1.3: The 15th Century in Spain

 

 

During the 15th century, a distinct way of life emerged in Europe, one that diverged from the feudal system that had been dominant in Christian areas until the 14th century. For this reason, many historians have marked the end of the Middle Ages with significant events of the 15th century: the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453; the invention of printing by Gutenberg around 1455; the creation of central powers united with cities and merchants, the basis of modern States, in Italy (Florence, Venice and Milan dominated around 1406), France (Louis XI prevailed after 1461), Spain (Castile and Aragon were united in 1479), and England (the Tudor dynasty began in 1485); or the great commercial expansion, also called the “Era” of the Discoveries”, in Africa (which Portugal began in 1415) and America (since 1492). It was a period of transition to a new configuration of Western Europe, marked by shifts in economic (mercantilism), political (the rise of nation-states), and ideological (Renaissance) spheres.

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The Decline of the Feudal System

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To put it simply, the feudal system was based on three social classes: the serfs, who worked the land; the lords or knights, who defended the land; and the clergy, who conferred authority on the lords. It was based on a theocentric and hierarchical ideology that legitimized the power of lords and clergy: authority came from God (the Lord) and his representatives: the Pope, the Church, and the feudal lords. Life on earth was a path to heaven. Being submissive and loyal to the Lord was the most admirable virtue. Academic activity was centered on the Church—encompassing monks, bishops, and the founding or teaching of Christianity. Wars, carried out by feudal lords, were justified in the name of religion (the Crusades, for example) or of the protection of serfs.

But the hegemony of feudalism suffered severe blows in the 14th century. Agriculture, the basis of the economy, was negatively affected by climate changes that generated periodic famines (1315) and by the bubonic plague (1348), which drastically reduced labor. Unhappy with the famines and realizing their chance to earn more, farm workers and city dwellers rose up in popular revolts across Europe. The Catholic Church itself experienced strong internal divisions (in 1378, for example, there were two rival Popes supported by different areas of Europe), which generated wars between princes, peasant protests, the weakening of papal power and the strengthening of national Churches. Furthermore, due to the crisis in the agricultural economy, the merchant class gained greater importance, leading to an economic system that gradually became dominant and is now known as mercantilism or precapitalism. The group of people dedicated to growing commercial activity was a kind of middle class that was neither poor nor dependent, like the serfs, nor a landowner or warrior, like the nobles or clergy. They did not live in fiefdoms but in villages, also called burgos. That is why they were known as the bourgeoisie, and they began to constitute an economically and socially powerful class. This mercantile process was more efficient and robust in regions close to coasts and ports. For example, in the Italian Peninsula, Catalonia, and the Netherlands (specifically, Flanders and Holland). The combination of these factors, along with the frequent wars and protests that made the countryside unsafe, led to the urbanization of activities such as banking, textile industries, and the manufacture of weapons. In this way, cities and fiefdoms began to compete strongly with each other in a spiral, generating civil wars. The political result was an increasing centralization of power to resolve these struggles. Thus, leaders such as Louis XI in France (1461), the Catholic Monarchs in Spain (1479), or Henry VII in England (1485) began to unify large territories under their authority, creating the first modern monarchical nations, which were largely financed by sectors of the bourgeoisie.

The Renaissance

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By the beginning of the 15th century, Italian villages had become powerful city-states — especially Milan, Venice, and Florence — functioning as oligarchic republics, that is, controlled by wealthy bourgeois. Artistic and intellectual production in these thriving cities is associated with a series of cultural changes that reach the present, beginning a period that historians called “Modernity”. The initial period of European Modernity, from approximately the end of the 14th to the 16th century, is known as “the Renaissance” (from the Italian Rinascimento), because in cities a particular interest in Greek and Roman classics as well as in scientific knowledge was reborn. While the medieval academic interest in classical antiquity was mainly aimed at establishing Christian didactics, the Renaissance sought in the classics the foundations for a philosophy of life here on Earth, changing medieval theocentrism with modern anthropocentrism (life centered on the human being).

Renaissance intellectuals employed the humanistic method in their studies, exploring the complexity of human perception in art. It's not that they rejected Christianity. On the contrary, many of his works were dedicated to religion and were sponsored by the Church. [1] Values are changing. If in feudalism land, hierarchy, loyalty and religion are what give value to life, in mercantilism gold, pleasure, freedom and innovation are more desirable. The anthropocentric vision is developed within humanism (the Studia Humanitatis), a method of education and thought inspired by Greco-Latin sources, many of which were accessible thanks to the work of intellectuals from al-Andalus in the 12th century, such as Maimonides and Averroes. The aim was to develop all the disciplines (the liberal arts) that would help to better understand human and earthly life. The new humanists began to question medieval political theory, which was based on the authority of God. For example, Dante Alighieri (Florence, 13th century), in his work De Monarquia, defended civil authority over ecclesiastical authority. Other thinkers also advanced this political secularization, such as William of Ockham (an English monk of the 14th century) and Nicholas Machiavelli (Florentine philosopher of the 15th century), who proposed the total separation of powers between Church and State. A parallel shift occurred in the field of science, which began to question theological principles based on direct observation, as seen in the anatomy and botany of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) or the astronomy of Copernicus (1473-1543). Cultured arts and literature also distanced themselves from religious-didactic interests and emphasized the human perspective, pleasant harmony, and technical or mathematical knowledge (geometry, perspective), as in the case of the famous Florentine artists (Da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo), who were paid by the bourgeois Medici family. In short, the Renaissance is the European period during which feudalism, the predominant land-based mode of rural production, begins to decline in the face of mercantilism (precapitalism), a rising mode of urban production based on gold or money. The dogmatic and hierarchical ideology, the basis of feudal sociopolitical cohesion, is questioned by a humanist and liberal thinking fostered by the expansion of trade.

Schematically, these changes can be viewed as follows:

Feudalism (Middle Ages)	Mercantilism (Renaissance and Modernity)
Agricultural economy: owning land is the basis of wealth.	Mixed economy: gold (as a form of money) is becoming increasingly important.
Political system: Monarchies or unified cities (governed by noble dynasties, supported by merchants).	Political system: Monarchies or unified cities (governed by noble dynasties, supported by merchants).
Core values: loyalty, hierarchical authority, tradition	Core values: individuality, refinement, innovation
theocentric thinking	anthropocentric thinking

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[1] Some historians consider that the bubonic plague was one of the factors that influenced the thinking of the time: people began to concentrate more on present life, as they realized that at any moment they could die. Other important events that encouraged the dissemination of classical works and new ideas were the Islamic invasion of Constantinople in 1453 (which forced many Byzantine scholars to emigrate to Western Europe) and the introduction of printing (by Gutenberg, around 1440, with a sociocultural impact comparable to that of today's Internet), which gave access to many sources previously available only to a few.

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The Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century

Although the Iberian Peninsula had a very different political and cultural configuration from the rest of Western Europe due to the long presence of Muslim kingdoms —with
larger cities, ethnic diversity, greater trade and technology, great academic activity—by the end of the 14th century most of the peninsula was governed by Christian nobles who had a feudal mentality comparable to that of France or England. The reign of Henry III (1390-1406) had laid the foundations for a unified and strong monarchical power in Castile. It governed most of the Peninsula in the 15th century (the other kingdoms were Navarre to the north, Aragon to the east, Portugal to the west, and Granada to the south). During the reigns of his successors, John II (1406-54) and Henry IV (1454-74), violent internal tensions arose between nobles, as well as uprisings in cities and among peasants, which paradoxically also underscored the need for a unifying monarchy.

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Part of the monarchy's success was the creation of a large administrative apparatus—the courts—mostly made up of nobles. An important part of court life was the cultivation of study, history, the arts, and letters, as well as tournaments, parties, and shows that included dance, song, and poetry. In this artistic and cultural production, a shift in mentality is evident, a blend of typically feudal values and Renaissance interests. In this sense, the figure of the chronicler and court poet Juan de Mena (1411-1456) is iconic. His masterpiece, the Laberinto de Fortuna (1444), is a 297-stanza poem that celebrates “Spanish” unity under King John II and the ideal of “reconquering” Muslim territories for the Peninsula, and incorporates Greco-Latin sources as the basis of secular authority. This is how it looks, for example, in the dedication:   To the very arrogant Don Juan the second, the one with whom Jupiter had such zeal, that he made as much of his part of the world as he did of heaven; to the great king of Spain, to César Novelo, the one who with Fortuna is very fortunate, he one who has room for virtue and reign; to him, the knee stuck by floor. Al muy prepotente don Juan el segundo, aquél con quien Júpiter tuvo tal zelo, que tanta de parte le fizo del mundo quanta a sí mesmo se hizo del çielo; al grand rey d'España, al Çésar novelo, al que con Fortuna es bien fortunado, aquél en quien caben virtud e reinado; a él, la rodilla fincada por suelo.

This dreamy Spanish unity was achieved at the end of the century with the marriage (in secret, in 1469) between Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, who united the two crowns in 1479 and obtained the title of Catholic Monarchs from the Pope. His kingdom, which began to be officially called “Spain”, sought to consolidate its ideological unity through Catholicism, founding the Inquisition around 1478 and expelling or forcing the conversion of Arabs and Jews around 1492. It also promotes linguistic unity by systematizing the use of Spanish, whose first grammar and dictionary were commissioned to Antonio de Nebrija and published in 1492. Simultaneously, it turned from a kingdom to an empire with the arrival of Columbus in America in the same year.

Chronology

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Brief Chronology of the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century

To Review and Think

1. What economic phenomena began to gain strength in Europe during the 15th century? How does that change political and cultural life?

2. What is the “Renaissance”? Why is it called that? How is it different from the medieval mentality? What values do you emphasize?

3. What was the objective of “the Reconquest” in the Iberian Peninsula? What role did King John II play in it?

Fuentes

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• Davies, Catherine, ed. The Companion to Hispanic Studies. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Garcia de Cortázar, Fernando and José Manuel González Vesga. A brief history of Spain. Editorial Alliance, 2017.
• Kattan Ibarra, Juan. Cultural perspectives of Spain. NTC Publishing, 1990.