Christian Córdoba:
The city and its region in the late Middle Ages
John Edwards
Chapter 5
The nobility in regional politics
[131] It should already have become clear
that the difference between theory and practice in the life of the region in
this period could be considerable. Nowhere is this more true than in its
political affairs. It is undeniable that, apart from the Crown itself, the only
significant group in Córdoba's politics in the late Middle Ages was the local
nobility, so that events in the area cannot be understood without an awareness
of the role of aristocrats in regional society.
NOBILITY AND KNIGHTHOOD
In the case of late medieval Castile, the 'pure'
concept of rule by the best was of minimal relevance to contemporary
qualifications for inclusion in the nobility. By far the most important among
these were wealth and breeding. This is not to say, however, that the notion of
an aristocracy which earned its privileges had entirely disappeared. It is easy
to see that the prolonged crusade for the Reconquest of Spain from the Moors had
the effect of raising the military calling in the esteem of society, so that
other groups, such as the Christian clergy, burgesses and peasants, were forced
to acknowledge their dependence on the soldiers for the ability to live and
carry on their own activities. As the Reconquest was still incomplete for most
of the fifteenth century, it is natural that the warriors should still have been
established at the head of society in this period. Contemporary theorists, such
as the chronicler Diego de Valera, complained, as Boethius had done long before,
that nobles often obtained their rank on the basis of other people's virtues
rather than their own, but the hereditary principle was very far from being
threatened under Ferdinand and Isabella. Royal lawyers were indeed dissatisfied
with the notion of status being conferred by heredity, but they limited their
comments to municipal officeholders, not daring to tackle the nobility as a
whole. (1)
[132] If it was accepted without much
dispute that nobility might be conferred in perpetuity by the king and that it
might properly be granted to those who possessed wealth and breeding and who
followed the military calling, it is nonetheless true that many problems of
status remained unsolved. It was easy to distinguish the grandes, or
títulos, those who were granted titles and lordships by the Crown as dukes,
marquises and counts. More problematical was the relationship between nobles,
for whom the usual word was hidalgos, and knights, or caballeros.
That there was a definite distinction between these two ranks had been noted by
Valera, who wrote that, 'caballería, in common law, is not a dignity, nor
does it confer nobility, except on the caballeros of the Roman curia'.
(2) In Valera's view, this state of affairs was justified by the fact
that the main motive in his time for seeking the rank of caballero was to
obtain tax exemptions. However, if the status of caballeros was poorly
viewed in the late fifteenth century, that of nobility (hidalguía) was
being steadily enhanced.
The privileges of a hidalgo were fairly
clearly delineated. Hidalgos were less threatened than others by the law
and were distinguished from the rest of society. A hidalgo had a special
relationship with the king and could only be arrested by his express order. Out
of respect for his military calling, a hidalgo's horses and weapons were
exempt from seizure for debt or any other cause and because of his supposed
virtue and purity of blood he might not be judicially tortured. Affairs of
honour between nobles were settled by duel and if a noble had for some reason to
suffer the death penalty, he was beheaded and not hanged. These privileges
naturally applied to the titled nobility as well.
By the fifteenth century, the possession of a
fixed family residence (casa solar) and membership of a kin-group (linaje)
were becoming increasingly important. As Valera's work indicates, the concept of
blue blood (sangre azul), derived from the heraldic significance of the
colour blue, which was variously described as the sky, divinity, loyalty and
justice, was still firmly established. As a result, far from there being a
movement towards individualism, aristocratic notions of lineage were still the
inspiration of much political and social activity. Blue blood could only be
preserved by avoiding alliances with unworthy persons and it is easy to see the
results of this attitude in the marriages of the Córdoba nobility.
In addition to the possession of a casa solar
and a restriction to marriage within the same social group, the noble had to
behave [133] in an appropriate manner in his daily life. Official
documents, when describing the characteristics of the 'noble life', often
reflected the confusion which existed in contemporary society between the noble,
or hidalgo, and the knight, or caballero. It was clear enough, in
principle, that a caballero, and the requirement included hidalgos,
should always keep a horse and weapons, in order to be able to respond to the
king's military summons. In practice, this rule was harder to keep, but even
more difficulty arose with the other main feature of the noble life, which was
that in order to benefit from the privileges of this rank, a man should not live
by 'base and vile offices'. A law of John II gave as examples of what was meant
by this statement the offices of tailor, leather-dresser, carpenter,
stone-cutter, digger, cloth-shearer, barber, spicer, retailer and shoe-maker.
(3) Those who failed to fulfil either of these conditions were to lose
their privileges and revert to the status of pechero, or tax-payer.
THE NOBLE 'LINAJE'
The tension between the military ideal and the
practical need to engage in some form of activity for financial gain affected
all, from the humble caballero to the exalted grande, but the
first task will be to examine the characteristics of the upper noble linajes
whose economic and political dominance over the region has already been
described. In theory, all nobles were equal before the law, but disparities of
wealth were already apparent in the thirteenth century and these gradually
created what was in effect a separate class, as the difference of quantity
became one of quality. At least until the fourteenth century, the link between
wealth and nobility was openly admitted in the title of rico hombre
('rich man'), which was the only way in which the leading magnates of Castile
were distinguished. In the late Middle Ages, French titles, such as duke,
marquis, count and viscount were introduced and the term rico hombre became less
prominent, disappearing after 1516. In order to understand the political
activity of the upper nobility, it is necessary first of all to look at the
economic basis of the linaje. (4)
Titles of the French type had only begun to
appear among the Córdoba aristocracy by 1500. Don Alonso de Aguilar, who
dominated the region throughout his political career, was never more than a
señor, though the head of the rival house of Baena, Don Diego Fernández de
Córdoba, was made count of Cabra by Henry IV in 1455, having held the lordship
of the town since 1439. (5) Until Don Alonso de
Aguilar's son, [134] Don Pedro, was created marquis of Priego after his
father's death in 1501, the only other titled noble in the Córdoba area was the
Sotomayor count of Belalcázar. This title was created in 1466. In view of the
small number of Castilian grandes in this region, the political role of
the nobility has to be approached through the families which possessed
lordships. The houses of Aguilar and Baena were indeed as pre-eminent as their
social rank and economic strength would suggest and the political conflict
between them will be considered in due course, but in economic terms, the upper
noble linaje largely shared the characteristics of the other seignorial
families in the area.
The vital importance of royal grants of lands,
rents and lordships with judicial, administrative and military powers in the
creation of the late medieval Cordoban aristocracy has already been stressed.
(6) There were, however, other ways in which the Crown helped to
ensure the continued supremacy of the nobility in regional society. Grants of
señoríos were very rarely revoked and the few contemporary cases did not
involve Córdoba. Far more common were additional grants of lordships to existing
seignorial families. It was also possible for the king (or the pope) to
legitimise the bastard children of the nobility in order to ensure that a
suitable heir was available to inherit the family's possessions. However, the
most significant contribution which the Crown made to the longevity of
aristocratic dynasties was economic.
Often, the Castilian Crown's financial aid to the
nobility took the form of transfers of royal revenues to private coffers. These
grants, known as juros, consisted of a specified sum in cash, which the
recipient was thereby entitled to receive from the proceeds of royal
tax-collection. Sometimes a specific rent was named in the grant as a source for
the cash, while in other cases the money might be obtained from any available
rent. The cash was normally handed over annually and grants might be either for
life (de por vida) or hereditary (de heredad). The excessive
alienation of royal revenues to private individuals was one of the main
weaknesses of medieval monarchs and in Castile the Cortes mounted a campaign
against such grants throughout the fifteenth century. These efforts were largely
unsuccessful and juros developed, as the sixteenth century went on, into
a kind of national debt system, in which those below the ranks of the nobility
might invest.
As part of their attempt to put the royal
administration on a sounder footing, the Catholic Monarchs began in 1480 to
reduce the size and number of juros and convert hereditary into life
grants. According to Matilla Tascón's calculations, over fifty-seven million
maravedís in [135] hereditary juros were granted in 1480 and
five million in life juros. After the reform, the respective totals were
twenty-five million and six million. (7) The
spectacular reduction by fifty per cent of royal grants of all kinds, including
the governorships of castles (tenencias) and feudal retainers in cash (acostamientos),
did not however prevent certain individuals, and in particular the upper
nobility, from continuing to receive a massive income from this source. Two
notable local examples are the count of Cabra and the alcaide de los donceles,
whose juro income was halved from 60,000 to 30,000 mrs per annum.
These were hereditary grants. Such sums were, however, insignificant in
comparison with the enormous grant of 1,750,000 mrs., 'situated' in the
almo janfazgo and alcabala of Córdoba and its tierra, which
the duke of Medinaceli received in 1493. The date of this grant indicates how
far Ferdinand and Isabella had deviated from their earlier policies by the end
of the Granada war. The fact that this huge sum went to a magnate with no
interests in the Córdoba area acts as a reminder that the recipients of juros
did not necessarily collect their cash from local revenues.
(8) In her will, Isabella expressed regrets that the financial needs
of the Crown during the Granada campaign had caused a reversal of the 1480
reform. Juros de heredad were given to individuals in return for loans in
aid of the war effort, but the queen stressed that each grant contained a
provision that the Crown could buy the juros back at any time in the
future, at a price equal to the sum originally granted. Her hopes that her
successors would revoke these grants were not, however, realised.
(9)
In addition to new grants of juros, a
number of Andalusian nobles received extra lordships in the kingdom of Granada
after its conquest. The house of Aguilar gained Almena and El Cerro, the house
of Baena Canillas de Aceituna, Archez and Corumbela, and the alcaides de los
donceles Sedella and Comares, the latter with the title of marquis. The lord
of Palma, Don Luis Portocarrero, received Huéjar la Alta and the lord of El
Carpio obtained Sorbas and Lubrín. (10) The most
important point to notice is that no new family with existing holdings in the
Córdoba area joined the ranks of the señores in Andalusia as a result of
the Granada campaign. Royal largesse was employed to strengthen the position of
the existing leaders of local society.
Even more fundamental to the strength and
permanence of Castilian linajes in this period was the history of the law
of inheritance. As in other countries in western Europe, the most important
single factor in the creation of huge private estates was the introduction and
acceptance [136] of primogeniture as a guiding principle. This was,
paradoxically, one of the main results of the reintroduction of law based on the
code of Justinian (which in fact assumes partible inheritance) in the thirteenth
century. In earlier Castilian law, for example the Fuero Juzgo, it was
assumed that the parent would divide his goods among his children. Restrictions
were placed on attempts by parents and grandparents to favour particular persons
or institutions at the expense of others. No one son or grandson could receive
more than a third of his father or grandfather's goods in this way (de
mejoría). The Church could not receive more than a fifth of what remained
'without that third'. Goods received from the king or another lord in return for
services were even then excluded from these restrictions, which were known as
the tercia y quinta de mejoría, and might be disposed of as the testator
wished. (11) All this changed with the
introduction of Alfonso X's Partidas, which established the rights of the
eldest son over the rest. The theory of primogeniture was advanced in the
context of the succession to the Crown of Castile, but it was rapidly extended
to the nobility. In this way, the establishment of private empires in the
kingdom was the paradoxical result of a law which was intended to enforce the
royal supremacy over all. Whether foreseen or not, one of the results of the
permanent adoption of primogeniture in the royal family, a condition which was
not achieved until the fifteenth century, was to spread this custom to the
leading families of the kingdom, thus accentuating the very evils which the
Partidas were intended to eliminate.
The arguments used in this code to justify the
absolute right of the eldest son to the inheritance of his father were taken
from nature, law and custom. The so-called 'natural' argument was in fact based
once again on the ownership of property. The main desire of parents was said to
be to 'have a lineage to inherit their goods'. As the eldest son arrived first
to satisfy this desire, he was naturally the favourite of his parents and thus
received the appropriate reward of supremacy over his brothers and sisters. The
legal argument was based in the first place on the law of Moses, which stated
that the eldest son was set aside as holy for God, taking as an example of the
supremacy of the eldest son the power given by Isaac to Jacob, believing the
latter to be his eldest son Esau, when he gave him his paternal blessing. 'You
will be lord (señor) of your brothers and the sons of your mother will
bow before you.' The third ground for primogeniture, the appeal to customary
law, was more doubtful because, as has already been noted, fuero law did
not support this principle. The fact was admitted in the [137]
Partidas, which stated that by ancient custom, 'fathers commonly had pity on
their other sons [and] did not want the eldest to have everything, but that each
of them should have his share'. However, the new code tried to evade this
objection by asserting that 'wise men of understanding' realised that, at least
in the case of the royal succession, such a partition was not in the interest of
the kingdom and had allowed the entire inheritance to pass to the eldest son.
(12)
The Partidas were on insecure ground, in
the context of Castilian law, when they asserted the supremacy of the eldest son
and Gregorio López's commentary makes it clear that such statements were the
result of Roman law influence. Nonetheless, the principle did become established
in Castile in the fifteenth century and it opened the way for the accumulation
of huge private fortunes by the families which produced the future grandes
of Spain. The device which ensured that such fortunes passed intact to the
eldest son was the entailed estate or mayorazgo. Permission to create
such an estate out of the family possessions was granted only by the king, the
normal procedure being that the nobleman concerned would obtain a licence to
form a mayorazgo out of certain, specified goods and properties, in
favour of a named individual, generally his eldest son, and a succession of
named substitutes in case of the death of one or more of the named
beneficiaries. As the example of Córdoba shows, by the end of the fifteenth
century there was no important noble family which did not have a mayorazgo
and the practice was spreading downwards through the echelons of urban society.
Indeed, such was the interest which the law of inheritance aroused among the
leading citizens of the Castilian towns that the procuradores to the
Cortes of 1502 demanded new laws on the subject, a request which resulted in the
laws of Toro of 1505. (13)
The laws of Toro enforced the fueros in
all the towns which possessed them, so that inheritance in Córdoba was governed
by the Fuero Juzgo, with its provisions on the tercia and quinta.
In general, the 1505 laws extended the principles of the fueros to the
kingdom as a whole, but they added certain definitions in the case of
illegitimate children. A 'natural son' was legally a child of parents who were,
at the time of conception, in a position to marry without dispensation and whose
father recognised him as his son. An illegitimate son could always inherit his
mother's goods if she had no legitimate children and if he was born of a union
which did not carry the death penalty (dañado y punible ayuntamiento).
However, a legitimised child did not have precedence if his parents later had a
child within wedlock. In such a [138] case, the general rule that an
illegitimate child was entitled to a fifth of his father's goods was held to
apply.
The most interesting of the laws of Toro, from
the noble point of view, were those which referred to the inheritance of
mayorazgos. The phraseology of these laws reveals the extent to which they
had become embedded in Castilian life by about 1500. The need for a royal
licence to create a mayorazgo was confirmed at Toro but the Crown
reserved the right, if it so wished, to ratify one which had already been
formed. Licences for mayorazgos were held to be valid after the death of
the king who had granted them, if they had not by then been used by the
beneficiaries. Once a licence had been obtained, the Crown effectively abandoned
control of the mayorazgo into the hands of its possessors. A nobleman
could freely revoke his will to create a mayorazgo, without regard to the
royal licence which he had obtained for it, provided that he had not already
handed over the goods concerned to the beneficiary. After a mayorazgo had
been created, it passed automatically from one heir to another, according to the
terms of the original document and royal licence, without the need for any
further intervention by the Crown. A law which was important in certain cases in
Andalusia in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella gave the descendants of the
eldest son preference, in the inheritance of a mayorazgo, over the
younger sons of the founder of the mayorazgo and their descendants. The
same rule applied if the inheritance was collateral. All descendants of the
second son had precedence over the third son and his descendants, and so on.
Another law which greatly helped the nobility was that which allowed
improvements made to entailed properties, such as fortresses and towns, to be
included automatically in the mayorazgo, although the Crown was careful
to add that entirely new fortifications might not be included without a royal
licence, in addition to that required for their construction. The overall effect
of these measures is clear. They gave wealthy men the power to preserve and hand
on their riches, so that their families obtained a more or less permanent place
at the head of society. The weakness of the taxation system also helped to
prevent the diminution of wealth, once it had been accumulated. There was no
alcabala on inherited property and no question of death duties.
As with juros, it is impossible to assess
in precise numerical terms the extent of the practice of founding and
maintaining mayorazgos among the Cordoban nobility. Information from
later documentation in national archives does however indicate that
mayorazgos were virtually [139] universal in families whose members
held municipal office in the late fifteenth century. Thus in addition to the
various branches of the Fernández de Córdoba, families such as the Aguayo,
Castillejo, Godoy, Saavedra, Valenzuela and Vargas had mayorazgos by
1500. (14) The concentration, so far, on the
privileges of the eldest son does not, however, imply that the rest of the
children were unimportant. In the first place, all children of noble parents
were noble too and not all noble goods were in entail. Secondly, the importance
of the nobility in a regional society such as that of Córdoba depended to a
large extent on whole families rather than those families' individual heads. In
recent years, it has become fashionable in some circles to stress the social and
political role of the noble lineage in late medieval west European history. Work
has been done on both urban and rural areas, particularly in Italy, but in view
of the contemporary use of the terms linaje and bando, it is clear
that such an approach is also relevant to the history of Castile.
(15)
Before examining the political role of noble
lineages, it is necessary to look at their size and geographical location. For
this purpose, a division has been made between families which possessed at least
one complete señorío, and whose head was thus entitled to call himself
señor, and those noble houses which, despite having extensive possessions in
entail and members who held public office, had not attained the seignorial
level. On these criteria, the first group of families contains the eight
branches of the Fernández de Córdoba, the Mexía lords of Santa Eufemia, the
Portocarrero lords, and later counts of Palma, the Méndez de Sotomayor of El
Carpio, the Venegas of Luque, the Sotomayor counts of Belalcázar and two
branches of the De los Ríos, lords of Fernán Núñez and Las Ascalonias,
respectively. As it is hard, on the basis of the available knowledge of the
goods of individual families, to draw an accurate line between the non-seignorial
'upper' nobility and the rest of the hidalgos, a fairly arbitrary
selection of the former has been made, using as a rough guide the criterion of
public office-holding in Córdoba. The second group thus includes the Aguayo,
Angulo, Argote, Cabrera, Cárcamo, Cárdenas, Carrillo, Castillejo, Godoy, Góngora,
Hoces, De las Infantas and Mesa. About another dozen families might have been
included in this category, had sufficient genealogical material been available.
(16)
It is particularly hard to provide precise
information about the size of noble families. Contemporary genealogies and other
documents, such as wills, can rarely be relied on for completeness. Children who
died [140] young were often omitted. Illegitimate offspring might well
not be recorded and little effort was made, on occasions, to give a precise
account of daughters. Thus even if the great age of the falsification of
genealogies to prove 'purity of blood' had not yet begun, it is nevertheless
unwise to place too much weight on the available figures for noble offspring. In
the case of more humble families, the task can scarcely be attempted.
Among the fifteen seignorial families which
headed the Cordoban aristocracy, there were few prolific fathers. The largest
recorded families are those of Don Alonso de Aguilar, who had five legitimate
and four illegitimate children, and the first count of Cabra, Don Diego
Fernández de Córdoba, who fathered no fewer than eighteen children, sixteen of
them in his two marriages. Most seignorial nuclear families in this period,
however, seem to have contained seven or fewer children. The average number for
each head of household in this sample was just over four, including illegitimate
offspring. Among the thirteen office-holding families included in the second
group, there are no recorded families as large as those of the heads of the
houses of Aguilar and Baena. The average family size emerges as 3.9, which in
view of the dubious nature of the figures used cannot be effectively
distinguished from the results for the seignorial houses.
The recorded marriages of Cordoban nobles in the
period of the Catholic Monarchs appear to contain few surprises for those who
expect little upward or downward mobility and marriage within the existing
social group. The heads or heirs of the houses of Aguilar and Baena duly found
their spouses in families of national importance. Thus Don Alonso de Aguilar
married Doña Catalina Pacheco, daughter of the
master of the order of Santiago, while his son, the first marquis of Priego,
married Doña Elvira Enríquez, a cousin of the king. In the house of Baena, the
second count of Cabra married Doña María, the daughter of Don Diego Hurtado de
Mendoza, first duke of the Infantado, while his son, the third count, was
married twice, to women from two leading Castilian families, the Enríquez and
the Zúñiga. The seventh alcaide de tos donceles, head of the third most
important line of the Fernández de Córdoba, married the sister of Don Alonso de
Aguilar's wife, Doña Juana Pacheco. The lesser lords of the Córdoba area
generally married members of local families of equivalent rank, though the
Fernández de Córdoba lords of Guadalcázar married into other branches of the
same original line, the houses of Montemayor and Cabra, respectively. There was
some intermarriage between the first [141] and second groups of families,
which is not surprising in view of the fact that the division between them is
artificial and intended only as an aid to analysis. Thus Fernando Alfonso de
Argote married the daughter of the fourth lord of Guadalcázar and Juan Pérez de
Godoy, veinticuatro of Córdoba, married a daughter of Fernando Alonso de
Montemayor. His nephew married the daughter of a grande, Don Juan Ponce
de León, second count of Arcos. There is no case in this group of office-holding
families of marriage with individuals of lesser rank. Unfortunately, the
fragmentary nature of the sources makes it impossible to examine the ordinary
hidalgos in a similar way, but at least it is clear that, while 'good' or
'bad' marriages might be made, in social, economic or political terms, the
Cordoban nobles entered the sixteenth century with a determination to seek
alliances within their own group.
The distribution of nobles among the parishes of
the city is of relevance to an understanding of linajes as social and
political entities. This question may be looked at from two points of view.
First, it is worth asking whether there was any concentration of nobles in
certain parishes and, secondly, it is useful to know if each linaje lived
in a particular quarter, which it might be able to dominate, on the pattern
found, for example, in Genoa. If the same criteria for inclusion or exclusion
are used as have been applied up to now, the result is an average of about ten
upper noble, or office-holding families in each parish. At the two extremes, the
ten noble houses in St Nicholas 'de la Villa' included two branches of the
Fernández de Córdoba -- the house of Aguilar, and the descendants of the former
bishop of Córdoba, Don Pedro de Solier -- while St Bartholomew and St James each
contained only four important office-holding families. It is not possible to
distinguish any aristocratic quarter in the city and it is equally clear that
individual families had, by the late fifteenth century, become so complex that
they might not be said to dominate particular parishes or parts of parishes, as
happened elsewhere. The great majority, if not all, of the families above the
rank of simple hidalgo in Córdoba by about 1500 had come to the region,
if not to the city itself, as early as the thirteenth century. They had thus had
ample time to intermarry and also to divide into various branches. The result
was that, of a sample of forty-nine office-holding families, which excludes all
the Fernández de Córdoba, only nineteen were confined to one parish. Fifteen
families were divided between two parishes and one between three, while six
families resided in four parishes and eight in no fewer than five. [142]
The effect of this distribution on Córdoba's political life will be examined in
due course.
It is impossible to establish precisely the
number of citizens who were included in the upper noble category as members of
families which regularly held public office, for example as veinticuatros
or jurados. However, if the estimates used so far are at all accurate,
and the average size of this rank of household was about six, excluding retinues
and servants, then Córdoba's leading families may have totalled approximately
350 individuals. In addition, it is possible to make some estimate of the number
of citizens with the rank of hidalgo. The fullest account from the period
is a list which was produced for the city council in May and June of 1514.
(17) At the council-meeting on 5 May 1514, a document (requerimiento)
was read in which the hidalgos of the city demanded that the council
should investigate the inclusion in the tax lists (padrones) of the
parishes of St Marina and St Lawrence of various individuals who, they claimed,
were hidalgos and therefore exempt from inclusion. The council duly
adopted the course suggested in the requerimiento and called on all
hidalgos to prove their title to that rank before the council. This replica
of the procedure normally required for proof of hidalguía at the royal
chancillería was implemented during the succeeding month and the results
were recorded, parish by parish. This was not the only list of hidalgos
produced in the period. As a result of a conflict between the hidalgos
and the caballeros de premia over their respective duties in the military
service of the Crown, a group of hidalgos, eighty-one in number, signed a
legal document in Luque on 26 January 1513. (18)
Apart from the fact that the i 513 document was not intended as a complete list,
the number of names included in it is much smaller than the total of 196
individuals whose titles were accepted by the city council in 1514. Even this
larger figure cannot, however, be accepted without modification. Thirty-three
names which were included in the I 513 document are not to be found in the I 514
lists. A total of 240 hidalgos in I 5 I4 would not seem unreasonable but
would clearly be much larger than the figure of 110 which Marie Claude Gerbet
has obtained from Simancas documents. (19) The
1514 lists are incomplete in that there are no names for the parish of St Peter.
They also contain the names of twenty-four individuals who were only included
after discussion in council and it is matter for speculation whether the doubt
was genuine or the result of personal animus. In order to reach some kind of
total for the Córdoba nobility in the early sixteenth century it is necessary
also to point out that the 1514 lists [143] include many members of the
families which have been regarded here as part of the upper or office-holding
nobility. It is probable, therefore, that a figure of between 250 and 275 noble
heads of household would not be wildly inaccurate.
The only indication of the number of
caballeros de premia in late medieval Córdoba is a list of those who took
part in a parade (alarde) on the Campo de la Verdad, to the south of
Córdoba, on 5 November 1497. There are 195 names on the list, but it appears to
be far from complete, as five parishes are missing altogether and some others
are represented by very few names. The occupations of the knights are included
in a minority of cases and, as might be expected, they cover a wide range. There
were caballeros de premia among the cloth-merchants (traperos) and
general merchants (both mercaderes and the apparently lesser
merchantes). Among industrial workers, the tanners and the dyers seem to
have achieved this rank, in some cases, and artisans were represented by
silversmiths and furniture-makers, among others. Tenant farmers (labradores),
gardeners (hortelanos) and woodmen (silvaneros) also appear in the
lists. The dispute over military service, which surfaced in 1496 and culminated
in the hidalgo list of 1513, indicates that the distinction between
noblemen and caballeros de premia, which was in theory precise, was in
practice not always obvious. However, the 1497 list does suggest that the
practitioners of 'vile and base offices' were still well represented among the
caballeros de premia of Córdoba around the year 1500 and it will become
clear in due course that this particular group had a prominent role to play in
the city's politics during the early years of the sixteenth century.
(20)
MILITARY FORCES
If the characteristics of noble families are of
interest in the study of the aristocratic contribution to local politics, it is
equally clear that a knowledge of the distribution of military power in the
region is essential for an understanding of the relative strength of different
groups within the city and its tierra. In a society dominated by a
crusade against the infidel, which was rapidly approaching its climax, it was
inevitable that political power should correspond closely with the ability to
garrison castles and put armies in the field. As far as the larger towns, such
as Córdoba, were concerned, the legal basis for the raising of troops was the
fuero which had been granted in the thirteenth century. The [144]
dominant principle was that of the feudal host, whereby the king had the right
to summon to his service all men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty who
were not excluded for physical reasons or because they were clerics. Those who
did not serve had to pay a tribute instead. The militia was paid from council
funds and was mustered on the basis of padrones, which, like those for
taxation purposes, were compiled and used by the jurados. The urban
forces of Andalusia consisted from the start of caballeros and peones,
two categories which were often more important in social and financial than in
military terms. According to Córdoba's fuero, the caballeros were
the most important part of the force. They were only allowed to leave the city
outside the campaigning season, that is, between October and May, and if they
took their families with them they had to leave a substitute, as a pledge that
they would return. The caballero, or his deputy, had to maintain a horse
for at least eight months of every year. The peones, or foot-soldiers, on
the other hand, were simply summoned by the jurados of their parish, when
the order came through from the Crown via the local council, and placed in
contingents, each with a certain number of caballeros. The whole force
was led by the city's alguacil mayor. (21)
Even in the fuero itself, the
caballeros de premia were complicating the issue. From the start, these were
the members of the trading community which settled in the newly conquered city,
who had the wealth to pay for a horse and for the fairly simple knightly
accoutrements of the period. They were treated as equals of the caballeros.
After the laws of Alcalá of 1348, those with goods valued at more than a certain
fixed sum were obliged to do knight service. In the fifteenth century, the
figure in Córdoba diocese was 4,000 mrs. Those with goods worth io ooo
mrs had to supply two horses and those with 40,000 mrs three. By a
pragmatic of 20 June 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella raised the minimum figure to
l00,000 mrs, in Córdoba and the other cities of Andalusia, adjusting the
other figures accordingly. According to a Seville ordinance of 1432,
caballeros, of whatever kind, had to parade in helmet and coat of mail, with
sword, shield and lance. The infantry was divided into crossbowmen (ballesteros)
and lancers (lanceros). The latter also had swords, shields and daggers
and are not to be confused with the mounted soldiers who were armed with lances.
By the time of the Granada campaign, there were also hand-gunners (espingarderos),
who wore armour. (22)
Ladero's figures for the forces put in the field
during the Granada campaign do not, generally speaking, show the types of
infantry [145] involved, but they do indicate that Córdoba was in
practice capable of raising up to 750 horsemen and 5,000 infantry, in case of
necessity. The more detailed figures for the period after 1495, which are to be
found in local records, reveal that the city was asked to provide up to 400
espingarderos and, in one case, 800 ballesteros, but that the bulk of
its infantry contribution generally consisted of lanceros. Another fact
which emerges from the actas capitulares is that the conquest of Granada
was far from being the end of the demands made by the Crown on the city's
military resources. Apart from general levies at times of panic, such as the
Alpujarras revolt in the kingdom of Granada in 1499, the royal expedition
against certain Andalusian magnates in 1513 and the threat of Turkish attacks on
the region's coast in 1515, the numbers demanded were lower than they had been
during the Granada war, but nonetheless there were few years between 1492 and
1515 in which no troops were required from Córdoba by the Crown.
(23)
So far, no mention has been made, in a military
context, of the Crown's own 'feudal' vassals, the vasallos del Rey, who
in theory composed a force of mounted lancers which could form a reliable
nucleus for the royal armies. A vasallo del Rey agreed to serve the Crown
whenever required, on specified terms, and might not become the vassal of any
other lord without royal permission. Had this been an effective institution in
the period of the Catholic Monarchs, it could have given the Crown a valuable
basis of political support among the leading citizens of Córdoba. In fact,
however, as Ladero has observed, it was declining steadily in importance during
the Granada wars and between 1486 and 1491 the city provided no more than eight
vasallos del Rey to the royal armies. Marie-Claude Gerbet could find
evidence of only eleven in a slightly later period, though her list is
admittedly incomplete. (24)
The significance of the Córdoba militia in the
region's affairs cannot be assessed only on the basis of numbers. Quality and
morale are more important considerations and in these respects the reputation of
urban forces in this period was not good. As far as Córdoba is concerned, one
guide to the level of military fervour among the citizenry is the effectiveness
of the regular parades (alardes) of the caballeros de premia.
While the total of nearly two hundred knights who paraded in Córdoba in 1497
contrasts sharply with the single, pathetic caballero who appeared in the
only parade summoned in Madrid in that year, Córdoba council seems also to have
expected a large-scale failure to meet royal requirements. When ordering an
alarde for the last Sunday [146] in May 1500, for example, the
council added that all caballeros who had no horses were to parade
nonetheless as peones, in accordance with royal instructions. By November
1515, things had deteriorated further. Complaints were made in council that half
the caballeros de premia failed to turn out, sending their sons or
serving-lads instead, while those who did appear were in a state of disarray.
The council decided to call another parade for Christmas 1515.
(25)
Another sign that military activity was by no
means to the taste of many of Córdoba's citizens is the prevalence in the period
of substitution in the performance of military service. It was inevitable that
many citizens' concern for their own farms or businesses should have outweighed
their feeling of loyalty to the Crown and their desire to complete the Granada
'crusade'. This was particularly so once the direct military threat had receded
from the Córdoba area, with the result that by the late fifteenth century it was
normal for those liable for military service to pay a deputy to march for them.
This practice was particularly common among the caballeros de premia, but
cases involving all ranks are to be found in notarial registers. Thirty-nine
examples of substitution are recorded between 31 July and 2 August 1490 and
another forty-six between 21 and 24. December 1501. The rush to arrange for
deputies was accompanied by a series of disputes over exemptions and status,
whenever a demand for troops was received by the council.
The figures provided by Ladero for the troops
supplied by leading nobles for the Granada wars give a good indication of the
forces at the disposal of the leading members of regional society, as the
Andalusian magnates were heavily committed throughout. In contrast with the city
militia, seignorial contingents consisted mainly of horsemen, either the lightly
armed jinetes, who rode in the Moorish style, or the hombres de armas,
whose equipment and style of fighting corresponded more closely to those
customary elsewhere in western Europe. The two categories are not distinguished
in the records concerned. Apart from a freak total of 550 horsemen produced by
the count of Cabra in 1483, the largest recorded total for the army of a
Cordoban magnate is 400, supplied by Don Alonso de Aguilar in 1483, 270 of them
being cavalry. Don Alonso never achieved this total again and the count of Cabra
and alcaide de los donceles, like him, normally produced during these
campaigns between 200 and 300 men, most of them cavalry. Lesser lords, such as
Gonzalo Mexía and Egas Venegas, provided between twenty and fifty horsemen in
most years of the war. Military and economic capabilities seem to have been
closely matched among the Andalusian upper [147] nobility and the effect
of this state of affairs on the political life of Córdoba is made plain in the
whole history of the period. (26)
METHODS OF POLITICAL CONTROL
Any investigation of this question must rest on
the assumption that the nobility was involved in the region's politics with the
legal sanction of the Crown. The leading families of the Córdoba area were all
represented on the city council, except for the Sotomayor of Belalcázar. Don
Alonso, the head of the house of Aguilar, was alcalde mayor of Córdoba
and the count of Cabra, head of the house of Baena, was alguacil mayor.
These two magnates were among five who held votos mayores, or predominant
votes, in the council. The others were the alcaide de los donceles,
Gonzalo Mexía, lord of Santa Eufemia, and Don Luis Portocarrero, lord of Palma.
(27) The voto mayor seems not to have given an additional vote,
but to have been a formal title of honour, beyond the style 'Don', which was
restricted to members of the highest rank of the upper nobility and to senior
clerics.
It was not, however, by means of honorific titles
that the upper nobility exercised its power in Córdoba. The difficulty is that
it is not generally possible to discover the mechanism by which this control was
effected, although the results were clear enough. In principle, it might be
expected that an obvious way in which a magnate could establish a connection
with an individual member of Córdoba council would be by means of a simple
feudal link between lord and vassal. A lord would pay a retainer (acostamiento)
to his man, in return for which the latter might live in his lord's house,
sharing his table, as a comensal or paniaguado, although this was
not necessarily the case. The recipient of an acostamiento was, however,
required to serve his lord in battle, when summoned, and in this respect the
relationship between a nobleman and a lesser man (who might also be a noble) was
similar to that between a magnate and the king. The case of an ordinary citizen
who attached himself to the household of a holder of an important municipal
office -- and in Córdoba all holders of such offices had at least the financial
privileges of a noble -- might or might not be of great political significance.
It is clear, however, that when a veinticuatro of Córdoba became the
vasallo of a local magnate, this was a sign of political alignment. Ladero
has noted the growth, after the arrival of the Trastamarans on the Castilian
throne in 1369, of the illegal practice of veinticuatros and other
council officials receiving acostamientos from [148] nobles. A law
of John II, which forbade office-holders in any royal town to live in the house
of any other official of that town, on pain of losing their vote and office, was
confirmed by Ferdinand and Isabella. However, the continued existence of this
practice was tacitly admitted by the Catholic Monarchs, when they allowed the
marquis of Cádiz, and his heir the first duke of Arcos, to pay acostamientos
to officials in Córdoba, Ecija and Carmona, since they themselves had no offices
in these towns. After the admission that nobles might pay acostamientos
to officials in neighbouring towns, it was difficult in practice for the Crown
to stop such payments in towns such as Córdoba where the nobles did in fact hold
office. (28) It is, unfortunately, as hard to
work out in detail the political significance of noble use of acostamiento
payments as it is to establish the effect of marriage alliances and the action
of noble linajes as political entities. The only way in which the attempt
may be made is through an examination of the main episodes in the political
history of Córdoba and its region from the late 1460s until 1516.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS
The reign of Henry IV
Political alignments in the whole of western
Andalusia in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs were largely determined by the
conflicts of Henry IV's period. The significant years came after 1464, when
national and local rivalries combined to cause turmoil in the region. When
prince Alfonso became the centre of noble resistance to his half-brother, the
king, in 1465, the Andalusian upper nobility split into two opposing camps. In
Córdoba, Don Alonso de Aguilar became the leader of a party supporting Alfonso,
while the count of Cabra led those who remained loyal to Henry. These two
bandos were to be the main feature of Córdoba's politics at least until the
early years of the sixteenth century. From the start of hostilities, Don Alonso
de Aguilar, accompanied by the alcaide de los donceles and Luis Méndez de
Sotomayor, lord of El Carpio, was dominant in the city. He held the alcázar
of Córdoba and the tower known as the Calahorra, which controlled the southern
end of Córdoba's bridge across the Guadalquivir. He also held the castles in the
tierra at Santaella, Bujalance, La Rambla, Adamuz, Peñaflor and Puente de
Alcolea. The Cabra party, in contrast, normally functioned in the tierra.[149]
It was supported by Martín Alonso de Montemayor, lord of Alcaudete, Egas
Venegas, lord of Luque, and Luis Portocarrero, lord of Palma. The Cabra side
held the castles of Castro del Río, Castro Viejo, Pedro Abad, Aldea (now Villa)
del Río and Montoro.
Many skirmishes and raids took place during the
next four years, but the most important was the capture of Ecija, in July 1466,
by the count of Cabra and his son-in-law, Luis Portocarrero. The Aguilar party
continued to control Córdoba, however, and after Don Alonso had granted a truce
to his rivals, in November 1467, the next major event on the national stage was
the death of prince Alfonso at the end of June in the following year. His demise
filled king Henry's supporters with new enthusiasm, and the count of Cabra
unsuccessfully attacked Bujalance and Córdoba itself. Initially, the backers of
prince Alfonso transferred their allegiance to the king's sister, princess
Isabella, but after the agreement between the two sides had been made at
Guisando, in September I468, whereby Henry recognised Isabella as heiress to the
throne, the king attempted to restore his authority in the rebel areas. As a
part of this campaign, he came to Andalusia in May 1469, entering Córdoba at the
end of that month. The count of Cabra and his supporters came back to the city
with the king, but the settlement treated both sides equally. All the royal
castles which had been seized in the fighting were to be restored to the control
of the council, but the king also decreed that the two leaders, Don Alonso and
the count, were to be compensated by the citizens of Córdoba, through a
repartimiento, for the cost of garrisoning the usurped castles and for works
carried out within them. Henry seems previously to have promised to the count of
Cabra the sum of 1,400,000 mrs in return for his efforts to restore the
city to the king's obedience. Numerous members of the two parties signed an
agreement in Córdoba on 5 June 1469, to the effect that they would restore the
integrity of the city's possessions and never allow any of them to be alienated
again. The following day, three veinticuatros of Córdoba were appointed
to find out the magnates' expenses and five members of the council offered to
mortgage various of their farms if public funds proved insufficient to pay the
compensation. (29)
Not surprisingly, the king's visit to Córdoba
failed to end the conflict between the two bandos. Henry installed his
ally, the count of Cabra, as teniente of the alcázar and the
Calahorra tower, but in October 1469, Don Alonso de Aguilar made a surprise
attack on the count's son, the mariscal Don Diego and his brother Don
Sancho, the former being imprisoned in the castle of Cañete. Don Alonso then
besieged the [150] Córdoba alcázar and the Calahorra and succeeded
in recapturing them, while his ally, the alcaide de los donceles, was
despatched to secure the defences of the castle at Castro del Río, which in
theory belonged to Córdoba council. The alcaide had estates nearby, in
his town of Espejo. Once Don Alonso had regained control of Córdoba, he
graciously agreed to obey the king and release the mariscal Don Diego,
but only into the hands of two nobles with whom he had connections and in return
for a promise that the king would grant him, by June 1470, the governorship of
the important frontier fortress of Alcalá la Real, which was one of the Crown's
defences against the Moors of Granada. Once he had regained his freedom, the
mariscal challenged Don Alonso to single combat and, although the fight
never took place, the chivalric correspondence which survives concerning the
affair illustrates one aspect of the aristocratic mentality of the period.
The king's failure to restore order in the
Córdoba area was largely the result of political pressures on a national scale.
Don Alonso de Aguilar's virtual immunity from attack owed much to the support
which he received from the marquis of Villena, Don Juan Pacheco, to whose
daughters both he and the alcaide de los donceles were later married. The
aim of the marquis of Villena seems to have been to dominate Castilian politics
purely on his own behalf, but he was happy to help his future son-in-law govern
Córdoba virtually as a seignorial town. King Henry in effect had no supporters
in the area, as his superficial ally, the count of Cabra, now supported princess
Isabella, and after she had been disinherited once more by her brother, signed,
on 22 December 1470, an alliance with the duke of Medina Sidonia, who largely
controlled the city and region of Seville. In 1471, Don Alonso expelled from
Córdoba its bishop, Don Pedro de Solier, who was a member of the Fernández de
Córdoba family but a supporter of the count. With the help of the marquis of
Villena and the marquis of Cádiz, the latter the arch-rival of the duke of
Medina Sidonia, Don Alonso held on to Córdoba until the early years of the
following reign.
In May 1472, king Henry was in Córdoba once more,
attempting vainly to make peace between the bandos, and in the following
year the political tensions in the city became entangled with the problems of
Christians newly converted from Judaism, with the result that riots erupted,
both there and elsewhere in the region. The implications of these events will be
discussed later, but the next major development was the capture and imprisonment
by the mariscal Don Diego of Don [151] Alonso's brother, Gonzalo
Fernández de Córdoba, who was later known as the 'Great Captain' for his
military exploits in Italy. This less glorious episode, early in his career,
took place in September 1474 and resulted in Gonzalo's incarceration in
Santaella castle, where he remained until February 1476, together with his wife
and some supporters. This was despite the fact that, after the death of Don
Alonso's mentor, the marquis of Villena, the two sides signed a peace-treaty, in
November 1474, in which they agreed that the garrison in Santaella would be
reduced, that Gonzalo Fernández would be released and that Don Alonso de Aguilar
would marry Doña Francisca, the daughter of the count of Cabra, as had been
arranged some years before. None of the terms of this treaty was carried out and
it was at this stage that Don Alonso married Doña Catalina Pacheco, hoping that
her brother would secure him the king's favour. (30)
The reign of Ferdinand and Isabella
In the event, Henry died in the following month
and was succeeded by his sister Isabella. However, her claim was strongly
disputed by his daughter Joanna and her Portuguese allies, and while the outcome
remained obscure the politics of the Córdoba area, with the bandos in
stalemate, remained virtually frozen. This meant that when Isabella and her
husband Ferdinand, having secured their position, eventually arrived in
Andalusia in 1477, the balance of power in Córdoba was as it had been in 1474.
The Cabra party was exiled to its lordships in the tierra, while Don
Alonso occupied Córdoba itself and the castles of Hornachuelos, La Rambla,
Santaella, Bujalance, Montoro, Villa Pedroche and Castro del Río. The Catholic
Monarchs obtained the restoration to the Crown of all these castles, but like
Henry IV they found it necessary to compensate the magnates for their losses. It
was by no means a foregone conclusion that the new rulers would be obeyed,
especially as one of the queen's tasks when she reached Córdoba was, it is said,
to sue for the release of her corregidor, Diego de Merlo, who had been
arrested in 1476 by Don Alonso, in his capacity as alcalde mayor of
Córdoba. In order that Isabella might save face, Merlo was reinstated, although
he was soon replaced. The main achievement of the royal visit, however, was the
recovery, apparently by the sovereigns' will-power, of the royal castles and the
expulsion from the city of the leaders of the two bandos. Don Alonso
remained as alcalde mayor and the count as alguacilmayor, but they
were both suspended and their [152] powers were vested in the
corregidor, who was henceforth the Crown's chief representative in the area.
(31)
Before assessing the effectiveness of the
settlement brought about by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1477-8, it is worth
looking more closely at the composition of the bandos which had virtually
destroyed the authority of the Crown for a number of years. The available
information on the residence, marriage policy and political activity of the
Cordoban nobility suggests that the unit of political conflict was not the
family 'clan', or linaje, but the far more amorphous and complex bando.
There were only two such groupings, the Aguilar bando and that which
supported the house of Baena. Each was led by a magnate who was also the head of
one of these two rival branches of the Fernández de Córdoba family, and the
citizens of Córdoba, in the reign of Henry IV, had little choice but to join one
of these groups or else keep out of politics. In practice, the latter option
probably did not exist, except for the most insignificant members of Cordoban
society.
The limited amount of evidence available for the
composition of the two bandos indicates that each must have been
supported by far more people than could have had feudal or marriage ties with
the houses of Aguilar and Baena. It is known that the Cabra party was present in
Córdoba for Henry IV's visit in 1469, during which a document of reconciliation
was signed. It is also known that the cabristas were expelled three
months later, in October, by Don Alonso de Aguilar. Lists of members of Córdoba
council during the period of the expulsion survive in the Córdoba Cathedral
archive. One is to be found in the excommunication of Don Alonso, together with
various members of the council, by the bishop of Córdoba, Don Pedro de Solier,
after the latter had been expelled from the city for supporting his cousin, the
count of Cabra. This document is dated I July 1472. A document lifting the
excommunication, issued by the bishop on 24 September 1475, contains
council-lists for 21 June 1473, 6 November 1473 and i8 August 1475. If these
later lists are compared with that of the signatories of the 1469 agreement,
those who disappear after 1469 include members of the Aguayo, Angulo, Argote,
Aranda, Berm·dez, Cabrera, Castro, Figueroa, Godoy, Heredia, Mayorga, Molina,
Noguera, Ramírez, De los Ríos, Méndez de Sotomayor, Vargas, Velasco and Venegas
families. Those who remained in Córdoba with Don Alonso included members of the
Aguayo, Angulo, Argote, Baeza, Berrio, Cabrera, Cárcamo, Cárdenas, Castillejo,
Castillo, Cea, Figueroa, Gahete, Godoy, Herrera, Hinestrosa, Hoces, Infantas,
Luna, Mesa, Molina, Parias, De los Ríos, [153] Sosa, Méndez de Sotomayor,
Tafur, Torreblanca and De la Torre families. It is obvious from these lists that
a number of families were apparently involved in the conflict on both sides.
(32)
It must be clear from the events between 1464 and
1474 that royal control over Córdoba and its region was no more than theoretical
and that the local council and its financial and political structure had been
swept aside by the rival factions of the upper nobility and their supporters. In
contrast, the period between the restoration of royal authority, in 1478, and
the death of Don Alonso de Aguilar, fighting Moorish rebels in the Sierra
Bermeja in 1501, reveals a virtually complete absence of activity by the
bandos. The leaders of the two sides seem to have accepted, albeit with
reluctance, the suspension of their offices in Córdoba and, at least in the
years for which records exist, to have taken no part in council affairs. Indeed,
the surviving documents suggest that political life, in the sense in which that
term had been understood in the previous reign, had ceased. Even if it is
necessary to chronicle and try to explain the resurgence of seignorial power
after 1500, the subsequent setbacks of royal policy should not detract from
Ferdinand and Isabella's earlier achievement. Between 1478 and 1500, Córdoba and
its tierra were governed in a manner which was probably more in
accordance with royal intentions than had been the case in any previous period
under Castilian rule. While it is by no means obvious that the interest of the
Crown coincided with that of Córdoba's citizens, it nonetheless appears that the
regular succession of corregidores who were sent to the city to represent
the Crown after 1478 gave individuals a better chance of escaping, if they so
wished, from the tyranny of the bandos than they had had before or were
to enjoy again for many years. It was in this period that the governmental
structure which was described earlier corresponded most closely to reality. It
remains to be seen what tensions survived in the political society of the region
and to what extent they undermined or even destroyed the work of the Catholic
Monarchs.
The early sixteenth century
The return to prominence of the old leaders of
the bandos began with the apparently irrelevant episode of the annexation
by the count of Cabra of the lordship of Valenzuela. The Valenzuela family had
come to Córdoba at the time of the Reconquest. The exact date of the grant of
the señorío to the family is not known, but in the fourth generation
after this the line reached an heiress. She married Martín Sánchez de [154]
Castro and their descendants bore the name of Valenzuela. The family become
closely involved with the house of Baena and in the later fifteenth century Juan
Pérez de Valenzuela was household steward (maestresala) to the count of
Cabra. However, the rival house of Aguilar was also interested in the lordship
and, between them, the two great houses extinguished its independence.
(33)
On 5 May 1501, Alfonso Fernández de Valenzuela,
lord of Valenzuela, made an agreement with Doña Francisca de Zúñiga, countess of
Cabra, to sell her the little town (lugar) of Valenzuela. The price was
to be 30,000 mrs per yugada of land, 5,000 mrs per citizen
(vecino) and 150,000 mrs for every 1,000 mrs of rent
produced by the town. (34) However, he seems to
have repented of this transaction, as of 15 June 1501, he made another agreement
with Don Pedro Fernández de Córdoba, marquis of Priego and lord of Aguilar,
whereby he put all his property, including the castle and town of Valenzuela,
under the protection of the marquis and became his vassal, agreeing to serve the
marquis with a small band of horsemen, in return for an acostamiento of
40,000 mrs per annum. Alfonso stated in this document that he had made
this agreement because he was 'fatigued by the annoyance given him by the count
of Cabra over the said lugar of Valenzuela'. As a result of the count's
pressure, he had agreed to sell Valenzuela to the house of Cabra, but he now
formally withdrew his approval of this agreement, replacing it by his
arrangement with the marquis of Priego. (35)
This confused state of affairs was resolved as
part of a much more significant event for the history of Córdoba, that is to
say, a permanent peace between the two bandos which had fought over the
area for so many years and which had been restrained only with great difficulty
by Ferdinand and Isabella. Negotiations between the houses of Aguilar and Baena
were conducted, on the side of Don Alonso's son the marquis of Priego, by Don
Enrique Enríquez, the marquis's father-in-law and uncle of the king, who acted
not merely in the interest of family peace but also with the full support of the
Crown, which was anxious to secure permanent stability in the Córdoba area. Don
Enrique first of all attempted to obtain the implementation of an agreement
which had been made at Granada between the young count and the dowager countess
of Cabra, on the one hand, and the marquis of Priego on the other. This had
included the handing over of Valenzuela to the house of Baena, in return for the
demolition of its castle. However, Alfonso Fernández de Valenzuela had proved
unwilling to sacrifice his patrimony [155] in the interest of peace
between the two great noble houses and although, as has been mentioned, he had
duly agreed to sell Valenzuela to the count of Cabra, he had since attempted to
extricate himself by concluding the agreement which made him a vassal of the
marquis of Priego, no doubt hoping to profit from the marquis's misgivings about
the general peace. Don Enrique Enríquez, however, was determined to see the sale
and demolition go through and was ordered by Ferdinand and Isabella to hold
Valenzuela castle until the agreement between its lord and the countess of Cabra
had been implemented. Don Enrique extracted a promise from the young count of
Cabra that he would demolish the castle as soon as he had taken possession of
the town and told the marquis of this promise by means of a letter from Seville,
dated 22 February 1502, in which he stated baldly that the agreement would go
through regardless of Alfonso Fernández de Valenzuela's views on the matter. Don
Enrique also told the marquis in this letter that he had summoned Alfonso to
Seville to resolve the issue, telling him this was a royal command. In addition,
he wrote to Fernán Páez de Castillejo, a veinticuatro of Córdoba, asking
him to use his good offices to persuade Alfonso to come to Seville and effect
the sale of Valenzuela. (36)
Alfonso duly succumbed to the combined pressure
of the Monarchs, the king's uncle and the houses of Aguilar and Baena and gave
up his señorío. With this obstacle removed, a general peace was made
between the marquis of Priego and the count of Cabra, at Seville on 3 March
1502. This fulfilled the second count of Cabra's wish that the rivalry between
the two great houses of Córdoba should cease, a wish which he expressed in his
will, made at Baena on 4 April 1487. (37) It was
perhaps natural that the desire for peace should have been strong on the side
which had generally done less well in the struggle, but in any case, at Seville
in 1502, the new heads of the two houses publicly buried their predecessors'
rivalries. It was agreed that a messenger should be sent to obtain from the
Crown a licence for the agreement for the sale of Valenzuela to the house of
Cabra to be implemented. On the same day, the marquis and the count agreed a
series of articles between themselves. First, in accordance with a general royal
directive to the Cordoban nobility, the two lords agreed not to acquire any
property within each other's lordships, or less than a league (about 5.5 km)
from the territory of the other. They also agreed not to harbour malefactors
escaping from each other's lands, not to receive each other's vassals except by
mutual consent, and to settle all future disputes by diplomacy and not by force.
[156] The agreement hardly reveals a high degree of trust between the old
rivals, but it was to have a drastic effect on the strength of royal authority
within the area. The Valenzuela affair itself illustrates the continued
influence of the upper nobility, which Ferdinand and Isabella could in reality
do little to reduce. (38)
Before the reconciliation took place, the marquis
of Priego had been offered by the Crown a basis on which he might in the future
exercise power in the region. On 7 October 1501, as soon as his father had been
killed in the Sierra Bermeja, Don Pedro Fernández was granted Don Alonso's
office of alcalde mayor of Córdoba, as well as the title of marquis, an
honour which Don Alonso himself had never gained. The new marquis was received
as alcalde mayor by a full session of Córdoba council on 27 October 1501.
After receiving the staff (varia) of office, Don Pedro went to his
lodgings in the bishop's palace, accompanied by the corregidor and
council. (39) This implies that at this stage
the marquis continued his father's practice of not attending council-meetings
and indeed his presence was not recorded at any session until 1504. In the
meantime, however, the marquis and other local nobles had placed the city in
their debt, both morally and financially, by supplying it with grain and then
cash, during the emergency of the years after 1502. The efforts of the local
nobility in this connection were to reach a peak in 1506.
(40) On 18 November 1504, the marquis of Priego attended a meeting of
the council, although there was a corregidor in the city, and this meant
that he was suspended from office as his father had been since 1478. It might be
thought that Don Pedro was profiting from the demise of the queen, but her death
did not occur until 26 November and Córdoba council only received news of the
event from Ferdinand on 4 December, when Diego López Dávalos' term as
corregidor was extended. The city formally raised Joanna's standard as queen
on 8 December, in the presence of the corregidor, the marquis of Priego,
the count of Cabra and the alcaide de los donceles, all holders of
votos mayores, thirty-three veinticuatros and twenty-nine jurados.
(41)
It is impossible to tell, from the available
evidence, whether the marquis acted in this way because he had heard of
Isabella's ill-health and being aware, as all those concerned with national
politics must have been, of the doubts about the future, hoped for a relaxation
of royal control. However, leaving aside the possible prophetic powers of the
marquis, there is no doubt that he began at this point to attend some
council-meetings, but by no means all. He was absent for the rest of [157]
1504, but in 1505 he appeared on 3 February, 20 February, four times in late
July, twice in late August and once at the beginning of September. By early
1506, the grain shortage had caused a serious situation in Córdoba and on 18
March, the corregidor told the council that 600 'Swiss' soldiers (çoyços)
were available to quell food-riots in the tierra. At this time, a number
of veinticuatros left the city, presumably to protect their own property
from attack, and on 10 June 1506 they were followed by the corregidor
himself.
Thus it was that on 15 June 1506 the royal
provision of corregidores or pesquisidores broke down, for the
first time since Francisco de Valdés' appointment in 1478. The marquis of Priego,
as alcalde mayor, and the count of Cabra, as alguacil mayor, took
the varas of office from the corregidor's officials, although the
previous alcalde mayor, Lic. Andrés de Palacio, declared that they should
not have them without a specific royal command. There was some discussion in the
council about the propriety of the nobles' action, a fact which itself indicates
the success of the intervening period of stable royal government in erasing the
former system of seignorial control. The deputy town clerk (escribano del
concejo), Diego Rodríguez, recorded in the actas that Martín Alonso
de Montemayor declared himself to be in favour of the new arrangement, unless he
saw a royal document which forbade it, and this view prevailed at the meeting.
The former officials withdrew, leaving the marquis and count in charge. It is
worth remembering that without the reconciliation between the houses of Aguilar
and Baena, which had been at least partly engineered by the Crown, a united
noble government of Córdoba at this stage would scarcely have been imaginable.
The period of control by the marquis and the
count, the latter having appeared in council for the first time to accompany the
marquis on this occasion, lasted only until Don Diego Osorio was received as
corregidor on 19 August, but its importance lies in the fact that it in some
sense broke the spell which had kept the upper nobility from direct involvement
in urban politics. The arguments used to justify the takeover were set down in a
memorandum which was presented to Córdoba council by Gonzalo de Hoces, the
city's procurador mayor. They were twofold. First, the corregidor
Dávalos had absented himself from the city secretly, without informing the
council as he was required to do, and secondly, in view of his absence, the
intervention of the magnates was essential to the preservation of order in the
current difficult situation. Such views bear a marked resemblance to those
generally held in aristocratic circles in the later years of Henry IV's reign.
(42)
[158] The argument about the danger of
disorder seems to have been advanced with at least some degree of sincerity, as
in March 1507, when plague threatened, a formal requerimiento was issued
by the council to corregidor Osorio, that he should remain in the city
and not escape like his predecessor. This suggests that, in such an emergency,
strong government would be welcomed by the council, from whichever quarter it
came. However, the marquis and the count were given occasion to intervene once
more when, on 25 August 1507, the corregidor, who had left the area in
April after the worst of the plague was past, failed to present himself when a
document extending his term of office was read in council. The marquis seems to
have intended at this stage to make a political challenge to the authority of
Ferdinand as administrator of the Crown of Castile, because, in expelling
Osorio's officials from the council-chamber, he stated for the record that he
would only accept the corregidor's extension if it was commanded by queen
Joanna, 'by her letter patent, signed with her royal name, as is customary with
the provision of offices of corregimiento'. (43)
This, he must surely have known, was impossible because of her insanity, and the
gesture may not have been unconnected with the news of Ferdinand's return to
Valencia from Italy, which had been received by the council on 19 August.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the marquis ruled the city, with Don Antonio
de Córdoba as deputy for his brother the count of Cabra, until, in December
1507, Diego López Dávalos returned to the post which he had deserted in 1506,
armed, ironically, with a royal provision given in Joanna's name but signed by
Ferdinand. This was accepted without demur by the marquis and Don Antonio.
(44)
The third episode in the progressive alienation
of the marquis from the authority of the Crown is not recorded in the city's
actas capitulares, which, perhaps significantly, do not survive for the
years í508ù9. However, the events of the summer of 1508 can be fairly well
established from other sources. The chronicles of Bernáldez, Santa Cruz and
Alcocer give accounts of varying length, but do not differ in their statement of
the basic facts. Bernáldez's account is used here, as it is contemporary,
whereas Santa Cruz's chronicle was not completed until í551ù3. Alcocer's version
contains nothing which is not to be found in Bernáldez, except for one small
incident, mentioned below, which may well be fictitious. Bernáldez is, however,
supplemented by the Libro de los escribanos, which is an account of
contemporary events by two successive town clerks of Jerez de la Frontera, Juan
and Gonzalo Román. (45)
[159] Bernáldez states that trouble arose
in Córdoba in 1508 between the supporters of the corregidor, Diego López
Dávalos, and members of the household of the bishop, Don Juan Daza. Violent
incidents occurred and were investigated by Nuño de Argote, who held the vara
of an alcalde mayor for the alcaide de los donceles. However, the
marquis of Priego, 'who followed, in friendship and favour, the party (parcialidad)
of the bishop', broke Nuño's staff, because he had not received it in the
council-chamber. (46) Ferdinand heard of this
affront to the dignity of the magistracy and decided, in view of the disorder
prevailing in the city, to send an alcalde of the royal household as
pesquisidor, to investigate the marquis's behaviour. He formally ordered the
marquis to leave Córdoba, but Don Pedro's reply was to arrest the alcalde
and imprison him with the alcalde of the Hermandad, Juan Estrada. The
marquis then took the royal official to Montilla castle, announcing to the
public that he was obeying the king's orders by leaving Córdoba and that the
alcalde was accompanying him voluntarily. Despite this, the marquis released
the magistrate in Montilla and returned to Córdoba.
Ferdinand decided that this defiance could not be
tolerated and informed Córdoba and other Andalusian towns, from Dueñas on 25
July 1508, that he was coming to the area to restore order. The royal towns were
told to place their forces in readiness to assist. The king took the royal
garrison of Burgos to Andalusia, this consisting of 600 hombresdearmas,
400 jinetes, and 2500-3000 infantry -- hand-gunmen, crossbowmen and
lancers. The marquis's brother, the 'Great Captain', Gonzalo Fernández de
Córdoba, attempted a reconciliation, even persuading the marquis to come to
Court and ask for Ferdinand's pardon, but the king refused to see him and kept
him in captivity two leagues from the Court.
The military expedition was therefore punitive in
character and not aimed at restoring order. A contemporary document gives the
sentences which were meted out to the marquis's supporters in this venture. He
himself was condemned to perpetual banishment from Córdoba and the rest of
Andalusia and was deprived of all his royal offices -- the alcaldía mayor
and veinticuatría of Córdoba and the governorship of Antequera -- and
300,000 mrs of juros in the rents of Córdoba. His castles were all
confiscated by the king and that at Montilla, in which the royal alcalde
had been imprisoned, was demolished, despite the pleas of the Great Captain, who
was born there. Thirteen men, including Alonso de Cárcamo, Bernaldino de
Bocanegra, Juan de Saavedra, two lawyers called Herrera and Mexía, Juan de Luna
and two members [160] of the Valenzuela family, were sentenced to death,
with the confiscation of their goods and the demolition of their houses. Others,
such as the governor of Montilla, who had received the prisoner, the jurado
of St James, Alonso Ruiz de Aguayo, who had led him out of town in chains, on a
mule, and the alcalde of the Hermandad, who lent the marquis a horse for
the occasion, were sentenced to lose limbs. The alférez of Córdoba, Don
Diego de Córdoba, four veinticuatros and two jurados and several
other members of leading Cordoban families, were sentenced to terms of
imprisonment. The marquis was also condemned to pay the entire cost of the
military expedition and the subsequent trials, which was estimated at twenty
million mrs. (47)
The reasons for the revolt and for the king's
savage reaction are complex. Bernáldez's view was that the marquis bore a
particular grudge against Ferdinand because he had not adequately punished the
Moors who killed his father, Don Alonso de Aguilar. Ferdinand had attempted to
secure his loyalty by marrying him to his cousin, Doña Elvira Enríquez, whose
father had been responsible for bringing the houses of Aguilar and Baena
together. Nonetheless, Bernáldez argued that a concern for the family honour had
led to rashness on the part of the young marquis. The earlier acts of defiance,
which seemed to prepare for the 1508 revolt, could fit in with this theory, but
the issues involved were probably more complex. Alcocer recounts the story that,
when resting at the Venta del Puerto del Mulador, on the way to Andalusia,
Ferdinand began to feel misgivings about the expedition, fearing that the
marquis might humiliate him. However, a courtier, Hernando de Vega, heard what
was in the king's mind and said to him, 'My lord, to Córdoba, or to Aragon!'
Whether this episode actually took place or not, there is no doubt that many
Andalusian magnates, including the marquis of Priego and the count of Cabra,
were anxious that Ferdinand should not govern Castile. After Philip I's death in
1506, many of them had signed a document of confederation which on the surface
was intended to keep order in the region, but which was in fact directed against
Ferdinand. It was not only in Córdoba that the king faced seignorial defiance in
1508. (48)
Recently, Bartolomé Yun has forcefully asserted
that the bando politics of Córdoba in these years cannot be properly
understood without an awareness of the role of the alcaide de los donceles.
He suggests that Ferdinand had endeavoured, since 1502 or earlier, to build up
the power of the alcaide in order to balance that of the marquis and
count. However, in reality it is hard to see the alcaide delosdonceles
[161] as the focus of opposition to the newly combined bandos of
Aguilar and Baena, because he played so little part in the events of 1506-8. At
a vital stage, in 1506, the alcaide left Córdoba altogether, in order to
command the expedition to Mazalquivir, in North Africa, and in view of this fact
and of the earlier strenuous efforts of the Catholic Monarchs to bring about the
reconciliation of the houses of Aguilar and Baena, it is difficult to accept
Yun's analysis. It may well be that archbishop Deza of Seville was right when he
referred, in a letter, to the alcaide de los donceles as a faithful
servant of Ferdinand, but the boundaries disputes between towns belonging to the
alcaide and the marquis of Priego, which Yun notes in support of his view
and which are more fully examined by Quintanilla, were typical of relations
between the different agricultural communities of the region. It is possible
that Ferdinand did realise early on that the new alliance between the Aguilar
and Cabra bandos threatened to weaken royal control of the area, and it
is also possible that the alcaide de los donceles for some reason
resented the rapprochement between his relatives, but until the family papers of
that branch of the Fernández de Córdoba, which are in the archive of the dukes
of Medinaceli, have been fully investigated, it is unwise to be dogmatic on the
subject. (49)
Despite the apparent strength and speed of
Ferdinand's expedition in 1508, the Crown did not press home its advantage, as
it had done in 1478. It is not known if the sentences summarily passed on the
rebels were actually carried out. According to Alcocer, the marquis spent his
banishment in Toledo, even appearing at Court at the request of Ferdinand's new
queen, Germaine of Foix. This hardly suggests that he was out of favour and so
it is perhaps less surprising that, on 21 August 1510, Pedro de Valles arrived
in Córdoba with a royal letter restoring the marquis to his offices of
alcalde mayor and veinticuatro. On 26 November 1511, the marquis made
his first personal appearance at a meeting since 1508, a fact which may have
been connected with the demolition of Montilla castle, which according to
Alcocer was carried out at this time. The king seems to have been satisfied with
symbolic retribution and a limited period of banishment as, in August 1510, ten
veinticuatros, including the marquis's son, Don Francisco Pacheco, were
restored to their offices by royal command. Six jurados reappeared at the
same meeting. (50)
As these events suggest, the Cordoban nobility
and its supporters on the city council were not seriously affected in the long
run. Indeed, in some ways the nobles were allowed to improve on the position
which [162] they had attained by 1500. A growing tendency was the return
of royal castles in the area to noble governors, but this time in complete
legality and not by usurpation, as under Henry IV. Almodóvar castle had been in
the hands of minor members of the Fernández de Córdoba family since 1478, but in
1511 Ferdinand granted it to the count of Palma. The city council's protest was
overruled and the count continued to expand his influence in the area by
obtaining the governorship (tenencia) of the royal castle of Hornachuelos.
This castle was transferred in 1512, first to the 'Great Captain' and then,
later in the same year, to the marquis of Priego's son, Don Francisco Pacheco. Bujalance castle was granted by the Crown to another of the Fernández de Córdoba.
(51) Tension over boundaries and land-use between the citizens of
Palma and those of the neighbouring royal possessions of Hornachuelos and
Peñaflor, both under Córdoba's control, erupted in 1513 into an open challenge
by the count of Palma to the Crown's authority. On 15 July, the council in
Córdoba received a requerimiento from Palma, demanding action in the case
of the arrest of a servant of the count of Palma by citizens of Hornachuelos. It
transpired that the count's men had illegally occupied some royal land, known as
the Haza del Cerro de la Cabeza. After Córdoba council had appointed a
commission to defend the royal patrimony, two of its agents reported that, on 26
July, the count's men had marched into the lands of Peñaflor and put up gallows
as symbols of seignorial jurisdiction. In a letter sent to Córdoba later on 27
July, the council's men reported that the count of Palma's forces for this
operation consisted of a hundred cavalry and four hundred infantry. Eventually,
the dispute was settled by the audiencia at Granada through the time-honoured
procedure of sending a pesquisidor. The success of the Crown's legal
agencies in ending the violence was to be at least as significant for the future
as the continued readiness of local magnates, even after 1508, to pursue their
interests by military means. In this case, the count was punished for his
invasion of royal territory by the loss of the governorship of Almodóvar castle.
(52)
That the balance of power in the region still
strongly favoured the upper nobility was soon to be confirmed from another
source. The actas capitulares for 1515 contain copies of three petitions
to the Crown from Antón de la Mesta, on behalf of the caballeros de premia
of Córdoba. (53) They amount to a damning
indictment of the leaders of local society and suggest that whatever the
caballeros de premia had lost in military vigour, they had in effect taken
over from the jurados as the guardians of communal tradition. The
behaviour of the jurados, 'who will be [163] lords of the people',
was the main burden of the second petition, but it was the first which made the
most wide-ranging accusations. The veinticuatros and jurados were
said to be residing in the houses of the principal caballeros and to be
representing their interests. Because council members were avasallados,
the citizens dared not complain, and the caballeros de premia were
offered the rank of hidalgo notorio, with exemption from direct taxes, if
they remained silent. The corregidor and his officials condoned this
behaviour. The result was bad government in the city, with the council conniving
at crime provided it was in its members' interest. The solution proposed by the
petitioners was radical and provides an interesting parallel to the later
Comunero movement. Along with other Castilian cities of the period, the people
of Córdoba, on this evidence, referred to themselves as the comunidad.
Córdoba took no part in the uprisings of 1520-2, but here the caballeros de
premia asked the Crown to allow the comunidad to enter the
cabildos of the council and also to hold separate assemblies. The
comunidad was to join with the magistrates to provide for the government of
the city. Some of the present council members might take part in these meetings,
apparently as individuals. The third petition urged that the Crown should give
more support to the activities of its judges of boundaries in the area.
The fact that the council kept a copy of these
petitions may suggest the sublime self-confidence of Córdoba's rulers in 1515.
In any case, nothing came of the protests and the nobility continued to dominate
the area. The bandos had ended, but this only strengthened seignorial
power.
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