Spain 1474–1598

Jocelyn Hunt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781136759086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The rise of Spain from obscurity to the position of one of Europe's greatest powers is centrally important in the history of Western Europe in the sixteenth century. Spain 14741598 explores key themes including the unification of Spain and the domestic and foreign policies of each of the monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, Charles V and Philip II. T

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The author and the publishers wish to thank the copyright holders for their permission to reproduce the following material:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1950) copyright © J. M. Cohen, 1950. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

The Tribute Money by Titian, reproduced with permission of the National Gallery, London.

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Simplified family tree of the ruling families in Spain, 1474–1598

Note: Underlined names indicate more than one appearance

Map 1 Kingdoms and Provinces of the Iberian Peninsula, 1474

1

SPAIN AT THE TIME OF ITS ‘UNIFICATION’

BACKGROUND NARRATIVE

As the twenty-first century gets under way, Spain is one of the European countries which has firmly adopted a political system based on regional self-government. This is a reminder that, until the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century, Spain was not a single country. By the end of the sixteenth century, all the kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula had been brought together. During the sixteenth century, the King of Spain governed more of Europe than any ruler since the Romans; and at the same time, Spain became the dominant power in the New World. This book traces the history of Spain during these remarkable years, and this first chapter provides a summary of the condition of the kingdoms of Ferdinand and Isabella on the eve of their accessions.

The kingdoms of the Peninsula, in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, were Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Granada, which were to become what we now know as Spain. Castile and Aragon were brought together by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469 and their subsequent policies. Granada and Navarre were taken by conquest. The kingdom of Portugal remained an independent country. Although it was united with Spain in 1580, through inheritance, it was to regain its independence within sixty years. Few contemporaries predicted that the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella would result in the permanent unification of Aragon and Castile. Through the fifteenth century it had often appeared more likely that Castile would join with Portugal. The Portuguese Avis dynasty had taken the throne during a war to resist Castilian control, but frequent marriages linked the two houses ever closer. In the event, however, it was to be Castile and Aragon which together formed the kingdom of Spain. Meanwhile, the ties binding the three provinces of Aragon were never strong and the fifteenth century saw a serious attempt by Catalonia to establish itself as an independent state. Thus both Castile and Aragon experienced civil war in the years before the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.

The kingdoms of Spain had been established during the long years of the reconquista. In the early part of the eighth century, Muslim armies swept across the narrow straits of Gibraltar and defeated the Visigothic rulers of Iberia. Although raiding parties then crossed the Pyrenees, France was never Moorish, and indeed the northern parts of the peninsula, such as Asturias, were never absorbed into Muslim Spain; it was here that the reconquest began. The rest of Iberia, however, proved much harder to reconquer. Not until the tenth century was the area known as Old Castile reconquered. The first of the Iberian kingdoms to achieve its modern boundaries was Portugal, which completed its reconquista with a great victory at Silves in 1249. During the next fifty years, all of the peninsula except for Granada was restored to Christianity, after 500 years of crusading against Islam. Naturally the reconquista was not a continuous war. There were many periods when the Christians and Muslims had lived at peace; from time to time, one of the emerging Christian provinces might ally itself with the Muslims against encroaching Christian neighbours. This long struggle determined the shape and ethos of the Spanish kingdoms and is thought to be in large measure responsible for both similarities and differences between them.

Castile was the largest of the kingdoms. It occupied two-thirds of the whole peninsula, and its population was greater than that of all the rest of the Iberian kingdoms together. The monarchs of Castile, since the 1370s, had been of the Trastámara family, a branch of which provided the Kings of Aragon. The King was chosen by God, but was expected to take the advice of ‘all the best, most honest and wisest men of the land’.¹ These men met in the Cortes – representatives of the nobility, the clergy and the towns. The consent of the Cortes was needed for direct taxation, and legislation could arise from their petitions to the crown. No law could be repealed without Cortes consent, and the Cortes was entitled to give its opinion on issues of foreign policy. The powers of the Cortes were, however, limited by the fact that it could only meet when summoned by the King. The monarch also chose which nobles should attend, and which dioceses and towns should send representatives.

Other limitations on the monarch’s power were more threatening. The nobility were exempt from taxation, and could not have their property confiscated for debt. The Council of Castile, which advised the King, was made up of representatives of the powerful families. Over the many centuries of the reconquista, noble families had acquired large estates and considerable autonomy. It has been calculated that 97 per cent of the land of Castile was owned by just 3 per cent of the population.² The Church had also gained much power through years of crusade, and was exempt from taxation and had its own courts. The military orders combined the devotion of the monastic order with the traditions of crusading chivalry, but by the fifteenth century they had become powers on their own account. The noble families which dominated them had under their control fortresses and private armies. Even the towns had considerable autonomy; in order to attract Christian settlers to newly conquered areas, towns had been given rights to appoint ruling councils and to control their own affairs. Many of the noble families hoped to establish a hold over the towns and their wealth.

The economy of Castile was dominated by its geography and climate. The northern provinces had soil unsuited to arable farming, and regularly imported cereals, mainly from northern Europe. Only in the south, in Andalucia, did Castile have a substantial food growing area. Here the climate was mild, and the irrigation techniques learned from the Muslims ensured good crops. Much of central Castile, on the high plateau, was suitable only for pastoral farming. Increasingly, in the fifteenth century, wool production was the dominant activity. The quality wool from the merino sheep was in demand in all the textile-producing areas of Europe. The extreme weather conditions and shortage of water meant that some flocks of sheep were ‘walked’, that is, moved from pasture to pasture over long distances. It seems possible that there were as many as 20 million sheep in Castile by the 1470s. Towns were therefore important as markets where the wool could be exchanged for the necessities of life. In the north, towns traded with the rest of Europe, and in the south, with Africa and Italy. In the heart of Castile, towns acted as gathering points for the wool and the commodities for which it was exchanged. There was little industry, however, most Castilian wool being exported in raw form for processing elsewhere, although there were textile processing works, for example in Segovia and Toledo. In Seville and the Basque ports, ship-building was beginning to develop.

Castile’s population included substantial minorities. Because they had a land frontier with the Muslim kingdom of Granada, there were comparatively few Mudejares (Muslims living under Castilian rule) since they found it easy to migrate to join their co-religionists, there were, however, substantial numbers of Moriscos, or Christians of Arab origin. Many of the towns also had large Jewish communities, mainly engaged in commerce or in the learned professions of medicine and law. While they were criticised by contemporaries for not working hard in the fields, we have to remember that they were not allowed to own land, and thus could hardly be expected to take an interest in farming issues. Some Jewish families had converted to Christianity, but these conversos were not fully trusted. Attitudes to the non-Christian communities varied. Close contact with the Muslims of North Africa, and with the Jews of Italy meant that these sections of the community were influential in the cultural life of Castile, and in the re-introduction of the great classical works to Europe. At the University of Salamanca, study of the writings of Aristotle enabled them to be seen as useful to Christians. There were periods of great tolerance: in the thirteenth century, one church in Toledo was used by Muslims on Friday, Jews on Saturday and Christians on Sunday. Intolerance was only just below the surface, however, and any disaster, plague or defeat in war, could result in violent attacks, often orchestrated by the Church. The uneasy convivencia (living together) of many centuries was to be ended in draconian fashion by Isabella.

Relationships with other countries were dictated by the physical position of Castile, between her neighbours Portugal, Granada and Aragon. In the past, Castile had allied with France, to contain the ambitions of Aragon. During the great papal schism at the end of the fourteenth century, Castile and Aragon had supported opposing Popes. Border fighting was sporadic, and marriages with Portugal and Aragon that were intended to bring peace too often provided pretexts for claims to inheritance and further conflict. For example, in the civil war which preceded Isabella’s accession, the King of Portugal interfered in the hope of establishing a Portuguese regency and control over Castile.

Henry IV, King of Castile from 1454, was nicknamed ‘the impotent’. He had been married to Joanna of Portugal for seven years before she became pregnant, and the daughter she bore in 1462 was believed by many to be the child of the royal favourite, Beltrán de la Cueva. Many of the powerful nobles of Castile, intent on increasing their own power, refused to recognise Joanna ‘la Beltráneja’, demanding instead that Henry’s younger half-brother Alfonso should be the heir. In the fighting which followed, noble families sided with whichever claimant they thought might better serve their interests. When, in 1467, Alfonso died, many suspected that he had been poisoned; plague seems, however, to have been the more mundane truth. The rebel nobles then proclaimed Alfonso’s sister Isabella as the heir. If they hoped that the 16-year-old princess would be a pliable tool for their ambitions, they were mistaken. Henry IV was forced, by the Treaty of Toro in 1468 to recognise Isabella as his eventual heir. When Henry died in 1474, Isabella became Queen of Castile.

Five years before her accession, Isabella had married the heir to Aragon, her cousin, Ferdinand. Marriages between Castile and Aragon had been common but had not altered the hostility that these kingdoms felt for each other. In part, this hostility derived from the differences between them.

The Kings of Aragon ruled its three constituent parts separately, gaining approval from each Cortes in turn, and spending time in Catalonia, Valencia and Aragon, though they seldom travelled to their overseas possessions. The Cortes of Aragon was dominated by the nobility, since there were two houses of nobles, the Greater and the Lesser. In contrast to Castile, all nobles were entitled to attend; similarly, any town which had once been summoned had the right to attend from then onwards. Clergy attendance was fixed by custom, rather than by the King. All taxes, and all new laws were subject to Cortes approval, and their standing committee the Diputacion del Reyno monitored the work of the royal administration. In addition, the Justiciar, appointed by the King but for life, was a kind of Ombudsman, protecting the rights of the people and arbitrating in disputes with royal officials. The King’s power was subject to similar limitations in Catalonia, where the Parliament was required to meet every three years, and where the representatives of nobles, clergy and towns debated and agreed new taxation and legislation. The Diputacion of Catalonia supervised the navy and army as well as overseeing all aspects of government. The strength of the Cortes of Valencia lay in the fact that each of the three houses could meet independently, and without royal summons, if affairs appeared to warrant it. It was possible for the three Aragonese Cortes to meet in a General Assembly, but there were few occasions when concerted actions seemed attractive to these very different kingdoms. Thus we may recognise the very limited nature of constitutional monarchy in the kingdom of Aragon, and the amount of royal energy needed to manage the jealous rivalries of its three regions.

The power of the nobility in each of these three provinces was based on large land holdings. A type of feudalism existed, which kept the peasants tied to the land by all kinds of obligations and dues. The nobles could raise substantial, if untrained, armies at need. The people of the great towns, such as Barcelona and Valencia, jealously guarded their privileges and rights. The military religious orders were, as in Castile, dominated by a few noble families. The Aragonese Church was virtually autonomous; proximity to Italy meant that the churchmen were more actively involved in curial politics, and one Aragonese family, the Borgias, rose to the Papacy itself. The Church was probably more corrupt than that of Castile, and the reformed orders, such as the observant Franciscans were less influential than they were in Castile. The great wealth of the Church appears to have encouraged corruption, and foreign visitors were struck by the high level of superstition among the common people.

The economy of Aragon had been both strong and diverse at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Commerce, through the great port of Barce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Series preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Spain at the time of its ‘unification’
• 2 The domestic policies of Ferdinand and Isabella
• 3 How successful were the foreign policies of Ferdinand and Isabella?
• 4 Charles I as ruler of Spain
• 5 Foreign affairs during the reign of Charles I
• 6 What problems confronted Philip II in his government of Spain?
• 7 The successes and failures of Philip II’s foreign policy
• 8 Was the sixteenth century ‘a golden century’ for Spain?
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index