Église et pouvoir dans la Péninsule Ibérique. Les ordres militaires dans le royaume de Castille (1252-1369) (review)

The "Great Reconquest" placed most of Islamic southern Spain under Christian rule, doubled the size of Castile-Leon in the process, and was capped with the occupation of Seville in 1248. The Latin Chronicle describes how it had began twenty-four years earlier, when young king Fernando III (1217-1252) unexpectedly decided to attack his southern neighbors. But first he sought the advice of the masters of Calatrava and Santiago, the Spanish Military Orders founded half a century earlier. Only then did he summon his vassal army and, together with the Orders, marched against the South (Chronica latina regum Castellae, ed. C. Brea [Turnhout, 1997]; §44). As the conquest progressed, the armed friars received huge territories from the Crown, rewards that climaxed when Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, the Hospitalers, and the Templars obtained a significant share of the Seville farmlands allotted by Fernando III before his death in 1252.

Josserand begins his study of the Castilian Military Orders at this point, when their main raison d'être seemed to vanish as "reconquest" seemed no longer possible or necessary. He then traces their fortunes over the hundred plus years which span the reigns of Alfonso the Wise (1252-1284) and his last legitimate descendant, Peter the Cruel (1350-1369). From the start he adopts a justified and refreshing polemical stance. He rejects the notion of decadence often applied to the Orders at this period and shows instead how they managed to adapt to their new conditions, moving from conquest to defense, from monastic to a secular ethos, from a predatory war economy to one based on the encomienda system—later to be exported and adapted in the Americas.

Had they remained faithful to their origins, the Orders would have imploded. Instead, Josserand shows how they refashioned themselves after 1252, maintaining their social relevance as sentinels against Islam. And then, when a succession of dynastic conflicts weakened the Crown in 1282-1326, they attracted the younger children of noble families and were embraced by the aristocracy. Contrary to received wisdom, the book argues that the Orders' scope of action on the Castilian political stage was enhanced, rather than diminished at this time. Their own success, in turn, made them a force too powerful to be ignored by the Crown. Alfonso X, whose saintly father was not above meddling in episcopal elections, had no qualms about placing loyal servants at the heads of Orders which remained ecclesiastical in nature. The dynastic troubles of 1282-1326 partially interrupted the trend, but it regained momentum with Alfonso XI and continued unabated under his son with the enthusiastic acquiescence of the fighting friars. They had by now lost most of their original identity, but had grown richer with the encomiendas, worldlier with the nobility, and more powerful under the Crown's tutelage. As the Modern Era was about to dawn, they were fully awake and ready to go.

This masterful book shakes up many historiographic myths and brilliantly illuminates an area of Spanish history woefully unattended until now. Église et pouvoir represents an exhaustive survey and revision of earlier scholarship, with a bibliography of more than one hundred and thirty pages, and, more importantly, a fresh reappraisal of the evidence, represented by many literary texts and over six thousand documents, many previously unpublished or little used. Josserand responsibly shifts, synthesizes, and often surpasses his predecessors, who are thoughtfully challenged with original evidence when warranted. Judicious and convenient footnotes firmly anchor his arguments.

As a final gift, the author offers an edition of the Order of Santiago's earliest preserved statutes, well known to scholars, but inexplicably never printed before.