Catholic Monarchs Research Articles

Una lectura discursiva de La Dorotea desde la tradición celestinesca

Este artículo propone una comparación entre La Celestina y La Dorotea en función de sus particularidades discursivas. A partir del reinado de los Reyes Católicos se produjeron una serie de innovaciones literarias que modelaron una línea creativa con proyección hasta el Siglo de Oro: la configuración de un autor autoconsciente que se narra a sí mismo, la desaparición de reglas tradicionales de estilo para la construcción de personajes-tipo, el empleo innovador de un “estilo copioso” en el que proliferan y se entrelazan vocablos de diferentes etimologías y registros.

Evolución del hecho religioso en el marco del constitucionalismo español 1812-1978

Las relaciones entre la Iglesia y el Estado han estado vinculadas a los avatares de la historia de España y por los avatares que ha pasado la sociedad española, en las distintas épocas, desde constitucionalismo español, especialmente desde los siglos XIX al XXI. No hay que olvidar que la esencialidad de lo que consideramos hoy nación española está estrechamente vinculada a la creencia y pertenencia a la Iglesia católica desde tiempo inmemorial, incluso durante la dominación árabe, y que se concretará en el reinado de los Reyes Católicos. Es notorio que las influencias cristianas y católicas arraigaron en la mentalidad del pueblo español que unió la fe con su españolidad. Han sido siete Constituciones, tres Cartas otorgadas y otras que no llegaron a promulgarse. Pero la riqueza acumulada en dichas relaciones ha sido determinante a la hora de establecer unos lazos de colaboración entre ambas entidades. _____________________________The relationships between Church and State have been linked to the vicissitudes of Spanish History and the vicissitudes of Spanish Society, through its diverse periods since the Spanish Constitutionalism, especially since the XIX century, to the XXI century. It cannot be forgotten that the essentiality of what we know as the Spanish Nation is closely linked to the believing and belonging to the Catholic Church since old times, even during the Arabic domain, materialized during the ruling of the Catholic Monarchs. It is remarkable that the Catholic and Christian influences enrooted in the mentality of the Spanish people that united faith with its Spanish identity. It has been seven Constitutions; three Granted Charter and others Charter unpublished. However, the accumulated richness in those relationships has been decisive at the moment of establishing the bow of collaboration between both entities.

Historical Titles v. Effective Occupation: Spanish Jurists on the Caroline Islands Affair (1885)

AbstractThis article analyses the arguments posed by Spanish jurists regarding the character and value in international nineteenth-century order of the titles to territories that the Spanish State inherited from the Catholic Monarchs. Focused on defending colonial interests in the Pacific, Spanish jurists insisted upon reproducing the legitimising arguments of the Conquest throughout the nineteenth century, until the German occupation of the Caroline Islands, expressly supported by the agreements reached at the Berlin Conference, forced them to rethink the foundations of their argument. The conflict surrounding the Caroline Islands was the first example of confrontation between articles 33 and 34 of the Act of Berlin and historical titles.

Del reformador activo (Cisneros) al reformador contemplativo (Vitoria)

La apuesta por la reforma de la Iglesia, de sus jerarquías y órdenes es una tarea que en la península Ibérica va ganando adeptos desde el siglo XV, y a la que se entregan con entusiasmo tanto los Reyes Católicos como muchos religiosos. Dentro de estos, el cardenal Cisneros y Francisco de Vitoria representan dos formas de vivir y apoyar esa reforma y de difundir sus valores: más práctica, centrada en el ámbito hispano y apoyada en recursos políticos la del franciscano, y más teórica, universalista y fundada en principios morales la del dominico.

Tess Knighton (ed.): "Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs", Brill’s Companions to the Musical Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, vol. 1, Leiden, Brill, 2016

Tess Knighton (ed.): "Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs", Brill’s Companions to the Musical Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, vol. 1, Leiden, Brill, 2016

Collision of Royal Law and local fueros in the process of the Spanish state formation in XVI century on the example of the Antonio Perez case

In this article, the Author uses the concrete case of Antonio Perez, the ex-secretary of the king Philip II of Spain, to demonstrate the course of the Spanish state formation and the integration of the Law and State with its problems and contradictions. The object of this study is to research the mentioned process in theory and in reality, because they are different. In theory, the process of the State formation comes to its end in the epoch of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella governing. Later, in the epoch of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Spain was the Empire yet. However, in the epoch of Philip II the unity and integrity of the new sate are in danger, because the case of Antonio Peres demonstrates that customary law as fueros, privileges and time-honoured traditions are able to survive the political and legal processes.

La Primera parte de las Crónicas de España de Lorenzo de Padilla: versiones y manuscritos

Lorenzo de Padilla, Arcediano de Ronda, redacta entre 1538 y 1569 una Crónica de España en cuatro partes de cinco libros cada una, la cual narra los hechos de la península ibérica hasta los tiempos de los Reyes Católicos. De esta obra solo se conoce la primera parte —en cuatro versiones distintas— y la segunda, recientemente descubierta. El presente trabajo se encarga de analizar las relaciones que las diversas versiones de la primera parte mantienen entre sí, al tiempo que incorpora al panorama conocido los datos que recientes investigaciones han aportado a la obra muy poco estudiada de uno de los cronistas menos renombrados del siglo XVI en España.

Nobleza media, clientelismo y violencia en la ciudad bajomedieval: los Sarmiento, Burgos y el perdón real de 1479

El perdón real de 1479 ha sido evaluado por la historiografía como un episodio más a sumar en lo que constituye ya un lugar común aceptado por todos los autores: la completa pacificación del reino culminada en 1480 por los Reyes Católicos. Sin poner en duda, lo que considero una evidencia incuestionable, la pacificación del reino, el objetivo del presente trabajo es aprovechar la detallada relación que proporcionan los libros de actas burgaleses para analizar el alcance de dicho perdón real y la reacción de la sociedad burgalesa ante el mismo, a fin de profundizar en el significado, consecuencias y términos de dicha pacificación que a mi entender implicó una intensificación notable del proceso de “nobilización” de las ciudades de realengo, que reforzaría el paralelismo entre centralización y señorialización, que considero fue el hilo conductor de la génesis, a finales del siglo XV, de la monarquía feudal centralizada, también llamada Estado Moderno o Monarquía hispánica.

No Land without a Lordd: Lordships, State Capacity, and Economic Development

This paper investigates the long-term consequences of delegation of governmental authority through the study of a pivotal local political institution in historical Europe: the lordship. I collect data on seigneurial jurisdictions for ancien-regime Spain and document a negative relationship between having been a seigneurial town in the 18th century and current economic development. To shed light on the causal effect, I focus on the distribution of lordships in the former Kingdom of Granada after its conquest by the Catholic Monarchs, which can be considered as conditionally random. The results confirm the negative effect of lordship found for the whole country: towns that shortly after the conquest were granted to nobles are relatively poorer today. In addition, I explore the mechanisms of persistence, with the results pointing to lower state capacity as a main explanatory factor. This finding is consistent with an interpretation of seigneurial jurisdictions as a privatization of the local government, which has historically hindered the application of central government policies and lowered the state’s infrastructural capacity in former manorial towns.

En torno a la disyuntiva décima/subsidio en Castilla y la Corona de Aragón durante la Baja Edad Media

En este artículo, llevamos a cabo una sucinta revisión diacrónica y comparativa del largo proceso que, tanto en la Corona de Aragón como en Castilla, fue discurriendo en torno a dos formas de imposición fiscal extraordinaria (décimas y subsidios), que podemos tomar como representativas de un importante trasvase de renta eclesiástica a favor de la incipiente fiscalidad estatal. Siguiendo sucesivas fases cronológicas, desde el siglo XIII hasta la época de los Reyes Católicos, intentamos ver la frecuencia con la que ambas monarquías hicieron uso de ambos tipos de prestación, con o sin autorización papal, los diferentes motivos aducidos en cada caso, así como otras cuestiones relativas al consentimiento del clero y al papel de las asambleas eclesiásticas en la gestión de esas cargas. A pesar de ciertas divergencias y de las distintas dinámicas desarrolladas en cada reino, es obvio que ambas modalidades de contribución clerical condujeron al establecimiento cada vez más regular de impuestos sobre la renta, en tanto que constitutivos de una fiscalidad sustentada en base a la tasación de los beneficios eclesiásticos. Este artículo se ha elaborado a partir de una revisión selectiva de la producción bibliográfica y de la consulta, por lo que concierne a la Corona de Aragón, de fuentes archivísticas de primera mano.

Admiration and Awe: Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography by Antonio Urquízar-Herrera

Reviewed by: Admiration and Awe: Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography by Antonio Urquízar-Herrera Katherine Van Liere Antonio Urquízar-Herrera. Admiration and Awe: Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography OXFORD UP, 2017. 305 PP. CHRISTIAN SPAIN HAS LONG BEEN AMBIVALENT about its Muslim heritage. After the 1492 defeat of the last Muslim polity on the Peninsula, two conflicting impulses could be found in Spanish Christian culture. On the one hand, an official historiography, rooted in medieval chroniclers and expanded by Renaissance humanist writers, treated the seven centuries of Muslim rule and Christian–Muslim coexistence on the Peninsula as a cultural, political, and religious aberration and rejoiced that the Catholic monarchs' victory over Muslim Granada had ended the contaminating effects of Arab and Muslim culture, especially, though not only, in religious life. Aided by the humanist tradition that celebrated and often magnified classical origins, the received narrative in Habsburg Spain told of a Roman and Christian Hispania, rudely but temporarily interrupted by the violent Arab invasion. This written history was enhanced by a host of "miraculous finds" of artificial Christian relics from the pre-Muslim era that have been much studied of late. On the other hand, a persistent tradition of maurophilia in Christian Spain kept alive positive memories of Morisco culture, albeit in circumscribed contexts. Maurophilia's best-known incarnation is the literary tradition, stretching from medieval romanceros to Cervantes and beyond, that celebrated good-hearted and chivalrous Moors; this has been studied extensively by literary scholars since Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo in the nineteenth century. Barbara Fuchs's Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain (U of Pennsylvania P, 2009) highlighted a much more tangible dimension of maurophilia: a "moorish habitus" that survived in architecture, clothing, and everyday practices such as cuisine and horsemanship. Fuchs characterized this enduring embrace of morisco culture as a largely nonliterary phenomenon and one at odds with the official stance of the Catholic Church. She contrasted the fondness for mudéjar architecture and domesticity, seen especially among the laity and the nobility, with the [End Page 179] "official histories" written by ultraorthodox Spanish clergy who she alleges wrote Muslim history and Morisco culture out of the Spanish national story altogether. Citing passages from the chronicler Hernando de Pulgar and the Jesuit historian Juan de Mariana about the ephemerality of monuments, she suggested that most historians ignored the physical vestiges of the Muslim past in favor of idealized narratives of an eternally Christian Spain. Antonio Urquízar-Herrera's Admiration and Awe demonstrates the falsity of any simplistic picture of maurophilia and maurophobia as representing different segments of the Christian Spanish population. Urquízar-Herrera's main subject is the attitudes of Spain's sixteenth-century humanist historians, many of whom were churchmen, toward the physical remains of al-Andalus. He documents exhaustively that these authors wrote a good deal about the architectural remains of al-Andalus, often professing admiration for them, as exemplified by the book's title, a comment on the great mosque of Cordoba made by Ambrosio de Morales in his Antiquities of the Cities of Spain (1575). But the attitude of these antiquarians, chorographers, and civic historians was also fraught with "contradictions and complexities" (218), which UrquízarHerrera carefully examines in his ten chapters. In part 1, Urquízar-Herrera begins, appropriately, with three chapters of medieval background, both architectural and historiographical. He highlights the prevalence of the theme of "Spain's ruination" in medieval chroniclers, which ensured that "the notion of Islamic destructiveness was a good as etched into the DNA of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historiographical thought in Spain" (35). In this near-ubiquitous paradigm, Muslims were violent conquerors who, with savagery comparable to the Visigoths before them, had vindictively destroyed buildings—perhaps even for the explicit purpose of destroying sites of historical memory. This justified the treatment of conquered Muslim palaces and mosques in one of two ways: either complete destruction as vestiges of unworthy culture that was best forgotten, or preservation as "symbolic war trophies" that could be converted to Christian use while reminding viewers of the Christian victory over Islam. Throughout...

Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs. Tess Knighton, ed. Brill’s Companions to Musical Cultures 1. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xvi + 728 pp. $275.

Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs. Tess Knighton, ed. Brill’s Companions to Musical Cultures 1. Leiden: Brill, 2017. xvi + 728 pp. $275.

Forty-fourth Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology: “Science, Technology, and Medicine between the Global and the Local,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 24–29 July 2017

Forty-fourth Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology“Science, Technology, and Medicine between the Global and the Local,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 24–29 July 2017 Francesco Gerali (bio), Marcin Krasnodębski (bio), Saara Matala (bio), and Dick Van Lente (bio) Forty-fourth Symposium of the International Committee for the History of Technology “Science, Technology, and Medicine between the Global and the Local,” Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 24–29 July 2017 The forty-fourth ICOHTEC symposium took place in Rio de Janeiro as part of the twenty-fifth International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST). Traditionally, the two organizations meet together every four years. The ICOHTEC theme this year was “Science, Technology, and Medicine between the Global and the Local.” As the society of professional historians, ICOHTEC contributed more in terms of scholarship, originality of the themes proposed, and number of sessions and participants. Fifty-one research results were presented in various papers of the following thirteen ICOHTEC panels. • History of Tourism: What Can the History of Technology Contribute? (Organizers: Stefan Poser and Per Lundin) • West–East Transfer of Technology during the Cold War (Organizers: Timo Myllyntaus and Elena Kochetkova) • Twelfth Annual Symposium of the Social History of Military Technology (Organizers: Bart Hacker and Ciro Paoletti) • Visions of Urban Mobility in the Global Age from the 1890s to the 1970s (Organizers: Eike-Christian Heine and Sławomir Łotysz) • Environmental and Energy Issues: Global and Regional, [End Page 152] Long-Term and Short-Term (Organizers: Anthony Stranges and Ana Paula Silva) • Epidemics and Technologies, Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries (Organizers: Catarina Caetano da Rosa, Anne Rasmussen, and Nils Kessel) • The Workflow of Oil: Upstream, Midstream, Downstream Technologies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Organizers: Francesco Gerali and Basil Evangelidis) • Unconventional History: Sixty Years of Science and Technology in Hydraulic Fracturing (Organizers: Francesco Gerali and Raechel Lutz) • Problems in Introducing New Energy Technology (Organizers: Timo Myllyntaus and Sławomir Łotysz) • Science, Innovations, and Patents (Organizers: Timo Myllyntaus and Sławomir Łotysz) • Politics in Constructing Infrastructure (Organizers: Timo Myllyntaus and Sławomir Łotysz) • Taking New Directions (Organizers: Timo Myllyntaus and Sławomir Łotysz) • Visions and Realities of Automation in the Twentieth Century (Organizers: Lars Bluma and Timo Myllyntaus) ICOHTEC’s travel grant committee awarded seven travel grants to scholars from Belgium, England, Germany, Romania, Scotland, South Korea, and the United States. Two awardees were first-time presenters with ICOHTEC and, following a 2016 decision by the Board of Officers, they are eligible for a one-year membership free of charge. As we do every four years, when our symposium is a part of the ICHST, ICOHTEC elected its new officers. This year we organized an electronic ballot prior to the meeting in Rio, so the new officers could swiftly take on their new duties just after the congress ends. The officers for 2017–21 are: • President—Sławomir Łotysz (Poland) • Secretary General—Stefan Poser (Germany) • Vice President—Yoel Bergman (Israel) • Treasurer—Timo Myllyntaus (Finland) • ICON Editor—Hermione Giffard (United States/Netherlands) • Newsletter Editor—Francesco Gerali (Italy/United States) In a special session ICOHTEC awarded our two annual prizes to young scholars. The Turriano ICHOHTEC book prize was awarded to Brice Cossart for his dissertation “Les artilleurs et la Monarchie Catholique: Fondements technologiques et scientifiques d’un empire transocéanique” (“The [End Page 153] Gunners and the Catholic Monarch War: Technology and Science in the Shaping of a Transoceanic Empire”), defended at the European University Institute (Florence) in 2016. The Maurice Daumas article prize was awarded to Gemma Cirac Claveras for her paper, “Factories of Satellite Data Remote Sensing and Physical Earth Sciences in France,” which was published in ICON 21 (2015): 24–50. As Cossart was present at the conference, we organized a panel to discuss his book, after an extensive comment by Dr. Patrice Bret. On Monday 24 July, ICOHTEC’s opening meetings explored several aspects of East–West technology and know-how transfer in the cold war decades. The first session, approached the theme from the point of view of a minor political entity, Finland, and one specialized industry, shipbuilding. Aaro Sahari, University of Helsinki; Timo Myllyntaus, University of Turku; and Saara Matala, Aalto University, presented...

The Reception of Galician Performances and (Re)translations of Shakespeare

This presentation will deal with the reception of performances, translations and retranslations of Shakespeare’s plays into the Galician language. As is well-known, Galician is a Romance language which historically shared a common origin with Portuguese in the Iberian Peninsula, and which had a different evolution due to political reasons, i.e. the independence of Portugal and the recentralization of Spain after a long partition with the so called Catholic monarchs. As a consequence, Galician ceased to be the language of power and culture as it was during the Middle Ages, and was spoken by peasants and the lower classes in private contexts for centuries. With the disappearance of Francoism in the 1970s, the revival of Galician and its use as a language of culture was felt as a key issue by the Galician intelligentsia and by the new autonomous government formed in 1981. In order to increase the number of speakers of the language and to give it cultural respectability, translations and performances of prominent playwrights, and particularly those by Shakespeare were considered instrumental. This article will analyse the use of Shakespeare’s plays as an instrument of gentrification of the Galician language, so that the association with Shakespeare would confer a marginalized language social respectability and prestige.

La imagen de Cristóbal Colón y el Descubrimiento de América en la ópera alemana durante el Tercer Reich

On July 13, 1933, Bavarian Radio broadcast the opera Columbus of the German composer Werner Egk. This opera was the first of three approaches to the Hispanic world of this composer, whose rise in the musical world of his country coincided with the establishment of Nazi Germany. In Columbus, Egk represented the history of Christopher Columbus from his interviews with the Catholic Monarchs until his death in misery, after his deposition of the government of the Spanish colonies in America. The libretto, written by the composer, used the negative stereotypes about Spain that existed in the German imaginary to criticize the colonialism of the time. Ironically, the opera would end up joining the musical culture of Nazi Germany.

Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs. Ed. by Tess Knighton.

Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs. Ed. by Tess Knighton.

Introduction: The Future of Memory in Spain

Memory as 'un proyecto de futuro'In La literatura en la constuccion de la ciudad democratica, Manuel Vazquez Montalban states of his theme (1998: 10), 'no aludimos estrictamente a un determinado sistema urbanistico materializado, sino a la organizacion misma de la vida y a una espectativa de historia, de proyecto de futuro'. This sense of the role of cultural production within the democratic construction of society is highly appropriate to the experience of memory in contemporary Spain, for the recent 'boom' in memory has become entangled with discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of Spanish democracy in recent years. Memory, in this sense, is closely linked to arguments over projects for the future, yet memory studies are frequently seen as focused on the past, as Ribeiro de Menezes argues in her article.Glancing backwards, this Special Issue marks not only ten years since the 2007 'Ley de Memoria Historica', as Spain's most recent memory legislation is commonly known,1 but almost two decades since the latest upsurge in memory debates. Then again, anniversaries in the recent past are easy to find. In 2017 we are 25 years from Spain's hosting of the Olympics in Barcelona, the World Exhibition in Seville, and the European Capital of Culture in Madrid. We are also 25 years from the controversial commemoration of the 'discovery' of America in 1992, an anniversary that, since it also marked the Catholic Monarchs' Edict of Expulsion against Jews, posed uncomfortable questions about exclusion within Spanish society that might be seen as the early seed of the current memory discussions. We are 35 years from the first Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol (PSOE) victory in 1982; 39 years from the approval of the 1978 Constitution; and 40 years from the Moncloa Pacts that transformed the economy at a time of crisis. Looking further back, it is 60 years since Opus Dei technocrats joined the Francoist government in 1957, heralding an earlier economic turning point. Seventy years ago witnessed the Law of Succession, which named Franco Caudillo for life, and 80 years ago saw the Barcelona 'May Days'. Finally, it is exactly a century since the 1917 crisis, with its social and constitutional upheavals. Significant dates, in short, abound, and one could begin to weave a historical narrative linking several of these dates. The question is, though, to what purpose? What might certain dates mean at any particular point in time? What is the significance, and what are the consequences, of linking them in a coherent narrative? Such concerns for the discursive construction of the past and its implications for the present are characteristic of the emerging field of Memory Studies. What is less acknowledged at times is the extent to which such a narrative is not just a reading of the past, but also a projection of the future.When, in the opening chapter of La literatura, Vazquez Montalban speaks of 'memoria historica' he is referring to history in a fairly traditional sense as an objective glance backwards, 'desprendida de cualquier posibilidad de falsificacion' (1998: 48). However, in the second chapter he moves on to speak of memory - both personal and collective - as a form of desire, designating the process of memory's reconstruction a 'propuesta de futuro' (1998: 77).2 Vazquez Montalban is discussing the so-called mid-century generation of writers (such as Blas de Otero, Gil de Biedma, Juan Goytisolo) and their response to living under a regime that had effectively abolished memory, yet his words are prophetic for the role of literature, and particularly narrative fiction, in the emergence of new memory debates in Spain since the turn of the millennium. If that mid-century generation forged a critical voice that was essential in the construction - albeit somewhat indirectly, in that they were writing under a dictatorial regime - of an oppositional vision of reality, Spain's new authors of memory have, over the course of the past two decades, articulated a series of at times combative responses to the memory horizon of the Transition, setting their works the moral task of giving voice to perspectives that were either silenced or given little credence in civic discourse. …

Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs, edited by Tess Knighton

Companion to Music in the Age of the Catholic Monarchs, edited by Tess Knighton

El cardenal Joan Llopis, política y mecenazgo al servicio de los Borja (1454-1501)

El presente trabajo analiza la actividad política y cultural del valenciano Joan Llopis, secretario de Rodrigo de Borja (futuro Alejandro VI) y uno de sus cardenales más afectos durante su pontificado. Gracias a su destreza y discreción, ocupó el oficio de la dataría convirtiéndose en uno de los principales colaboradores del papa en el gobierno de la Iglesia y sus relaciones con los Reyes Católicos, Florencia y el reino de Nápoles, sin abandonarle en los años finales de aproximación a Francia. Desde su privilegiada posición, Llopis participó en los círculos intelectuales romanos e impulsó proyectos artísticos en Perugia y la Ciudad Eterna que reflejan su sensibilidad por las corrientes culturales del Renacimiento. Aunque la acumulación de beneficios le acarrearon acusaciones de corrupción, Llopis no consolidó un patrimonio familiar, dedicando vida y ganancias a un papado al que sirvió en uno de los períodos más polémicos de su historia.

The Last Crusade in the West: Castile and the Conquest of Granada

The Last Crusade in the West: Castile and the Conquest of Granada