[19] Castilians of the fifteenth century wrote of and in a bewildering atmosphere of social and political upheaval. There was no well defined medieval tradition to serve as a guide amid the confusion of the period. Instead, Castilians embarked upon a series of innovations in every aspect of life without discarding the old patterns in any systematic way, without reconciling the conflicts that inevitably developed between old and new, and without correlating new systems with one another.⁽¹⁾ Throughout the Trastámara period, Castilian intellectuals sought new solutions to the inevitable problems of a dynasty which had acquired the throne through civil war and fratricide: they tried to define the nature of the state, to interpret its transformations during their own lifetimes, and to define its proper relationships with the papacy and the empire. The major efforts in defining Castile's relationships with the papacy and empire were postponed until the reigns of the Catholic Monarchs and of Charles V, but the task of defining, interpreting, and regularizing Castilian politics and society began immediately upon the accession of the house of Trastámara. Loyal adherents of the new dynasty embarked upon a massive propaganda campaign -- in the form of chronicles -- to clothe their revolutionary triumph in credible respectability. Ironically, the result was not one but two contradictory and increasingly incompatible definitions of Castilian monarchy and society.

The most important innovations in society and politics were made by Enrique II himself, who -- recognizing that the greatest threat to the monarchy past and future came from within the royal family itself -- [20] created a counterbalance to the king's relatives by delegating political power to two other groups, the caballeros (military professionals) and the letrados (university graduates with advanced degrees in canon or civil law). Enrique II gave large portions of the royal patrimony, the only noble titles in Castile, and the two highest military offices of the kingdom to his relatives, but he made sure that they all reverted to the crown upon the death of the holders. No members of the royal family were given high political office. The two highest political offices of the kingdom and all of the territorial governorships were given to the caballeros, who received no titles but did receive a portion of the royal patrimony and other lands, which they were required to convert into mayorazgos (perpetual trusts).⁽²⁾ Thus, the caballeros held the highest judicial (criminal law) and military powers on the territorial level. Their political influence was in turn checked by the all-pervading influence of the Audiencia, the king's own court of civil and administrative law with jurisdiction in cases involving the aristocracy, whose high offices were filled by letrados. During the fifteenth century, the caballeros and the letrados for the most part played the role Enrique II had intended for them: they provided the military and judicial resources with which the Castilian kings resisted repeated attacks from their own Trastámara relatives. Their political and social views, however, began to diverge markedly: the caballeros continued to see themselves and the monarchy as partners in a secular, aristocratic, and particularist government; the letrados developed a theory of monarchy that placed the king at the apex of a divinely ordained and immutable hierarchy of institutions administered by anonymous bureaucrats.

These two definitions of the Spanish monarchy were developed by intellectuals whose educational backgrounds and professions were so divergent that their most basic assumptions -- about the relationship between the past and the present, the nature of historical sources, the validity of universal models derived from philosophy, and the worth of man's rational and irrational natures -- were equally divergent. While the caballeros developed a set of assumptions that produced histories similar to the humanist histories of their Florentine contemporaries, the letrados developed a theoretical model based on medieval scholastic ideals. During most of the century, these two historical approaches coexisted in support of their mutual objective; but at the end of the century, changing political circumstances made the letrado approach more attractive to the Catholic Monarchs. This letrado interpretation of Spanish history swept the field so completely and for so long -- it prevails [21] to the present day -- that the very existence of the Renaissance historical tradition in fifteenth-century Castile was almost forgotten. Understanding the process by which Spanish society rejected humanist historiography is one of the keys to understanding the nature and development of the Renaissance in Trastámara Castile.

Of all the varieties of history that abounded in fifteenth-century Castile, only the Latin chronicles written by letrados have attracted the attention of literary critics. They have been analyzed by Robert B. Tate, who has shown the degree to which the official chronicles of Fernando and Isabel were derived from the Latin chronicles, which in turn were dependent upon the seminal works of don Pablo de Santa María and of his son, don Alfonso de Cartagena.⁽³⁾ Don Alfonso, his father, and his students introduced a political theory, a literary style, and a theological approach that were new to Castile, and they revived the interest in universal history and histories written in Latin which had been neglected since the thirteenth century. Except for theology, these innovations were developed to their fullest extent by don Alfonso's students -- Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, bishop of Palencia and Castile's representative to the papal court; and Alfonso de Palencia, Latin secretary and chronicler to Isabel and principal source for W. H. Prescott's still-influential History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabel the Catholic. Because these men exercised a profound influence on the literary and religious attitudes of the royal court and on the subsequent historiographical development of Castile, the importance of their innovations in the writing of Spanish history is incalculable.

The earliest formulator of the letrado theory was don Pablo de Santa María (1350-1435), bishop of Burgos and former head rabbi of Burgos. After his conversion to Christianity in 1390, don Pablo studied at the universities of Salamanca and Paris and achieved such facility in the method and substance of scholastic theory that he was privileged to argue before the popes of Avignon. In 1412, don Pablo wrote a summary of the medieval chronicles of Spain, and in 1418 he completed an extended and versified version of his summary. In this work, the "Edades del mundo," don Pablo adapted early Spanish history to Old Testament names and chronology. He retained the tradition that Hercules was the first Spanish king, but he changed the name of Geryon to Gideon, claimed that Gideon had ruled the Castilian nation rather than a province that later formed part of the Roman Empire, and treated the Carthaginian and Roman periods very briefly in order to devote more attention to the Goths and the Reconquest. This shift of emphases from classical myth [22] to Old Testament history, from the Romans to the Goths, and from Roman province to Castilian nation became one of the distinguishing characteristics of the letrado treatment of Spanish history.

Don Pablo's son, don Alfonso de Cartagena (1384-1456), also studied at Salamanca, became bishop of Burgos, and revised Spanish history. He spent much of his adult life outside Spain as a representative of the Castilian king and acquired a circle of acquaintances among Italian humanists, who seem to have had considerable respect for him.⁽⁴⁾ He had an enormous influence on Castilian historiography because he took into his household and educated a number of famous clerics who later became officials in the court of the Castilian Monarchs. His most famous work is a speech made in 1434 before the Council of Basle in which he argued that Castile's representatives should take precedence over those of England because of the greater antiquity of the Castilian monarchy (according to his father's revision of early Spanish history) and because the Castilian king's war against the infidel proved that he was second only to the emperor in obeying the divine will.⁽⁵⁾ In this speech, which he entitled the Anacephaleosis, don Alfonso was interested in demonstrating the superiority of Castile to other nations by establishing both its antiquity and even more the relation of its chronology to those of various other kingdoms. He assumed that the natural political order was a divinely ordained hierarchy and that the order of command descended from God to pope to emperor, thence to the kings in chronological order of acquiescence to the divine will.

Although don Pablo and don Alfonso were concerned with developing historical evidence and theories for the precedence of the Castilian monarchy in international affairs, the revolt against Enrique IV in 1464 led two of don Alfonso's students to concentrate on developing theories of monarchical precedence within Castile itself. Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo (1404-1470) accompanied don Alfonso to Basle and spent most of the rest of his life in Rome employed in the papal administration.⁽⁶⁾ He was the most extreme and the most voluble of the letrado theorists in expounding the majesty and supremacy of the Castilian monarchy. A collection of his writings, published in Rome in 1469 under the title Historia Hispanica, not only expounds don Pablo's views on the historical antiquity of Castile and don Alfonso's on the international superiority of the Castilian monarchy but also goes on to claim that Castile held the preponderance over Portugal, Navarre, Granada, and the rest of the peninsula in preclassical times. When Juan Pacheco's faction appealed to the pope to depose Enrique IV, Sánchez de Arévalo responded with two tracts, "De Monarchia," and "De Regno Dividendo," in which he [23] described Castile, in Tate's words, as "a unified realm under a single monarch responsible to God alone, the protector of the common weal, and defender of the faith."⁽⁷⁾ In order to meet the threat to the monarchy presented by the alliance between Pacheco and the papacy, he claimed that the papacy had no political jurisdiction over the Castilian monarchy. The neat pyramidal hierarchy with the papacy at the top, which had been the core of don Alfonso de Cartagena's theory, was converted into a pyramidal hierarchy with the king at the top, but it was still a divinely ordained and well-defined hierarchy. After 1464, this extreme monarchism became more attractive to letrado writers as Castilian political concerns shifted away from international affairs and toward internal conflicts.

The letrado theory of monarchy was ardently and eloquently espoused during the reign of Enrique IV by Alfonso de Palencia (1423-1490), who studied with don Alfonso de Cartagena and George of Trebizond and served as royal chronicler and Latin secretary to the Castilian monarchs from 1456 to 1474.⁽⁸⁾ Palencia's chapters on ancient history have been lost, but the chapters of his Decades that chronicle the reign of Enrique IV are among the most influential works in Spanish historiography. In the Decades, Palencia measures Enrique IV against Sánchez de Arévalo's theoretical monarch and finds him wanting. Palencia launches a vicious attack on the king, charging that he had not retained the royal power God had given to him exclusively but parceled it out to favorites, that he had brought the nation to civil war instead of promoting its unity, that he had made treaties favorable to the Muslims and detrimental to the Christian knights instead of carrying on the Reconquest, that his immorality and weakness had brought scorn and disgrace to Castile instead of a predominance over the rest of the peninsula. Although Palencia recognized the contradiction between his theories and reality, he blamed Enrique IV for not conforming to the theory.

Palencia's Decades was the source for the first few chapters of the Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos by Andrés Bernáldez (d. 1513?), who chronicled the period from 1490 to 1513.⁽⁹⁾ Bernáldez adopted not only Palencia's judgments of Enrique IV but also his whole theory of monarchy and its role in a divinely ordained hierarchy. To Bernáldez, the monarch was God appointed, invested, in Tate's words, "not only with a right to exercise royal power but with a duty to every member of the community and set apart with his ancestors as the guardian of the common weal."⁽¹⁰⁾ Castile was described as the heart of a unified peninsula, which it had dominated in antiquity and which it would again dominate by force of its moral and political superiority. [24] Thus the final object of the state to these writers became Hispania -- the moral, political, and geographical recuperation of Spain under the leadership of the divinely inspired and appointed Castilian monarch.

The two most influential formulators of the letrado theories, don Alfonso de Cartagena and Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, did not reside in Spain much of the time. They wrote in response to forces outside of Spain until 1464, and the theories they developed bear little relation to the realities of Spanish politics and society for three-quarters of the fifteenth century. Sánchez de Arévalo was aware of this discrepancy but tried to claim that Enrique IV really did fit the theory. Palencia also recognized the discrepancy between theory and reality and used it effectively as an accusation against Enrique. But the reign of the Catholic Monarchs seemed to eliminate the discrepancy itself. Even before the succession war ended in 1480, the Catholic Monarchs announced a program of reform and centralization which appeared to the letrado theorists as the first stage in the fulfillment of their hopes for a strong, moral monarchy and a unified Spain under the hegemony of Castile. Reality had evidently changed radically after 1480; and the extreme monarchism, which borders on messianism, in the royal chronicles written from 1480 to 1513 reflects the exuberance of theorists whose theories are suddenly made credible by contemporary events. It is especially significant that no new developments in the letrado theories of state were made during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs. With theory and reality apparently joined, there was no longer any need to adjust the theory.

The historiography of the letrados  was distinguished by a concern for order and continuity. Their interest in history was spurred by a desire to discover those characteristic institutions that could be traced back to antiquity without interruption and therefore glorified as the essence of the Spanish political structure. They studied the Roman period, not as a society peculiar to its own time and circumstance but as one part of the continuum of Spanish history; and to emphasize the permanence of the Spanish characteristics, they concentrated on reconstructing the more obscure periods before and after the Roman period. In their eagerness to find these consistencies, the letrados were uncritical of the sources for the Visigothic period and took liberties with the sources for the pre-Roman period. Their search for patterns of universality and continuity and their concern with establishing those patterns as indigenous to Spain prior to the Roman period probably represent a response to their involvement in international affairs and the international organization of the church.

[25] Even before the letrados developed their theory of the state, another group of writers, the caballeros, were writing chronicles and other prose works whose assumptions and objectives were completely different from those of the letrados. The caballero writers are more difficult to assess in terms of individual contributions to theory, partly because of the incomplete state of our own knowledge about the documents and partly because they themselves were not much concerned with theories.⁽¹¹⁾

The first and greatest of these caballero historians was Pedro López de Ayala (1332-1407) -- poet, soldier, diplomat, canciller mayor of Castile, translator of Boccaccio and Guido delle Colonne, and commentator on the book of Job. His Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla are full of details about events and personalities he knew from first-hand experience.⁽¹²⁾ He appears to have been driven to record and give immortality to all he knew and to judge motives, persons, and events with an implacable sense of right and wrong, wisdom and foolishness. With clinical precision, he describes the frailties, vices, strengths, and virtues of those whose decisions shaped his era. Underlying this attention to detail is an assumption that the events and decisions of his lifetime would be of enduring importance to Spain and that future generations would look back to this period to find explanations, causes, and insights. By carefully arranging his material, he forces his readers to make moral and political judgments by which to guide their own careers. He assumes that the future of the Castilian state depends upon the moral character and political sagacity of his readers. What he does not assume is equally significant: he is interested neither in the early history of Spain nor even in the reigns preceding his own lifetime; he proposes neither a system of hierarchies nor a theory of Castilian sovereignty as a political objective; he concerns himself with relationships not as they should be but as they are and as they seem to work best. In writing history, Pedro López de Ayala assumed that the state is made up of mutually dependent and yet precariously balanced and competing political groups. If the monarch is the ultimate authority in the state, he is the first among equals, and his duty is to maintain a balance among all parties so that no one group can tyrannize over the others.

These concepts are similar to those of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán (c. 1377-1460), whose Generaciones y semblanzas was completed about 1450.⁽¹³⁾ Guzmán was a nephew of Ayala, enjoyed a distinguished political and military career under Juan II, and retired from public life after losing favor with the king. During his retirement, he maintained a correspondence with his friend, don Alfonso de Cartagena, and with don Alfonso's brother, Alvar García de Santa María. Guzmán does not [26] seek into Spanish origins prior to Roman times, and he emphatically rejects the extreme monarchism of the letrados. In his view, the monarch is the supreme ruler of Castile by virtue of his power over the military and the church, not because of any God-given authority, and the extent to which the king exercises his powers is determined by his own abilities and the degree of cooperation he receives from the great political powers within the country. Although Guzmán assumes that the family is the basis of loyalty and action, he insists that all citizens of Castile have a direct obligation to their country that requires them to reject personal obligations and loyalties when these threaten the country as a whole. No theoretical scheme of loyalties or hierarchies can adequately guide political actions in a world where each political crisis and each participant is unique.

The last caballero chronicler of the Trastámara period was Diego de Valera (1412-1488).⁽¹⁴⁾ Valera was educated at the court of Juan II; he was knighted at the battle of Huelma by his patron, the marquis of Santillana; traveled throughout Europe as a representative of the king; and retired from the court of Enrique IV, whom he disliked. After 1482, he was appointed corregidor of Puerto de Santa María by the Catholic Monarchs; and although he was never official royal chronicler, he wrote three chronicles dedicated to Isabel. These histories utilize a variety of sources, including don Alfonso de Cartagena's Anacephaleosis and Palencia's Decades. Valera emphasizes the active role the king should take as military leader and proposes several financial measures to ease the strained treasury of the Catholic Monarchs. He describes the king as giver of justice and the nobility as military and political advisers to the king. Valera was himself fond of giving unsolicited advice to Fernando, either in letters or in speeches in the Cortes. Far from believing that the monarchs were divinely inspired, Valera thought that they were in constant need of his own worldly advice and even cautioned Fernando against overconfidence, pointing out that some of the king's military victories had been won by sheer luck and in spite of his poor judgment.⁽¹⁵⁾

Valera did not believe that the structure of the Castilian state was ordained by any divine plan. It had developed over a long period of time and in fact contained many features consciously borrowed from other governments, especially the French.⁽¹⁶⁾ His judgments of historical personages were less harsh than those of Pedro López de Ayala and more perceptive than those of Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, but he used them in the same way -- to provide moral and political examples for future generations. He assumed that men can shape their own actions [27] and they must struggle against the larger forces of history to uphold and improve society.

This assumption on the part of Valera and the other caballero writers led them to emphasize biography. Ayala included brief biographical sketches in his histories and described individuals both effecting historical change and subject to historical change. Fernán Pérez de Guzmán wrote almost all his prose works in the form, to use the words of Montaigne, of "separate lives, being concerned rather with motives than with events, more with what arises from within than with what arrives from without."⁽¹⁷⁾ Valera, his enthusiasm for recording every detail coupled with his failure to discriminate the important from the trivial, presents gossip as biography in discussing relatively unimportant persons but makes some effort to present serious biographical sketches of the most important persons.

The increasingly incompatible nature of the caballero and letrado concepts can be seen in the way the two groups regarded the two most famous accomplishments of the Catholic Monarchs -- the Reconquest of Granada and the reforms. Some of the most extreme views on both sides were expressed by Valera and Bernáldez. Bernáldez's attitude toward the Reconquest of Granada is evident throughout the Memorias, but its most striking and succinct expression is contained in his description of the monarchs' entry into the conquered kingdom:

And thus they brought this holy and laudable conquest to a glorious conclusion and saw before them what many kings and princes had wished to see: a kingdom of so many cities and towns and such a multitude of villages situated in such strong and fruitful lands, all won in the space of ten years. What could be the meaning of this but God's desire to provision it for them and put it in their hands?⁽¹⁸⁾

[28] Those who had given those taxes and donations, providing the means and resources for this very holy act of war, found that with their rewards they were richer than they had ever been before. This is understood by that which the angels said at the glorious nativity of Our Redeemer, when they sang the gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax, etc. Finding themselves rich with what had been distributed to them, good Christians and of good will and fearful of God, they correctly discerned that all the good things the monarchs had done they owed to God: because God guides the heart of the good king and does not enable the king to make war by himself nor with his own, but with the help of his vassals and their goods.⁽²¹⁾

Bernáldez's pious exultations stand in sharp contrast to Valera's caballero attitude toward the Reconquest. Valera is lavish in his praise not only of Fernando, "our most victorious king in this holy and great war [who exerted] superhuman efforts" and placed himself in grave dangers during the campaign, but also of the other great heroes. The highest praise he offers is couched in terms of chivalry: "They did that which the Catholic faith and nobility required them to do."⁽²²⁾ The only aspects of nature he considers noteworthy are topography as military terrain -- which he describes in terse and yet evocative detail -- and human nature, which leads men to make military blunders even in a crusade.⁽²³⁾ He accepts the nobility's financial support of the war as a matter of course and advises the king of many practical ways of raising money, even suggesting that when everything else fails "it would not be unseemly to eat out of clay vessels, and melt down the silver vessels, and sell the jewels, and take the silver from monasteries and churches, and even selling offices would be a holy work."⁽²⁴⁾ He advises Fernando to accept the queen's intervention in war councils, since "she was not fighting less with her donations and prayers than he was with his lance."⁽²⁵⁾ Valera thought that war was won not by God's will but by the most strenuous exertions of men who had to worry about money and natural cul-de-sacs [29] and foolish commanders. Valera referred to the Muslims not only as enemies of the faith but also as believers in God and as admirable knights, noting that the Muslims were "willing to die in order to defend their honor and property and liberty" and exhorting the Christian soldiers to do the same.⁽²⁶⁾

He describes Reconquest battles in the same tone he uses to describe battles of the civil wars, and his descriptions lack the apocalyptic overtones that suffuse Bernáldez's battle scenes. Valera moves calmly from the battlefield to the banquet hall. In one chapter, for example, he presents in gory detail the disastrous ambush at the Ajarquía and the survivors' return to the royal camp -- where the seating arrangements, table service, and ladies' clothing are all discussed with the same seriousness.⁽²⁷⁾ To Valera, knighthood itself was a religious vocation; and anything the knight did for his own honor, according to chivalric standards and with success, was a glory to God and to the king. It is in this limited sense that Valera saw religious significance in the Reconquest. He referred to it as a holy war because the papacy had granted a bull of crusade for it,⁽²⁸⁾ but his description of the Reconquest was couched in secular terms -- praising the king for his courage and vigor, criticizing him for poor military judgment, attributing success or failure to physical circumstances and human abilities, recognizing the Muslims as worthy enemies in battles, and suggesting specific methods of raising funds.

Bernáldez and Valera both wrote of the conquest of Granada, but they saw and described two different wars. Bernáldez saw God and His chosen agents, the Catholic Monarchs, defeating His enemies and entering into the Promised Land. Valera saw a secular war of territorial conquest fought in the pursuit of honor, property, and liberty by the king and his fellow knights.

Despite the caballeros' presentation of history as the judgment of posterity on the deeds and persons of the past and their clear desire to inspire virtuous men to wise action in the future, they never assume that because man can shape his own actions and judge those of the past he can therefore shape his fate; nor do they conclude that because man must make the effort to maintain and improve society he can therefore control history. They assume that a larger force -- Fortuna, inexplicable and unpredictable -- ultimately decides man's fate and the course of history, although "it is a virtue to struggle against fortune."⁽²⁹⁾ They do not confuse Fortuna with God, and they do not consider worldly success or failure to be God's judgment on individuals or causes. Bernáldez's statement that "Our Lord shows His justice in battles more than in any [30] other thing, and thus He did here, so that the greatness of the victory showed the justice of the cause," would be completely foreign to the caballeros.⁽³⁰⁾ Their pessimism about the larger issues in history gives them the appearance of stoics and sets them distinctively apart from the letrados' messianic optimism about achieving Hispania through moral regeneration from the top.

This difference in perceptions is evident in the two groups' attitudes toward specific reforms. Bernáldez regards the changes made by the Catholic Monarchs as the fulfillment of a divine plan and accepts reports of their success without question. He reports with satisfaction the conversion of the natives of the Canary Islands, the assumption of the masterships of the military orders by Fernando, the increasing dependence of Isabel on the advice and services of clerics and letrados.⁽³¹⁾ He reserves his greatest enthusiasm for the new Inquisition. He has no doubt that the Inquisition has been the salvation of the country, rejoices in the large number of heretics burned and imprisoned, and even hints that the Inquisition was succeeding in spite of the resistance of cardinal Mendoza.⁽³²⁾ There is no acknowledgment that the foundations for these reforms and great undertakings were well laid in previous reigns: they appear as the spontaneous creations of the Catholic Monarchs in fulfillment of the divine plan for Castile.

Valera displays many doubts and reservations about these same reforms and undertakings. He attributes their instigation to the monarchs' desire to control the government more effectively; and although he generally approves of this, he reminds the rulers that any institution, no matter how well conceived, is subject to the weaknesses and perversions of those who administer it. He is critical of the increasing use of Roman law instead of custom as a basis for court decisions and dredges up a citation from Aristotle to argue that "there are two types of law: one is natural, the other is legalistic."⁽³³⁾ He criticizes the excesses of the hermandades and the Inquisition, blaming them on the greed and vindictiveness of their administrators. He cautions the monarchs against selfish use of their increased military and judicial powers and warns Fernando against relying on the military advice of clerics and other men inexperienced in war.⁽³⁴⁾

Valera regards even pious endeavors with a note of skepticism, noting for example that the Christianity of the Canary Islands was questionable because the natives had been converted under the threat of slavery.⁽³⁵⁾ He also traces the early stages of these same reforms in the reigns of Juan II and Enrique IV, when they were already regarded with some reservation by caballero writers,⁽³⁶⁾ and considers them to be specific [31] responses to specific problems. Bernáldez and Valera view the reforms almost exactly as they view the Reconquest -- Bernáldez saw them as the fulfillment of a larger plan, and Valera saw them as human reactions to particular problems.

These two concepts flourished and existed side by side throughout the fifteenth century, and each represents an "educated opinion" of the day. Bernáldez's attitudes are typical of the letrado writers whose education was oriented toward the universities, with their emphasis on scholastic argument and their models provided by Roman law. Valera's attitudes are typical of the caballero writers whose education was centered in noble courts, where argument was based on historical example and models were found in the lives and deeds of individual heroes. Their approaches to history and to the monarchy reflect two different world-views that influenced their perceptions of every aspect of 1ife. The letrados and the caballeros -- the two leaders of Castilian society, politics, and culture -- held conflicting views even when they were acting on the same side in a political conflict. This tolerance appears to have changed abruptly during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, whose political circumstances made it imperative that only one of these traditional perceptions of history and society should remain popular.

The political needs of Fernando and Isabel developed from the political and social upheavals of the fifteenth century. Enrique II's distribution of political power successfully joined the military and legal aristocracy to the king's cause but also excluded from power two groups whose ranks were constantly renewed in the fifteenth century -- the king's relatives and upwardly mobile knights. Fernando de Antequera, brother of Enrique III of Castile and himself king by election of Aragon (1412-1416), set the pattern these two latter groups would follow in their efforts to acquire hereditary lands and offices -- control of the highest positions in the military orders, with their financial resources; fame as military leaders in the Reconquest; and control over the king's decisions through personal influence at court. All the seditious and rebellious movements of the fifteenth century found their rallying points in the infantes -- first the sons of Fernando de Antequera and then the younger children of Juan II of Castile -- while several estateless but ambitious and talented men attached themselves to the king's cause and identified their own fortunes with those of the monarchy. Consequently, Castilian politics in this period could be characterized by the career of a talented and ambitious courtier who gains the king's confidence, successfully organizes the monarch's defense against the attacks of the infantes and his campaigns against the Muslims, and is rewarded with lands, income, high [32] office in the military orders, and marriage into the aristocracy. He is then attacked by the aristocracy and bureaucracy because the concentration in one person of hereditary wealth, military power, and political influence over the king constitutes a threat not only to the balance of powers established by Enrique II but also to the monarch's independence. As a result, Castile offers the spectacle of civil wars fought by caballero and letrado advocates of a strong monarchy against a king whose campaign is led by his favorite courtier and manned by caballero and letrado advocates of a strong monarchy.

The widespread demand for a stronger monarchy is the best evidence of the lack of strong royal leadership during most of the century. Isabel's father, Juan II (1406-1454), neglected his political and judicial responsibilities, delegating his powers to his favorite, don Alvaro de Luna. Don Alvaro began to seem a greater threat to the monarchy than the infantes he successfully repulsed, and disaffected nobility raised enough threats of rebellion to force the king into arresting and executing don Alvaro. But the king died soon afterward; and his son, Enrique IV (1454-1454), delegated much of his power to a new favorite, Juan Pacheco. When Enrique IV replaced Juan Pacheco with a new favorite, Beltrán de la Cueva, Pacheco tried to recoup his losses by denouncing both Beltrán and the king. To this end, he and his party spread doubts about the king's daughter, the princess Juana, claiming that she was really Beltrán's daughter, that the queen was unfaithful, that the king was impotent, and that the true heir to the throne was Enrique's half-brother, Alfonso. Enrique IV vacillated between defense of his daughter's legal rights and attempts to prevent bloodshed by compromising with Pacheco, achieving neither and increasing the confusion of everyone.

Unfortunately for the rebels, Alfonso, their popular candidate for the throne, died prematurely in 1468 and they were

in great fear, dreading the indignation of the king, whom they had basely insulted with letters and words during the division, and finding no other means of defending themselves except to continue the schism which they had begun in the kingdom, elevated the lady princess Isabel as queen of the kingdom in place of her brother [Alfonso].⁽³⁷⁾

Immediately upon the death of Enrique IV, Fernando and Isabel took possession of the royal government; but the division between the two factions reduced the administration to chaos, and all sections of the population took advantage of this opportunity to give vent to acts of violence. The ensuing civil war dragged on for eight years. When victory for Isabel was assured in 1480, the Catholic Monarchs found themselves rulers of a people both tired of civil war and eager to accept such energetic and attractive monarchs. They were still faced with the twofold problem of establishing the legitimacy of their claims to the throne and disarming the rebellious party, which was defeated but still potentially dangerous. In these circumstances, the royal chronicles became the royal propaganda.

Initially the royal historians undertook to encourage popular acceptance of Isabel's claims by impugning the memory of Enrique IV and the reputation of Juana. They incorporated into the royal chronicles the Decades of Palencia -- the most vitriolic of Enrique's enemies. Hernando del Pulgar, appointed royal chronicler in 1482, began his Crónica de les Reyes Católicos with twenty chapters about Enrique IV translated directly from the Decades; and Bernáldez began his Memorias with a few paragraphs about Enrique IV selected from the first twenty chapters of Pulgar.⁽³⁸⁾ Antonio de Nebrija's account of the first part of Isabel's reign is a fairly direct translation of Pulgar, and the history published by Dr. Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal in 1517 is a composite of the royal chronicles since the reign of Juan II. Not all of the chronicles were available to Carvajal, so he filled in the gaps by writing a few chapters himself, using a translation of the Decades for his information about Enrique IV.⁽³⁹⁾ The received version of Enrique's reign and of the legitimacy of Isabel's claim to the throne was based on the works of this group of historians -- Palencia, Pulgar, Bernáldez, Nebrija, and Carvajal.

It is significant that none of these historians based his history of the reign of Enrique IV either on his own experiences during the reign or on an examination of various sources. Pulgar, at least, was in a position to do both; but he explained that sometimes lies and false accusations "are [34] necessary to clearly demonstrate the right which this princess doña Isabel had to the succession of this realm."⁽⁴⁰⁾ So they all took their material and their point of view from Palencia. This is not to say that after 1480 the popular or learned opinions of Enrique IV were all suddenly changed to the Isabelline point of view. Enríquez del Castillo had been a partisan of Enrique's and praised him in a chronicle that Palencia destroyed. Enríquez del Castillo later reconstructed it, still treating Enrique fairly but tempering the tone of the work to suit Isabel, from whom he expected a grant of money for the work. Valera, although he disliked Enrique and had left the royal court in disgust, never wrote anything to harm Enrique during or after his lifetime. Valera's chronicle of Enrique's reign, the Memorial de diversas hazañas, was based in part on the Decades and in part on Enríquez del Castillo's work, but he often corrected Palencia's information according to his own memory, reproached the rebels for their disloyalty to the king and their unchivalrous attack on the queen and princess, and made no attempt to hide the weaknesses of the king. Valera criticized Enrique for making conflicting statements under oath about the succession to the throne, thus hiding the truth and creating needless suspicions, and for acting in a manner unbecoming to a knight.⁽⁴¹⁾ These "opposition" chronicles received neither financial support nor official recognition from the Catholic Monarchs.

The official revision of the history of the previous reign appears to have been successful in stilling the doubts of "those who still suspected that their assumption of the throne had been a virtual usurpation,"⁽⁴²⁾ but the accusations against Enrique themselves created a problem: in throwing slime at Enrique, they dirtied the throne itself. The personal prestige of the monarchs was very high after 1480, but the prestige of the Castilian monarchy as an institution had to be raised to a level that would forestall any attack by the rebels.

The theoretical arguments needed for this task had already been developed in the works of the letrado historians, and they acquired some credibility as a result of the proposed 'Reconquest of Granada and the reforms. After 1480, the letrado concept of the monarchy was not only credible but also desperately needed. Throughout the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, the letrado theory of state and society, irrevocably bound to Isabelline propaganda, became the theoretical bulwark of the Catholic Monarchs, of the bureaucracy, and -- after the death of Isabel in 1504 -- of the enemies of Fernando.⁽⁴³⁾

While the letrado concept of society enjoyed official encouragement, the caballero theories suffered a period of disuse: from the composition of Valera's Memorial de diversas hazañas in 1488 until the publication of [35] don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's De la guerra de Granada in the seventeenth century, no caballero histories or treatises were published in Castile. The political needs of the Catholic Monarchs dictated that of the two major theories of Castilian history that flourished in the fifteenth century only the letrado theory was appropriate for their purposes. The rejected caballero concept of politics and history -- with all its Renaissance characteristics -- remained neglected throughout the sixteenth century.

1. Fifteenth-century Castilian society has defied the analytic efforts of even the greatest historians. Although it is agreed that this is the formative period of Castilian politics, society, economy, religion, and arts, most historians have despairingly resorted to narrating events and then describing the whole period as "chaotic." Merriman's comment is typical: "Anarchy and disruption at home are the most prominent features of the history of the time." Roger Bigelow Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old World and in the New, New York, 1962, I, 95.

2. For a full description of the mayorazgo, see Chapter V.

3. Robert B. Tate, "The Anacephaleosis of Alfonso García de Santa María, Bishop of Burgos, 1435-1456," Hispanic Studies in Honour of I. González Llubera, Oxford, 1959, pp. 387-401; idem, "An Apology for Monarchy," Romance Philology, 15 (1961), 111-123; idem, "Italian Humanism and Spanish Historiography of the Fifteenth Century," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 34 (1951), 137-165; idem, "Mythology in Spanish Historiography," Hispanic Review, 22 (1954), 1-18; idem, "Nebrija the Historian," Bulletin of the Hispanic Society, 34 (1957), 125-146; "Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo (1404-1470), and his Compendiosa Historia Hispanica," Nottingham Medíaeval Studies, (1960), 58-80. Most of this material has since been published in a single volume in Spanish translation, Ensayos sobre la historiografía peninsular del siglo, XV, Madrid, 1970. More recently, Tate has published fine critical editions of some of the works of Guzmán and Pulgar; and in the prefaces to these editions, he uses a more modern definition of humanism.

4. Aeneus Sylvius Piccolomini got to know don Alfonso at Basle and described him as the "delight of Spain." Pius II, De Gestis Concilii Basiliensis Comnientariorum Libri II, ed. and trans. Denys Hay and W. K. Smith, Oxford, 1967, p. 10.

5. "Discurso sobre la precedencia del Rey Católico sobre el de Inglaterra en el Concilio de Basilea," in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, vol. 116 (Prosistas castellanos del siglo XV), Madrid, 1959, pp. 205-233. See also "Carta dirigida al Rey por los embajadores de España en el Concilio de Basilea... dando cuenta de la acogida que tuvieron los enviados, primeras impresiones y de las manifestaciones sobre precedencia que impulsaron a don Alonso de Cartagena a pronunciar su discurso sobre la superioridad de España respecto a Inglaterra... año 1434," transcription by Antonio Elías de Molins, Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 3^a época, 1 (1897), 67-73.

6. R. H. Trame, R. Sánchez de Arévalo, Spanish Diplomat and Champion of the Papacy, Washington, D.C., 1958.

7. Tate, "Apology," p. 122.

8. Antonio Paz y Melia, El cronista Alonso de Palencia: su vida y sus obras, Madrid, 1914; Alfonso de Palencia, Crónica de Enrique IV, trans. Antonio Paz y Melia, 5 vols., Madrid, 1904.

9. Andrés Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos, ed. Manuel Gómez-Moreno and Juan de Mata Carriazo, Madrid, 1962.

10. Tate, "Apology," p. 122.

11. The study of the caballero chronicles is possible because of Juan de Mata Carriazo's editions of many previously unknown vernacular chronicles. See his "Estudio Preliminar" and edition of each of the following: Andrés Bernáldez, Memorias del reinado de los Reyes Católicos; Crónica de don Alvaro de Luna, condestable de Castilla, maestre de Santiago, Madrid, 1940; Crónica del halconero de Juan II, Pedro Carrillo de Huete, Madrid, 1946; Hernando del Pulgar, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, Madrid, 1943; Relación de los fechos del muy magnífico D. Miguel Lucas muy digno Condestable de Castilla, Madrid, 1940; Diego de Valera, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, Madrid, 1927; idem, Memorial de diversas hazañas, crónica de Enrique IV, ordenada por mosén Diego de Valera, Madrid, 1941.

12. Pedro López de Ayala, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla. My citations of this work will be to the edition readily available in BAE, vols. 66 and 68, Madrid, reprint 1953, but my translations are based on the superior text in Colección de las crónicas y memorias de los reyes de Castilla, 2 vols., Madrid, 1779-1780.

13. Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones y Semblanzas. Unless otherwise noted, citations of this work will be to the edition by Robert B. Tate, in Colección Támesis, Series B, vol. II, London, 1965.

14. For his life, see Lucas de Torre, "Mosén Diego de Valera. Su vida y sus obras," Boletín de la Academia de Historia, 75 (1914), 50-83, 133-168; Juan de Mata Carriazo, Estudio preliminar to Diego de Valera, Memorial de diversas hazañas. For his place in Spanish historiography see E. A. Peers, Spain: A Companion to Spanish Studies, 5th ed. London, 1929, p. 116; Jaime Vicens Vives, ed., Historia social y económica de España y América, Barcelona, 1957, II, 483; Julio Alonso Puyol, "Los cronistas de Enrique IV," Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia, 78 (1921), 399-415, 488-496; 79 (1922), 11-28, 118-144. For his works, see La corónica de España, Seville, 1538; Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, ed. Juan de Mata Carriazo; Epístolas de mosén Diego de Valera, enbiadas en diversos tiempos e a diversas personas, ed. José A. de Balenchana, Madrid, 1878; as well as the Memorial de diversas hazañas.

15. Crónica, p. 147; Torre, "Mosén Diego de Valera," pp. 134-135.

16. Crónica, p. 149.

17. Michel de Montaigne, Essays, trans. J.M. Cohen, Harmondsworth, (1958), 10, p. 169.

18. Memorias, p. 233.

19. Ibid., pp. 129, 203, 209.

20. Ibid., p. 22.

21. Ibid, p. 213.

22. Crónica, pp. 7, 136.

23. Ibid., pp. 161-165, 150, 193, 196.

24. Ibid., pp. 192-193; "Letter to don Fernando, 2 June 1485." Epístolas, p. 88.

25. Epístolas, p. 87.

26. Crónica, pp. 86, 119, 138, 141. This caballero attitude toward the Muslims had not changed since the composition of the Trailer to the Gran Crónica of 1344. The author of this work noted that "hay una ley de Dios por encima de las dos religiones y Dios 'administra justicia y milagro' sin atender al credo, sino a la verdad de cada uno." Diego Catalán, ed., Un cronista anónimo del siglo XIV, Canarias, n.d., p. 119.

27. Valera, Crónica, pp. 170-171; compare the similarity of this passage to his description of the battle of Toro, ibid., p. 60.

28. For the persistence of religious elements in Spanish chivalry and of secular elements in the Reconquest, see Juan de Mata Carriazo, "Cartas de la frontera de Granada, 1430-1509," Al-Andaluz, II (1946), 69-130; Catalán, Un cronista, pp. 66-67, 105, 114, 116-117, 118; don Juan Manuel, Libro de los estados, p. 294, cited by Américo Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, trans. Edmund L. King, Princeton, 1954, p. 221; José Goñi Gastambide, "La Santa Sede y la reconquista del reino de Granada," Hispania Sacra, 4 (1951), 49-63; P.G. Evans, "A Spanish Knight in Flesh and Blood. A Study of the Chivalric Spirit of Suero de Quiñones," Hispania, 15 (New York, 1932), 141-152.

29. "Ser siempre victorioso es donde la alta tribuna, mas pugnar contra fortuna exercicio es virtuoso," Generaciones, pp. 263-264.

30. José Luis Romero considers this confusion of Fortuna with Providence as a characteristic of the medieval mind, "Sobre la biografía española del siglo XV y los ideales de vida," Cuadernos de Historia de España, 1-2 (1944), 115-138, reprinted in Sobre la historiografía y la historia, Buenos Aires, 1945. José Cepeda Adán believes that it is an indication of Jewish ancestry, "El Providencialismo en las cronistas de los Reyes Católicos," Arbor, 17 (1950), 177-90.

31. Memorias, p. 661. Bernáldez's attitudes on these subjects are considered by many historians to be typical of the common people. See Castro, Structure, p. 215; A. Ballesteros y Beretta, Historia de España y su influencia en la historia universal, 2nd ed., 12 vols., Barcelona, 1943-1948, V, 32; F. Soldevila, Historia de España, Barcelona, 1952, II, 425-428, 416-418; J. H. Marièjol, L'Espagne sons Ferdinand et Isabelle, Paris, 1892, pp. 12-13.

32. Memorias, pp. 94-98, 225.

33. "Dos maneras son de derecho: una es natural, otra es legal... segunt el Philósofo lo nota en el quinto de las Héticas," Doctrinal de príncipes, in BAE, vol. 116 (Prosistas castellanos del siglo XV), p. 197.

34. Epístolas, pp. 62-69; Memorial, pp. xxxiii-xxxvi, 113; Crónica, pp. 32-34, 123-124; 149; La corónica de España, Parte IV, Chs., IX, XXXVII, XCIII, XCIV, XCVI, CXXV.

35. Crónica, p. 112.

36. See Pérez de Guzmán, Generaciones, pp. 9-97; Juan Torres Fontes, Estudio sobre la "Crónica de Enrique IV" del Dr. Galíndez de Carvajal, Murcia, 1946, pp. 19, 42; Luis Suárez Fernández and Juan de Mata Carriazo, La España de los Reyes Católicos, 1474-1516, vol. XVII of Historia de Espana, directed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Madrid, 1969, I, 31.

37. Pulgar, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, I: "Introducción," Ch. II.

38. Pulgar, Crónica, I, 71, 144-149, 237, 255, 277-281, 325, 333, 334-337, 415; Bernáldez, Memorias, pp. 3-9; Romero, "Sobre la biografía," pp. 161-166.

39. Torres Fontes, Estudio, pp. 11-33; B. Sánchez Alonso, Historia de la hístoriografía española, Madrid, 1941-1947, I, 302-306.

40. Puyol Alonso, "Los cronistas," p. 131.

41. Carriazo, Estudio preliminar to Memorial by Valera, p. xxxiii; Puyol Alonso. "Los cronistas," pp. 218-126; Torres Fontes, Estudio, pp. 31-32; Valera, Memorial, pp. 112, 293, 179; idem, Epístolas, pp. 17-20.

42. Puyol Alonso, "Los cronistas," p. 132.

43. Carriazo, Estudio preliminar to Memorial by Valera, p. xiii; Torre, "Mosén Diego de Valera," p. 160.