The Triumph of an Accursed Lineage

Kingship in Castile from Alfonso X to Alfonso XI (1252-1350)

Fernando Arias Guillén

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000287202
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Triumph of an Accursed Lineage analyses kingship in Castile between 1252 and 1350, with a particular focus on the pivotal reign of Alfonso XI (r. 1312–1350).

This century witnessed significant changes in the ways in which the Castilian monarchy constructed and represented its power in this period. The ideas and motifs used to extoll royal authority, the territorial conceptualisation of the kingdom, the role queens and the royal family played, and the interpersonal relationship between the kings and the nobility were all integral to this process. Ultimately, this book addresses how Alfonso XI, a member of an accursed lineage who rose to the throne when he was an infant, was able to end the internal turmoil which plagued Castile since the 1270s and become a paradigm of successful kingship.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval Spain, as well as those interested in the history of kingship.

1 The representation of kingship in Castile (1252–1350)

Sacred monarchy, the ethos of the Reconquista, and the legitimacy troubles of an accursed lineage

In the summer of 1332, Alfonso XI staged in two phases one of the most complex and fascinating ceremonies of the Middle Ages. According to the royal chronicle, the monarch first made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, where he was knighted by the Apostle St James. Alfonso XI then returned to the Royal Monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos, where he crowned himself king in the presence of Castile’s elite.¹

As is discussed over the course of this chapter, Alfonso XI’s coronation has been studied in considerable depth and from diverse perspectives.² Such extensive scrutiny comes as no surprise, as the ceremony offers a singular case study to analyse the representation of kingship in Castile during the first half of the fourteenth century. The complex ritual held in 1332 was used by the monarch to articulate the fundamental ideas that underpinned his authority, and, furthermore, to make a forthright response to those who disputed the legitimacy of his lineage as successors to Alfonso X.

The principal account of this ceremony is to be found in the Crónica de Alfonso XI, which was intended to extol Alfonso’s reign by focusing on recent events which eclipsed the historiographical topoi of the myths of the Visigothic past, the Arab conquest of 711, and the ancient history of Spain.³ During this period the patronage of the Castilian monarchy led to a significant number of historical works being written, which were characterised by the concern to interpret the near past and serve as ‘official’ histories of Castile. Thereby, the Alfonsine historiography, with its broad historical scope, gave way to a new type of writing which was primarily focused on the defence of the dynastic rights of Alfonso X’s ‘accursed lineage’: Sancho IV, Fernando IV, and Alfonso XI.

Alfonso XI’s knighthood and coronation provide a perfect example to examine the range of ideas deployed by the Castilian kings to exalt their royal status. However, the traditional debate about whether kingship in Castile was of a fundamentally secular or religious nature needs to be rethought within a more complex context, one that explores the convergence of a range of motifs and ideas. Therefore, an analysis is undertaken of how the ethos of the Reconquista and the chivalric ideals coexisted with an idiosyncratic yet undeniably sacral concept of the monarchy. Furthermore, it will be shown how the sacred nature of the Castilian kings was underpinned by the formulation of legal codes, ranging from the Siete Partidas (c. 1265) to the Ordenamiento de Alcalá (1348), which forged the idea of royal authority not being beholden to any other class of power.

Appropriating the past: Royal chronicles and historical writing in Castile (1252–1350)

The court of Alfonso X was defined by an impressive range of literary creation, scientific enquiry, and legal codification. The Wise King’s patronage and interests, together with its engagement with the scholarly culture of al-Andalus, led to the monarch being considered as a Renaissance prince.⁴ Given that Simon Doubleday’s study provides an insightful enquiry into Alfonso X’s diverse scholarly activities, the works he commissioned, and the range of ideas he sought to transmit over the course of his reign, it is not my intention to analyse these themes in depth. Instead, the focus of this section is devoted, first, to the works of history written under Alfonso’s patronage. Attention is then turned to how historical writing underwent significant changes in terms of its form and content during his successors’ reigns.

Gabrielle Spiegel’s seminal studies have demonstrated how the writing of chronicles in the vernacular made a major contribution to the consolidation of royal power, which became founded on the testimonies of the past by claiming a monopoly on truth.⁵ While all medieval monarchies shared an interest in commissioning works of history, this general trend encompassed a complex variety of historical writing. However, England provides a notable exception. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was begun in the ninth century and continued up until the mid-twelfth century. By contrast, the Angevin monarchs showed no interest in commissioning historical texts, although many of the monastic chronicles had a quasi-official nature.⁶ It has been speculated that England’s solid territorial unity, in contrast to the more complicated situation in France and the Iberian Peninsula, offers an explanation for this difference between England and other medieval monarchies.⁷ It has also been proposed that the assassination of Thomas Beckett (1170), and the fact that the English monarchs never forged a lasting relationship with any single religious institution, like the Capetians and the royal monastery of Saint Denis, may also explain the Angevins’ disregard for history. However, these hypotheses are yet to be convincingly demonstrated.⁸

In any case, the situation in Castile and León was wholly distinct to that of England: more than 60 extant chronicles were composed between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, and the immense majority of these were written on instructions from the king.⁹ The Castilian monarchy untiring interest in constructing historical accounts of its deeds clearly reveals a genuine concern to appropriate the past and mould it to their liking in order to influence the present. By the second half of the twelfth century, the Castilian royal chancery had become well aware of how writing, including both fictional and historical texts, provided a valuable resource for the consolidation of royal power.¹⁰ The reign of Fernando III (r. 1217–1252), in particular, represents a magnificent example of how the writing of chronicles played an immensely important role in legitimatising the monarchy.¹¹

The reign of Alfonso X was a major cultural watershed in many senses, and the writing of history was no exception. First, Castilian substituted Latin as the language of history, which signalled a clear wish that the works commissioned by the monarch were to be circulated amongst the kingdom’s elite. Furthermore, historical writing ceased to be the exclusive task of members of the Church. The two principal historical texts created by the Alfonsine scriptorium were a history of Spain and a universal history, the Estoria de Espanna and the General Estoria. In these texts, Alfonso X essentially sought to justify both his ‘overlordship’ of all the Iberian kingdoms and his claim to the imperial throne, respectively. Although neither of these works were concluded during the reign of the Wise King, they proved to be very influential in the decades that followed, especially the Estoria de Espanna. Indeed, many of the works of history written during his successors’ reigns were continuations of the Estoria de Espanna. However, there were significant developments in terms of style and ‘authorial’ intention.¹²

In this sense, it has been argued that the Crónica particular de Fernando III and the Crónica de Castilla, two distinctive continuations to the Estoria de Espanna written during the reign of Fernando IV, espoused an ‘aristocratic’ ideology, which was set against the ‘official’ discourse of the Castilian monarchy.¹³ Patricia Rochwert-Zuili has convincingly demonstrated that Queen María de Molina (c. 1259–1321) exerted a clear influence over the creation of the Crónica de Castilla, which calls into question the claim for this text being a ‘mouthpiece of the nobility’.¹⁴ Furthermore, the notion that there were two opposing visions of royal authority, one monarchical the other aristocratic, is overly simplistic. The ideals of the nobility and their deeds had already become an element of the thirteenth-century royal chronicles written in Latin. A trend which continued in the vernacular works written during following decades.¹⁵ As it will be further explored in Chapter 6, the chronicles played a didactic role; they sought to transmit values that could be shared by all the kingdom’s elite, and they tended to be composed at moments when there was a broad consensus between the king and the nobility.¹⁶ A key issue that must be emphasised is that the consolidation of royal authority did not imply a decline in the nobles’ power. Setting aside the conflicts that arose from time to time, both grew stronger in parallel. It is for this reason that the claim that there were antagonistic visions of royal authority, which were pitted against one another, is misleading. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, Juan Manuel pursued his conflict with Alfonso XI into the field of literature and history. However, he did not represent an ‘aristocratic’ voice against the Castilian monarchy; instead, he defended his own ambitions and his lineage’s prestige.

In any case, the majority of the extant works concerning history written during this period were commissioned by the monarchs themselves. Fernando Gómez Redondo has developed the concept of ‘molinismo’, which was first coined by Diego Catalán in the mid-twentieth century, to encompass the historical texts commissioned by the Castilian monarchy during the reigns of Sancho IV, Fernando IV, and Alfonso XI. The term refers to Queen María de Molina, the wife, mother, and grandmother, respectively, of these three kings; she played a fundamental role in the creation of a pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of images
• List of maps
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Notes on names, places, and terms
• Introduction
• 1. The representation of kingship in Castile (1252–1350): Sacred monarchy, the ethos of the Reconquista, and the legitimacy troubles of an accursed lineage
• 2. A kingdom comprising several realms
• 3. Royal itineration and kingship in Castile (1252–1350): The kingdom’s capitals and the absence of a dynastic mausoleum
• 4. A plural monarchy (I): Queenship and royal power in Castile (1252–1350)
• 5. A plural monarchy (II): Defining the royal family in Castile (1252–1350)
• 6. Nobles and kingship (I): The ‘conflictual cooperation’ between the ricoshombres and the king in Castile (1252–1350)
• 7. Nobles and kingship (II): The representation of the Castilian nobility in the privilegios rodados (1252–1350)
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Sources and bibliography
• Index