Spain

C1

b

Aristocracy

A powerful aristocracy developed in medieval Spain. By 1400 a few great clans dominated the aristocracy in Castile. In the north, aristocratic estates included jurisdictional rights that gave nobles control of local offices and taxation. Much of the land, however, actually belonged to peasants or the towns. In the south, however, Castilian kings gave large tracts of lands taken during the reconquest to Christian military leaders. These land grants are the origin of the latifundia, large estates owned by powerful families. Lords of the estates hired day workers to herd the sheep and farm the land. This created a system of debt peonage. Poor laborers who owed money to landlords could not afford to move unless they paid up.

A landed aristocracy also emerged in Aragón, but the power of Aragónese nobles was challenged by the wealthy merchant families of Barcelona, who could block decisions that they disliked in the cortes. Aragónese merchants were much less interested in the reconquest than the landed nobility, who stood to gain additional lands and jurisdictional rights. For merchants, the reconquest meant the disruption of profitable trade. In the cortes, merchants generally opposed taxes on trade and preferred taxes on land and agriculture; landed nobles generally favored the reverse.

C1

c

Local Government

The exercise of royal power depended on the cooperation of town governments. In exchange for the authority to manage local affairs, towns collected many of the king’s taxes and implemented royal edicts. Land grants issued by the monarchy, called propios, provided rents that helped support local governments. Most landowners took part in town meetings and elected the town councils. As towns grew in size and economic importance, local government often became dominated by the local nobility. Some town governments, however, remained independent of the nobility, and they helped the king limit the power of the landed aristocracy.

C1

d

Roman Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church exercised significant power in medieval Spain. The church was important in two ways. First, it made royal authority legitimate, through the doctrine of the divine right of kings. People who did not accept Catholicism were suspected of disloyalty to the monarchy. Second, it asserted spiritual jurisdiction over all Spaniards. As both head of the Catholic Church and a foreign ruler, the pope could call upon church members in Spain to undermine royal policy. The papacy, for instance, frequently opposed royal actions that were perceived as conflicting with the church’s interests in other countries, and it sought to prevent kings from diverting the income of the church into the royal treasury. For these reasons, kings tried to control the selection of bishops in their territory. The church also controlled an immense amount of wealth, which it accumulated in the form of bequests when people died. Wealth and papal political influence gave the church great power that kings often sought to restrict.

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The church consisted of several influential organizations. The most important were the monasteries and the military religious orders. Monasteries participated in the Christian reconquest, and several bishops and abbots led armies. As the idea of a crusade grew in popularity, the pope encouraged another religious institution in Spain, the military orders. The most important of these included the orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcántara. Knights in the orders took religious vows to fight the infidels, and they played a significant military role in the reconquest between 1150 and 1250. The orders were granted tracts of land to support the reconquest, and those who were admitted gained the status of nobles. Later, the orders grew wealthy and lost their original purpose.

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e

Economic Development

Spain’s medieval economy prospered. Agriculture flourished, and farmers in central Spain raised wheat, grapes, olives, sheep, and cattle. Most agricultural goods were consumed locally. The exception was wool. As Europe’s economy grew, European demand for Spanish wool rapidly expanded. By the 1200s regional organizations of sheep owners (mestas) were established in Castile, and the monarchy chartered a national Council of the Mesta. The council was granted a special court to resolve disputes with farmers over damage caused to cultivated lands by grazing. In return for such privileges, the Mesta agreed to pay taxes to the king on sheep migrating through key mountain passes. It also became wealthy itself and frequently loaned money to the monarchy.

The Black Death, an outbreak of bubonic plague that swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, reduced farming and increased livestock grazing in Spain. The plague decreased the population in Europe by as much as one-third. Many farms were turned into pasture because it took fewer people to herd sheep than to farm. Grazing also became more profitable than farming because the smaller population needed less food, leading to a decline in food prices. As a result, people had more income to spend on luxuries such as wool cloth. The stronger market for wool reinforced the shift to grazing.

Commerce thrived in medieval Spain. Barcelona was an important banking center by 1200 and Aragón dominated trade between Spain, France, Italy, and North Africa. This trade included cloth, food, gold, slaves, and ransomed prisoners. The Basque region became the largest source of iron in Europe and developed several important industries, including shipbuilding, fishing, and whaling.

D

The Making of a World Power

In 1469 Isabella of Castile (later Isabella I), heiress to the Castilian throne, married her cousin, Ferdinand of Aragón (later Ferdinand V). Isabella was declared queen of Castile and León in 1474, and by 1476 Isabella had won control of the kingdom amidst a war of succession for the crown. Ferdinand, who ruled Castile alongside Isabella, inherited Aragón in 1479, and the two monarchs became joint rulers of both kingdoms. The partnership between the rulers of the Iberian Peninsula’s most powerful monarchies set in motion the developments that made Spain a great power. During their rule, they established the Spanish Inquisition to enforce uniform adherence to the Catholic faith. In 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand conquered Granada, the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, and expelled from Spain Jews who would not convert to Christianity. That same year they sponsored a voyage of Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus, who was seeking a westward route to Asia. Columbus’s discoveries preceded a spectacular expansion into the Americas that brought enormous wealth and control of vast new overseas territories to Spain.

Ferdinand and Isabella greatly expanded Spain’s influence on the continent by marrying their children to the heirs of other European rulers. When their grandson, Charles, came to the throne as Charles I of Spain, he inherited a vast amount of territory in Europe. In 1519, as Charles V, he became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the largest Western empire since the Roman Empire. Subsequent Spanish kings ruled vast European domains and faced many foreign threats. They met these threats using wealth from Spain’s huge American empire.

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