led to the abandonment of the Albrets by

France. Their later attempts to vindicate their rights after 1 Zurita, Historia, X. 8. 2 Terrateig, 11. 198, 214. 8 See Boissonade, pp. 341-58 (the text in pp. 636-50), also Terrateig, BRAH 134 (1954), 71-108, and G. Desdevises du Dézert, Revue hispanique, 56 (1922), 336, n. 1.

4M. Fernandez Alvarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 724. 5 Boissonade, pp. 284, 290, 321-41. § Luis Correa, Historia de la conquista del reino de Navarra (Toledo, 1513, reprinted

Pamplona, 1843), fo. a iv’, a phrase repeated by Lorenzo de Padilla, Crénica de Felipe I, I. 24 (CDIHE viii. 204).

Ge. a II. 27 f. (pp. 221, 231, 233). See Martire, XXV. 505 (DIHE . 78).

568 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516

Fernando’s death were even more unsuccessful. In 1514 Fernando’s troops occupied French Navarre, Ultrapuertos; it was only returned long after his death, in 1530. The government of Navarre, though more efficient than in the past, continued on traditional lines.! Fernando commissioned at least one juridical and another

historical apologia for his action. Juan Ldpez de Palacios Rubios, a jurist and a member of the Royal Council, had already defended the Patronaio Real over churches. In. 1513 or 1514 he found it opportune to reverse his stand and champion papal claims to depose kings. The occupation of Navarre was seen as a crusade against the allies of the impious Louis XII. Palacios Rubios could not resist, however, using another argu-

ment. For him Navarre had had a ‘vicious beginning’, in the usurpation of power from the legitimate heir of the Goths, Léon. To this the present rulers ‘added the injustice of .. . joining themselves to schismatics . . . The Most Clement and Just God disposed that they should be deprived of dominion and that the kingdom should pass to another people.” The historical apologia was written by no less a person than the great philologist Antonio de Nebrija (d. 1522), official royal

historian from 1509. His De bello navarico apparently uses Palacios Rubios as well as Correa’s Historia de la conquista of 1513, which Nebrija largely translates into Latin. In Correa the ‘Duke of Alba’s speech to the citizens of Pamplona had hailed Fernando as ‘great Constantine’, champion of the faith. Like Correa, Nebrija refers to the (legendary) defeat of Charlemagne by ‘Alonso el Casto de Castilla’—though Nebrija admits that

Alonso was aided by ‘auxiliary Moorish troops’. One of Nebrija’s main additions to Correa is his stress on the geographi-

cal reasons which assigned Navarre to Hispania, which, ‘from a mere geographical expression, has become a living political ideal’.? 1 Boissonade, pp. 411-40. For the government of Navarre see Ch. IV, above. 2 De tustitia et iure obtentionis retentionisque regni Navarrae, necnon et de tpsius terrae situ

et antiquitate (Burgos, 1517?), esp. Pars vi, 11, See E. Bullén y Fernandez, Un colaborador de los Reyes Catélicos, el doctor Palacios Rubios y sus obras (Madrid, 1927),

Pp. 245-74; Boissonade, pp. xiii, 359 ff. For the Gothic argument see Part I, Ch. VI, above. 8 Correa, Historia, fos. a vi, b ii; Nebrija (Lebrixa), Historia de la guerra de Navarra,

ed. Duque de Alba, trans. J. Lépez de Toro (Madrid, 1953), pp. 120, 24 f. (the 1st edn. is Granada, 1545). See R. B. Tate, Ensayos sobre la historiografta peninsular del

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 509

Fernando had taken the title of king of Navarre in 1512. It was not until 1515 that he incorporated his conquest in the Crown of Castile. His reasons for so doing are not entirely clear

but 1t seems probable that the move was intended to prevent Fernando’s presumptive heir, Charles, allowing the Albrets’ claims to be reopened. By this time Fernando had probably abandoned hope of children by his second wife.} FERNANDO’S LAST AIM: PEACE AMONG CHRISTIANS?

It has been argued that, from 1512 onwards, the main aim of Fernando’s policy was the peace of Christendom.? It is germane

to note that, by 1513, Fernando’s main territorial ambitions were satisfied. He had conquered Naples, had driven France out of Milan, and had conquered Navarre. Through a chain of captured ports in North Africa—together with the Balearics and Sicily—he virtually dominated the western Mediterranean. He engaged in as many negotiations as ever. In 1513, in the Treaty

of Lille, he appeared to have achieved a Triple Alliance of England, the German Empire, and Spain, an alliance which is often seen as a constant aim of his policy of ‘containing’ France.®

But this alliance was dissolved within a year. It seems that Fernando preferred not to see either France or his opponents crushed.‘ But this aim was not a disinterested one. For him Maximilian and his grandson Charles presented a greater peril

than France, for they directly challenged his own control of Castile. A document of 1 January 1514 states unambiguously: “This State [Spain] is in no danger unless the Prince [Charles] follows bad advisers.’5

In 1515 Fernando accepted the French reconquest of Milan by the new king Francois I and did not attempt to prolong the war. His serious illness was gaining on him. But it is hardly possible to maintain that when Fernando died in 1516 ‘the era

of conflict between France and Spain was definitely over’. While the official policy of Charles V may have followed that of siglo XV (Madrid, 1970), pp. 204-10 (the quotation from p. 210). Nebrija’s probable use of Palacios Rubios seems hitherto unnoticed. 1 Boissonade, pp. 440-3; Desdevises, pp. 337 f. * Doussinague, El testamento, pp. 13, 26 f., etc. 8 Idem, El cisma, pp. 454 f. 4 See Bridge, iv. 239 f., for a different view. 5 Doussinague, El testamento, pp. 212 f.

570 - THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516

Fernando, especially in his preoccupation with the western Mediterranean—‘peace among Christians and war against infidels’—the duel with France begun by Fernando continued throughout the sixteenth century. FERNANDO AND ISLAM

On his coins, after Isabel’s death, Fernando appears as “Divus

Ferdinandus Catholicus Hispanorum Rex Sancte Romane Ecclesie protector’. As has already been suggested, Fernando’s essentially Mediterranean policy was inevitably directed against Islamic powers—though also, at times, against Genoa, Venice, and France. The Catholic Monarchs continued the tradition of the Crown of Aragon of protecting the princes of the Christian East, particularly the Hospitallers. In 1479-80 Spanish assistance was extended to the Hospital during the siege of Rhodes

by the Turks. In 1480-1 Spain and Portugal were the only important Christian powers to assist Naples against ‘Turkish invasion. Throughout the 1480s Fernando’s correspondence is concerned with countering Turkish threats at sea. In 1488 it is

clear that the papacy relied mainly on Spain for the naval defence of the Mediterranean.! That in 1483 Fernando was prepared to join Naples in a ‘peace, truce, or alliance’ with the Turks*—which did not come about—or that his general antiTurkish policy was linked with the conquest of Granada and with the protection of Sicily, does not diminish the importance

of his actions. At the same time Fernando pursued friendly relations with the Islamic rulers of North Africa, especially Morocco—the sale of Spanish grain to North Africa helped to finance the war with Granada—and also with Egypt. In 1488 an Egyptian victory turned aside a Turkish threat. In 1489 Fernando was proposing to send fifty caravels—for payment—

to assist Egypt. An Egyptian mission to Spain prepared for Pietro Martire’s embassy to Cairo in 1501-2. This embassy proved successful both in reinforcing a common front against the Turks and in ending a persecution of Eastern Christians.*

The question of how far Fernando’s plans of conquest 1 Suarez, Politica, i. 249-55, ii. 144-7; La Torre, e.g. ii. 171-3, 183 ff, 191 f,, 198 f.; 11. 139 f.

* La Torre, i. 294 f., 297. 8 Suarez, Polftica, 11. 16 f., 11. 28 f. 4 La Torre, ii. 147, 234; Suarez, Polftica, ii. 148 f.; idem, HE xvii. 2, pp. 540-2.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 571

extended is hard to elucidate. While preachers exhorted him to

free Jerusalem and some contemporaries considered that a Spanish attack on Constantinople or Egypt was practicable, one

should not make Fernando responsible for the homilies or dreams of others.1 A proposal in 1506 for a great anti-Turkish alliance was mainly a way to sound out papal intentions. More concrete plans and proposals for large-scale war on the ‘Turks appeared in 1509-11. Some of Fernando’s letters of these years are as exalted in tone as any sermon. Pietro Martire reports in

1510 that ‘for him the conquest of Africa constitutes an obsession’. According to Zurita the king proposed to go himself on crusade and to surpass the glories of the Catalan Company. In a

surviving letter of 2 July 1509 to his ambassador in Rome Fernando wrote, “it seems to me that, although I do not deserve

it, [ am in some manner compelled [to go| by the will of our God’.? In a slightly earlier letter (10 June) the king had stated, ‘from my youth I was always very inclined to war against infidels and it is the thing in which I receive most delight and pleasure’. In February 1510 he wrote, ‘the conquest of Jerusalem belongs to Us and We have the title of that kingdom’.* How far did these statements correspond to concrete plans?

That in 1509 Fernando should have asked Julius If for the ‘crusading tenth’ of all clerical revenues in Europe if he was to

be the only monarch to go on crusade might not prove very much. In 1510 he asked the General Cortes of the Crown of Aragon for aid to wage war in North Africa and as far as Egypt (the vote of money also spoke of Jerusalem).° Some contemporaries, including Louis XII of France, and many later historians have considered that, in 1511 at least, the Muslims Fernando was crusading against were French. The case resembles that of Pere II of Catalonia—Aragon’s expedition to Tunisia in 1282, which turned against the Angevins in Sicily. Which was Pere’s

po, 1 See, e.g. S. Cirac Estopafian, Los sermones de Don Martin Garcta, Obispo de Barcelona, sobre los Reyes Catélicos (Saragossa, 1955), pp. 73-9. For Constantinople, see Doussinague, La polttica internacional, pp. 239 f., also El testamento, pp. 305 f.; for Egypt, a proposal by the Grand Master of the Hospital in 1510, CDIHE xxv. 468. * Doussinague, La polttica, pp. 147 f.

® Pietro Martire, XXIII. 435 (DIHE x. 314); Zurita, Historia, VIII. 41 (see

Doussinague, pp. 548 f.); Terrateig, ii. 80 (see later letters, ibid. 84, 162 f.). 4. Sarrablo Aguareles, V CHCA ii. 186, 188. 5 Terrateig, ii. 78-82; Doussinague, p. 343; Zurita, IX. 14. See below, p. 575, n. If.

572 THE GATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516

real goal? The question is still disputed.t A letter of Pietro Martire of 31 January 1511 seems to reflect the views of the Spanish court. Fernando is about to embark for African conquests, but it is already foreseen that Louis XII’s plans against the papacy and Naples may cause a change of direction. The

following day Martire reports, however, that Fernando was still trying to persuade Louis not to prevent his ‘enterprise of Africa’? Looking at Fernando’s Mediterranean policy as a whole, over

a long term, 1t would appear that he was concerned, in the following order, with the North African coast and the western Mediterranean, with the defence of Sicily and Italy, and, lastly,

with Egypt and the Turks. Zurita, as usual, appears to be correct when he states (speaking of 1509) that Fernando ‘determined to make war on Tlemcen and Tunisia and to con-

tinue it along the coast by Tripoli . . . to Alexandria... Together with this, his fleet gained much repute in the affairs of Italy . . . and was the reason that all felt need of him.”? NORTH AFRICA

Behind Fernando’s conquests in North Africa there were centuries of contact, commercial, military, and religious, between Spain—and particularly his own Crown of Aragon— and the Maghrib.* There were also the more recent Portuguese conquests, beginning in 1415 with Ceuta and continuing under Afonso V (1438-81), of Arzila, Alcacer, Seghir, and Tangier (1471). These conquests had asserted Portuguese claims over Morocco. There remained, however, the other North African emirates, Tlemcen, Bougie (together corresponding, roughly, to modern Algeria), and Tunisia. The motives for conquering the coastal regions of these king-

doms were in part religious, in part military. Commercial motives, the spirit of adventure and the lure of booty, were also

present. Royal agents were well informed as to the political 1See Vol. I. 253 (not all scholars would be as positive in emphasizing the

secondary nature of Tunisia).

2 Martire, XXIV. 449, 450 (DIHE x. 344-7; see also 454, pp. 354 f. (5 May

1511) ). See p. 537, n. 1, above, p. 575, n. 1, below. $ Zurita, IX. 1. 4 See Ch.-E. Dufourcq, L’Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XIIT® et XIV® siécles

(Paris, 1966), also Vol. I, Part II, Ch. I. |

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 573

divisions of North Africa—a mosaic of independent emirates and cities such as Oran—and as to the military inferiority of the ‘Moors’, which was so pronounced that the occasional defeats of the Spaniards can be ascribed to the ignorance or stupidity of some of their commanders. The conquest of Granada made it necessary to investigate the opposite coast, from which the restive, still Muslim population could be assisted and the new conquest assailed. Spies were

promptly dispatched to reconnoitre. In 1494 Fernando de Zafra, the Monarchs’ principal agent in the matter, reported that in Morocco the decision had been taken to abandon the coast, in Tlemcen ‘the whole kingdom is trembling with fear’. A small fleet and 2,000-3,000 men could raid as far as Tunis.? These views are of interest, for they come not from a preaching friar but from an experienced administrator; they were not to prove very remote from reality. Zafra singled out Melilla for its strategic situation, at the end of the caravan routes ‘with the gold they bring from the Sahara’. The same year (1494) Pope Alexander VI conceded crusade indulgences for war in Africa; in 1495 he recognized Spanish rights over North Africa east of

Morocco (thus confirming Spain’s previous agreement with Portugal at Tordesillas) .° Before the French expedition to Naples in 1494 the Catholic

Monarchs were planning to obtain Melilla and Oran. Melilla was occupied in 1497 by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, with the knowledge and support of the Crown. Farther east there was as yet less interest in acquiring defensible positions except for Djerba off Tunisia, which, with Malta, could have controlled

the sea between Sicily and Tunisia, as Reggio and other Calabrian fortresses, acquired in 1495, controlled the Straits of Messina. Although Djerba was not in fact taken, negotiations with its sheikhs and plans to conquer it continued for years.‘

}.

The revolt of Granada in 1501 may have induced greater

1 The article by F. Braudel, Revue africaine, 69 (1928), 192-233, is very useful but the author’s remarks as to Fernando’s Catalan tradition inducing lack of interest in Africa need correction after the work of Dufourcq. 2 CDIHE ii. 73 f., 80. For the defence of the coast of Granada see A. Gamir Sandoval, in Homenaje a Don Ramén Carande, 1 (Madrid, 1963), 87-131. 8 CDIAE ii. 89; Suarez, Polftica, 11. 30. 4 Doussinague, La polttica, pp. 75-81, 111, 123; Suarez, Politica, iv. 21-7. For the Calabrian fortresses see above, p. 552, n. 3.

Bg THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 attention to possible dangers from North Africa, but it was not until 1505, after the completion of the conquest of Naples, that a further move was made, when Mers-el-Kebir was captured,

its proximity to Oran providing a base for an attack on that city. In 1506 Cazaza, near Melilla, fell; in 1508 Pefion del Vélez de la Gomera, near Cazaza. The first of these expeditions was commanded by Diego Fernandez de Cordoba, the second

was assembled by the Duke of Medina Sidonia. The use of Andalusian nobles made these wars a continuance of that of Granada.! The expedition to Mers-el-Kebir was financed by Cardinal Cisneros. His role here, as later at Oran and Algiers, has made him, for many historians, the hero of the whole North African enterprise. He certainly embodied the crusading spirit, and, in this sense, was perhaps closer than Fernando to Isabel’s dying wish to continue ‘the conquest of Africa and the war for the faith against the Moors’. Nevertheless, the one continuous supporter of conquest in North Africa was Fernando. The idea of attacking Oran had been entertained by Fernando and Isabel as early as 1494. The expedition of 1509 was led by Cisneros, while Pedro Navarro was in military command. While the battle lasted Cisneros remained in prayer, a new Moses praying for an unlikely Joshua. Julius II had the victory celebrated with great pomp in Rome. The two commanders failed to agree on how to follow it up. Cisneros’ rapid return to Spain and refusal to continue to provide funds made further progress difficult.? Navarro, supported by Fernando’s reinforcements, was able

to take Bougie in January 1510. Vassal relationships were established over two emirates and the town of Algiers. In 1510 Tripoli was taken. Collo, Tunis, and Béne were the only North African ports not by now under Spanish control. The Spanish defeat at Djerba in August 1510 did not dissipate Fernando’s

hopes, expressed in a letter of 24 December, to extend his conquest to Tunis. The Cortes of Monzén had voted over 500,000 lb. for the conquest of Tunisia (reserved for the Crown

of Aragon, as Fernando reminded the papacy). A thousand 'See above, Ch. II, pp. 374 f. 2 J. Gon, Historia de la Bula de la Cruzada (Vitoria, 1958), pp. 469~74, is one of many historians who stress the importance of Cisneros. Compare Doussinague, La politica, pp. 186-207. Testamento y codicilo de Isabel la Catélica (Madrid, 1969), p- 32-

| FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 575 English archers sent by Henry VIII reached Cadiz to take part in the expedition. ‘They had to be sent home. It was in vain that,

at the news of the approaching storm, more towns and emirs hastened to submit. War with France in Italy, not with Islam in

Africa, had become by 1511 the order of the day. In 1515 Majorca had to raise 3,000 men, with great difficulty, to relieve Bougie, attacked by the Barbarossa brothers.!

One cannot say that the North African policy of Fernando ended in complete failure. In 1515 the king ordered the viceroy of Naples to attack Djerba again. Nevertheless, it seems true to say that the Italian wars under Fernando, the Indies under his successor, distracted attention from Africa. To maintain the captured ports was costly. Fernando permitted free trade with the conquered or subject cities of Bougie, Tripoli, Algiers. But he made no effort to occupy the hinterland with troops or settlers. The caravan trade from the Sahara escaped from Spanish hands. Perhaps Cisneros’ policy of all-out conquest might have been more successful.” THE ATLANTIC

The war with Portugal in the first years of the Catholic Mon-

archs was not only waged on the mainland but also in the Atlantic and along the west coast of Africa. The Treaty of Alcacgovas in 1479 which ended the war and assured Portugal control of the African coast beyond Cape Bojador and of all the

Atlantic islands other than the Canaries was intensely unpopular m Andalusia. It was reinforced, however, in 14809, at

the time when the first Portuguese marriage of the Infanta Isabel was being negotiated. The discoveries of Columbus necessitated a new agreement, which was established in June 1494, by the Treaty of Tordesillas. This set the line of demarcation between Portugal and Spain 370 leagues to the west of the

Cape Verdes. The North African coast east of Morocco, * Doussinague, pp. 212-28, 327-43, 346-56, 641-3, 658-60, 663-5, 670-5; Zurita, IX. 14, 32 f.; Terrateig, ii. 138, 95; F. Sevillano, BSAL 33 (1972), 332-70. See also J. Torres Fontes, Hispania, 19 (1959), 44-51. Sevillano, ibid. 14 (1954), 577-80 (Valencian assistance to Bougie). * Doussinague, El testamento, pp. 184 f., 564; M. Gil Guasch, V CHCA ii. 105-22;

Braudel, loc. cit. : : , ® For earlier Portuguese explorations see Part I, Ch. I, p. 41, above. F. Pérez

Embid, Los descubrimientos en el .Atléntico y la rivalidad castellano-portuguesa hasta el

Tratado de Tordesillas (Seville, 1948); Suarez, Polftica, iii. 19.

576 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 including Melilla and Cazaza, was reserved for Spain, most of West Africa, as before, for Portugal.1 WEST AFRICA

During the fifteenth century the Castilian nobles who were gradually conquering the Canaries had begun to raid the African coast opposite the islands. Andalusian fishermen had become accustomed to fish off the coast and merchants had penetrated the interior. It was probably in 1478 that Castile established the fortress of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequefiaoffthe Saharan coast to the north of the later colony of Rio del Oro. This and other more or less ephemeral coastal establishments were probably less important to the lords of the Canaries than the large-scale slave-raids they conducted into the Sahara and the access to gold brought by caravans to the coast. In the 1490s the royal governor of Great Canary attempted to

develop a system of fortresses along the Saharan coast, but military expeditions, because of native resistance and Portuguese diplomatic pressure, produced few results. The Crown consistently preferred its Mediterranean to its Atlantic interests. The Treaty of Sintra in 1509 surrendered all Spanish claims to

Portugal, except for Santa Cruz which survived until about 1527. One should not underestimate the economic importance of this region, however. In 1510 a Portuguese official reported that in South Morocco there were two ‘factories’ (1.e. settle-

ments), one French, the other Castilian. The Castilians included an agent of the great Pardo merchants of Burgos.? THE CANARIES

In 1477 Fernando and Isabel recognized the feudal tenure of the Herrera family over the four lesser Canary Islands but

bought out their claims to Great Canary, La Palma, and Tenerife. These islands were conquered, by the system of agreements (capitulaciones) later used with Columbus, by adventurers in the royal service. The conquest of Great Canary 1 The text of the treaty concerning Africa is in Lépez de Toro, Tratados (DIHE vili. 22~40), or in A. de la Torre and L. Suarez, Documentos referentes a las relaciones con Portugal, ii. 421-34, that concerning the Atlantic in Tratados, viii. 41~70. See the commentary by A. Rumeu de Armas, Espafia en el Africa atlantica, 1 (Madrid, 1956), —211.

8 Rumeu, i. 68-70, 164, 190, 215-39, 305-98, 467-92, 511; M. Mollat, Le commerce normand a la fin du Moyen Age (Paris, 1952), p. 246.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 597 was Officially complete by 1483, that of La Palma and Tenerife by 1496. While the four smaller islands continued to be held by

descendants of the Herreras, the large Canaries were directly subject to the Crown.} Throughout the reign both Fernando and Isabel endeavoured to protect the liberty of baptized Canarians (usually called guanches) but this protection was not extended to those resisting the conquest, thousands of whom were carried into slavery outside the islands. Slave-raids and the fighting which accompanied the conquest of the larger islands greatly reduced the

native population. It survived, though in uneven degrees, relatively few guanches in Great Canary, more in Tenerife— where most of those enslaved attained their liberty relatively soon—La Palma, and La Gomera, the only island where no real repopulation from Europe took place. In the other islands one finds immigrants from Castile, including a large number of conversos; Portugal, which provided much of the free peasant population of Tenerife, in particular; and negro slaves, needed to work the sugar plantations.” The Canaries were to be more important to Spain than West

Africa, even than North Africa. They were to provide the staging point for a world yet undiscovered in 1479 when, of all the Atlantic islands, they alone were reserved for Castile. For one contemporary, at least, the discovery of the Indies appeared an extension of the conquest of the Canaries. One finds in the Canaries some principal traits of later colonization in the New World, capiiulaciones between the Crown and its agents, the transplantation of Castilian institutions, the cultivation of sugarcane, interbreeding with native women, massacres of natives, and also religious protests against the treatment of the aborigines. Charles Verlinden has described the Canaries with reason

as a ‘trial laboratory for . . . colonial methods’ used later in America.® 1 Sudrez, HE xvii. 2, pp. 310-16, 327-31, and Rumeu de Armas, Alonso de Lugo en la corte de los Reyes Catélicos (1496-1497) (Madrid, [1952]), esp. pp. 95-125 (with earlier bibliography).

*See above, Part I, Ch. IIT, p. 124, n. 1. A. Rumeu de Armas, La polttica indigenista de Isabel la Catélica (Valladolid, 1969), esp. pp. 82, 113-25; M. Marrero Rodriguez, La esclavitud en Tenerife a ratz de la conquista (La Laguna, 1966); E. Serra Rafols, AEM 5 (1968), 409-29. 8 Antoine de Lalaing (in 1501), in Viajes, i. 485. See C. Vifias y Mey, Hispania, 1. 2 (1940-1), 62 f. Charles Verlinden, V CHCA iii. 269-83, at 277 (translated in his

578 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516

THE INDIES: DISCOVERY | In 1458 ‘Kings of the Great Canary with all its islands’ first appears in the roll-call of titles of the Catholic Monarchs. The ‘Indies’ are not normally referred to there, only in some documents does Fernando appear as ‘Lord of the Indies of the Ocean Sea’. In an age when royal nomenclature was of great signifi-

cance this contrast represents a fact that later developments obscure.’ In the reign of Fernando and Isabel the Indies received far less attention than North Africa, let alone Italy. Even

in 1516 the real importance of the New World discovered by Columbus had not been realized. It has been asserted that Castile was ‘psychologically and historically the country most prepared’ to take advantage of the discoveries.2 Had Columbus thought this he would presumably not have gone first to Portugal. At a time when Spain had abandoned the competition for West Africa and the Atlantic, Joao II of Portugal (1481-95), armed with the gold and slaves of Guinea, was pursuing actively the search for Prester John which had been begun under his great-uncle, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’. In 1488 Bartholomeu Dias was to round the Cape of Good Hope, in 1499 Vasco da Gama to return with his news

of the ‘Christians and Spices’ of India. Jo&o’s successor, Manoel (1495-1521), was able to dominate the Indian Ocean and the spice trade. The Portuguese discoveries were due— apart from the dedication of several leading figures—to develop-

ment in celestial navigation in which Portugal led the rest of

western Europe.® |

Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon, as he was later known in Spain) was born Cristoforo Colombo in or near Genoa in 1451. (There is no reason to take seriously the peren-

nial attempts to make him out. of Spanish descent, whether The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (London, 1970), pp. 113-31, at 127; see also

ibid. pp. 132-57). 7 ,

1M. V. Gémez Mampaso, BRAH 16g. (1972), 643, 648 f. ;

2 Vifias y Mey, Hispania, 1. 5 (1940-1), 91. ,

3 See above, Part I, Ch. I, p. 41. C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire

1412-1825 (London, 1969), pp. 30-51; A. Teixeira da Mota, in Le Navire et Véconomie maritime du Moyen-Age au XVIIT° siécle principalement en Méditerranée (Paris,

1958), pp. 127-40. For the sensational increase in the Portuguese revenues from _ Africa in the 1480s see V. Magalh&es Godinho, Os descubrimienios e a economia mundial, i (Lisbon, 1963), 46. —

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 579

close or remote, Christian or Jewish.) As a Genoese seaman he was in the long line of Italians who had sailed for centuries for Portugal and Castile. Living from 1476 in Portugal he sailed thence to Madeira and Guinea. In 1484 he proposed to Joao II

to discover a direct sea route to ‘the Indies’, by sailing west across the Atlantic. Columbus had acquired his navigational skill in Portuguese service but the very extent of Portuguese geographical knowledge generated scepticism as to his plans. Through accumulated errors in calculation he had reduced the

real distance from Europe to Japan and China by threequarters. He ‘placed Japan in approximately the true position

of the Virgin Islands’. This error was fortunate in that it encouraged Columbus to persevere. But, combined with the successful progress of the explorations round Africa and with Columbus’s lack of private backers, it was probably responsible for the rejection by Portugal of his proposals. Columbus spent most of the next seven years in Spain. It was not until 1492 that

his exorbitant demands were accepted by Fernando and Isabel; the actual outlay on his fleet (three small ships and under a hundred men) indicates continuing reserve.”

It was fortunate that Columbus set out in the service of Spain, not Portugal. Had he sailed for Portugal he would probably have done so from the Azores and, at most, might

have discovered Newfoundland. Sailing from the Canaries, an idea presumably suggested to him by his Andalusian friends, he was able to use the north-east trade winds and to make a rapid crossing to the Bahamas (9 September—12 October 1492).? His

discovery of islands near where he expected to find Japan confirmed him in his theories. Until his death in 1506 he believed he had found an outlying part of Asia. While several thinkers in Spain were soon sceptical of Columbus’s calculations 1J. H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (London, 1974), pp. 218-43, at 223. See S. E. Morison, The European Discovery of America, the Southern Voyages A.D. 1492-1616

(Oxford, 1974), p. 30. Ch. Verlinden, The Beginnings, pp. 181-95. For Columbus’s mystical aims see Ch. VII, below, p. 610 and n. 1.

2See Pietro Martire, VI. 130 (DIHE ix. 236), of 14 May 1493; ‘they [the Monarchs] thought what he said chimerical’. For Fernando’s part see M. Ballesteros, Fernando el Catélico y América (Ponencia, V CHCA, Saragossa, 1952); for

the financing of the expedition, F. Sevillano, Hispania, 14 (1954), 580-91; T. de Azcona, Isabel la Catélica, pp. 674 ff. The capitulaciones with Columbus in La Torre, Documentos, iv. 34-7. 8 Verlinden, Anuario de estudios atldnticos, 25 (1968), 243-60.

580 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 of longitude the first realization that the “New World’ was a separate continent does not appear until a map of 1507 and was not accepted then by many scholars. The real counterproof was only afforded by Magellan’s voyage round the world beginning in 1519.1

The rapid diffusion of the news of Columbus’s first voyage

was due to the need Spain had to assert its claims against Portugal. Pope Alexander VI, in a series of bulls of 1493, granted Fernando and Isabel everything they asked. In 1494, by direct negotiation with Spain, Jodo II of Portugal acquired a less unfavourable line of demarcation, which was to give his successor the title to Brazil when that country was discovered.? GOVERNMENT

The privileges promised Columbus on 17 April 1492 if he succeeded in his voyage were probably modelled on those of the

existing Admiral of Castile and the viceroys of different territories of the Crown of Aragon. In combination they were, however, more impressive, if less precise, than any precedent. His offices of Admiral, Viceroy, and Governor-General were to be hereditary; he was also granted a tenth of all the products of lands he should discover.* It would seem that it was not until after the first voyage that Columbus and his masters contemplated settlement as well as trading posts. Here trouble began, for Columbus’s genius as a navigator, which increased with each voyage, and his mercantile skills, were not matched by administrative success. But, as Las Casas was to point out, the

Archangel Gabriel would have had difficulty in ruling the early Spanish settlers of the Caribbean. Columbus was certainly unable to understand the mixture of heroism and greed—

but above all the individualism—of the settlers.* |

Columbus kept his admiralty jurisdiction, at least in theory, until his death, but, from 1499, he was not allowed to act as 1M. Bataillon, Bulletin hispanique, 55 (1953), 23-55 (trans. in Spain in the fificenth century, ed. R. Highfield (London, 1972), pp. 426-63). See Parry, pp. 264-6. 2 See p. 576, n. 1, above, also Azcona, Isabel, pp. 688-92. 8 See Ch. Verlinden and F. Pérez Embid, Cristobal Colén y el descubrimiento de América (Madrid, 1967), pp. 51-7, trans. in Verlinden, The Beginnings, pp. 196-202; for Portuguese comparisons see ibid., pp. 203-40. For a different view see A. Garcia Gallo, V CHCA ii. 139-56, and his earlier study AHDE 15 (1944), 16~106, also B. Gonzalez Alonso, Gobernacién » gobernadores (Madrid, 1974), p. 19.

* Morison, The Southern Voyages, p. 119.

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 581

Viceroy and Governor-General. The period of settled royal government of the Indies begins with the appomtment of Nicolas de Ovando as governor of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1501. By 1516 Hispaniola had been

subdued and settlement begun in Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba. The Caribbean and the Central American coast had been largely explored but no permanent settlement had been made on the mainland other than Darién (today in Nicaragua). Brazil had been discovered but the Portuguese were only beginning to establish trading posts there. From 1493 until after Fernando’s death Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, at first archdeacon of Seville, later bishop of different sees, was the actual, though untitled, minister of colonial affairs. The laws and institutions established for the Indies were

modelled on those of Castile, but, from the first, the new discoveries were under close Crown control. Trade with them, though carried on by private merchants, from 1503 was con-

centrated exclusively in Seville. This year the Casa de la Contrataci6n—perhaps modelled on a Genoese institution— was established in Seville to supervise trade with the Indies.

Fonseca, under the distant supervision of the Council of Castile and the actual control (from 1507) of Fernando himself, continued to be in charge of political affairs. ‘This centralized system was probably the only way for the Crown to exercise any

control over the Indies. Columbus’s son, Diego, though appointed Governor in 1509 (later Viceroy), was not allowed to make important appointments; judicially his powers were restricted by the creation, m 1511, of the appeal court (audtencia) of Santo Domingo. A local treasury was also organized. In 1513

a separate government was set up in Darién.' THE CHURCH AND THE NATIVE POPULATION

Alexander VI’s bulls of 1493, conferring title to the Indies on Fernando and Isabel, carried with them the right and duty to constitute the Church there. In 1508 Fernando secured from Julius IT the Patronato Real over the Indies. It was not until 1512

that the first bishoprics began to be set up in Santo Domingo ij. H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (London, 1966), pp. 49-62. For the subjects of the Crown of Aragon as regards the Indies, see J. Vicens Vives, Els Trastamares (Barcelona, 1956), pp. 240-3.

562 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 and San Juan de Puerto Rico. But, from Columbus’s second voyage in 1493, priests were dispatched with most expeditions. The evangelization of the native population began in 1500 with the arrival of the Franciscans, soon followed by other orders.+

Columbus’s first reaction to the ‘Indians’ he encountered was ‘how easy it would be to convert these people—and to make

them work for us’. Slavery went naturally with conversion. In 1495 Columbus shipped some 500 Indians back to Spain to be

sold. Indians were enslaved in Spain, though not in great numbers.? In 1500, after consulting theologians and canon lawyers as to the legality of enslaving the Indians, Fernando and

Isabel proclaimed their liberty. This decision, restricted by later exceptions made for cannibals, those resisting conquest, and those acquired by purchase, was the norm under the

Catholic Monarchs.® : But the Indians’ freedom created problems. In 1503 Isabel declared: “because of the great liberty the Indians have, they fly from conversation and communication with the Christians, so that . . . they will not work, nor is it possible to teach them and attract them to our Holy Catholic Faith . . . Therefore I order you to compel and force the Indians to treat and converse with the Christians and to work.’ The Crown hoped for revenue from tribute in precious metals. It soon became clear that the only way this could be got was by forced labour by the Indians, who were divided in repartimientos (soon called encomiendas) among the Spanish settlers. The Crown attempted to tie the grants of land and Indians to the duty to convert, as well as pay, the subject race. There were also experiments, from 1501, with negro labour imported to replace the natives in the mines. Royal orders in favour of the Indians were often not obeyed, however, nor does Fonseca appear to have favoured complaints by missionaries.* In 1512 the Leyes de Burgos, the result of the 1W. E. Shiels, King and Church (Chicago, 1961), pp. go f., 104-26; Azcona, pp.

704-7. For the Patronato Real in general see Ch. III, above, pp. 396-9. | 2 Morison, p. 67. See Rumeu, La polttica indigenista, pp. 131 ff. V. Cortes, La esclavitud en Valencia durante el reinado de los Reyes Catélicos (Valencia, 1964), pp. 59 f.,

notes only one slave from ‘Les Illes Noves’ sold there, though the Portuguese brought slaves from Brazil from 1509.

* Rumeu, pp. 134-41. :

Seaborne Empire, p. 61. #Rumeu, p. 399. See Verlinden, The Beginnings, p. 43; Parry, The Spanish

FOREIGN POLICY: THE ADVANCE OF EMPIRE 593

deliberations of a junta of theologians and jurists, again declared the Indians should be protected against abuse by the settlers. But before Fernando’s death Bartolomé de las Casas began his lifelong clamour against Spanish injustice. During his regency (1516-17) Cardinal Cisneros responded by sending out three Hieronymite monks as commissioners to the Indies. ‘They were ordered to transform the encomtendas if possible into

free Indian towns, under their own government. A remarkable idea, 1t proved a failure. Like many other primitive peoples, the Taino Indians of the Caribbean were not to survive their contact with European civilization. In 1510 Fernando made clear his view of the New World as

a source of wealth for more important theatres of action, in particular war in Africa. This view of the Indies is reflected in

the fact that they are not mentioned in the memoirs of Fernando’s successor, Charles V, and that Philip II apparently ‘never fully grasped the implication’ of their conquest. The general reticence of Spanish authors of the sixteenth century about the New World has also been observed.* The significance of the discoveries was only slowly recognized. In 1493-5 what was noticed by Pietro Martire was the finding of gold, of naked natives, and of a new mission field.* Even in 1512-13 the great Florentine, Francesco Guicciardini, then ambassador to Spain,

lists the acquisition of the Indies last among the achievements of the Catholic Monarchs.5 CONCLUSIONS

Towards the end of Fernando’s reign his official historian Nebrija summed up his achievements. ‘For now, who does not see that, although the title of the empire is in Germany, its real 1 Bullén y Fernandez (cited, p. 568, n. 2), pp. 121-5, 130-5, 146-57. For the Hieronymites see also M. Serrano y Sanz, NBAE xxv, pp. cccxxxix-ccccl. 2M. Fernandez Alvarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 710. See E. J. Hamilton, American treasure and the price revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), Pp. 345

for the revenue in 1503-15.

8 J. . 87. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-1650 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 12~14,

4 Pietro Martire, VI. 133, VIII. 158 (ix. 242 f., 296), For an exceptional realization (in 1494) of the importance of the discovery see J. Calmette, Les premiéres , grandes puissances (Paris, 1939), pp. 427 f. 5 Guicciardini, Viajes, i. 617 f. In his later Storia d’Italia, VI. 9, ed. Seidel, ii. (Turin, 1971), 592 f., he praises the Iberians and especially Columbus for the discoverieés,

584 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 power is held by the Spanish Kings, who, lords of a great part of

Italy and of the islands of the Mediterranean, carry war to Africa and send their fleets, following the course of the stars, to the islands of the Indians and the New World, joining the east

to the western limit of Spain and Africa?’ In 1514 Fernando himself could say: ‘For over 700 years the Crown of Spain has not been as great or as resplendent as it is now, both in the west

and the east, and all, after God, by my work and labour.’! In the undeniable triumphs won by Fernando the dynastic union of Castile and Aragon had played a central part. Just as the Crown of Aragon’s importance in the conquest of Granada did not consist only, or mainly, in troops and money but in the absence of the tensions which had in the past largely prevented this Castilian success, so the later victories of Fernando over France—the recovery of Roussillon and Cerdagne by diplomacy, the conquest by war of Naples, Navarre, and also the seiz-

ure of much of the North African coast—would have been impossible without the assistance of Castilian forces and of leading Castilians, beginning with the Gran Capitan and Cardinal Cisneros.? In foreign policy, as nowhere else, one can see the fruits of the marriage of Fernando and Isabel. 1 Nebrija, Decadae, in Hispaniae illustratae scriptores, ed. Schott, i (Frankfort, 1603), 790. Fernando, in Doussinague, El testamento, p. 212.

2T follow some suggestive remarks of S. Sobrequés, in Historia de Espafia y Amérita, ed. Vicens, ii. 476-8.

Vi The End of the Reign: the Problem of the Succession (1497—1516) M veFernando remarked that, by his successive enterprises, ‘kept his subjects’ minds uncertain and astonished and left no time for men to settle down and act against him’.! But this time came, after the death of Isabel, when an alternative king appeared in Spain. Although the good fortune of Philip I’s early death soon removed his rival from his path, Fernando’s last decade was constantly troubled by problems of succession. These problems brought to light internal tensions, within Castile and between Castile and Fernando’s own kingdoms, which had been veiled by the earlier successes of the reign. Commynes, writing in 1498, was deeply struck by the first of

the ‘miserable accidents which in a short space befell the king

and queen of Castile, who had lived in so much glory and felicity to the fiftieth year of their age’. These ‘accidents’ were the death of Fernando and Isabel’s only son, Prince Juan, and

their eldest daughter, Isabel. They were to be followed by others.”

Fernando and Isabel had one son, Juan, and four daughters, Isabel, Juana, Marfa, and Catalina, better known in England as Catherine of Aragon. Prince Juan, born in 1478, was to die in 1497, six months after his marriage to Princess Margaret, the daughter of the future Emperor Maximilian. THE DEATH OF PRINCE JUAN (1497) Prince Juan’s death has been correctly called ‘by far the most important event of his life’. One need not take too seriously the panegyrics of Pietro Martire on his intelligence at the age of ten 1 The Prince, 21, trans. L. Ricci (revised) (London, 1949), p. 100. 2 Ph. de Commynes, Mémoires, VIII. 24, ed. B. de Mandrot, ii (Paris, 1903), 372-5: L use the translation by Mr. Uvedale (London, 1712). See the genealogical table.

586 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 or thirteen. We know virtually nothing of his intellectual formation. At the age of thirteen he was delicate, almost effeminate in appearance, to judge by his portrait in the Prado.’ His death is

traditionally ascribed to his physical passion for his young bride. This explanation seems to stem from a letter of Pietro Martire, dated 13 June 1497. The precision of the prophecy it contains makes one wonder if it was inserted after the prince’s death on 4 October. More prosaic causes, such as an attack of smallpox, may have contributed to his end.? The funereal splendour with which Don Juan was buried, the amounts of wax consumed in candles, the cost of the ironwork

surrounding his temporary tomb (made by the Mudejars of Salamanca—it was five years before they were to be ordered to become Christians), the whole court clothed in black—according to Commynes even the mules were ‘covered in black cloth down to their very knees . . . so that there was nothing of them to be seen but their ears’—all this is recorded in detail.? There is

no reason to doubt Martire when he says that the spirit of the Monarchs was broken.‘ It seems mistaken, however, to see Don Juan’s death as responsible for ‘a deviation of the history of Spain’ towards its tragic involvement in Habsburg conflicts in northern Europe.’ This mvolvement was due to three other

Miguel. oe |

unforeseeable ‘accidents’, the birth of a stillborn child to Princess Margaret, the death of Princess Isabel, and of her son

THE PORTUGUESE HEIR (1497-1500) )

It is possible that the marriage of Isabel to King Manoel of Portugal was delayed until after it became clear that Margaret was to give birth to a child. The Monarchs had consistently pursued a policy of friendship with Portugal but it is unlikely that

they wished a ruler of that country. to inherit their own king1 Pietro Martire, Epistolario, I. 47, V. 98 (DIHE ix. 66-8, 183-5); J. Camdén Aznar, Sobre la muerte del Principe Don Juan (Madrid, 1963), esp. pp. 4:7, 63 f., 67. |

* Pietro Martire, X. 176 (ix. 334). See Camdén Aznar, p. 71; G. M. Bertini, V CHCA v. 37 f., 54-62. That Martire’s explanation was considered at least possible appears from later instructions of Fernando opposing the premature

(Madrid, 1892), 247 f. , a oo

marriage of his grandson Charles. A. Rodriguez Villa, La reina Dofia Juana La Loca — §T. de Azcona, Isabel la Catélica (Madrid, 1964), p. 715; Commynes, ubi supra.

_ « Martire, X. 183 (ix. 347); for Isabel see ibid. XVI. 255 (x. 48) (in 1503). 5 So Menéndez y Pelayo, Antologta, vii. 319.

THE END OF THE REIGN 587 doms.! This was, however, the probable course of events from

November 1497 (after the death of Margaret’s child) to July 1500. The Monarchs were largely occupied in securing the formal recognition by the Cortes of their different kingdoms, first of Isabel, and then, after her death on 23 August 1408, of her newly born son Miguel. Only the Aragonese refused to recognize Isabel, as a female heir (they did recognize Miguel). The death of Miguel on 20 July 1500 meant that the heir to Castile and Aragon was now the Monarchs’ second daughter, Juana, who had married Margaret’s brother, the Archduke Philip ‘the Handsome’ (later Philip I of Castile) in 1496. The Monarchs sought to reinforce their ties with England and Portugal by the marriages of Catherine (to Prince Arthur, then Henry VII’s heir, in 1501) and of Marfa (to King Manoel of Portugal), in 1500. Catherine’s marriage had been arranged as early as 1489. In Maria’s case the initiative probably came from Portugal, whose king could hardly forget how near he had come

to uniting—through his first wife or infant son—the whole peninsula under his sway.? THE HABSBURG SUCCESSION (1500-4)

These marriages were unable to alleviate the future which now loomed over Spain. Juana and Philip had two children by July 1500, one of whom was the future Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain), born on 25 February of that year. They were to have four more. The Monarchs had to come to terms with the Archduke Philip, not only himself a far from ideal successor, but a man not primarily interested in Spain but in the Low Countries he ruled as heir to the dukes of Burgundy, and in all probability due to become Holy Roman Emperor after his father’s death. The Habsburg alliance had seemed, throughout the reign, the best counterbalance to France. Now it had become the Habsburg succession.® 1 See Merriman, The Rise, ii. 266 f. This theory runs into the difficulty of Isabel’s first marriage, in 1490, to the then heir of Portugal, which might reasonably have been expected to provide heirs. For general policy towards Portugal see Ch. V, above, p. 539. Isabel’s marriage to Manoel was definitely agreed to on 30 November 1496, that of Prince Juan (and his sister Juana) to the Austrian princes in January of that year. Azcona, p. 712. 2 Merriman, ii. 268 f.; Suarez, HE xvii. 2, pp. 494-502. 3 Merriman, li. 320.

588 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 PHILIP ‘THE HANDSOME’

It proved difficult to persuade Philip to bring his wife to Spain to receive recognition as heir. When the Archduke arrived in | early 1502 the impressions produced were painful for both sides. Even before this journey the first enthusiasm in Spain over the

| physical and moral perfections of Juana’s husband had long been tempered by accounts of marital disagreement.! To Philip and his Flemish suite Spain seemed provincial in its fashions as well as oppressively rigid in its morality. Antoine de Lalaing, who accompanied Philip, mentions the fact that the Monarchs were clothed in wool (in contrast to the satin, velvet, and gold of

Philip and Juana). Philip spoke no Spanish and showed no understanding of the Spanish past; his attitude to the Mudejars

was characteristic. To Spaniards his insistence on hurrying back to Flanders, through France (with which Spain was now at war), leaving his pregnant wife, seemed sheer obstinacy or childish fear of the Spanish climate, wine, and cooking, which he

claimed was killing off his companions. The general Spanish view of him was summed up by a contemporary chronicler, ‘nothing seemed to him better than women’s pretty faces’ .? | The Archduke wished to shine, however, as a diplomat. He sought to use his return to negotiate peace between France and Spain. Fernando’s lack of confidence in his son-in-law is clear from contemporary letters, in one of which he ordered the Gran Capitan in Naples not to obey orders from Philip unless they | were corroborated by him. This lack of confidence was justified

: by the Archduke’s haste to conclude a treaty (at Lyon, 5 April 1503), by which Naples, just conquered from France, was to be handed back to her (in return for a far off marriage between the

infant Charles and Louis XII’s daughter Claude). Fernando

inevitably disavowed the treaty. Philip gradually turned 1 For the first impression (1497) see Martire, X. 179 (DIHE ix. 339). Gompare Suadrez, 504-6. 2 Lalaing, Voyage, I. 15, in Collection des voyages des souverains des Pays-Bas, ed. Gachard, i (Brussels, .1876), 176 (in Viajes, i. 459 f.); Martire, XV. 250 (x. 34.f.). See J. M®. Doussinague, Fernando el Catélico y Germana de Foix (Madrid, 1944), pp. 17-21. Continuacitén anénima de Pulgar (BAE \xx. 524): ‘no le parecia cosa mejor que los

gentiles gestos de mugeres’; Zurita, Historia, IV. 40, V. 18, expresses this view of

Philip as a playboy (but see his praise of him in VII. 15). For Philip and the Mudejars see above, Ch. ITI, p. 477.

THE END OF THE REIGN | 589 towards France. On 22 September 1504, two months before Isabel’s death, he joined his father Maximilian and Louis XII in an alliance clearly directed against the Spanish Monarchs. It is hardly surprising that Isabel, in her will of 12 October, virtually excluded Philip and Juana from the government of Castile and gave it to Fernando until the young Charles reached the age of twenty (in 1520).? PRINCESS JUANA

The exclusion included Juana. It was through her that Philip could claim to rule the Spanish kingdoms (Castile after Isabel’s death, the Crown of Aragon after Fernando’s). Had Juana possessed her mother’s character she might have been able to exert some control over Philip. But, by 1504, Juana’s character, and even her sanity, seemed frail props to build on.

Well educated (she could speak French and Latin without difficulty), Juana found it hard to adapt herself to her husband’s court. In 1499 a Spanish priest reported that she was ‘so

frightened that she could not hold up her head’. In 1500 Fuensalida, the Spanish ambassador, remarked, however, that she understood Philip’s weakness in being led by others. The following year he wrote, ‘in a person so young I do not think one has seen such prudence’.? Juana needed prudence to endure the behaviour of her husband. At this time she was already divided in feelings between him and her parents.* The first clear signs of extreme neurosis and hysteria appeared when she was left in Spain by Philip in 1502. When she returned

to Flanders in 1504 her jealousy of her husband burst out violently.5 In 1504, in order to prevent Philip allying with France, and so as to have some hold on the future, the Monarchs offered to recognize him as king of Naples, governing through Spanish officials, if his heir Charles was sent to Spain. As has 1RABM 23 (1910), 498 (see 497 n.); Suarez, 577-84, 635 f. 2 See below, p. 591. 8 Rodriguez Villa, La reina, pp. 34-7; Correspondencia de Gutierre Gémez de Fuensal-

ida, ed. Duque de Berwick y de Alba (Madrid, 1907), pp. 139 f., 182. 4 Fuensalida, pp. 165, 176. 5 On Juana in Spain see especially the medical report of 20 June 1503 (Rodriguez

Villa, p. 83) and Isabel’s letter, in Fuensalida, pp. 196-8 (of 1504 but referring to events of November 1503). See Alonso de Santa Cruz, Crénica de los Reyes Catélicos,

ed. Carriazo, i (Seville, 1951), 301 f.

590 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 been seen, however, French diplomacy prevailed over Spanish in the treaty of September 1504.1 _ In Isabel’s last months the future looked gloomy indeed. Her

daughter and heiress, if not completely insane, was mentally unbalanced, her husband an undependable playboy led by the nose by. advisers under the influence of Spain’s major enemy. ‘Neither of [the Archdukes],’ Pietro Martire remarked in April 1504, echoing court opinion, ‘loses any sleep over their (future) kingdom.’ In October, when Isabel was clearly dying, Martire records the forming of ‘cabals’ at court, one party being in favour of retaining Fernando in power. By November another party had emerged demanding that Fernando should be sent home and Philip sent for. “The nobles sharpen their teeth like wild boars with the hope ofa great change.”? ISABEL’S WILL

There are some signs that during Isabel’s last decade the Monarchs felt the need of support against a possible reaction of the greater nobility. Hence, perhaps, the long-desired concession made to municipal oligarchies in Castile (consisting of lesser

nobles), who were now themselves allowed to collect and to transmit royal revenues in their town.* It has also been suggested that after the death of Prince Juan Fernando’s influence in Castile increased, a number of posts passing from Castilian to Aragonese conversos.® It is clear, in any case, that Isabel was

aware of the alternative. Between Philip, and the nobles (Flemish and Spanish) who would control him, and Fernando, she could hardly hesitate, if she wanted, as her will and codicil indicate, the achievements of the reign—the unity of the Spanish kingdoms, the pre-eminence of the Crown, the conquest of Islam, the evangelization of the Indies and religious reforms—

| to go forward. Hence the crucial clauses of her will of 12 October. These instituted her daughter Juana as ‘universal heiress of all my kingdoms and lands and lordships . . . proprie1 Suarez, HE xvii. 2, pp. 630-6. 2 Martire, XVI. 271, 274, 277 (DIHE x. 82, 86, 88 f.). 8M. A. Ladero, La Hacienda Real de Castilla en el siglh XV (La Laguna, 1973), p. 244 (on p. 31 he suggests that the change, apparent from 1495, may have been due to the absence of Jews and conversos to act as tax-farmers). 4F. Marquez (ed.), Hernando de Talavera, Caiélica impugnacién (Barcelona,

1961), pp. 18 f. ,

THE END OF THE REIGN 591 tress .. . conformable with what I owe and am obliged by law’. Juana and Philip, ‘as her husband’, should receive obedience from her subjects. She then ‘ordered’ that no office should be given by her successors to foreigners. No laws should be issued or office conferred by them while they were outside Castile. If

Juana was outside the kingdom or, when inside it, ‘does not desire or is not able to engage in its government’, a regency was

to be entrusted to Fernando ‘until the Prince Don Carlos, my grandson, shall be at least twenty’. The later clauses which ordered Juana and Philip to obey Fernando and conferred on him a large revenue from Castile and the Indies, were less

important. Given the very clear language employed by Isabel it is difficult to agree that ‘there was not the least design of depriving

Philip of his rights’. Unable to disinherit Juana, Isabel had done everything she could to make it impossible for her to rule as well as to reign. It was notorious that Juana was unwilling or unable to govern—Philip was to admit this himself.? Since she could not govern, either her husband or her father had to do so

for her. Isabel had attempted to exclude Philip as a ruler of Castile. On the day of Isabel’s death in Medina del Campo, 26 November 1504, Fernando solemnly renounced the title of king of Castile which he had held since 1474. He retained, however, that of governor of the kingdom, based on Isabel’s will.?

VIEWS OF ISABEL

Eulogies of Isabel begin long before her death and continue to the present day. In contrast to the many inspired by interest or

convention, that of Andrés Bernaldez, writing about 1513, seems genuine. The queen’s death was preceded, he says, as in the case of Charlemagne—‘wonderful and most Christian king and holy warrior against the Moors’—by signs and wonders. The reign of Fernando and Isabel was a time of ‘triumph and

honour and prosperity which Spain had never experienced 1 Testamento y codicilo de la Reina Isabel la Catélica, ed. L. Vazquez de Parga (Mad-

rid, 1969), pp. 30-4. Suarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 638, attributes the appointment of Fernando to the codicil of 23 November, which does not refer to it. For Isabel’s “‘programme’ see Azcona, p. 740. 2 Suarez, loc. cit. See below, p. 596.

3 See Martire, XVI. 279 (DIHE x. 92).

592. THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 before’. He compares it to Rome at the time of Augustus.! The

Flemish noble Lalaing held that ‘all Christians should wear mourning for [the queen’s}] death’. Not all contemporaries shared this view. One royal corregidor remarked in 1506, ‘these

kingdoms have been very badly governed and he believed that the Queen Isabel, for her evil rule, was in Hell’. This opinion may be partly discounted; it was expressed during the

| brief triumph in Castile of Philip I.2 The way a Sephardic Jew, Yosef ha-Kohen, writing about 1575, spoke was also predictable: “The Lord showed Himself jealous for His people and gave these two kings their reward ... Queen Isabel, the accursed, died weary of her life and half her body devoured by a cancer. Yahweh is just!’? More surprising perhaps is the contrast drawn by

Zurita between the sorrow of the people of Castile and ‘the universal joy and satisfaction of the peoples’ of the Crown of Aragon, at Isabel’s death, for many thought that at last ‘they would enjoy the residence of their prince in his own kingdoms’.4 In this hope they were to be disappointed. Fernando’s interests remained concentrated on Castile. THE CRISIS OF THE CASTILIAN SUCCESSION (1504-6) The laws of Castile recognized the ruler’s right to name a regent

in the case of the heir’s incapacity. But, the heir being married,

the normal regent was her husband, not her father. Fernando’s legal position was thus open to challenge. Philip’s incapacity to govern may have been obvious to Isabel, it was not so clear to all Spaniards of this time.® Fernando lost no time in convoking

the Castilian Cortes at Toro to obtain their recognition of his position as governor of the kingdom. On 12 December 1504 he told the Gran Capitan in Naples that he had this recogni1 Bernaldez, Memorias, 202, ed. Gdmez-Moreno and Carriazo, pp. 484-90. V. Rodriguez Valencia, Isabel la Caiélica en la opiniin de espaftoles y extranjeros, 3 vols. (Valladolid, 1970), collects a vast mass of excerpts favourable to Isabel, evidently

I f.). . .

so as to promote her canonization (the cause was formally begun in 1964: see ii.

ae Ciaing, Voyage, I, 33-5, ed. Gachard, i. 220-7 (in Viajes, i. 482-6). The corregidor’s view in CDIHE l|xxxi. 25 ff., or in Rodriguez Valencia, 1. 282. For other less prejudiced opinions to the same effect see below, p. 599, n. 2.

3 Yosef ha-Kohen, ‘Emeq ha-Bakha [Valley of Tears], trans. P. Leén Tello

(Madrid, 1964), p. 180. , : 4 Zurita, Historia, V. 84. 5 Doussinague, Fernando y Germana, pp. 213-25.

THE END OF THE REIGN 593 tion. It was important to make sure of his new conquest and its Castilian viceroy.1 Bernaldez may represent the view of many

people when he sees Philip as brought to Castile to disturb Fernando’s peaceful government by ‘some nobles. . . who acted more out of greed for the royal patrimony than for the good of

the kingdom’.? On the other hand Henry VII’s envoys to Castile in 1505 reported that the people would support Philip,

as Juana’s husband, if he brought her with him, against Fernando, who was unpopular because of the taxes he had im-

posed (very large sums had certainly been raised in recent years, largely to support Fernando’s conquest of Naples) .° The view of the English envoys was that, despite Fernando’s proclamation of Juana as queen, he intended to continue to rule Castile. On 24 July 1505 his secretary Almazan told the ambassador, ‘the king is determined to reign and govern this kingdom of Castile for the rest of his life ... the king will not be ruled in his own kingdom’. Philip could hardly be expected to accept this

claim on Fernando’s part. His challenge to Fernando was to prove successful because of the support it received from the great Castilian nobles, who saw a marvellous occasion to regain the virtual independence they had enjoyed im earlier reigns, ‘to reign and be like a king’, to quote Almazan again.* From his first visit to Spain in 1502 Philip was in correspon-

dence with a particularly disaffected noble, the Marquis of Villena. Immediately after Isabel’s death he was sending letters to all the leading nobles and cities of Castile and to King Manoel of Portugal, and was endeavouring to keep the Cortes in session until he arrived. This correspondence was orchestrated by Juan

Manuel, former ambassador of the Monarchs to Maximilian and Philip, a minor noble ‘on the make’ who observed to Fuensalida, still loyal to Fernando, ‘it is in troubled times that men are made’. By February 1505 representatives of the Castilian

magnates began to appear in Flanders. By May, Fuensalida remarked that ‘every shoemaker’ in the (Spanish) court was sending in his allegiance.® 1RABM 27 (1912), 519 f. See above, Ch. V, p. 560. * BernAldez, 204, p. 492. $ Lépez de Toro, Tratados (DIE viii. 207). For taxes see above, Ch. IV, pp. 503 ff. 4 Lépez de Toro, viii. 213 f., 216 f., 220 f.

5 CDIHE viii. 268-90; Fuensalida, pp. 322, 330 f., 359. For Juan Manuel see Martire, XVII. 282 (DIHE ix. gg f.).

504 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 In this situation the attitude Juana would adopt—and the question of her sanity—became crucial. Her jealousy of Philip—

not unfounded (in February 1505 Fuensalida reported, ‘they take him from banquet to banquet and from one lady to the next’)—burst out violently. Fernando secured a secret letter from her confirming his position, but, this being intercepted, she was made to send another, on Philip’s behalf.+ As 1505 advanced Fernando’s rule became more difficult. He

had offered Philip Naples if he would leave him the government of Castile. This offer was only withdrawn when it became clear that Philip was maintaining that Juana was sane and that he thus had the right to rule as her husband. In April 1505 the

treaty of September 1504 between Maximilian, Philip, and France was ratified at Hagenau. It was accompanied by a secret agreement by which Naples and Castile were threatened

with invasion. Disaffected grandees controlled the frontiers

between Castile and Navarre and Portugal, and much of Andalusia. The army in Naples was mutinous. Philip was trying

to persuade the pope to remove Cisneros and other bishops loyal to Fernando to Rome. On 12 September he issued a circular letter accusing Fernando of stating Juana was mad (the Cortes of Toro had been so informed) and ordered Castilians to cease to obey his father-in-law.*

This seemingly desperate situation was reversed by one of Fernando’s greatest diplomatic coups, the alliance with France reached in July 1505 and solemnized in the second Treaty of Blois on 12 October. This made it impossible for Philip to invade

Castile by land.? It forced him to accept a compromise with Fernando. By the agreement of Salamanca (24. November)

Castile was to be jomtly ruled by Fernando, Philip, and Juana.* Neither Philip nor the nobles of Castile were satisfied. Philip -_-was ready to risk a winter voyage to secure Castile. Delayed bya — storm and a stay in England, where his alliance with Henry VII

was confirmed, he, Juana, and an army of 3,000 Flemings and 1 See Fuensalida, pp. 313, 330, 354. Rodriguez Villa, pp. 110 f. 2 Fuensalida, p. 403. See Doussinague, pp. 79, 92 f., 123 f., 127-9. CDIHE viii. 307, 325-32. For the Cortes of Toro, Zurita, VI. 4. * Doussinague, pp. 134-44, 175 f. For the terms of the treaty, as they affected

Naples, see above, Ch. V, p. 559. , 4 Zurita, VI. 23; CDIHE xiv. 299 f.

THE END OF THE REIGN 595 Germans arrived at La Corufia on 26 April 1506. It is possible

that Philip intended to land in Andalusia, where the Duke of Medina Sidonia was his supporter.’ La Corufia had the advantage of being almost as far from Fernando. Philip wanted time to rally the grandees. They poured in im a flood. Philip was received with pleasure not only in Galicia but else-

where.? Many rumours circulated against Fernando. He was believed to have tried to marry Enrique IV’s daughter, Dofia Juana,® and his actual recent marriage to Germaine de Foix was unpopular, even at court, where Pietro Martire, denouncing it as humiliating, was already turning towards the rising sun. Even the weather—the drought of the preceding year— contributed to Fernando’s unpopularity. The nobles, with few

exceptions, one observer remarked, ‘only want one king, Philip’. The feeling in Philip’s suite was bitter. One of Philip’s leading officers was convinced that Fernando was ‘false and wicked’, while Philip’s next worse enemy was Juana. In June 1506 Philip’s ambassador in Rome was warning him against being poisoned by his father-in-law. For a long time he avoided meeting him.®

The remark as to Juana seemed to be confirmed by Philip’s refusal to allow Fernando to see her. Fernando’s followers spread

the report that she was imprisoned by her husband and also claimed (with some truth) that Philip had ordered the Inquisition to cease proceedings: he was bidding for the conversos’ support.® These damaging accusations had little effect. Fernando was not willing, probably not able, to fight. His supporters were 1 Lorenzo de Padilla, Crénica de Felipe el Hermoso, 11. 4, 8 (CDIHE viii. 129, 141); Deuxiéme voyage de Philippe le Beau en Espagne, en 1506, ed. Gachard, Collection, i. 432

(Viajes, i. 571). 2 Deuxiéme voyage, pp. 432, 506. See also Sancho Cota, Memorias, ed. H. Keniston

(Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 38 f. 3 In 1505 the English envoys heard that Fernando was planning to marry Dofia Juana and that ‘many in these parts rejoiced at this’ (Lépez de Toro, Tratados, i. 227, 230). This story is found in later historians but is improbable, given the dates alleged for the negotiations. See Doussinague, p. 193.

4 Pietro Martire, XVII. 292 (DIHE x. 114). See also the eulogy of Philip in XVII. 285 (103 f.), and the account of his own embassy to La Corufia (XVIII. 306, pp. 135-7). Bernaldez, 204 (p. 493), praises the marriage. 5 Deuxiéme voyage, pp. 437, 450. Count Wolfgang zu Firstenberg (who commanded Philip’s army), to Maximilian, and the ambassador’s letter in Gachard, i, pp. xxvii f., 523 f. § Letter of 6 June 1506, in Gachard, i. 519. See CDIHE viii. 336 f. (a decree, not carried out, of 30 September 1505).

596 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 vanishing. Even Cisneros and the bishops were deserting him.

Philip’s threat of war against the Crown of Aragon was not necessary. By 9 June Fernando was willing to meet Philip wherever the latter chose. But Philip needed to receive repeated assurances of the absence of armed resistance before he agreed to. the first of two brief and unfriendly interviews.1 The agreement, known as that of Villafafila, reached on 27 June, sealed

Philip’s victory. Fernando had to abandon all intervention in the government of Castile to Philip and Juana, or to Philip alone if he survived Juana. He kept only the minor legacies of Isabel, some income, and the Military Orders. Fernando had already agreed to the exclusion of his daughter Juana from any share in government, while protesting in secret that this was against his will, and that he was “despoiled’ of the government which belonged to him.?

Fernando had been obliged, as Martire says, to appear ‘almost as a suppliant’, before Philip. He had had the gates of cities closed against him by leading nobles. He himself admitted

he could not oppose Philip. But, as Zurita put it, ‘it did not seem to him that he could reign without Castile . . . he dissembled for a time’. While he withdrew to his own Crown of Aragon, ‘more forced than freely’, as a contemporary said, he began

to stir up war, through his French ally, on the borders of Flanders. Philip, at the same time, was urging his father Maximilian to invade Naples.

Philip’s main interest was now in obtaining the grandees’ consent to declare Juana incapable of government. Archbishop Cisneros and most of the grandees were willing to agree to this but they were opposed by the Admiral of Castile and the repre-

sentatives in Cortes. From Aragon Fernando told Louis XII of France that ‘diverse cities’ were asking him to free the queen. Philip died, after a mere summer’s reign, in Burgos on 25 Sep-

tember 1506 when he was apparently headed for a further collision with Fernando.‘ He was only twenty-eight. His sudden 1 Gachard, i. 521, 539, 541 f. See Rodriguez Villa, La reina, pp. 149-53.

Gachard, i. 543 f.; Zurita, VII. 7 f.; CDIHE xiv. 316~29. * Martire, XVIII. 308, 310 (pp. 139 ff., 143 f.). Fernando’s letter of 1 July to his ambassador in Rome (BRAH 28 (1896), 450 f.), franker than the official version of events, sent out the same day (CD/HE viii. 385-93). Zurita, VII. 8, 15. Continuacién anénima .de Pulgar (BAE \xx. 524).

4 Zurita, VII. 10-12.

THE END OF THE REIGN 597 death, though apparently due to natural causes, startled his contemporaries. Historians recorded the appearance of a comet before his death. Pietro Martire lamented the disappearance of ‘that young handsome, elegant man, of great talent and understanding, who already saw himself as being able to conquer the world’. Martire’s comparison of Philip to his maternal grandfather, Charles the Bold, perhaps reflects a remark he had heard Philip make. A contemporary Spanish chronicler record-

ed that ‘many said’ that this sudden death was due to God’s judgement on Philip for his ‘disobedience to the king Don Fernando his father’.+

A TIME OF TROUBLES (1506-7)

Within ten days Fernando, on his way by sea to Naples, had been informed of Philip’s death. On 6 October he dispatched, from Portofino, a circular letter ordering Castile to obey Juana. Narratives of this time agree in recounting the queen’s courage in caring for her husband—one witness calling her ‘a woman to suffer and behold all the things of this world . . . without change of heart or courage’. After Philip’s death, however, she refused

to pay more attention to her realms ‘than a new-born child’. The only measures she insisted on were the revocation (in December) of all grants made by Philip to his supporters, and the removal of his advisers from the Royal Council, the latter measure being carried out, the former published, if not obeyed. Otherwise she answered all questions by saying that her father would deal with them when he came. In the meantime she refused to be parted from Philip’s body; she believed he would rise again, having been told so by a Carthusian.?

Fernando did not return from Naples for nearly a year, not until August 1507. Promptly summoned back, he had delayed saying when he would come. The nobles who had most opposed Fernando, the Duke of Najera, the Marquis of Villena, the Count of Benavente, would have preferred to administer Castile 1 See the report of Dr. Parra to Fernando in CDJHE viii. 394-7. For the comet, Sancho Cota, Memorias, p. 40. Martire, XVIII. 316 (p. 151); Continuacién de Pulgar, loc. cit. Alonso de Santa Cruz, Crénica, ed. Carriazo, ii. 58, follows the Continuacién but substitutes other reasons. * CDIAE viii. 397 ff.; Deuxiéme voyage, ed. Gachard, i. 462 f. (Viajes, i. 588 f.);

Martire, XVIII. 318, 323, XIX. 328 (DIHE x. 155 f., 161 f., 169 f.); Rodriguez Villa, La reina, pp. 211, 224.

598 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516

in the name of Juana and her elder son Charles (still in Flanders), or for the conveniently distant Emperor Maximilian. Immediately after Philip’s death an attempt to get hold of the younger Prince Ferdinand was only just prevented by the city

of Valladolid. The anti-Fernando faction also encouraged the proposal of Henry VII of England that he should marry Juana. Fernando kept the negotiations going, in part so as to

VITI.4 ,

promote the second marriage ofhis daughter Catherine (widowed

in 1502) to the brother of her first husband, the future Henry

In these circumstances Archbishop Cisneros played a key role. His attempt to have Juana declared incapable of rule was rejected by Fernando—who now had to derive his authority from her. But her departure from Burgos with Philip’s body con-

| vinced most people that she was mad. The grandees were agreed to ‘get everything they could out of this revolution of things’.? Bernaldez, in Andalusia, remarked that ‘some thought it was the end of the world and the time of King Enrique [IV]

had returned ... he who could take most did so and each was king of his land and of what he could take from the Crown’. Private armies appeared. The Duke of Medina Sidonia besieged

Gibraltar, which had been taken from him in 1502 by the Crown, and tried to take Jerez. In Galicia the Count of Lemos retook Ponferrada, of which he had been similarly deprived.

These particular attempts might be defeated, as Bernaldez claimed, by ‘the towns (comunidades) of Castile and Andalusia’,

but feuds extended to Segovia, Toledo, Madrid. The peace imposed by Fernando and Isabel disappeared and, in a few months, the ‘anarchic ferment, rooted in almost a century of indiscipline’, burst out again. As has been noted, there is here ‘a

continuity which can explain the [later] explosion of the comunidades . . .as something long in gestation’ .®

Against the background of hunger and plague, ‘in all Castile’,

a contemporary relates, ‘they fought by night and day’. In 1 Zurita, VII. 15, 17, 21 f., 27, 41; Rodriguez Villa, pp. 445-50, 472-80; Fuensalida, pp. \xviii-lxxviii. 2 Rodriguez Villa, p. 209. Zurita recounts in great detail the manoeuvres of the

different parties. See esp. VII. 43. 8 Bernaldez, 207 f. (pp. 510-14); E. Benito Ruano, Toledo en el siglo XV (Madrid,

1961), p. 133. For Andalusia see also A. Cotarelo, Fray Diego de Deza (Madrid, 1902), Pp- 350-9, 364.

THE END OF THE REIGN 599 November 1506 Pietro Martire was already prophesying that if

the king did not return, ‘everything will collapse’. Fernando was obliged to entrust the government of Castile to Cisneros, whose thoughts, as Zurita says, on this and other occasions, ‘were more those of a king than a friar’. Raising troops with the revenues of his own see of Toledo, and with the help of the Duke of Alba and the Constable of Castile, Cisneros was able to hold

the anarchy in check in the north while Andalusia, under its own junta of grandees, arranged its own affairs.1

In July 1507 Martire announced that the very news of Fernando’s return to Spain had calmed revolt. Things were not

so simple. Bernaldez might rejoice: ‘Men knew they were as sheep without a shepherd.’ Others were less delighted. As in 1475 Fernando found Burgos castle held against him. His secretary had received an outspoken letter from Gonzalo de Ayora, a distinguished military commander and historian, who declared, ‘any neighbouring prince who took over the tutelage of these peoples could throw the king out of these kingdoms’. Ayora cited the very heavy taxes—‘and, in payment, no direction or government’, ‘royal injustice’, of which “there is no man

or woman in these kingdoms who has not often complained’. He also warned Fernando not to believe that he could return to Castile without meeting outrageous demands both from his supporters and his former enemies.?

FERNANDO AGAIN RULER OF CASTILE (1507-16)

The small army Fernando brought with him from Naples was sufficient to make Burgos castle and the Duke of Najera submit by November 1507. The Count of Lemos abandoned Ponferrada. A small force was enough to occupy the states of the young new Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1508. One or two examples—the levelling of the castle of the turbulent Marquis of

Priego near Cordoba, the taking and sacking of Niebla— sufficed to crush open opposition. But considerable concessions had to be made, not only to Cisneros—who became a cardinal 1Pedro de Alcocer, cited by Benito Ruano, p. 132; Martire, XVIII. 317 (p. 154); Zurita, VII. 2g. 2 Martire, XIX. 354 (p. 203); Bernaldez, 212 (p. 530); E. Cat, Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages du chroniqueur Gonzalo de Ayora (Algiers, 1890), pp. 37 f. Sancho Cota,

Memorias, p. 41, relates that Fernando’s government ‘was a burden to many in Castile’.

600 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 and Inquisitor-General—but to recently hostile nobles such as

Villena. Disorders were forgiven. The archdeacon of Valpuesta, who had become bishop of Zamora ‘by right of conquest’, repeatedly defeating and imprisoning royal envoys sent against him, was left undisturbed.} In 1507-16 Fernando was more interested in being governor of Castile than king of Aragon. Castile alone could continue to

supply him with the money and men he needed to confront

France, to conquer the North African ports, and to win Navarre. Juana’s immediate submission to him and withdrawal from the world made his task easier. From 1507 onwards it was with great difficulty that she could be persuaded to change her clothes, eat, or wash. From 1509 until her death In 1555 She lived a recluse at Tordesillas.®

Going beyond the terms of Isabel’s will, Fernando claimed that he should rule Castile during Juana’s lifetime, not merely until her son Charles was twenty. Attempts by Charles’s other grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian, to subvert Fernando by intriguing with the Castilian nobles had hastened Fernando’s return and troubled him for several years. It was not until 1510 that virtually all the leading grandees swore to serve Fernando. as governor of Castile until Charles was twenty-five. At the same

time Charles’s rights to the succession, after his mother, were reaffirmed. The less serious intrigues of Henry VII had ended In 1509 with his death, and the accession of Henry VIII who at once married Catherine.* Even after 1510, however, there were probably some suspicions that Fernando might exclude Charles. These suspicions were perhaps behind a new league of nobles in 1514.° THE SUCCESSION TO FERNANDO

In 1505, with Fernando’s second marriage to Germaine de Foix, the separation of the Crown of Aragon from Castile be1 Rodriguez Villa, pp. 229 f.; Bernaldez, 216 f. (pp. 539-46); C. Fernandez Duro, Memorias historicas de la ciudad de Zamora y su obispado, 11 (Madrid, 1882), 173-7.

21 follow M. Fernandez Alvarez, HE xvii. 2, p. 692. See also above, Ch. V, Pp. 561-75. 8 Rodriguez Villa, pp. 235, 246. 4J. M?. Doussinague, La polftica internacional de Fernando el Catélico (Madrid, 1944), pp. 242 f., 259-61, 271-80; Zurita, VIII. 2, 29, 42, 45; CDIHE xiv. 333~46.

§ CDIHE viii. 550-3. ’

THE END OF THE REIGN 601 came a real possibility. Great ingenuity has been used to obscure this obvious fact. Documents of 1513 have been invoked

to show that Fernando never intended to separate the Crowns. They do not disprove the situation obtaining in earlier years. In 1504 the Crowns had only been united for twenty-five years; the union was a personal one and supported by very little, if any, general sentiment. It seems anachronistic to suppose that “Spain was already an indissoluble unity’. It is less probable that it was a ‘unitary idea’

which inspired Fernando’s marriage to Germaine, than the need to find an ally against Philip and so maintain his position in Castile. After Philip’s death Fernando continued to want a

male heir. On 3 May 1509 this heir was born, and baptized Juan de Aragon. His almost immediate death, according to Pietro Martire, ‘only served to give the king hope of other children’.2 Had Juan survived Fernando there is no doubt that he would have become king of Aragon on his father’s death. It

has been suggested that Fernando would have attempted to make any male heir also king of Castile, to the exclusion of Charles; 1t seems unlikely that any such attempt could have been successful.2 The most probable result of Fernando’s second marriage was thus the separation of Castile and Aragon. It was merely chance which prevented this.

In 1513 Fernando was still ‘extremely desirous of having children, particularly sons, to whom to leave his paternal realms, as to an heir closer to him than his grandson Charles’. The story that he then received an aphrodisiac from the French cook (of a French queen), which had such deadly effect that it led (over two years later) to his death, is inherently improbable. In 1514 Martire was still complaining of Fernando’s inseparability from his wife Germaine.* (It is worth asking if the

stories which circulated as to Fernando’s slight regard for 1 See, contra, J. M®. Doussinague, Fernando el Catélico y» el cisma de Pisa (Madrid, 1946), Pp. 451.

2 Martire, XXII. 414 (DIHE x. 282); Galindez de Carvajal, Anales (BAE Ixx. 557). Juan was buried in Poblet, with his royal ancestors. Zurita, VIII. 8.

° ® Merriman, ii. 328 f.

* Martire, XXVI. 531, XXVIII. 542 (DIHE xi. 137 f., 162 f.). Martire 1s apparently the source of Santa Cruz, ii. 280. Martire and Galindez de Carvajal, Anales (BAE \xx. 560) are followed by Zurita, X. 55. See also the Continuacién de Pulgar (BAE ixx. 530).

602 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 Germaine and her unfortunate effect on him are not inspired by a desire to please Charles V, once he was on the throne.*) In his last years there is some evidence that Fernando turned to Juana’s younger surviving son, Prince Ferdinand. Brought up

in Spain from the time of his birth i 1502, he seemed more sympathetic than his distant elder brother Charles, whom his grandfather saw as possibly allying, like his father Philip, with

the nobles of Castile.2 Charles certainly suspected that Fernando would leave the Military Orders in Castile and all he could in Aragon to Ferdinand. In 1515 an agreement was reached between Fernando and Charles. Fernando was to remain governor of Castile during his life. Charles was to come to Spain, without troops, in 1516, and his younger brother was

to go to Flanders. The Orders were to go to Charles after

from Flanders.? |

Fernando’s death. Rebels against Fernando were to be expelled

There was no time to carry out this agreement or indeed to confirm it. In late 1515 Fernando was on his way to Seville to prepare an expedition which could be used, as circumstances dictated, either against Islam in North Africa or France in

Italy. Charles’s representative, the dean of Louvain (later Pope Adrian VI), followed him to the miserable village of Madrigalejo, near Trujillo, where the king was too ill to go farther. He was sent packing. Queen Germaine arrived from Aragon, where she was holding Cortes, two days before Fer-

nando died (on 23 January 1516). According to Lorenzo Galindez de Carvajal, who was with him, he hesitated to the 1 Martire, one of the main sources for the story of the deadly aphrodisiac, was already recounting exaggerated reports of Charles’s excellence in 1513 (XXVI. 515, xi. 101 f.). (One cannot tell how far Martire’s letters were ‘edited’ before

publication.) The unfavourable picture of Germaine drawn by Doussinague, Fernando y Germana (pp. 202-5) is largely based on Sandoval, Historia del Emperador

Carlos V, a source virulently hostile. In his last letter to Charles and his will Fernando implored him to care for Germaine and praises her for taking ‘the things of Our realms as her own’. Rodriguez Villa, p. 260; Santa Cruz, ii. 366. 2 Zurita, X. 96. For rumours and negotiations as to the Infante Fernando see X. 69; Doussinague, El testamento polttico de Fernando el Catélico (Madrid, 1950), pp. 77f.,

85, 347. While very cautious, Fernando did entertain the idea that the Infante might receive Naples.

3’ CDIAE xiv. 347-52 (variant texts in Santa Cruz’s two chronicles; see his Crénica de los Reyes Catélicos, ii. 328, n. 40). See also Zurita, X. 98; Martire, XXVIII.

565 (DIHE xi. 211): ‘the proposal to divide the kingdoms or at least to take from

the Crown the [Orders] was undone’. :

THE END OF THE REIGN 603 last to whom he should leave the government of Castile and Aragon. In an earlier will he had left this charge to Prince Ferdinand, ‘for he believed that Charles would not come [to Spain] or stay there’. He was persuaded to alter this disposition and not to leave the Prince the Orders, on the ground that this

division of powers would be used by the nobility to cause ‘revolutions’. In the Crown of Aragon Fernando’s illegitimate son, the archbishop of Saragossa, continued to act as governor, in Castile Cisneros was appointed. Prince Ferdinand was merely left revenues in Naples. In a letter written to Charles on the day before his death Fernando told him he had worked ‘with soul and body for your good’. He had freely chosen not to dispose otherwise of the kingdoms conquered in his lifetime. The sadness of the people of Castile who saw Fernando’s body

borne to Granada to be buried beside Isabel is contrasted by Zurita with the joy of the grandees who saw themselves ‘freed from a very hard subjection and servitude’ by his death. The lamentations in the Crown of Aragon at the passing of its last independent king were more general.? VIEWS OF FERNANDO

The main accusations made by his contemporaries against Fernando were avarice and dissimulation. As Guicciardini remarks, that of avarice was disproved by his poverty when he died. That of dissimulation, accepted by Guicciardini, is more

justified, but, as Zurita says, it was ‘normal among kings’. Zurita singles out as Fernando’s virtues “prudence and counsel (consejo)’. Among his sufferings he names ‘the nature of the Catholic Queen [Isabel] . . . to be forced to rule in her company

with so much dissimulation and patience’. (This remark is curiously confirmed by the letter of Ayora of 1507 already cited,

in which Ayora, writing to Fernando’s secretary and for the king’s eyes, remarks that ‘in the life of the queen the king could not give away or provide for the matters [of Castile] and he dissembled this)’.? In his last years Fernando also had to endure 1 Galindez de Carvajal (BAE lxx. 562-5). Zurita, X. 99, criticizes this account, as inconsistent with the previous agreement with Charles, but this had not been ratified (see Martire, cited in the preceding note). The letter to Charles in CDIHE xiv. 353 f. (also in Santa Cruz, i. 336 ff.). * Zurita, X. 100. § Zurita, X. 100; Cat, Ayora, p. 37.

604. THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 the prospect of the succession of a prince ‘of another nation and other tongue’, as Isabel’s will put it. This succession, averted by

fortune in the case of Philip, took place with Charles. To the end Fernando wished to remain in control of the situation, but it was due, again, to fortune that Charles was to follow in his _ Spanish grandfather’s steps and not in those of his Francophile advisers, both with regard to the retention of Navarre and Naples and to war with Islam. The future would show whether his adoption of ‘the principles of Christian universalism’, partially if not exclusively pursued by Fernando, was to prove, in the end, a blessing or a curse to Spain.' The last years of the reign and the crisis of the succession had revealed the continued existence of two forces which were to haunt Spanish history, the

nobility’s power to disrupt internal peace, and the stubborn separate identity of the kingdoms so recently united under one rule, so near to separation in Fernando’s last decade.? 1 Testamento y codicilo de Isabel, p. 31. See R. Menéndez Pidal, Los Reyes Catélicos y otros ensayos (Buenos Aires, 1962), pp. 71-111, for the former view. 2 Fernando’s death was followed by a rebellion in Ledén, a prelude to that of the

Comuneros, and, almost, by another civil war in Andalusia. L. Fernandez, Archivos Leoneses, 28 (1974), 323-84; Martire, X XIX. 567 (DIHE x1. 220) (February

1516). For the rapid emergence of an idealized image of Fernando see J. A. Maravall, Las Communidades de Castilla, 2nd edn. (Madrid, 1970), pp. 67-9.

Vil The End of Medieval Spain? TRADITIONALISM: RELIGION

T o Monarchs their contemporaries the achievements of the Catholic seemed the fulfilment of past aspirations. Future possibilities were seen in a traditional framework. In 1485 Diego de Valera prayed that God would give Fernando ‘the power to accomplish all that from far back in time has been prophesied of Your Most Noble Person’. Fernando had conquered ‘a third of the kingdom of Granada in twenty-two days’. It was clear ‘that God is with you, and that through you and the most Serene Princess, Dofia Isabel, He wishes to destroy and lay waste the perfidious Mahomedan sect’.1 These visions were not

peculiar to Spaniards. In 1495, after the conquest of Granada

was over, Dr. Miinzer of Nuremberg, in an address to the Monarchs, told them that nothing remained for them to do ‘except to add to your victories the reconquest of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem’. For them ‘had been reserved the triumph’ which had escaped earlier crusading kings.”

That such views appealed to Isabel appears from her will, that they also appealed to Fernando from letters of 1509. ‘The idea of crusade proved attractive to his subjects. In 1510 he received a grant of a very large sum to enable him to wage war

as far as Jerusalem.? |

Apart from being crusaders Fernando and Isabel were religious reformers, ‘Catholic’ Monarchs as the inscription on their tomb in Granada proclaimed.* They were compared by their

contemporaries to Charlemagne and constantly reminded of their supposed descent from the Visigothic kings of the seventh century. The vigorous control they exercised over the Church in 1 Diego de Valera, Epistola xxiv (BAE cxvi. 31). 2 Viajes, 1. 405. 8 See Ch. V, above, p. 571, nn. 3-5, also A. Antelo Iglesias, CH 1 (1967), ar For the sepulchral inscription see below, p. 618.

!

606 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 their realms recalls these distant figures. Like them the Monarchs strove to put down blasphemy, immorality, sodomy, witchcraft. Their state resembles Visigothic Spain, not only in the dominance of the central Meseta over the peninsula but in the royal enforcement of rigid orthodoxy. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that they were aiming to restore a (more or less imaginary) Visigothic kingdom than to create a modern state.

The case of the ‘Beata de Piedrahita’ (Sor Marfa de Santo

Domingo) sheds light on the beliefs held at court and by Fernando (Isabel was dead at the time). A Dominican nun, the Beata claimed to be the spouse of Christ, went into ecstasies and fascinated her audience with long dialogues with Him and the

Virgin Mary; in 1512 Pietro Martire remarks, ‘she has the whole court enthralled’. She had been investigated by a committee of bishops and declared innocent. Fernando, Cardinal

Cisneros, and ‘the rest of the nobility visited her’. Her own

Dominican Order was divided on the subject. That, for Fernando, this was not a passing craze appears from the account of his last journey in 1515-16. He had received a message from the Beata, ‘sent from God, that he was not to die until he had won Jerusalem’, and it was only with great difficulty that he could be persuaded otherwise.? When Fernando’s political theories are seen as ‘humanist’, or he is regarded as inaugurating the ‘Modern State’, it is as well to remember the

Beata of Piedrahita.4 Not only through their legislation and public pronouncements, not only in their contemporaries’ eyes,

but in their own minds the Catholic Monarchs belonged to a continuing tradition which accepted crusade and prophecy as norms of existence. 1For comparison to Charlemagne see Ch. III, above, p. 407, n. 1, for Visigothic kings see Ch. III, p. 463 and n. 2, also Diego de Valera, Doctrinal de principes, prol. (BAE cxvi. 173).

2 See Ch. III, above, p. 407, n. 1; T. de Azcona, Isabel la Catélica, pp. 571 £3 Menéndez y Pelayo, Historia de los Heterodoxos espaftoles, u (Santander, 1947), 45) Pietro Martire, Epistolario, XXXII. 431, XXV. 489 (DIHE x. 305, xi. 41 f.), of 1509 and 1512. Lorenzo Galindez de Carvajal, Anales breves (BAE Ixx. 563). See M. Bataillon, Erasmo y Espafia, i (Mexico, 1950), 80, n. 25, with references there given. 4 J. A. Maravall, V CHCA ii. 9-24, and elsewhere, while referring to the Beata,

p- 486. ,

stresses the ‘humanist’ aspect of Fernando’s political thought. See Ch. IV, above,

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 607 POLITICS

The adherence to tradition is as clear in general internal and in external policies as it is in religion. It has been shown that the internal administration and economic measures pursued by the Monarchs were rooted in the past. A standing army had been envisaged under Juan I of Castile (1379-90); it existed under Enrique IV.1 The use of educated officials (letrados) is found throughout the fifteenth century.2 There was nothing new in the Hermandad or corregidores. What was new was the more efficient use made of existing tools of government.® In economic measures the encouragement of pastoral interests in Castile and the attempt to assist Catalan trade continued earlier policies of the separate kingdoms.* PREDOMINANCE OF CASTILE

While the Monarchs can be understood better ifthey are seen as

continuing medieval traditions rather than as inaugurating a modern state,® the traditions they followed were predominantly those of Castile. It was there, not in the Crown of Aragon, that a

state already existed whose ruler could ‘legislate, administer justice, name his officials, where he possessed a permanent army, could declare war, sign international treaties, raise taxes, and issue money ’,® all this with only token and generally ineffec-

tual opposition from the Cortes.? In the Crown of Aragon, at least from the 1350s, the ruler’s position was much more restricted.§ It is for this reason, as well as because of the far greater

demographic resources of Castile, that first Fernando and Isa-

bel, and then Fernando alone, relied mainly on Castile and devoted most of their time and energies to controlling it.? In 1 See Vol. I. 400; above, Part II, Ch. IV, p. 327.

2 See Ch. IV, above, p. 491 and n. 2. 8 Ch. IV, above, p. 506.

4 Ibid., pp. 493 f. See Vol. I. 289 f., 245 £., 266, 279 f.

§ I agree with Suarez, HE xvii. 1, p. 22: ‘one understands the Monarchs and their policy far better from the angle of medievalism than from that of modernity’. § This list of the attributes of an ‘absolute monarchy’ is based by A. Morales Moya, Hispania, 35 (1975), 82, on works of Mousnier. It is applied by him, as something new, to the Catholic Monarchs, though he admits (p. 98) that they were restricted by divine and natural laws.

? See Vol. I. 304-6; above, Part I, Ch. VI, p. 196; Part II, Ch. IV, p. 306. 8 See Vol. I. 278 f., 383 f.; above, Part I, Ch. VI, p. 191; Part IJ, Ch. I. * See Ch. IV, above, pp. 489 f.

608 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 doing this they reinforced the hegemony of Castile over Spain which had begun to be evident a century before their accession. MEDIEVAL MENTALITY

_ The most important limitations on the Monarchs consisted in the mentality of their subjects, which they largely shared themselves. Their officials’ minds had not changed overnight in 14.75. As Vicens remarked, even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ‘the majority of the persons occupying office preserve

a totally medieval mentality’; they regard their office as their private property, to be exploited for their own advantage, a view

not conducing to form the ideal modern bureaucrat. The attitude of the nobility, in its turn, is well represented by an early sixteenth-century epitaph in the cloister of the old cathedral at Salamanca, which asks, ‘to [the Monroy family] may God give as great a part in heaven as, by their persons and descent, they merited [to possess] on earth’.2 The Monarchs had to work with their officials and nobles. “Their innovative role’, as has

| been said, ‘consisted in a regulation of the different social forces’, not in their transformation.® Their conception of the

state was that it was their own patrimony (to be defended therefore with zeal), and they saw themselves, though paramount, as the first nobles in their kingdoms. For them the nobility was an essential ally, an indispensable collaborator.* EXTERNAL EXPANSION

The external policies of the Catholic Monarchs, while spectacularly successful, in the directions they pursued, the motives they

followed, and the means they employed, were entirely traditional. The ‘foreign policy’ of the Monarchs was largely directed by Fernando. Like that of earlier rulers of the Crown of Aragon

it was Mediterranean in focus, and was particularly concerned | with the traditional Catalan attempt to establish a commercial and political control over the western part of that sea and over North Africa. The more ambitious part of Fernando’s policy, the 1 J. Vicens Vives, ‘Estructura administrative estatal en los siglos XVI y XVII’, Coyuntura econémica y reformismo burgués (Barcelona, 1968), pp. 128 f. 2M. Fernandez Alvarez, La sociedad espaiiola del Renacimiento (Madrid, 1970), p.

4 J. I. Gutiérrez Nieto, Hispania, 33 (1973), 5294See Ch. IV, above, pp. 497-500.

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 609 conquest of Naples, was a resumption of his uncle Alfonso 1V’s

achievements.! As with other rulers of his time, Fernando’s motives were dynastic.” His claim to Naples was by descent. The conquest of Navarre was defended by apologists on the grounds

that it restored the natural boundaries of Hispania, but the reacquisition of Roussillon and Cerdagne, across the Pyrenees, because these counties formed part of Fernando’s inheritance.?

To expand and defend their territories the Monarchs used royal marriages. If they pursued, as seems probable, the terri-

torial unity of the Iberian peninsula, they did so by three marriages with Portuguese princes—they also attempted to marry their one son Juan to the heiress of Navarre. This use of

royal marriages had been employed with considerable consistency by earlier Trastamaras.* Outside the peninsula Fernando and Isabel attempted to counteract France by allying dynastically with England and with the House of Burgundy, controlling the Low Countries, now, through Maximilian’s marriage, linked with the Habsburgs. In this they imitated Fernando’s father, Juan II. A series of unexpected deaths led to a result the Monarchs had not desired, the Habsburg succession to the Spanish kingdoms.® THE NEW WORLD

Posterity thinks of the discovery of America as the greatest event of the Monarchs’ reign, as something utterly new, which changed the history of the world. ‘To Fernando and Isabel it was perhaps their least important achievement. The discovery and its exploitation has been well described as ‘a projection of the Spanish Middle Ages in space and time’.® The discovery was made by a Genoese navigator, the representative of a republic which had for centuries provided admirals for Castile, a man deeply influenced by the crusading spirit so strong in Spain at the

time. Columbus’s main aims appear to have been the liberation 1See Vol. I, Part IT, Ch. I; Part III, Ch. II; above, Part IT, Ch. II. 2 Compare J. R. Major, Representative institutions in Renaissance France, 1421-1559

(Madison, Wisc., 1960), pp. 3 f. 8 See Ch. V, above, p. 568. 4See Vol. I. 392 f.; Gh. V, above, pp. 539-41. 6 Part II, Ch. ITI, p. 294; also Ch. VI, above, p. 587. 6 C. Sanchez-Albornoz, Espafia, un enigma histérico, ii (Buenos Aires, 1956), 501.

610 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516

of Jerusalem and the conversion of the world. In 1495 he was seen by acontemporary not only ‘within the tradition of “‘the

knight Hercules .. . and the prince of chivalry, Julius Caesar’’’ but as ‘Apostle and Ambassador of God’. The exploitation of the discovery, ‘the last period of the epic Middle Ages’, was inspired by the long Holy War and the Messianic feeling gener-

ated by the conflict and convivencia of the three religions of medieval Spain.? More technically, ‘the persistence for so long of an open frontier of war and conquest’ lies at the root of ‘skills

in warfare and in the creation of new societies that Spaniards displayed in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru’.? The continuity from the Old World to the New appears from the first and is continuous—in the legal basis for the discoveries (the capitulaciones de Santa Fé), in later colonial administration, and in

the thirst for transportable riches: the visible sign of dominion which already inspires the Cid of the Poema still lures on the conqutstadores.*

The conguistadores, by crossing the sea, did not expand their mental horizon. For fifty years, while men born and brought up in the peninsula survived, the system of life of the feuding walled cities of Castile was transported to the New World. In Bernal Diaz del Castillo one can see the books the conquerors cited—

the old romances, whose improbable characters had as much influence on American place-names as they did, in a different way, on St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Teresa of Avila. Santiago crossed the Atlantic and appeared to Spaniards in battle on the walls of Cuzco. Mexico was covered with convents whose towers and battlements recall the fortified churches of Avila and Tuy. Gothic architecture arose among coconut palms. While the

Catholic Monarchs were seen by their subjects—and perhaps

saw themselves—as new Charlemagnes, the conquerors of America delighted in the tritest versions of medieval romance and saw themselves as wandering knights errant involved in 1See Vol. I. 290 f. J. S. Cummins, in Medieval Hispanic Studies presented to Rant Hamilton, ed. A. D. Deyermond (London, 1976), pp. 45-55, at 53* Here [ venture to combine Sanchez-Albornoz, loc. cit., and Américo Castro’s views, as synthesized by Stephen Gilman in an unpublished lecture, ‘A Generation of Conversos’, given at La Jolla, in April 1975. See also J. L. Phelan, The Millenizal Kingdom of the Franciscans in the New World, 2nd edn. (Berkeley, 1970). $C. J. Bishko, in A History of the Crusades, 111 (Madison, Wisc., 1975), 455 f. —

4C. Vifias y Mey, Arbor, 43 (1959), 249 f. ,

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 611 adventures surpassing but in a sense continuing Arthurian legend.+

A TRADITIONAL CULTURE

During the reign of Fernando and Isabel the political hegemony of Castile was reflected in the penetration of Castilian into regions of the peninsula which had possessed their own languages and literatures. The decline of Galician continued. Galician poets now wrote in Castilian.2 The Leonese dialect only survived among peasants; it was used by writers in Castilian to emphasize the rusticity of their characters. In the Crown of Aragon Aragonese had ceased to be a literary language. In Valencia many poets were now bilingual, writing in Castilian as well as Catalan. In Barcelona high society was beginning to speak Castilian on public occasions.*? Castilian poetry penetrated Portugal. The Cancioneiro of Resende (1516) contains poems in Castilian by Portuguese authors—the reverse of the situation obtaining in the fourteenth century.* This hegemony of Castilian over the other literatures of the peninsula was not accompanied by many new developments within Castile. The one great masterpiece, La Celestina, stands

alone. The Crown sought to use Italian scholars and the native Castilian Elo Antonio de Nebrya (1442-1522) to make ‘the newly-united kingdom not only the military and political but the intellectual leader of Europe’.* Nebrija taught at Sala-

manca and at Cisneros’ Alcala. He attempted to reform university teaching on Italian lines and to promote studies in Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin. His Castilian grammar of 1492 was the first serious attempt to apply grammatical rules to 1 Irving A. Leonard, Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Indies (Berkeley, 1933); Marqués de Lozoya, La Prolongacién de la Edad Media castellana en América Central en

el siglo XVI (Madrid, 1960); E. Asensio, RFE 36 (1952), 98, referring to Gonzalo

Fernandez de Oviedo, Libro del cavallero don Claribalte.

4A. Lépez Ferreiro, Galicia en el ultimo tercio del siglo XV, 3rd edn. (Vigo, 1968), I-Q. "7; R Lapesa, Historia de la lengua espaftola, 7th edn. (Madrid, 1968), pp. 190 ff. An anti-Castilian reaction in Barcelona by Pere Miquel Carbonell (on whom see Part I, Ch. V, p. 181) in CDIACA xxvii. 52. 4M. Rodrigues Lapa, Licées de Literatura portuguesa, época medieval, 6th edn. (Coimbra, 1966), pp. 405 f. § See Ch. ITI, above, pp. 469 f. 6S. Gilman, The Spain of Fernando de Rojas (Princeton, N. J., 1972), p. 305.

612 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 a romance language. He saw his work as the accompaniment of the growing empire of Castile over ‘many barbarous peoples and

nations speaking strange tongues’. |

This patriotism, which led Nebrija to become the apologist for Fernando’s conquest of Navarre, is perhaps more significant than his philological interests, in the end devoted to biblical scholarship.? Pietro Martire, when he opened a school at court by royal command for the sons of nobles, found it hard to interest them in humanist ideals. The Italian authors most congenial to Spaniards continued to be those of the fourteenth century, especially Dante and Petrarch. Spain was deeply influenced by the devotio moderna and its anti-intellectual piety. Love

poetry was written on traditional lines and attacked in traditional ways. The acceptance at court of popular ballads—anathema to an Italian humanist—maintained a living connection between the people and their rulers, lacking in other countries. Chivalric romances, imbued with traditional ideals, remained the favourite form of secular literature.* | Before the sixteenth century, apart from a brief flowering in

late fourteenth-century Catalonia, the Iberian peninsula had not known anything resembling the humanism of Italy.® In 1512-13 the Florentine scholar Guicciardini was unimpressed by the results achieved so far. “They are not interested in letters, and one finds very little knowledge either among the nobility or the other classes, and few people know Latin.’ More striking are

the remarks of Garcilaso de la Vega in 1533, when translating Castiglione’s The Courtier into Spanish: ‘I know not why it has always been our misfortune that hardly anyone has written in our language anything except that which could very well be

dispensed with.’”® |

1M. R. Lida, NRFH 5 (1951), 213, citing I. Bywater, The Erasmian pronunciation of Greek and its precursors (London, 1908); Lapesa, pp. 192-4; E. Asensio, RFE 43

(1960), 399-413. | a . 2 See Ch. V, above, p. 568. 8 Martire, epist. IX, 113 (DIHE ix. 209).

‘Pp. E. Russell, in Spain: A companion to Spanish Studies (London, 1973), pp. 268—

73. For the devotio moderna see Part I, Ch. III, above, p. 104 and n. 1. For a tradi-

tional attack on courtly love poetry see Fray. Ifigo de Mendoza, NBAE xix. a M. Batllori, in reply to J. A. Maravall, Los factores de la idea de progreso en el Renacimiento espafiol (Madrid, 1963), p. 140. See Part I, Ch. V, above. ® Francesco Guicciardini in Viajes, i. 614. Garcilaso translated by P. E. Russell, in Aspects of the Renaissance, ed. A. R. Lewis (Austin, ‘Texas, 1967), p. 58.

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 613 Even im the sixteenth century the Renaissance was very different in Spain from other countries. The number of humanists and humanist publications was small. There was very little real study of Latin and less of Greek. There is little doubt that much of this was due to the Inquisition, but perhaps not all.? The genius of Spain in the sixteenth century was military and

religious. The revival of theology began in the 1470s and expanded into the great scholastic age of Salamanca. Like the

other outstanding achievements of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Company of Jesus, the mysticism of St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, the theatre, this scholasticism had medieval roots. In art, while Italian Renaissance styles entered Spain under the Catholic Monarchs, their success was slow and never com-

plete. The facade of the old University of Salamanca seems Italian in design, but its decoration is more exuberant than Italians would have thought fitting and behind it there is a Gothic fabric. The continuing influence of Flemish painting— still collected on an extraordinary scale by Philip [I1—testifies to the traditional preferences of sixteenth-century Spaniards.® POLITICAL UNION: HOW DEEP?

If the religion, the administration, economy, society, foreign policy, and general culture of the reign of Fernando and Isabel were a continuation of past traditions, can it not be argued that, by accomplishing the union of the Spanish kingdoms, the Monarchs had achieved something entirely new? The question is, however, how deep the union went, how deep, indeed, it was

intended by the Monarchs to go. A modern historian who accuses them of ‘never succeeding in eradicating the regional separation of their kingdoms’, betrays a failure to understand non-Castilian history. The Crown of Aragon had been founded 1 FernAndez Alvarez, La sociedad espaitola, pp. 32-46. For printing in Spain until 1520 see above, Part I, Ch. V, p. 182 and n. 2. L. Gil, ‘El humanismo espajiol del siglo XVI’, Estudios cldésicos, 11 (1967), 211~97, esp. 256-70. See below, p. 622, n. * 2M. Andrés Martin, in Repertorio de historia de las ctencias eclestasticas en Espafta, ii (1971), 128~38. See Sanchez-Albornoz, Espafia, ii. 503.

§ Fernandez Alvarez, p. 34. See O. N. V. Glendinning, in Spain: A Companion, pp. 485 ff. For late examples of Mudejar art see below, p. 623; for art in about 1500, above, Part I, Ch. IV, p. 166.

614 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 and had prospered on respect for separatism which its own ruler, Fernando, was normally too wise to challenge.+

The idea that the marriage of Fernando and Isabel was the result of an irreversible process, restoring the unity which had existed in the Visigothic period, though certainly held by some men of the time, must yield to the evidence which indicates that it arose out of ‘concrete and, therefore, changeable circumstances’.2 The lack of institutions common to Castile and Aragon meant that the union remained a personal one. Therefore ‘each problem of succession [became] a problem of national

unity’. This was not so only in 1504 but in 1700, at the death of Charles II, and even at that of Ferdinand VII in 1835.8

| Many men did see a new unity emerging. To the Romans of 1492 the new Valencian Pope, Rodrigo Borgia, seemed to represent ‘Spain’.* The Monarchs were addressed in sermons as

| ‘King and Queen of the Spains’ or of ‘Spain’.® A Valencian poet recognized them as ‘Kings of Spain’ and in 1493 the city govern-

ment of Barcelona referred to ‘the King of Spain, our lord’.®

In 1511 the town council of Murcia told Fernando that ‘the whole Spanish nation’ begged him not to risk his person in an expedition to Africa.’ Against these expressions of individual or official feeling one has several discordant facts. When a probably deranged peas-

ant stabbed Fernando in Barcelona in 1492 Isabel’s and her Castilian suite’s first thought was that this was a Catalan plot.® This instinctive reaction is perhaps as instructive as the refusal of the Monarchs ever to use the title of “Kings of Spain’. Instead, 1T quote from M. Lunenfeld, The Council of the Santa Hermandad (Coral Gables,

, Fla., 1970), p. 65. Compare Vicens, Historia critica de Fernando II, pp. 324 f., and, | for an earlier period, Vol. I. 276-80; see also Ch. IV, above, p. 516. 2 have here in mind especially the well-known works of Ramén Menéndez Pidal. See, for instance, his prefaces to HE xv (1964) and xvii. 1 (1969). The quota-

199. |

tion from J. L. Martin, La Pentnsula en la Edad Media (Barcelona, 1976), p. 765. For

the link between the Monarchs and the Visigoths see Part I, Ch. VI, above, p. 8 M. Fernandez Alvarez, HE xvii. 2, pp. 645 f. 4 See Ch. V, above, p. 548 and n. 2.

, 5S. Cirac Estopafidn, Los sermones de Don Martin Garcia, obispo de Barcelona, sobre los Reyes Catélicos (Saragossa, 1955). , § Joan Roig de Corella, Obres, ed. R. Miquel y Planes (Barcelona, 1913), p. 361; J. Vicens Vives, Ferran IT i la ciutat de Barcelona, i. 96. * J. Torres Fontes, Hispania, 19 (1959), 51.

, 8 Pietro Martire, V. 125-6 (DIHE ix. 227 f.) :

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 615 in royal documents, we find all the separate medieval kingdoms listed one after another, in rigorous alternation between those of Castile and those of Aragon. This appears to reflect ‘the pluralist conception of the State, juxtaposing the kingdoms, not fusing them in one’.? It has been suggested that, if ‘political union’ was not yet a reality it was at least an idea in the minds of the Monarchs, which they strove to realize.” If it had been so

it seems likely that Isabel would have attempted to leave Fernando Castile in 1504 or that Fernando would not have remarried in 1505. This remarriage made the separation of Aragon from Castile extremely probable. In 1510 Fernando asked his envoy to Rome to persuade the pope to declare that the North African emirates of Bougie and Tunisia should be reserved ‘to Us and Our successors, Kings of

Aragon’. In this letter he made it clear that he was not concerned with Morocco (reserved for Portugal) or Tlemcen (reserved for Castile). The separation of the Crown of Aragon and Castile seemed to be foreseen. From the time of his conquest

of Navarre in 1512 until 1515, when his health was clearly failing, Fernando apparently intended to unite Navarre to Aragon. It is conceivable that, united, and with the support of Naples, Sicily, and much of North Africa, these kingdoms could have resisted Castile and maintained their separate identity—if Fernando’s son by his second marriage had lived.* THE SELECTION OF CHANCE

If one can say of western Europe in general that its political geography is ‘the result of the selection between various possi- , bilities’,* this is certainly true of the Iberian peninsula. The selection here was one mainly effected by chance. A Portuguese

historian has observed that from a geographical point of view ‘it is impossible to speak of a unit of Portuguese territory with a basis in the accidents of nature, or of a Portuguese individuality within the Iberian whole’.’ The individuality of Portugal is the result of history. In 1475 there were no more geographical or 1M. V. Gdmez Mampaso, BRAH 169 (1972), 627-49, at 631. 2 Martin, La Peninsula, p. 766. So also J. M®. Doussinague, Fernando el Catélico y Germana de Foix (Madrid, 1944), pp. 217 f.

*E. Sarrablo Aguareles, V CHCA ii. 188. See G. Desdevises du Dézert, Don Carlos d’ Aragon (Paris, 1889), pp. 431 ff. See Ch. VI, above, p. 601, nn. 1-3.

4 Vicens, ‘Estructura’, p. 111. § Oliveira Marques, Daily Life, p. 3.

616 THE CATHOLIG MONARCHS 1474-1516 historical obstacles to the union of Portugal with Castile than there were to the union of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. Portuguese memories of the war with Castile in the 1380s were probably no more vivid than Aragonese memories of the far more disastrous ‘War of the Two Peters’ of 1356-66.1

In the fifteenth century the marriage alliances between the Portuguese and Castilian royal families and noble houses, the

mutual stimulus of trade and exploration, drew the two countries together.” In 1498—1500 there was every likelihood

that the Monarchs’ successor would be a Portuguese prince, most probably King Manoel (1495-1521), as guardian of his son (the Monarchs’ grandson), Miguel.? It has been argued that a union between Castile and Portugal would have been more beneficial to Castile than her actual union with Aragon, which “forced Castile into Mediterranean politics’ .*

THE CROWN OF ARAGON | | The marriage of Fernando and Isabel was engineered by Fer-

nando’s father, Juan II of Aragon, who desperately needed Castilian aid against France, then supporting the Catalan revolution.® ‘The marriage was received with mixed feelings by his subjects. According to Valera many in Aragon, and leading

Catalans who were on Juan’s side, opposed the marriage, ‘because they believed [Fernando] being king of Castile he could oppress the kingdom with much greater power’. In Castile there

was also much opposition. In Valencia the marriage was received with joy.®

The Crown of Aragon survived: the reign of Fernando and ~1See Vol. I, Part ITI, Ch. III, IV. Carbonell’s first edition of the Crénica of Pere ITI, with its very hostile tone towards Castile, was prepared by 1517, though not

published until 1546. ,

2 C. Vifias y Mey, Hispania, 1. 1 (1940-1), 60. 3 See Ch. VI, above, p. 587, and R. Ricard, Etudes sur l’histoire morale et religieuse du Portugal (Paris, 1970), pp. 14-22. The possibility of the union of the two countries earlier, as the result of a victory of Afonso V in the civil war of 1475-9, seems less

great. See Ch. I, above, p. 364. In the revolt of 1519-21 the Comuneros invited King Manoel’s aid, ‘since we are all one nation’. J. A. Maravall, Las Communidades

de Castilla, 2nd edn. (Madrid, 1970), p. 59. _ * Merriman, Rise of the Spanish Empire, ii. 55 f.

5 See Part II, Ch. IV, above, also J. Vicens, Obra dispersa, i. 131 ff. 6 Diego de Valera, Memorial de diversas hazafias, 48, ed. Carriazo, pp. 156 f. Palencia, Crénica, li. 231, gives no reason for Aragonese opposition; for Castile see ii. 260, 282. For Valencia see Dietari-del capella d’Anfés el Magnanim, ed. J. Sanchis i

Sivera (Valencia, 1932), p. 358. _ D 7

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 617 Isabel astonishingly unchanged. It was laid, as it were, on the

shelf. Under the Habsburgs, it has been noted, what was organized was ‘the modern Castilian not the modern Spanish state’.1 Catalan, Aragonese, and Valencian privileges were left

intact, but the direction of the supra-national congeries of states ruled by the King of Spain had passed to Castile. Castile ‘limited itself to a paternalist control over the lands associated with it’, the Crown of Aragon, Naples, the Low Countries, Milan, finally, in 1580, Portugal.” THE END OF CONVIVENCIA

Despite the generally traditional nature of the reign of Fernando

and Isabel it was marked by two radically new departures, It ended with the accession of the future Emperor Charles V. This not only gave the Spanish kingdoms their first completely foreign dynasty but involved Spain in a new way in the problems of northern Europe. Charles’s accession was a dynastic accident, not originally intended by Fernando and Isabel. The main innovation for which they were directly responsible was the treatment of conversos, Jews, and Mudejars. These two changes, put together, constitute the greatest alteration in the history of the peninsula since the coming of Islam in the eighth century, but the second change was greater and more enduring than the first. The dynastic link to northern Europe only partly reversed the southern and Mediterranean inclination of Spain which the Islamic conquest had confirmed rather than created. The forcible end of convivencia attempted to reverse the Islamicization of Spanish culture, to change its nature. Fernando and Isabel’s actions, of which the expulsion in the seventeenth century was the logical completion, ended a state of affairs which had distinguished the Iberian peninsula from the rest of western

Europe—the coexistence of Christian and Jewish and Muslim communities. NEW MYTHS FOR OLD

Perhaps the most important question one can ask about a country is by what myths—by what hierarchy of values—it is ruled, The changes adopted by the Catholic Monarchs towards 1 Sanchez-Albornoz, Espafta, ii. 530 f. 2 Fernandez Alvarez, La sociedad espaftola, p. 29.

618 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 non-Christian communities were affected by and in their turn affected not only Spanish society but the myths which governed

the minds of Spaniards. For the myth of happy—at least, possible—convivencia in a land necessarily conceived of as con-

sisting of ‘Christians, Moors and Jews’, there was now substituted that of ‘a community of men holding exactly the same faith’. The modern historian whose phrase this is continues, ‘this community was moulded with blood and sorrow ... but life has never come into being without blood and pain’.! Fernando and Isabel are still acclaimed, to use the words of their sepulchral inscription in Granada, as ‘prostrating the Mahomedan sect and extinguishing heretical perversity’.2 One myth has replaced another. The fact that neither of the claims on the royal tomb was entirely justified, that the ‘community of men holding the same faith’ was a transparent mask concealing— though not from the contemporary Inquisition—the existence of tens of thousands of conversos from Judaism and of hundreds of thousands of baptized Muslims (Moriscos), does not trouble the

official image, any more than the frequent intolerance of Christians towards other communities disturbed the general acceptance of convivencia in earlier centuries.®

The possibility of an alternative pacific solution to the problem presented by non-Christian communities is often forgotten. Yet many thinkers of the fifteenth century favoured assimilation, as against the expulsion from Spain or virtual exclusion from society, adopted by the Monarchs. In 14,409 the first attacks on. conversos, as such, were sharply criticized by leading Spanish theologians, who argued that new converts would enrich not poison the Church.’ The new Inquisition was attacked when it

was first created. On his death-bed in 1507, Hernando de Talavera, a leading religious figure of the reign, himself then under attack by the Inquisition on false charges, declared that to try to suppress the converses as such ‘is manifestly against the Holy Catholic Faith, which desires that there should be neither

Jew nor Gentile’.2 The Pauline universalism of Talavera was 1 Suarez, HE xvii. 1, p. 358. For the myth of convivencia see Vol. I. 161 f. 2 ‘Mahometice secte prostratores et heretice pervicacie extinctores.’

8 See Ch. ITI, above pp. 464-9, 483, Vol. I. 210-14. : 4See Part I, Ch. IV, above, pp. 154 f. § Ch. ITI, p. 456 and n. 1; F. Marquez Villanueva, Investigaciones sobre Fuan Alvarez Gato (Madrid, 1960), pp. 412 f.

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 619 defeated, his eirenic policy towards the Mudejars of Granada abandoned for Cisneros’ violence. Talavera was popular among later thinkers touched by Erasmian and Franciscan currents of thought, but, as Bataillon observed, in the sixteenth century he had no successor.1 There was no room for him in the new official mythology.

In studying the turn Spain took under Fernando and Isabel it

might be worth exploring the power the past enjoyed over a deeply traditional society.” There are many echoes of the loss of Spain to Islam in the eighth century in the Castilian chroniclers

of the reign of Enrique IV and his successors. But what had been lost was now being recovered. There was a feeling that a chapter begun in 711 was now ending. ‘The conquest of Granada seemed a proof that this was so. To go back before 711 was to

return to a Spain principally known, through the Visigothic Law Code and the Councils of Toledo, for its savage suppression

of dissent and especially of Judaism in the name of Catholic unity.®

SOME FRUITS OF THE NEW MYTH

The rejection of the myth of convivencia and the adoption of that of a society united in one national faith involved a war on many

features of daily life in Spain, beginning with the language. ‘The progressive extirpation of Arabisms deprives Castilian of one of its main sources of contrast and variation.’ In 1515 Villalobos censured the inhabitants of Toledo because they used Arabisms, ‘with which they deform and obscure the cleanliness and clarity of Castilian’. Arabisms became reserved

for touches of local colour in romances on Granada.* On another level, public baths, a standard feature of life in Spain, their omnipresence largely deriving from Islamic example, were 1 Bataillon, Erasmo y Espaita, i. 394. See J.-B. Avalla-Arce, Romance Philology, 19

(1965-6), 384-91, and, for Talavera in Granada, Ch. III, above, p. 472. 2 For further discussion see Ch. III, above, p. 463. 8 See above, p. 606 and n. 1. References to the loss or recovery of Spain there, and in Palencia, ii. 364; Enriquez del Castillo, Crénica de Enrique IV, 77 (BAE |xx. 147), where Archbishop Carrillo is compared to the traitor of 714, Archbishop Oppas. See also above, Ch. II, p. 388 n. 2, p. 393, n. 1. 4. Asensio, RFE 43 (1960), 406; R. Lapesa, Historia de la lengua espaftola, 7th edn., p. 107. For the influence of Arabic on Castilian see Vol. I. 184-6.

620 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 attacked. Pulgar tells us that at the beginning of the conquest of Granada Alhama fell to the Christians and its inhabitants were slaughtered or captured because there were baths near the town where much bathing took place; these baths caused ‘weakness of body and too much delight, from which came idleness and from idleness evil and ugly pleasures ... Therefore we believe

that it pleased God’s justice to punish them, so that even the dogs of that city should not live.” The failure to maintain public baths cannot simply be ascribed to the economic decline of cities. An element of choice must be taken into consideration.

In the Late Roman Empire the failure to maintain public buildings was often not due to bankruptcy but to a decision to dedicate the funds available to other ends, notably Christian

| churches and private palaces.” So, in the sixteenth century, convents and palaces multiplied in Spain.

| As the new myth gained acceptance, a narrowing of mental horizons was perceptible. While Fernan Pérez de Guzman saw

Spaniards as including ‘Moors’ and Jews, the slightly later historian Pulgar limits his biographies of distinguished men to

Christian Castilians. For the simpler Bernaldez a typical Christian was a man who worked on the land and cooked with lard instead of with olive oil, in other words he was a Castilian peasant or a priest like Bernaldez himself who shared his tastes.® The Castilian contempt for ‘new’ Christians and Jews extended

to the occupations they specialized in, notably trade and

: industry. Lisbon and Barcelona were inferior because their inhabitants engaged in trade. So Palencia speaks with contempt

of the Portuguese trading with Africa as ‘exchanging vile merchandise for pepper and gold’, and Valera sees the cause of

Barcelona’s rebellion against Juan II as ‘its great wealth’.* Castilian disdain for bourgeois values and ‘mechanical arts’ had

existed long before the Catholic Monarchs, but it was now intensified. In 1512-13 Guicciardini, the citizen of the industrial city of Florence, was struck by the absence of interest in trade 1 Pulgar, Crénica, 127, ed. Carriazo, ii. 11. (These baths do not seem to be mentioned by other chroniclers.) For public baths see Vol. I. 189 f. 21 draw on a lecture by Peter Brown, to appear in his Making of Late Antiquity (Harvard University Press). ’R. B. Tate, in his edition of Pulgar, Claros varones (Oxford, 1971), pp. xxx f.; Bernéldez, Memorias, 43, ed. G6mez-Moreno and Carriazo, pp. 96-8. 4 Palencia, Crénica, iv. 51; Valera, Memorial, 18, ed. Carriazo, p. 63.

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 621 and industry in Spain in general. “They all have their heads full

of the hot air of /Aidalguia.4 In the eighteenth century the Castilian workman shared the /zdalgo’s contempt for manual labour. To get munition workers for its factories the Crown had to give them noble status. A sixteenth-century Castilian bishop stated that ‘the office of the merchant is to deceive, that of the usurer to save’. The idea that merchants only existed to deceive and that only usurers saved money reflects a stereotyped vision which was to dominate Castile for centuries.”

It 1s at least possible that the relative failure of science and technology to advance in Spain was due to the same causes that hindered the progress of trade. As trade and industry were considered unclean because they had so largely been in Jewish and Muslim hands, so science was regarded with fear by the leading

religious thinkers of the end of the fourteenth century in the Crown of Aragon, especially Eiximenis and Vicent Ferrer, unlike, in this, the earlier Ramon Lull and Arnau de Vilanova.? The weakness of Iberian universities has repeatedly been noted. The contribution of their teachers to science before about 1460 was virtually non-existent. The reason for this was not simply

the greater attraction of major centres in France and Italy, but the conditions of the peninsula, where the poverty of the Latin scholastic tradition was balanced by the contribution of Jewish scholars familiar with Arabic. In Spain scientific activity flourished not in universities but at royal courts, under the patronage of an enlightened ecclesiastic, or in Jewish communities. In the pogroms of 1391 and later persecutions, the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, and the forced conversion of the Mudejars,

the rich tradition of Arabic medicine and astrology received blows which it could not survive. In the sixteenth century, ‘the Morisco folk-healer (curandero) plays a role half tragic, half 1 See Vol. I. 72 f.; above, Part I, Ch. VII, p. 211. Guicciardini (Viajes, i. 614). For a slightly earlier period see Rodrigo Sanchez de Arévalo, Espejo de la vida humana I. 24 (Saragossa, 1491), fo. xliii; for an influential work of 1513 containing similar ideas see Gilman, The Spain of Fernando de Rojas, pp. 411 f. For hidalgos’ (very

desirable) privileges see Vol. I. 63. ?W. J. Callahan, Honor, commerce and industry in eighteenth-century Spain (Boston,

1972); Fray Antonio de Guevara, quoted by Fernandez Alvarez, La sociedad espaftola, p. 11. , *L. Garcia Ballester, Historia social de la medecina en la Espaita de los siglos XII al AVI, i (Madrid, 1976), 53-8. Compare Vol. I. 207 f.

622 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 grotesque, as counterpoint to a society which has failed in its exercise of tolerance and assimilation’.+

There is here a clear break. After 1500 there was no continuous teaching of Arabic at either Salamanca or Alcala. Arabic scholarship was reduced to training priests for Granada. Only a

few Moriscos glorified Islamic Spain or tried ‘to bridge the chasm’ between Christendom and Islam. Such was the prejudice they had to combat that they were obliged to falsify documents to prove their case.” The Jews of the Iberian peninsula had made major contributions not only to Arabic science but also to biblical scholarship.® The work of converso scholars on the Polyglot Bible of Alcala

carried on this tradition. The text of the manuscripts used for the Hebrew text of the Bible helped to establish ‘the best available text of the Hebrew Old Testament’ until the eighteenth century. Alfonso de Zamora (¢. 14:74-1545), who worked on the

Bible, had been trained in Zamora, a leading centre of Jewish learning. He taught at Alcala from 1512 until his death, adapt-

ing Jewish lexicographical and grammatical learning, and assisted by other conversos. But the work on the Bible, though under the patronage of Cisneros himself, was soon attacked by the orthodox, a Dominican declaring that the Polyglot was the work of Jews, heretics, and madmen. Even at Alcala Hebrew scholarship was ridiculed. In 1534 the greatest Spanish humanist of the century, Juan Luis Vives, a converso of Valencia by descent, who, since his parents had been burnt by the Inquisition, preferred to live abroad, was told by a correspondent in Alcala: ‘It is true what you say, that our fatherland is envious

and proud: add that it is barbaric. For it is certain for them that no one modestly imbued with letters can be free of heresies, errors, Judaism.”* 1G. Beaujouan, La science en Espagne aux XIV* et XV® siécles (Paris, 1967); idem,

‘L’astronomie dans la péninsule ibérique a la fin du Moyen Age’, Revista da Universidade de Coimbra, 24, (1969); Garcia Ballester, p. 13 (for further details, pp.

118-82). See also Vol. I. 98 f.; above, Part I, Ch. V, p. 186 and n. 1, and R. Garcia Carcel, Origenes de la inquisicién espafiola (Barcelona, 1976), pp. 230, 233-7. 2 J. T. Monroe, Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Leiden, 1970), pp. 5 f., 10 f.; D. Cabanelas Rodriguez, El morisco granadino Alonso del Castillo (Granada, 1965), pp. 235 f.; T. D. Kendrick, St. Fames in Spain, (London, 1960).

3 See above, Part I, Ch. ITI, p. 107, Ch. IV, p. t60 andn. 1. * B. Hall, Studies in Church History, 5 (1969), 127 ff., 131, 134-8, 144. On Vives see L. Gil, Estudios cldsicos, 11 (1967), 261; also Garcia Carcel, pp. 225-8.

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 623 RELICS OF CONVIVENCIA

A civilization cannot be altered overnight. Many relics of the old state of affairs lingered on. Untroubled by Palencia’s vili-

fication of the passion of Enrique IV and his courtiers for ‘Moorish’ dress and horsemanship, the Monarchs continued to enjoy the trappings of the conquered. An Italian visitor to Burgos in 1497 was struck by the appearance of Fernando and his nobles dressed as Moors for jousting. The inventory of Isabel’s jewels in 1504 records a ‘leather Moroccan saddle cover for a jennet’, ornamented with emeralds, pearls, and gold thread. In

the choir-stalls of Toledo cathedral Isabel appears wearing a Moorish turban. There is evidence that on 2 January 1492, when, in the culminating scene of the war with Granada, they received the surrender of the city, she, Fernando, and their suite were all dressed in Moorish brocades and silks.1

Moriscos fulfilled their traditional role of architect and craftsman in the sixteenth century, especially in Aragon, where they were still numerous. Long after their expulsion the Mude-

jar style of carpentry still appears in Andalusian churches, until the eighteenth century. Mudejar forms spread to the New

World, from New Mexico to Paraguay. They also appeared with the emigrants of 1609-14, in the mosques of Tunisia, and, in Morocco, in the houses of Rabat. With their manual skills the emigrant Spanish Muslims carried their speech. The influence of Latin forms on the Arabic spoken by these transplanted

people is still perceptible in modern Morocco, a trace of the Monarchs’ policy to compare to the preservation for centuries of fifteenth-century Castilian by colonies of exiled Sephardic Jews.?

There were many other ways in which Islamic or Jewish 1 For an earlier period see Vol. I. 168 f. C. Bernis, BRAH 144 (1959), 199-226; M. Gémez-Moreno, Al-Andalus, 8 (1943), 473-5; L. Torres Balbas, in Curso de conferencias sobre la polttica africana de los Reyes Catélicos, 2 (1951), 81-150. For the

dress of the Monarchs at the surrender of Granada see a contemporary letter edited by M®. del C. Pescador del Hoyo, Al-Andalus, 20 (1955), 286; other sources are silent on this (Carriazo, HE xvii. 1, p. 884).

2 See above, Part I, Ch. IV, p. 166; Part III, Ch. III, p. 476 and n. 1, also, for Aragon, P. Galindo y Romeo, Memorias de la Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, 1 (Saragossa, 1923), 389. J. Camén Aznar, V CHCA v. 145-63; L. Torres Balbas, Ars Hispaniae, iv (Madrid, 1949), 349 f., 245; J. Albarracin Navarro, Vestido y adorno de la mujer musulmana de Yebala (Marruecos) (Madrid, 1964).

624 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 influence continued to be felt, but they are more difficult to detect, and are only beginning to be explored. A recent study has found much evidence for the influence of Arabic sufi poetry on St. John of the Cross; this fact is more striking than the generally admitted converso descent of St. John and St. Teresa

of Avila.t It would seem worth looking at the relationship between picaresque novels and Arabic stories translated into Castilian centuries before. Was it some vestigial survival of the prestige attached to Arabic in medieval Spain which led Cervantes to attribute Arabic authorship to Don Quiyote? CONCLUSIONS

For the late doyen of Spanish scholarship, Don Ramon -Menéndez Pidal, the reign of the Catholic Monarchs was one ‘which for all Spaniards represents a happy golden age, remembered nostalgically as incomparable by one and all’. The only question that exists for Don Ramon is whether the reign was the apex of Spanish history or ‘the splendid initiation’ of its greatest age.? This nostalgic view of the age has been shared by many non-Spanish historians. Nevertheless, it may be questioned. One need not blame (or praise) the Monarchs for the involve-

ment in northern Europe which was ultimately to prove so disastrous to their Habsburg successors. Some of the less happy long-term results of the reign—the confirmation of the growing dominance of the nobility and of the Mesta within Castile—may

be attributed to them. The relative neglect of the Crown of Aragon was to sow a crop of dragon’s teeth for later centuries.

But perhaps one regrets most deeply the decision taken by Fernando and Isabel to end the convivencia of the peninsula, by expelling the Jews, persecuting the conversos, and forcing Spanish Muslims into nominal conversion. These measures, most fully

developed during the reign within Castile, were extended to Navarre, to Portugal by diplomatic pressure (there the Jews were forcibly baptized and the Mudejars expelled), and to the Crown of Aragon, including Sicily and Sardinia, either under Fernando, or, in the case of the Mudejars, under his successor. 11. Lépez-Baralt, ‘San Juan de la Cruz yla concepcién semitica del lenguaje poético’, Harvard University Ph.D. thesis (unpublished), 1974. _ 3T owe this suggestion to Professor John Boswell (Yale University). ’R. Menéndez Pidal, Los Reyes Catélicos y otros estudios (Buenos Aires, 1962). p. 42 (trans. in Spain in the fifteenth century, ed. R. Highfield (London, 1972), p. 402),

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 625 The inscription on the Monarchs’ tomb in Granada, with its selection of only two of their achievements, the destruction of the Islamic ‘sect’ and the extinction of heresy, presented, as has been said, ‘an inquisitorial version of their reign’. It ended one epoch and began another.' It closed the age symbolized by the inscription of Fernando III in Seville, drawn up soon after 1252

in Hebrew and Arabic as well as Latin (the only language employed in Granada) and Castilian.2 A new Spain was set on the path towards its full development in the seventeenth century.

By that time an Asturian scholar, discovering a document of 1399 by which a local monastery gave some neighbouring Jews

land for their cemetery, and they, in return, promised to be ‘true and loyal friends’ of the monastery, could not believe it was real and considered it to be a bad joke or a falsification, so

impossible did it seem, in the European Tibet of the later Habsburgs, that Jews and monks could ever have coexisted on

cordial terms, so totally had the past history of Spain been obscured by the power of the myth created by the Catholic Monarchs.?®

Fernando and Isabel had conquered Granada, expelled the Jews, begun to impose an official conversion on the Mudejars. In the end their efforts and those of later rulers failed to create a united Spain. The apparent religious unity of Spain attained under the Catholic Monarchs was not accompanied by a real political union. It was only in 1714, at the end of the War of Spanish Succession, that the new Bourbon dynasty endeavoured to level the regional privileges and traditions of the Crown of Aragon, which had opposed it—the other lands once under Castile, except for Navarre, had escaped from its grasp.

However, 1714 was too late to destroy the non-Castilian traditions of Spain, and especially of Catalonia. In the fifteenth

century Castilians had recognized the difference separating them from Catalans. Alfonso [V—though king of Aragon, a 1A, Castro, Los espaftoles: como llegaron a serlo (Madrid, 1965), p. 102; the inscrip-

tion is quoted above, p. 618, n. 2. 2 Castro, La realidad histérica de Espafta, 4th edn. (Mexico, 1971), pp. 38 f., reproduces and translates Fernando’s inscription. ’'The description of Spain as a western Tibet was apparently first made by Ortega y Gasset, and drawn out by Castro, Espafia en su historia (Buenos Aires, 1948), p. 639, n. 1. For the case mentioned see A. Dominguez Ortiz, Los Fudeoconversos en Espaita y América (Madrid, 1971), p. 14, n. I.

626 THE CATHOLIC MONARCHS 1474-1516 Castilian by upbringing and predilection—had told the envoys of the Catalan Corts that their ‘Usatges, privileges, pretended customs and liberties have impertinently been alleged to prevent justice’, whereas, in his newly conquered Naples, ‘where he [the king| has absolute power’, these obstacles to justice did not exist.1 Writing of the revolt of Barcelona in the 1460s against Juan II, Alfonso’s successor, the Castilian historian Valera said, ‘they tried to have liberty and ruled themselves as a commune,

without obeying the royal yoke’.? |

In the 1460s Catalonia, although divided, almost secured its independence. It would probably have done so if, at the beginning of the revolution, it had not been attacked by France as

well as by Aragon. Portugal secured its independence from Castile in the 1380s (although fully as divided as Catalonia eighty years later) because it had only one hostile neighbour— and an ally in England.® In the sixteenth century the different traditions of the peninsular kingdoms were still evident. To the Castilian maxim, well known by 1250, ‘Laws obey kings’, the Nueva compilacién of the Fueros de Aragén (1551)—whose compilers

were using thirteenth-century as well as later sources—replied: ‘In Aragon laws came before kings.”*

The national character of the institutions of the Crown of Aragon is often questioned on the ground that they were controlled—as they were—by a nexus of oligarchies, clerical, noble,

municipal. The same could be said of the English parliament. This gradually evolved; so might the institutions in question if they had not been suppressed by Philip V in 1714.5 _ As it was, the suppressed institutions were remembered. The 1M. del Treppo, Journal of European Economic History, 2 (1973), 184 f., cites this

statement. Perhaps it is a little naive to assume that Alfonso was concerned for

“justice, pure and simple’. See Part IT, Ch. Il, above. | 7

2 Valera, Memorial, 18 (p. 63). Palencia, Crénica, i. 327, speaks of ‘that innate desire of liberty’ which caused the ruin of Barcelona. See Part II, Ch. III, above,

p.$F. 271, nn. I, 2. . Soldevila, Histdria de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1963), pp. 756, 762 (citing the parallel between the two situations drawn by the Portuguese ‘King of the Catalans’, Pedro, in 1463).

4R. E. Giesey, If Not, Not (Princeton, N. J., 1968), pp. 119-25. 5 T follow here J. E. Martinez Ferrando, in Histéria dels catalans, ed. F. Soldevila,

iii (Barcelona, 1966), 1337 f. In a somewhat different sense see R. d’Abadal, HE xiv, pp. ccii f.; the remarks, contra Abadal, by C. Batlle Gallart, La crisis social » econémica de Barcelona a mediados del siglo XV, i (Barcelona, 1973), 379, do not affect

the general points made by these authors. -

THE END OF MEDIEVAL SPAIN? 627 survival of local languages guaranteed this. The cultural imperialism of Castilian had conquered the higher echelons of nonCastilian society, but it had not penetrated the countryside. Up

to 1714 the administration in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearics was carried on in Catalan. After this date, popular, mainly religious texts were still read (and sermons preached) in the native language.! There is here another parallel with Portugal. In the 1640s the collapse of the Habsburg state provided

Portugal with an opportunity to reassert its individuality. It threw off its cultural together with its political subservience to Castile.2 In the early nineteenth century the decline of the Bourbon state, unable to reassert itself after the French invasion, was followed by the literary renaissance (Renaixenga) in Catalonia,

the revival of Catalan culture, which explicitly returned to its medieval roots. The hegemony of Castile in the peninsula, first political, then cultural, was not to recover. The regained individuality of Catalonia, though so far unembodied (except for a few years in the 1930s) in political institutions, has been no less

real than that of Portugal. In recent years the Basque and Galician languages have served as the basis for claims of autonomy. No date can be set for the end of medieval Spain. The tensions created by the past are still alive. Recent events have shown that historical diversity can survive the accidents of dynastic mar-

riage and the centralizing mania of centuries of bureaucrats.3 In the present day the traditions of the crusader-conquistador and that of dialogue are still alive. The Civil War of 1936-9 was seen by the winning side as ‘the crusade of Spain’. But the contractual (pactista) strain in Spanish thought, strong in the Middle Ages,

not only in the Crown of Aragon and Navarre but in Castile, has also continued to exist. One hopes that the policies of a new generation will turn, in the phrase of Julian Marfas, to ‘a scrupulous respect for reality’, that options often exercised by Spaniards

in the past will revive, that hegemony will be again replaced by diversity, conflict by convivencia, and that the ‘catholic 1 The complete prohibition of the use of Catalan for official or teaching purposes did not come until 1768. See P. Voltes Bou, CHEC 16 (1977), 55-8. * Ricard, Etudes, pp. 22-4. § The continuity of the Aragonese concern for their fueros and privileges, down to the present, has been brought out by J. Lalinde Abadia, 7.