A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon

4. Kings and Their Heavens: The Ceremonious and the Negligent

4 Kings and Their Heavens The Ceremonious and the Negligent In the first half of this book, I investigated the place occupied by astrology and divination within late medieval culture. These disciplines touched upon a number of aspects of medieval life and connected with notions of power and authority, the nature of revelation and intelligence, and the juncture between scientific inquiry and magical practice. In the second half of this book, I discuss the extent to which the interest in prophecy and the occult intersected with the construction of kingship, specifically in the Crown of Aragon. The two fourteenth-century kings I focus on for this chapter are Pere el Ceremoniós, the Ceremonious (r. 1336–1387), and Joan el Caçador, the Hunter (r. 1387–1396). The starkly divergent characters and regnal styles of these two late medieval count-kings, and their approaches to astrology and the occult, highlight the liminal and shifting status of these disciplines, as well as their intersection with notions about these kings’ construction of regnal strength. Both Pere and Joan were interested in astrology, divination, and magic. Yet because Pere was a strong king, whereas Joan was weak, Pere was able to indulge in sidereal and 106 Chapter 4 occult proclivities with relative impunity, but Joan was subject to intense scrutiny and criticism for engaging with the same pastimes. As Pere was a patron of culture and the arts within the royal court, he was also a powerful sovereign who manifested his strength through traditional means, especially the waging of war. Joan, on the other hand, had a different approach to ruling his kingdom. He was an avid sportsman, and the hunt was his favorite pastime, even at the expense of the quotidian administration of his realms. In addition to hunting and the occult, Joan enjoyed trendy fashion, troubadour music, and Provençal literature. Joan’s intellectual interests also earned him the lesser-known, and much less flattering , sobriquet of el Descurat, “the Negligent.” Even though both Pere and Joan frequently directed their gaze heavenward to better ascertain the future of their domains, in terms of the practical duty of ruling their kingdoms, the two monarchs had very different approaches.1 These were the premier distinctions that separated the kings and explained why they received different degrees of criticism over their problematic interests. The first, and major, difference was the lengths of their respective reigns. In the history of the kings of the Crown of Aragon , Pere had the second longest reign, which spanned fifty-one years, from 1336 until 1387. Because of his long tenure as king, Pere had many opportunities to enforce his monarchical powers over purportedly rebellious regional lords, to increase the physical territory of the realms that he governed, and to function as a champion of his rights as sovereign of the Crown of Aragon. Compare that with the brief reign of Joan, which lasted only nine years, from 1387 until 1396, cut short because of a tragic hunting accident. Joan had less time to engage in such practices that his father put into motion, but he also appeared to be less able than his father in enforcing those rights. Additionally, both Pere and Joan governed over a kingdom that faced several significant crises. Like the rest of Europe during the fourteenth century, the Crown of Aragon did not escape unscathed from the many 1. For general studies on the history of the Crown of Aragon, see the following works: H. J. Chaytor, A History of Aragon and Catalonia (New York: AMS Press, 1969); J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516. 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–1978); Rafael Tasis i Marca, Pere el Cerimoniós i els seus fills (Barcelona: Editorial Teide, 1957); and Thomas N. Bisson, The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Kings and Their Heavens 107 disasters plaguing the continent. The major urban centers of the kingdom , especially Barcelona and Valencia, suffered grave demographic losses during the arrival and aftermath of the Black Death, which appeared on the eastern shores of the Iberian Peninsula in March 1348, thus hitting the Crown of Aragon before other Iberian kingdoms. In addition, the Crown of Aragon suffered from an economic crisis during the fourteenth century that pitted merchants and wealthy citizens against artisans and artists—the “Busca” and “Biga” conflict—which at times erupted into outright urban violence.2 One of...