Preliminary Programme

Wed 22 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 23 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Sat 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

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Wednesday 22 March 2006 14:15
G-3 MID07 Urban Elites and Aristocratic behaviour in the 15th and 16th centuries Spanish Kingdoms I: Status and Privilige
Room G
Networks: Elites and forerunners , Middle Ages Chair: Tuula Hockman
Organizer: María Asenjo-González Discussant: Peter Stabel
María Asenjo-González : Aristocratic ambitions in Oligarchic Urban Society: Social and political consequences in Fifteenth-Century Castilian Towns
During the XVth century, royal Castilian cities counted with many jurisdictional attributions and legislative competences. The favourable economic conditions made easy the social arising of merchants and the craftsmen and allowed the reinforcement of the urban oligarchy power. Cities were ruled by horseman-villains as regidores and they headed oligarchic groups. ... (Show more)
During the XVth century, royal Castilian cities counted with many jurisdictional attributions and legislative competences. The favourable economic conditions made easy the social arising of merchants and the craftsmen and allowed the reinforcement of the urban oligarchy power. Cities were ruled by horseman-villains as regidores and they headed oligarchic groups. As rulers, they acted like a society of equals and they watched to avoid the promotions and individual advantages of someone. In some way, regidores, participated in the world of the chivalrous code values that nobles used as dominant group as a consequence of the arms office that they practiced. But during the reign of Juan II (1406- 1454), the notion of the "royal service" and "privanza", that characterized the privilege of titled nobility, was offered by the king to a minority of horseman-villains. The urban councillors were incorporated, since 1419, as urban member of the Royal Council, the high government and justice institution of the kingdom, associated to the Royal Camera and that let to access to "privanza" privilege.
The royal cities count also with the presence of nobles which resided in big houses and exhibited aristocratic behaviour, luxuries and manners in accordance with their peculiar way of life. The fascination by noble manners, beautiful objects and noble uses of the aristocracy is confirmed since the half of XVth century, by the existence of sumptuary laws that restrained the accessibility of the social accessing to some luxury products, and the way of life of the nobility. It was a social tendency not only of urban councillors and their families but also of some neighbours like squires, rich merchants, notaries and law officials.
Aristocratic manners were imitated by urban elite groups and produced political consequences. In some way, the prevalence of aristocratic behaviour made easy the nobility predominance in many royal cities by including urban councillors in their social influence. The extension of aristocratic manners also produces a social radicalization inside the city, excluding some urban groups. We can observe examples of those social and political attitudes later, during the Comunidades revolt in 1520. (Show less)

Angel Galán Sanchez : "Hidalgos moriscos": from Muslims merchants and fuqaha to Christian Nobles in the Kingdom of Granada
The Conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada in Southern Spain by the Crown of Castile supposed the implantation of a “colonial” in which the emigration of the aristocracies to the independent Muslims land left the merchants and ulemas in a privileged position like intermediaries before the new Christian powers. ... (Show more)
The Conquest of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada in Southern Spain by the Crown of Castile supposed the implantation of a “colonial” in which the emigration of the aristocracies to the independent Muslims land left the merchants and ulemas in a privileged position like intermediaries before the new Christian powers. After the forced conversions to the Christianity at the beginning of XVI th century, the Castilians tried to assimilate these men to their own urban oligarchies and to do that they chose a patterns of social mobility well known. Many of them become members of the small Castilian nobility (hidalgos) to recompense their services in the surrender of the different places during the conquest war and their role like fiscal agents of the Castilians afterwards.
I study the documents of concession of the hidalguias and the biography of the some of these collaborationist between the end of the XVth and the beginning of the XVIth centuries. (Show less)

José Antonio Jara Fuente : Performing Aristocratic Roles? The Building Process of Status and Privilege in Fifteenth-Century Castilian Towns
One of the most outstanding features in the process of stratification in any society pivots around status. The way that each society defines statutory conditions represents an invaluable element in historical and sociological research, as it expresses, in a reasonably accurate form, the way that society and its diverse components ... (Show more)
One of the most outstanding features in the process of stratification in any society pivots around status. The way that each society defines statutory conditions represents an invaluable element in historical and sociological research, as it expresses, in a reasonably accurate form, the way that society and its diverse components observe themselves and want to be observed, produce and reproduce (that is, reconstruct), impose and assume (even if modifying or adapting to their own necessities) the basic structures inherent to the processes of construction and hierarchical structuring of social and political identities.

This argument was not unknown to urban societies in the Middle Ages. A general analysis of this process in Fifteenth-Century urban Castile shows an undeniable tendency towards the adoption, by the upper social groups, of aristocratic behaviour formulas (a general trend in medieval Europe).

Nevertheless, the construction of status must be analysed not only from that final image, erected as a final objective structuring individual and social action. That photo-finish, of the materializing process of certain aristocratic behaviours, just shows its success while hiding other type of relevant information.

In the first place, aristocratic behaviour and aristocracy are not necessarily synonymous notions; on the contrary, their conjunction, and even the own notions, depends, to a great extent, on the society’s positive perception over the global and personal situation and behaviour of every candidate. Thus, the materializing of aristocratic behaviour formulas does not imply the automatic acquisition of a concrete status (and failure is the tail of this coin).

In the second place, it must be in mind that the aristocratic spirit developed in this process, does not necessarily constitute an end in itself; on the contrary, it can be (and most times it is) part of a long-term process, the individual and his lineage’s ennoblement. Again, aristocratic behaviour and nobility does not turn out to be synonymous statutory conditions.

Finally, the prosecution of the acquisition of a nobiliar status in Castile (and neither in urban Castile) did not depend on the unfolding of the complete panoply of possible aristocratic attitudes. Individuals were in disposition of a more ample set of strategies, not less attended than that. In the last instance, the notion of strategy, charged with an intense process sense, explains most attitudes displayed by individuals and the way that these ones thought their social position and its projection to the future. The struggle for status and its correlative socio-politic position was not the action field of just an isolated individual but the result of thinking oneself in terms of a lineage (even when the lineage itself was just a dream not yet realized) and, then, it was the result of thinking the strategies of social mobility not only in individual terms but adjusted to a generation frame. (Show less)

Eloisa Ramírez-Vaquero : The elites of Pamplona at the end of the Middle Ages
Although the kings and their court prefer to stay in other places, from the XIVth century onwards we can consider Pamplona (Navarra) as the seat of all government institutions, except for the States meeting, which is itinerant. The city achieves its own administrative union in 1423, by the “Union privilege”, ... (Show more)
Although the kings and their court prefer to stay in other places, from the XIVth century onwards we can consider Pamplona (Navarra) as the seat of all government institutions, except for the States meeting, which is itinerant. The city achieves its own administrative union in 1423, by the “Union privilege”, which puts an end to a long history of internal problems between the civitas and the two bourgs. A prosopographic analysis may permit an accurate approach to the urban elites just before the municipal union, and after it, and may allow a particular knowledge about their behaviour along the political crisis of the XVth. century. An approach to their occupations and their political and economic relations will complete a more accurate vision of the elites in the reign’s capital. (Show less)



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