Aragonese King Research Articles

Арагонская летучая мышь и другие истории про сеньеру

The article uses data from sigillography, numismatics and pictorial sources to analyze the composition of the coat of arms of the Autonomous Community of Aragon, known since 1499. The legends associated with it are considered. This is the legend about the origin of the red and gold pillars of Aragon, the appearance of the red cross of the Sobrarbe tree, the legend about the cross in the dream of Inigo Arista on the eve of the battle of Arajuest, the legend about the Alco-rass cross of St. George with the four heads of the Moors. The author notes that the dragon in the crest of the Aragonese kings appeared under Pedro IV, and apparently is a vowel version of his knightly name Pedrodragon. The term «señera» in Aragon was applied exclusively to the royal coat of arms. The transformation of the dragon into a bat occurred in con-nection with the fading of the medieval meaning of this visual image.

Frederick III of Aragon (1296–1337)

Frederick III of Aragon, King of Sicily (1296–1337). Frederick III of Aragon was the third king of the Aragonese dynasty on the throne of Sicily. He ruled from 1296 to 1337 and he was the only Aragonese king of Sicily who made a significant use of his image. In particular, we have four official (namely, commissioned directly by him or his entourage) representations of him: the royal seal, the billon silver denaro coin, the lost mosaic from the Church of Santa Maria della Valle (known as Badiazza) near Messina, and the mosaic in the Cathedral of Messina.

Retorno a la obediencia de Juan I: la reinstauración de las décimas pontificias (1387-1393)

En 1387, el papa aviñonense Clemente VII promulgó tres décimas pontificias en la Corona de Aragón que debían servir para sufragar los gastos que ocasionaban las revueltas en Cerdeña. Parte de la colecta se destinó al rey aragonés Juan I que acaba de acceder al trono tras la muerte de su padre. Se desmarcaba así de su predecesor, quien se había incautado durante nueve años de las rentas de la Cámara Apostólica. En este artículo se estudia el retorno a la obediencia de Juan I y la reinstauración progresiva del aparato fiscal y financiero pontificio en la Corona de Aragón a través de la recaudación y gestión del tributo de la décima papal. Pope Clement VII of Avignon promulgated in 1387 three papal tithes in the Crown of Aragon in order to support the expenses caused by the riots in Sardinia. Part of the takings were destined to the Aragonese King John I, who had just acceded to the throne. With this action, King John I dissociated himself from the previous king – his father, who had appropriated the income of the Apostolic Chamber for nine years. This article studies the return of John I to the obedience, the progressive reestablishment of the pontifical fiscal system and the financial structure in the Crown of Aragon through the collection and management of the tribute taken by the papal tithes.

The Catalans in Sardinia and the transformation of Sardinians into a political minority in the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries

ABSTRACTThis article outlines relations between the Catalan-Aragonese and the Sardinians, between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, encompassing the integration of Sardinia first into the Crown of Aragon and then into the Crown of Spain. There was a political minority in the Giudicato of Arborea, a polity that was the last institutional heir to the ancient Arconate/Giudicato of Sardinia. This group was probably part of the oligarchy of the Giudicato; from the 1380s to the 1410s, it tried to overthrow the government of the Bas Serra dynasty and return to the allegiance of the kings of Aragon. It has been argued that the population of Arborea supported the policy of war against the Aragonese kings led by the judges of Arborea until the disappearance of the Giudicato. The political and social dynamics within Arborea and between the Giudicato and the Aragonese kings demonstrate the role of the discourse of the political minority.

Farene dui: The separation of the Jewish and Christian universitates in fifteenth-century Apulia

This study aims to make a contribution to the understanding of municipal belonging and Jewish–Christian relations in Renaissance Italy through the analysis of charters granted by the Aragonese kings of Naples to the cities and the Jewish communities of Apulia. During the fifteenth century the Jewish and Christian communities of the Kingdom of Naples were neither administratively nor jurisdictionally independent from one another. It was through political action that the Jewish communities attempted and succeeded in loosening the ties with the municipal communities, accentuating the gap between two religiously distinct groups. This study suggests that the administrative and jurisdictional separation of the Jewish community from the Christian universitas was not sought by municipal governments: it constituted, rather, the ultimate political goal of the Jewish communal leaders.

Jews in the Piazza: Jewish Self-government in the Fifteenth-century Kingdom of Naples

This study intends to make a contribution to the literature on Jewish autonomy in the Late Middle Ages by analyzing Jewish political life in the Kingdom of Naples in the fifteenth century. Contrary to Italian and European scholarship which has interpreted Jewry policy in the Kingdom of Naples in the fifteenth century as a direct emanation of the ‘good heart’ of the Aragonese kings, I argue that Jewish charters must be considered the product of Jewish agency. I suggest that the Jewish ruling elites, not the king nor the municipal governmets sought the administrative and juridical separation of the iudece (Jewish Communities) from the municipal governement of southern cities. Considering that Jewish political action, and the administration of the iudeca mirrored that of cities, I argue that Jewish Communities fit perfectly into the Aragonese administrative puzzle.

Un ejemplar medieval del Fuero de Belorado (Burgos)

The marriage of Alfonso I The Fighting with Urraca became a civil war. The Aragonese king always took the Camino de Santiago as a way to penetrate in Castile. Belorado is situated at its beginning and in a gorge, and it was fortified by the King. After the divorce, the King favored the villa with a charter granted in 1116, meant to attract the neighboring populations. It conceded municipal autonomy and set a market day and a fair, which was to be one of the oldest in Spain. The issue we publish here corresponds to a scroll of the late Middle Ages and its text is somewhat different to the ones published so far.

Drei Fragmente von arabischen Staatsbriefen (14. Jh) im Archivo de la Corona de Aragón/Barcelona

Abstract:Arabic letters from the Maghrib and the Andalus show a peculiar, tripartite layout that does not conform to Arabic letter layouts known from the mashriq. The edition of three fragments of diplomatic letters from Naṣrid Granada and Ḥafṣid Bougie to Aragonese kings, now preserved in the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón/Barcelona, serves as starting point for a detailed analysis of this hitherto insufficiently researched aspect of letter writing. By a comparison with contemporaneous diplomatic letters of Mamlūk sultans to the Aragonese kings, exemplary layouts of Andalusī-Maghribī, Ifrīqīyan and Egyptian diplomatic letters in the early thirteenth century can be described. By considering older Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic letters it may be suggested that they all stem from the same origins. The extensive differences between Western and Eastern layouts prove different ideal conceptions of diplomacy and relation with foreign rulers in these regions.

The Last Almohads: Universal Sovereignty between North Africa and the Crown of Aragon

Abstract Grounded in Romance, Latin, and Arabic archival sources, this article traces the journey of the last Almohad princes, the sons of the caliph Abū Dabbūs, from North Africa into the realms of the Crown of Aragon and back to North Africa again. It aims not only to repair two halves of a curious and little known history but also argues that the disciplinary boundaries that have divided the study of Iberia and North Africa have had enduring consequences on the interpretation of the relationship between these regions. From the Crown of Aragon’s alliance with Abū Zayd, the last Almohad governor of Valencia, to its attempt to restore the sons of Abū Dabbūs to the throne in North Africa, this essay argues that the Aragonese kings asserted their aspirations to imperial authority not against but rather over and through the legacy of Almohads. An appendix includes a new edition of an extraordinary bilingual charter from the Archives of the Crown of Aragon (ACA) in Barcelona.

Authoring the past: history, autobiography, and politics in medieval Catalonia

Authoring the Past surveys medieval Catalan historiography, shedding light on the emergence and evolution of historical writing and autobiography in the Middle Ages, on questions of authority and authorship, and on the links between history and politics during the period. Aurell examines texts from the late twelfth to the late fourteenth centuries - including the Latin Gesta comitum Barcinonensium, and four texts in medieval Catalan: Jaume I's Llibre dels fets, the Cronica of Bernat Desclot, the Cronica of Ramon Muntaner, and the Cronica of Pere el Cerimonios - and outlines the different motivations for the writing of each. For Aurell, these chronicles are not mere archaeological artifacts but rather documents that speak to their writers' specific contemporary social and political purposes. He argues that these Catalonian counts and Aragonese kings were attempting to use their role as authors to legitimize their monarchical status, their growing political and economic power, and their aggressive expansionist policies in the Mediterranean. By analyzing these texts alongside one another, Aurell demonstrates the shifting contexts in which chronicles were conceived, written, and read throughout the Middle Ages. The first study of its kind to make medieval Catalan writings available to English-speaking audiences, Authoring the Past will be of interest to scholars of comparative literature, students of Hispanic and Romance medieval studies, and medievalists who study the chronicle tradition in other languages.

Considerazioni sulla presenza dei modelli classici nella narrazione storica di Bartolomeo Facio

Facio's work, entitled Rerum gestarum Alphonsi regis libri decem, mainly describes the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples by the Aragonese king Alphonso the Magnanimous. However, the historical events are not only narrated on the basis of contemporary documents, but they are also shaped according to the various patterns provided by classical authors. Thus, in Alphonso's speech to the troops we can find a direct quotation of Cicero, or in Facio's preface there is a blend of arguments taken from Livy's praefatio and Cicero's well-known opinion on Caesar's style. Finally, in the episode on the siege of Gerba and the return of the fleet to Trapani, Facio depicts Alphonso's Tunisian enemies as if they were old Carthaginians, whilst the forced stop of the Aragonese fleet in Trapani allows the historian to establish a wisely disguised comparison with Aeneas' stop at Trapani/Drepanum in the 5th book of the Aeneid.

The Defense of the Crown of Aragon during the War of the Two Pedros (1356-1366)

This article focuses on the general strategy of defense developed by the Aragonese king Pere III during the War of the Two Pedros (1356–66) between the Crown of Aragon and Castile, headed by Pedro I "the Cruel." After eight years of fiscal creativity and defensive luck, Pere retained most of his territory but had lost some sovereignty to his parliaments. He then went on the offensive but never effectively defeated Pedro; this was achieved by his ally Enrique de Trastámara, Pedro's stepbrother. What the war did accomplish, however, was the establishment of administrative and military forces that would ultimately lead toward a Spanish statehood in the fifteenth century.

Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena 1423-1424 (review)

Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena 1423-1424. By Walter Brandmuller. [Konziliengeschichte, Reihe A: Darstellungen.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh. 2002. Pp.xxiv,371.euro50,20.) According to the decree Frequens of the Council of Constance, an ecumenical council was to be convoked by the pope five years following the end of Constance. Thus Pope Martin V in due time summoned a council to meet at Pavia, where a synod was inaugurated April 23, 1423. An outbreak of plague forced the sparsely-attended Council to move to Siena, where it lasted from july until its dissolution in March, 1424. Most of these months were filled with disputes over administrative matters, as well as divisions among the various nations; and the ambivalence of Pope Martin and his ultimate decision to remain away from the council made it difficult to get anything done. Despite the issuance of decrees on a number of issues, little in the way of reform was accomplished. Since its appearance over thirty years ago, students of medieval conciliarism have been indebted to Walter Brandmuller's monograph on the council. In that first edition, Dr. Brandmuller greatly augmented our knowledge of the Council by drawing upon many hitherto neglected manuscript and archival sources, most notably the writings of the envoy to the council of King Alfonso V of Aragon. Based upon this source and others, Brandmuller portrayed the Council as being at the center of complex maneuvering between the Aragonese king and his claims to the Kingdom of Naples, on the one hand, and Pope Martin V and his allies on the other. Although he made extensive use of the Dominican John of Ragusa's treatment of the Council, Brandmuller cautioned that John's interpretations of what happened at Pavia-Siena, particularly his judgments of the motivations behind the actions of Pope Martin V,must be read with extreme caution as a product of John's radical conciliarist perspective years later at the Council of Basel. Dr. Brandmuller not only offered the most extensive treatment of the Council to date, but provided a follow-up volume of previously unedited sources. While noting in his review that As a diplomatic history of the council his book is unsurpassed and it is not likely to be replaced {Catholic Historical Review, LVII [October, 1971], 501), Professor Brian Tierney and other reviewers questioned the author's emphasis on Pope Martin Vs lack of culpability for the council's failure. This new edition of Brandmuller's work is an expansion of his original volume in the light of three decades of research by himself and others. …

Cariteo's “Aragonia”: The Language of Power at the Aragonese Court

The Catalan poet Benedicto Gareth (ca 1450–1515), known as il Cariteo, left Barcelona to follow the Aragonese kings to their court in Naples. With his poetry, he highly contributed in erecting a glorious monument in celebrating the powerful dynasty in Italy. Cariteo, one of the most erudite humanists of the Accademia Pontaniana, chose to write in vernacular, rather than Latin or Catalan, in order to follow the example of other great Italian poets, such as Petrarch, and most of all, in order to create a bond with Italians in and outside the kingdom of Naples, thereby strengthening the Aragonese claims to its ruling. Cariteo's political poems in the Endimione, and their powerful remarks about his kings constitute an extraordinary diplomatic and poetic propaganda for the Aragonese regime, and intersect with its major historical events.

El castillo de Penna Cadiella en la sierra de Benicadell

In this article we try to locate the place where the castle of Penna Cadiella, mentioned in the Poem of Mio Cid could had been built. To this we reintroduce the hypothesis expressed in its time by P. Guichard regarding the castle's location on top of the Benicadell range of mountains (Valencia-Alicante) and we provide new documentary and archaeological data. Likewise, we analyse the 371st chapter of Jaime I´s Cronica in which the battle fought for the possession of the above-mentioned castle by the troops of the Aragonese king against al-Azraq in the thirteenth century is narrated.

K‐ras mutation in the tumour of King Ferrante I of Aragon (1431–1494) and environmental mutagens at the Aragonese court of Naples

The autopsy of the mummy of Ferrante I of Aragon, King of Naples (1431–1494) revealed an adenocarcinoma extensively infiltrating the muscles of the small pelvis. A molecular study of neoplastic tissue observed a typical mutation of the K-ras gene codon 12: the normal sequence GGT (glycine) was altered into GAT (aspartic acid). The recorded genetic change represents the most frequent mutation of the K-ras gene in sporadic colorectal cancer and is characteristic of the effects of alkylating agents. Recent studies have focused the importance of some alkylating agents, such as the endogenous N-nitroso compounds (NOC). Increased intake of red meat, such as beef, lamb or pork, induces a significant threefold increase of faecal NOC levels, with a range of exposure in faeces similar to that from tobacco-specific NOC in cigarette smoke. The study of alimentary regimens of the Italian Renaissance courts, and in particular of the Aragonese court of Naples, produced evidence of very high red meat consumption, attested also by the palaeonutritional data. Therefore, the alimentary ‘environment’ of the Neapolitan court of the 15th century, with the abundance of natural endogenous alkylating agents, can well explain the K-ras mutation causing the tumour that killed the Aragonese king over five centuries ago. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

K-ras mutation in the tumour of King Ferrante I of Aragon (1431-1494) and environmental mutagens at the Aragonese court of Naples

The autopsy of the mummy of Ferrante I of Aragon, King of Naples (1431–1494) revealed an adenocarcinoma extensively infiltrating the muscles of the small pelvis. A molecular study of neoplastic tissue observed a typical mutation of the K-ras gene codon 12: the normal sequence GGT (glycine) was altered into GAT (aspartic acid). The recorded genetic change represents the most frequent mutation of the K-ras gene in sporadic colorectal cancer and is characteristic of the effects of alkylating agents. Recent studies have focused the importance of some alkylating agents, such as the endogenous N-nitroso compounds (NOC). Increased intake of red meat, such as beef, lamb or pork, induces a significant threefold increase of faecal NOC levels, with a range of exposure in faeces similar to that from tobacco-specific NOC in cigarette smoke. The study of alimentary regimens of the Italian Renaissance courts, and in particular of the Aragonese court of Naples, produced evidence of very high red meat consumption, attested also by the palaeonutritional data. Therefore, the alimentary ‘environment’ of the Neapolitan court of the 15th century, with the abundance of natural endogenous alkylating agents, can well explain the K-ras mutation causing the tumour that killed the Aragonese king over five centuries ago. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Acerca del Quinto Templario. La Orden del Temple y los condes de Barcelona en la conquista de al-Andalus

In November 1143, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, and the Order of the knights Templar signed an agreement to solve the dispute caused by the will of the Aragonese king Alfonso the Battler. In one of his arrangements, the Count promised the Order the fifth of future conquests. Historians have considered it as the fifth part of the lands. This article suggests a different interpretation: the fifth is not related to any territory distribution but to a revenues one which would be collected in all the al-Andalus regions to be conquered by the Count and the Templars from then on. This seems to have taken place in Tortosa and Lleida where the Order started very quickly to acquire important domain, although no documents about land grants were written during the first conquests after the above mentioned agreement. Nevertheless, the fifth coult eventually adopt a territorial approach and in such a case, it was registered, as it happened in the Ribera d'Ebre. The intervention in the colonization by the Order could be different according to the way of receiving the fifth.

New light on musical aspects of the troubadour revival in Spain

The revival of the poetic art of the troubadours in eastern Spain from the latter part of the fourteenth century has been well documented. At this time, and through most of the fifteenth century, poet-courtiers at the royal courts of Aragon and Castile drew inspiration from the troubadours of the earlier centuries, many of whom had been active in the Spanish kingdoms. The historiographical tradition for this literary phenomenon begins with Gerónimo Zurita, the great chronicler of the Aragonese kings. In his Annies de la Corona de Aragón (1562–8), he discusses this renewed interest in the ‘Gay Science’ at the Aragonese royal court of Joan I (1387–96), and relates how letters came to prevail over arms at that time as the primary concern of the courtier:

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS FROM THE LIBRARY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VALENCIA, SPAIN

In 1442 the Aragonese King Alfonso settled his court in Naples, which remained a part of Spain until the eighteenth century. Here he assembled an extensive library, including the work of many contemporary illuminators and miniature painters. A large part of this library is now housed in Valencia, where it was transferred in the sixteenth century. These works are a potential source of information regarding style, pigments and artists’ techniques. Exceptionally complete records of bills, receipts and correspondence of the royal court exist, including the payments made to illuminators, allowing reasonably secure stylistic attributions to be made. Analyses of 98 pigment samples from 11 different books attributed to Rabicano and his followers have been undertaken and the results compared. The pigments were studied by X-ray fluorescence elemental analyses in the SEM, polarizing microscopy, X-ray diffraction and FTIR microscopy and microchemistry.