Preliminary Programme

Fifteenth-Century Castile was not a place for faint-hearts. A succession of civil wars, from the beginning of the century until 1479 (when Elizabeth I and Ferdinand V finally pacified the kingdom), compromised political and social order in Castile. Civil war –especially the almost unintermittently fought from 1465 to 1479- offered an outstanding opportunity to the nobility for taking advantage from these periods of royal weakness and socio-political unrest. In these circumstances, high and medium nobility, and even the lower members of the noble group, found in the royal domain an apparently easy space for them to prey on. In this manner, cities and towns, and many times their municipal jurisdictions especially, suffered their aggressions and illegal seizure of villages and rural districts; cattle thefts; the destruction of crops and the burning down of houses and even hamlets; and personal violence, from savage beatings to rape and murder. Disorder also raised its tents inside the towns: the presence (even inside the urban political institutions) of those «noble profiteers» and the division into factions particularly of the upper political lineages added fuel to the existing conflicts between different segments of the urban «dominant class» and between this one and the commoners.
In this context, mindful of that urban autonomy (and socio-political and economic independence for those urban elites) depended on cities and towns remaining inside the royal domain; representatives of these elites, both clergy and lay, began to claim (in their respective towns) for a sort of an unbreakable and sacred political-spiritual union of the urban body politic. These unions were founded on a set of principles: shared citizenship, civic love, civic friendship, and civic neighbourhood (understood as the socio-political and moral duties neighbours should have towards each other). They were endorsed by the Church and subjected to oaths.
The aim of this paper is to identify the diverse emotions and emotional means «represented» in this urban stage; to analyse the role played by emotions and emotional means in the emergence and collective sanction of these «calls for unity»; and to examine the way in which emotions and emotional means shaped the production of the discourses underlying those calls and the assemblies gathered to dramatize them. (Show less)

Urban conflict in late medieval Castile offers abundant examples of a discursive use of emotions (love, friendship and hate, amongst many others) employed by city councils and members of the high and medium nobility whenever these groups, in the frame of their mutual interactions, defended their respective positions of privilege. In this sense, the analysis of this kind of urban-nobility political relationships provide the opportunity for an in-depth analysis of what these emotions represented in the (urban) political sphere. Using Burgos as a case study, this paper aims to: determine the occasions in which both agencies resorted to the employment of emotions for the political advancement of their interests, and the contexts in which those uses are documented; and to analyse the manipulation of these emotions by both the city and the nobility, especially when reminding each other of their respective rights and duties (towards the other). It is important to highlight that this paper does not rest on a dynamic of conflict approach but that it considers also dynamics of cooperation. (Show less)

Characterized by a weak central power and repeatedly by situations of royal schism, the medieval empire with its multitude of political and military actors not only created permanent risks and potential military dangers but also the necessity and favourable conditions for urban cooperation. Since the time of the Great Interregnum, and especially in the years 1254-1257, towns united to defend their common interests and in order to assure their security. Later, in the 14th and 15th centuries, urban leagues as the Oberdeutsche and Rheinische Städtebünde are a prominent phenomenon that highlight these evolutions, that are particularly prominent in the severe conflicts of 1380s and around 1449/50.
Documents of urban leagues edited by Konrad Ruser and other researchers have often been analysed as sources of law and from the viewpoint of constitutional history, but they also provide a precious basis for further investigations for the analysis of political discourse and the use of emotions in order to achieve or justify political aims. The documents produced by these leagues and its individual members use a language that often expresses strong emotions. In order to get help or appeal for solidarity, they write to their ‘dear friends and confederates’ (liebe frunde und eidgenossen) and stress concepts of friendship, union, mutual love and common interests and hardships.
The analysis will refer to the following questions: What is the role of emotions in urban letters to fellow towns and enemies, in chronicles and poems / songs that comment the same events and in documents of the leagues themselves? What do we know about the reactions of their enemies? Do they use different means of speaking about emotions for promoting their policies? Is there a difference between urban letters with a specific ‘appeal function’ and the explicit purpose to get help and/or new allies and chronicles? Does a chronicler (who often writes from the viewpoint of a ‘big’ leading city as Nuremberg or Augsburg) and who describes common actions a league use the same formula as the interurban correspondence (that is also produced by or addressed to other smaller and less powerful towns, potential allies and enemies)? (Show less)

"Official" testimonies produced by the Portuguese urban governments in the transition from the Late Middle Ages to Early Modern times reflect political clashes between their members, pressure exerted by outsiders (non-urban collectives such as the nobility), the specific displays of power during electoral periods, and rumours that upset the entire urban population. But the truth is that the sources “par excellence” that inform us about these issues, the council minutes, only translate the actors’ behaviours, but omit the emotions that accompany them. However, accessing these emotions is not an impossible task for the researcher. In fact, it can be found in the letters through which political communication is established between royal peripheral officials (“corregedores” and “juízes de fora”) and the crown, as well as in royal letters of pardon that convey valuable information about emotions. The richness and detail of the narrative of events related to local management, provided by these sources, allow us to produce a typology of emotions in the political sphere. This is the goal to be achieved with the presentation of this paper. (Show less)