Thomas Devaney, “Redefining Nobility in Fifteenth-Century Castile,” in Prowess, Piety, and Public Order: Studies in Honor of Richard W. Kaeuper, ed. Daniel Franke and Craig Nakashian (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 120-39. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Imago temporis: Medium Aevum, 2023
In medieval Castile, language and propaganda were key aspects of political disputes. Some chroniclers and poets contributed to legitimisation and delegitimisation processes by representing both sides in their works. This paper presents a comparative view of the discursive strategies used to discredit the nobles who questioned whether Henry IV of Castile and, later, his successor, Isabella I, were rightful monarchs. The tactics of two chroniclers in particular will be examined, both of whom were solid defenders of the royal authority: Diego Enríquez del Castillo and Fernando de Pulgar. Their texts, as with other coetaneous chronicles, have never been compared in depth from the perspective suggested above; as such, an analysis could offer some interesting conclusions on the matter. Corral Sánchez, Nuria. «The Delegitimisation of Rebel Nobles around the War of the Castilian Succession: Discursive Strategies in Enríquez del Castillo’s and Pulgar’s Chronicles». Imago temporis: medium Aevum, 17, 2023, p. 105-129, https://doi.org/10.21001/itma.2023.16.05.
Embellishing the Past: Fernando del Pulgar and History at the Court of the Catholic Monarchs
Quidditas – Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 2019
Composed in the late fifteenth century, Fernando del Pulgar's Crónica de los Reyes Católicos was the official account of-and therefore one of the best sources for-some of the most significant events in late medieval Spanish history. Within his narrative, Pulgar described the marriage of Isabel and Fernando (better known today as the Catholic Monarchs), the establishment of the Spanish Inqui-sition, and the buildup to the conquest of Granada. Despite the importance of the events that he described, as well as his own role as official historian, Pulgar revealed a radical understanding of history and history writing in his personal correspondence. In particular, Pulgar claimed that it was the historian's responsibility to embellish their account of the past and to change details to make their narratives as rhetorically compelling as possible. This essay explores how Pulgar embellished his official history to support specific nobles, the converso community , and the political interests of the Catholic Monarchs. In doing so, it not only provides insight into Fernando del Pulgar and the Crónica de los Reyes Católi-cos, but it also reveals the complexity and literary sophistication of the historical narratives produced at the court of the Catholic Monarchs.
"Virtue, Virility, and History in Fifteenth-Century Castile," Speculum 88.3 (July, 2013): 721-749
""This article examines fifteenth-century Castilian attempts to enlist Romans and Visigoths as part of a usable past. Focusing on authors writing during and about the reign of Enrique IV, I argue that ambivalent visions of Romans as exemplars of virtue but also brutal, effeminate invaders paralleled attitudes regarding the Muslims of Granada. This analogy had multiple purposes. It served as a means to judge contemporary figures but also permitted the articulation of a broad framework of Castilian history. By rejecting both Romans and Muslims as mere interlopers in Iberia, Castilian thinkers contended that the only way to successfully complete the project of reconquest was to expunge all foreign cultural influences from Christian society, thus returning to the masculine, ascetic ideals of the pre-Roman Hispani and the Visigoths. By understanding how notions of chivalry, Christian-Muslim relations, and Castilian identity were forged through and against an imagined past, we can gain greater insight into attempts, both during and after the fifteenth century, to reconcile Spain’s complex past with notions of a timeless national character.
Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1414, ed. David Wallace (Oxford: OUP), 2016
the fifteenth are not regarded by literary historians as one of the high points of Castilian literature. And yet, by shifting the conventional focus of literary histories away from authors and texts, by incorporating the literary production of Jews and Muslims writing in Hebrew and aljamiado, and by thinking about the period in terms of literary relationships-questions of textual transmission, reconfigured literary traditions, new relationships between writers and audiences, and between Castile and other cultures, near and far-then these dates acquire a singular interest. For this period lay the foundations for the very idea of Castilian literature, composed for a lay audience that was increasingly literate and increasingly aware of the cultural capital of the Castilian vernacular with its potential to reshape individual and collective identities, and to do this in such a way as to foreground how identities are a product of one´s place in time and space. These literary changes are inseparable from the larger political and cultural shifts of the period. The reign of the Islamophile Pedro I (1350-1370) ended with his murder by his half brother Enrique de Trastámara, with the establishment of the Trastamaran dynasty the political and cultural landscape of Castile was transformed. The civil wars that ushered in the new dynasty, and the political struggles that shaped almost the entire fifteenth century, placed Castile within a bewildering spectrum of rivalries and alliances with neighbouring Christian and Islamic states (Portugal, Aragon, Navarre and Nasrid Granada), as well as with France and England (John of Gaunt's dynastic aspirations being perhaps the best known example). It is precisely on this spectrum of relationships that Castile defined itself as such. Though never reducible to anything like a homogenous national culture, in both the literary and political domains we see symptoms on the part of the Castilian elites to craft an identity in and through real or imagined relationships with their own past and a variety of cultural practices and traditions. In this respect, one might say that for Castile a more eloquent terminus ad quem would be the Council of Basle (1432), where the fisticuffs over seating plans inspired the towering figure of Alonso de Cartagena (converso, diplomat, theologian, translator, and future Bishop of Burgos) to pen his discourse on the European preeminence of the Castilian state.
The “destroyer of the realm:” Castilian chronicles and the de-legitimation of Juan Pacheco (d. 1474)
Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2022
During the fifteenth century, Castilian nobles were subject to criticism in chronicles and other literary texts. Titled nobles, especially those who were closest to the royal court, were particularly hard-hit by these discourses. Some of these aristocrats stand out for the intensity of the diatribes suffered, especially Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, whose political influence would, to a large extent, shape political relations in Castile in the second half of the fifteenth century. The time is ripe for a reassessment of the public image of this figure from a new perspective on medieval political discourses and criticism. The aim of this study, therefore, is to analyse the delegitimising strategies deployed around his figure, in relation to both his political role in the kingdom at large and his local influence in various cities and regions.
International medieval research, 2022
This paper investigates the engagement of the bishops of the Kingdom of Castile with the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and the ways in which they encountered the events and legislation of the Council. It offers a new synthesis of the available data and considers the ways in which the Castilian experience of the Fourth Lateran Council can be measured against its contemporaries. By examining its discourse in contrast to local lived realities, scholarly study can better understand the ways in which conciliar acta were a point of discourse for local clerics, rather than a normative standard against which their actions would be judged.