A Secret Realm - Current Trends in Spanish Medieval Studies

A Secret Realm: Current Trends in Spanish Medieval Studies
Author(s): Jaume Aurell

Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 105, No. 1, The State of
Medieval Studies (Jan., 2006), pp. 61-86
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27712567
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A Secret Realm: Current Trends in
Spanish Medieval Studies
Jaume Aurell, University of Navarra
For a long time the history of Spain has been a truly secret realm?fasci
nating, but more suitable for a novel than history. The history of Spain
has always been attractive for its originality and unpredictability. However,
scholars have allowed themselves to be too easily carried away by the tour
ist slogan "Spain is different," which has given rise to quite a few errors.
The following report is useful for demystifying the supposed singularity
of the history of Spain while helping to air an academic sphere which, for
far too long, has been encumbered by a chronic isolationism.
Medieval studies has always been one of the most prestigious and aca
demically famous fields of Spanish culture. The enormous weight the
medieval period has had in the formation of the Spanish national iden
tity partly explains that phenomenon. However, a number of political
and ideological factors have condemned the Spanish academic system to
autocracy since the end of the nineteenth century, which has hampered
both the reception of Spanish medieval studies beyond the borders of the
Iberian Peninsula and the assimilation in Spain of the new methodologies
of Western historiography. For that reason a report on the current state
of Spanish medieval studies is a rare opportunity for anyone outside of
Spain to learn about this secret realm.
In the last twenty years some reports on Spanish medieval studies have
appeared. In 1985 Miguel ?ngel Ladero Quesada published a short essay
in which he analyzed the main contributions of Spanish medieval studies
between 1939 and 1984. It was an aseptic and schematic analysis, but an
effective and rigorous one, drafted with authority by one of the most re
puted Spanish medievalists.1 In 1990 Cristina Segura coordinated a group
investigation of the state of affairs based on rather debatable regional
criteria, which took away unity and system from the final result.2 The work
published by Julio Valde?n in 1995 was more synthetic and reflexive: it is
i. Miguel ?ngel Ladero Quesada, "Aproximaci?n al medieval studieso espa?ol (1939

1984)," in La historiograf?a en Occidente desde 1945, ed. Valent?n V?zquez de Prada, Ignacio
Ol?barri and Alfredo Florist?n (Pamplona: Eunsa, 1985).
2. Presente y futuro de la Historia Medieval en Espa?a, ed. Cristina Segura (Madrid: Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, 1990).
Journal of English and Germanic Philology?January

? 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
62 Aurell
a good theoretical framework from which to start.3 The best documented

of all is the historiographie appraisal of the evolution of Spanish medieval
studies between 1968 and 1998, written by medievalists who are experts
in each field analyzed: Al-Andalus, the kingdom of Granada, political
history, territorial structure, ideology and monarchical power, medieval
literature, church and religious life, fiscal matters, marginal groups, cities
and trade, population, and medieval law. The final result, published in
1999, could hardly be more exhaustive, though the very ambition of the
project damages the coherence and unity of the work.4
This report sets out to take a step forward in everything concerned with
the latest tendencies in Spanish medieval studies, focusing particularly on
the contributions of the last fifteen years. Nevertheless, it is no easy task
because at present there is no predominant current in the field, though
there is an enormous vitality and a large scholarly output, even if not all
of it is of a really high standard.
THE PRECEDENTS: THE BURDEN OF INTELLECTUAL

AUTARCHY AND METHODOLOGICAL ISOLATIONISM
Spanish medieval studies is a true dark corner for those who do not culti
vate the study of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. The obstacle
of the language and the excessive national compartmentalization of Eu
ropean historiographie traditions are the cause ofthat ignorance. Spanish
medieval studies is well known to experts and those who have mastered
Spanish and the other peninsular languages such as Portuguese, Catalan,
Galician, and Basque, but it remains an excessively isolated fiefdom from
the point of view of the general evolution of the discipline of medieval
studies. That autarchy has its roots in the very evolution of the Spanish
academic world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The stature of medieval studies in the academic world in Spain was
forged in the nineteenth century. The recovery of the national character,
so much part of the romantic atmosphere of the 1800s, placed medieval
studies at the center of the historiographie debate. That hegemony lasted
until the 1960s, when the influence of Anglo-Saxon Marxist historiography
and French historical structuralism shifted the center of the debate from
medieval studies to modernism and contemporary studies.5 During those
3- Julio Valde?n, "La historia en Espa?a: Historia Medieval," Revista Jer?nimo Zurita, 71
(1995)? 19-3?
4. Angel J. Mart?n Dugue, La historia medieval en Espa?a. Un balance historiogr?fico (1968
1998) (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, 1999).
5. Ignacio Ol?barri, "El peso de la historiograf?a espa?ola en el conjunto de la historio
graf?a occidental (1945-1989)," Hispania, 175 (1990), 417-37, at 425.
Spanish Medieval Studies 63
years the great theses of the shaping of the Spanish soul in the Middle
Ages began to lose interest, as analyses of workers' movements, the working
classes, the country revolutions, liberal thought, and the shaping of capital
ism in Spain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gained ground.
Spanish historiography had sprung from the heroic efforts of a series of
eminent self-taught men in the last third of the nineteenth century. The
professionalization of history did not reach Spain until the first decades
of the twentieth century.6 During those years figures with a true sense
of historical scholarship began to stand out: Rafael Altamira and, in the
philosophy of history, the historicist Jos? Ortega y Gasset. However, that
cautious normalization was dramatically cut off with the outbreak of the
Civil War in 1936, which marked a radical break in academic thought and
practice in all areas of scholarship.7
The war heightened the chronic isolationism of Spanish scholarship.
It was impossible to open up science for many years, because the political
situation generated by the Civil War (1936-39) and the long period of
the Franco dictatorship (1939-75) consigned Spanish medieval studies
to an impoverishing isolationism. But we should not overdramatize. The
harsh working conditions of medievalists in the monolithic decades of the
Franco era spurred their inventiveness and capacity for work. That was
the time of the emergence of giants, such as Claudio S?nchez Albornoz,
Am?rico Castro, and Ramon Men?ndez Pidal in the Castilian tradition,
and Jaume Vicens Vives, Ferran Soldevila, and Mart?n de Riquer in the
Catalan tradition, who would not have stood out in such an extraordinary
way without some extrinsic motivation. Their mastery, in some cases ac
complished in exile, has been fertile.
The forties, the first years of the Franco dictatorship, were years of
apogee and inflation for Spanish nationalist historiography.8 It was like
returning to former times, as if everything that had been achieved until
then had lost all meaning. The maxim "Spain is different" was more
present than ever, among other things because it justified the perpetua
tion of a regime that was also different. There would be a strict link be
tween politics and historiography, between political action and academic
research. That generated an anachronistic interest in a historiography
with a positivist tradition, although it was of high scientific quality. That
is the tone of Spanish medieval studies of the postwar era. In the end,
that tendency was the result of the late arrival in Spain of the methods,
6. Ignacio Peir? and Gonzalo Pasamar, "La v?a espa?ola hacia la profesionalizaci?n his
toriogr?fica," Studium, 3 (1991), 135-62.
7. Gonzalo Pasamar, Historiograf?a e ideolog?a en la postguerra espa?ola. La ruptura de la
tradici?n liberal (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 1991).
8. Jos? Mar?a Jover Zamora, "Corrientes historiogr?ficas en la Espa?a contempor?nea,"
Bolet?n informativo de la Fundaci?n Juan March, 36 ( 1975), 3-21, at 6.
64 Aurell
and not so much of the theoretical presuppositions, of the nineteenth
century German school.
For Spanish medieval studies, the fifties were a curious combination
of heroic, titanic individual efforts and a rather depressing scene, be
cause there was hardly any methodological innovation, interest in other
historiographies, or drafting of joint interdisciplinary projects. During
this period, Spanish medieval studies was too much conditioned by the
ideological factors and scholarly orientation imposed by the regime. No
one can deny that the individual efforts were enormous, but often the best
energies were shrunken and isolated for two reasons: Spanish medieval
ists' ignorance of scholarly practices abroad and the same ignorance of
Spanish medieval studies abroad. Except for the exiles?Claudio S?nchez
Albornoz in Buenos Aires, Am?rico Castro in Princeton, Ferran Soldevila
in the south of France?and the odd isolated effort from Ramon Men?n
dez Pidal or Jaume Vicens Vives, Spanish medievalists were incapable of
spreading their research abroad.
Nevertheless, for Spanish historiography, and in particular for medieval
studies, the fifties were years of enrichment of perspectives through those
very individual efforts. That first modernization came mainly through
the penetration of the Annales school from neighboring France. The
"epistemological conversion" of the prestigious medievalist Jaume Vicens
Vives had a good deal to do with that process; he had been dazzled by the
socioeconomic history of the Annales after attending the International
Historical Sciences Congress in Paris (1950). From the sixties, socioeco
nomic history came to totally dominate the methodology chosen by Span
ish medievalists in the construction of their bulky monographs.9
In the sixties and seventies, that socioeconomic tendency coexisted with
two others: on the one hand, the traditional inclination to essentialism of the
great masters (Claudio S?nchez de Albornoz in history, Ramon Men?ndez
Pidal in philology, Am?rico Castro in anthropology) ; on the other, the Marx
ism of Anglo-Saxon origin whose postulates were being strongly introduced
into medieval studies. In the end, when the influence of the Annales had
been weakened and the influence of essentialism definitively despised as
anachronistic, it was Marxism that became hegemonic from the seventies
on, around the end of the Franco regime in the middle of the decade.
The gradual modernization of Spanish medieval studies was also en
couraged by a group of foreign historians and philologists, known as the
Hispanists, who undertook a serious, rigorous, academic study of the reality
9- Gonzalo Pasamar, "La influencia de Annales en la historiograf?a espa?ola durante el

franquismo: un esbozo de explicaci?n," Historia Social, 48 (2004), pp. 149-72; Adeline
Rucquoi, "Spanish Medieval History and the Annales: between Franco and Marx," in The
Work of Jacques Le Goff and the Challenges of Medieval History, ed. Miri Rubin (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 1997).
of Spain that was free from nationalist or partisan prejudices. The encoun
ter between Hispanists and Spanish academics was fruitful. The Hispanists
learned from the Spanish academics to better understand the peculiarities
of the history of Spain without allowing themselves to be carried away by
the "Spain is different" prejudice. The Spanish academics, for their part,
learned to see the differences in the history of Spain as relative, to delve
deeper into the similarities in the international context, and to acquire a
deeper knowledge of the history and historiography of the other European
and American nations. In a word, Spanish historiography began to come
up to date, to follow the same track as Western historiography.
In the political period of the Transition (1975-82), two circumstances
gave Spanish medieval studies renewed hope. First, the development of
the Autonomies allowed decentralization of the scholarly organs, which
brought greater resources for research into the periphery of the Iberian
Peninsula. Second, the end of Franco's ideological protectionism encour
aged dialogue with other international communities, especially in France,
England, and the United States. Obviously that communication with the
outside world had never been completely cut off, due both to the effec
tive work of the Hispanists and the interest of the main figures of Spanish
medieval studies in getting up to date.10 But the real turning point can be
dated to the eighties. From then, though very slowly, the tendency of Span
ish medievalists to lock themselves in their secret realmbegan to decrease.
Some of them began to practice comparative history or even to venture
into research on other countries. Others boldly launched themselves into
the international forums. Some young researchers obtained grants to write
their doctoral theses at the leading French, German, British, or American
universities. Though their return to Spanish universities was not always
simple, because unfortunately endogamy still reigned shamefully in the
academic system, their activity has helped to modernize the methodologi
cal and epistemological equipment of Spanish medieval studies.
THE EIGHTIES: THE CONVERGENCE OF

OLD AND NEW TENDENCIES
In the eighties modern tendencies put in a belated appearance, because

the Annales and Marxism were warmly welcomed by Spanish historians
just when those currents were falling into disrepute in Western historicism.
io. Adeline Rucquoi, "El medieval studieso franc?s y la historia de Espa?a," La Historia
en el horizonte del a?o 2000 (Zaragoza: Instituto Fernando el Cat?lico, 1997), pp. 199-218,
and Adeline Rucquoi, "La P?ninsule Ib?rique au Moyen Age," L'histoire m?di?vale en France.
Bilan et perspectives (Paris: Le Seuil, 1991), pp. 141-439.
66 Aurell
But in the end, although belatedly, Spanish medieval studies was finally
modernized from an academic point of view and assimilated normally into
modern historicist tendencies. An excellent example of the maturing of
Spanish medieval studies in the late seventies is the book published by
Abilio Barbero and Marcelo Vigil entitled La formaci?n del feudalismo en
la Pen?nsula Ib?rica (1978) ,n The book was an explicit application of the
models of materialist analysis to the study of peninsular society in the
Middle Ages. That model had been imported into Spain through the work
of the Hispanists, especially Pierre Vilar, but the combatively anti-Marxist
ideological orientation of the Franco regime had largely dampened its
influence. Besides applying Marxism, Barbero and Vigil's book confronted
the essentialist tendency, so deeply rooted in Spanish medieval studies.12
The new historians were facing a way of doing history based on a belief
in the existence of the eternal Spain, shaped by the joint action of men
and Providence through the complex process of the cultural and religious
mixture of Christians, Jews, and Muslims and the reconquest of the Pen
insula by the Christian kingdoms. That tendency had been heightened
by the patriotic exaltation generated by the triumph of Franco over the
Republican forces in 1939 and sank its roots in the agonizing debate over
the loss of the last Spanish colonies in 1898 to the United States: Cuba,
Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The essentialist Spanish medievalists
(Ramon Men?ndez Pidal, Am?rico Castro, Claudio S?nchez Albornoz,
and, from a peripheral perspective, Ferran Soldevila)13 had made some
enormously suggestive readings of the shaping of the Spanish soul in the
Middle Ages, but they were anachronistic visions because their meta-his
torical disquisitions reflected more the readings made in Europe by the
nineteenth-century romantic historians like Mich?let.14
Barbero and Vigil managed to break the twofold tendency (essentialism
and intellectual autarchy) that had dominated Spanish medieval studies
until then and made a clear choice of a materialist analysis of history. Their
theses on feudalization were harshly criticized, because they shed doubt
on the singularity of medieval Spain. In a process that was typical of the
Hispanic academic world, the controversy filtered through to the politi
11. Abilio Barbero and Marcelo Vigil, La formaci?n del feudalismo en la Pen?nsula Ib?rica
(Barcelona: Cr?tica, 1979).
12. For this concept, see Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, Lecturas sobre la Espa?a hist?rica
(Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1998).
13. Ramon Men?ndez Pidal, Espa?a y su historia (Madrid: Ediciones Minotauro, 1957);
Am?rico Castro, Origen, ser y existir de los espa?oles (Madrid: Taurus, 1959); Claudio S?nchez
Albornoz, Espa?a, un enigma hist?rico (Buenos Aires, Editoria Sudamericana, 1962); Fer
ran Soldevila, Historia de Espa?a (Barcelona: Ariel, 1961 ).
14. Hayden White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe (Bal
timore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1975).
cal and ideological spheres. The spread of the Marxist model through
medieval studies was so great because of both its persuasive capacity from
a strictly scholarly point of view and its ability to present itself as a real
political alternative to the Franco regime. The overwhelming election
victories of the socialists between 1982 and 1996, and the tendency of
Spanish historians toward historical materialism, are good proof that,
once again, Spanish scholarship had been incapable of generating an
intellectual discourse independent of the political circumstances of the
environment. The eighties were years of Marxist dictatorship in Spanish
medieval studies. In many Spanish universities historical materialism was
presented as the only proper scientific instrument for reading historical
reality. Research focused on social conflicts and economic crises (Reyna
Pastor, Julio Valde?n). The models of the Anglo-Saxon Marxist school
were recovered. The formally impeccable models that came from France,
notably Pierre Vilar and Pierre Bonnassie, were idealized.15
It is true that it was not all Marxism. The generation of medievalists
born in the thirties and forties continued to practice a more traditional
history, serious and firmly attached to documents, with no excessive meth
odological pretensions or epistemological joys. They had been called "the
generation of 68" because they won their chairs at Spanish universities
from the late sixties on. They were Jos? Luis Mart?n Rodr?guez, Jos? Angel
Garc?a de Cort?zar, Julio Valde?n, Jos? Enrique Ruiz Dom?nec, Salvador
Claramunt, and Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada, who replaced the earlier
generation, notably Angel Mart?n Duque, Eloy Benito Ruano, Federico
Udina Martorell, Salvador de Mox?, Emilio S?ez, Luis Su?rez, and Manuel
Riu. Their caution in the face of novelties has largely conditioned the
tendency toward the "traditional" path of Spanish medieval studies.
However, there was an alternative and complement to Marxism, which
spread through Spanish medieval studies especially in the eighties: the
history of mentalities, imported from France.16 That methodology particu
larly caught on among Spanish medievalists: the unquestioned authority
of Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff made that possible. It was not in
vain that Duby stated in 1991, in his intellectual autobiography L'histoire
continue, that the paths of Spanish historians were the same as the French
ones. He was not mistaken, because in just a few years some truly unprec
15- Pierre Vilar, La Catalogne dans l'Espagne moderne: recherches sur les fondements ?conomiques
des structures nationales (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1962); Pierre Bonnassie, La Catalogue du milieu du
Xe ? la fin du Xle si?cle: croissance et mutations d'une soci?t? (Toulouse: Association des Publica
tions de l'Universit? de Toulouse-le-Mirail, 1975-76).
16. Garlos Barros, "La contribuci?n de los terceros Annales y la historia de las mentali
dades. 1969-1989," in La otra historia: sociedad, cultura y mentalidades, ed. C?sar Gonz?lez
M?nguez (Vitoria: Universidad del Pa?s Vasco/EHU, 1993), pp. 87-118.
68 Aurell
ed?n ted subjects had been incorporated into Spanish medieval studies:
private life, death, reading, women's history. The history of mentalities
also encouraged a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue. That was a fairly
unusual practice in Spanish academic circles and was now beginning to
bear fruit.
In the late eighties, both the Annales and Marxism were entering a
definitive crisis. The Annales were shaken by the gradual disappearance
of the third generation and the emergence of the tournant critique, which
was a de facto refounding of the school. Marxism began to decline due to
the changes brought about on the European political scene from 1989.
That affected Spanish medieval studies, which in the nineties generated a
greater methodological variety and a peculiar atmosphere of coexistence
with the methodological traditions inherited from nineteenth-century
positivism; the postwar currents, such as the socioeconomics of the An
nales and Marxism; and last, though more of a minority, the practice of
the new histories and the recent methodologies.
In the nineties three broad directions in Spanish medieval studies
could be distinguished: first, the publication of a large group of works
based on the old subjects and methodologies, with no special interest in
methodological renovation; second, the practice of social history, which is
the generic field where the greatest renewal has occurred, with relatively
traditional parameters; and third and last, methodological innovation,
which in turn comes from three fronts: the recycling carried out by re
searchers with a long academic career, the action of the Hispanists, and
the work done by some young researchers from the periphery of the
Spanish academic world.
DEFENDERS OF THE TRADITION: DIPLOMATIC HISTORY,

ECONOMIC HISTORY, MENTALITIES, TERRITORIAL STRUCTURE
The vestiges of traditional history, in the purest sense of the concept, are
still quite perceptible in Spanish medieval studies. That tendency has
produced research based on a massive analysis of documentation, with
no excessive methodological and epistemological pretensions. Prestigious
earlier works are taken as models, but there is not much interest in or
capacity for bringing them up to date. Typical of that tendency has been
the recovery of the classical subject of the foreign relations of the kingdom
of Aragon with other Mediterranean kingdoms in the Middle Ages, fol
lowing the classical model created by Charles-Emmanuel Doufourq in his
study of the relations between the kingdom of Aragon and the Magreb,
published in far-off 1966.17 Maria Dolores L?pez Perez's study of the rela
tions between the kingdom of Arag?n and the North African kingdoms
(1995),18 and Roser Salicru's of the kingdom of Granada (1998),19 are
monuments to scholarship but are not able to situate the traditional sub
jects of diplomacy and trade in the context of the postulates of the new
political history.
The studies of general taxation that have spread in Spanish medieval
studies are also worth mentioning. One good example is the book by
Pere Orti on revenue and taxation in late medieval Barcelona. Around
this large Mediterranean urban center a study group on medieval taxa
tion has gradually formed, taking advantage of the enormous wealth and
diversity of the documentary collections of the archives of the kingdom of
Arag?n, whose material headquarters are in Barcelona. These works on
taxation enable us to analyze in detail the evolution of monarchical rev
enue, royal and municipal taxation, the procedures for extracting revenue,
the precocious development of a tax system in Catalonia, and the conflicts
brought about by competition from the gradual jurisdictional and fiscal
autonomy of the towns.20 On the consolidation of the tax system in Castile
there is an outstanding book by Miguel Angel Quesada, which relates the
development of the public treasury to the exercise of royal power. The
distinguished Spanish medievalist shows how the Castilian monarchy, from
the reign of Alfonso X the Wise, managed to lay the foundations of a tax
system that could sustain the purposes of the state.21
At present we can also perceive a certain inertia in the history of men
talities, which still had some influence in the nineties, as is the case with
Carlos Barros's research into the mentality of the Galician irmandi?os in
the late Middle Ages.22 Moreover, the theme of death has continued to
occupy an important place in Spanish medieval studies. A model study
of the subject, also well founded on multidisciplinary bases, is the excel
lent monograph by the Argentinian historian Ariel Guiance, published
in 1998. Through a hermeneutic study of text sources, but not forget
17. Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, L'Espagne catalane et le Maghrib aux XlIIe et XFVe si?cles
(Zaragoza: Imprenta de Andr?s Sebasti?n, 1966).
18. Mar?a Dolores L?pez P?rez, La Corona de Arag?n y el Magreb en el siglo XTV, (1331?1410)
(Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas, 1995).
19. Roser Salicr? Lluch, El Sultanat de Granada i la Corona d'Arag?, 1410?1458 (Barcelona:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas, 1998).
20. Estudios sobre renta, fiscalidad y finanzas en la Catalu?a bajomedieval, ed. Manuel S?nchez
Mart?nez (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas, 1993).
21. Miguel ?ngel Ladero Quesada, Fiscalidad y poder real en Castilla (1252?1369) (Madrid:
Editorial Complutense, 1993).
22. Carlos Barros, Mentalidad justiciera de los "irmandi?os": siglo XV (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno,
199?)
7o Aurell
ting an iconological discourse, Guiance makes an exhaustive review of
discourses on death in medieval Castile, from the Visigoth tradition of the
seventh century and the fully Christianized society of the fifteenth.23 The
Argentine investigator bases his work on a sound knowledge of modern
anthropological theories, notably the adaptation of Clifford Geertz's sym
bolic system to understand ideological discourse beyond its more evident
meaning. The study is based on the distinction between ecclesiastical
and lay discourses on death, which have different causes and therefore
require different methodological approaches. Guiance moves between
the history of mentalities that went beyond historical materialism and the
modern tendencies related to the new cultural history. His monograph
is in a sound tradition, well established in Castilian historiography, on
the study of death, as seen in the works of Manuel N??ez Rodriguez,
Ermelindo P?rtela, and Emilio Mitre. Some of them contributed to a
multidisciplinary analysis of the attitudes, spaces, and forms of death in
medieval Spain. Historians, philologists, archaeologists, theologians, and
art historians all worked on it together.24
As for the classic theme of the shaping of feudalism on the Iberian
Peninsula, the ideas imposed in the late seventies by Barbero and Vigil
have been left behind, though no alternative has been found from a
methodological point of view. They defended the shaping of feudalism
from the disintegration of the clan societies. That triggered a debate about
the issues raised in the north of the Peninsula after the withdrawal of the
Muslims or the social organization of the state. In recent years, the diver
sity in the north of the Peninsula has become evident, which has involved
territorial research, combining historical and archaeological methods.
There is a notable work by I?aki Mart?n Viso on the population and
social structures in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, which delves into
the differences in historical processes in those regions through written,
archaeological, demographic, and toponymie documents.25 A similar ex
ample is the provocative monograph by Juan Jos? Larrea from 1998 on
population and society in Navarra from the fourth to the twelfth centu
ries.26 His work takes as hypothesis the "feudal mutation" or "revolution of
the year 1000" proposed by French historians, such as Pierre Bonnassie,
which has found a warm welcome among Spanish researchers as shown by
the numerous works on medieval Catalonia byjosep Maria Salrach. Last,
23- Ariel Guiance, Los discursos sobre la muerte en la Castilla medieval (siglos VII?XV) (Val
ladolid: Junta de Castilla y Le?n, 1998).
24. Ante la muerte. Actitudes, espacios y formas en la Espa?a medieval, ed. Jaume Aurell and
Julia Pav?n (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2002).
25. I?aki Mart?n Viso, Poblamientoy estructuras sociales en el Norte de la Pen?nsula Ib?rica. Siglos
VI?XIII (Salamanca: Ediciones Universitarias de Salamanca, 2000).
26. Juan Jos? Larrea, La Navarre du We au Xlle si?cle. Peuplement et soci?t? (Paris-Bruxelles:
De Boeck Universit?, 1998).
in 1996 Ernesto Pastor D?az de Garayo published a suggestive study of the

evolution of the Duero borderlands between the seventh and eleventh
centuries, in which he related population, organization of space, political
power, and social structure.27 The sources used by Pastor were historical
and archaeological, and his methodology followed the French mutationist
theses, which provided a clear alternative between the essentialist theses of
the classics of the fifties and sixties and the Marxist ones of the seventies
and eighties.
Christian territorial expansion on the Iberian Peninsula had as its in
strument the religious orders. There are outstanding monographs by
Enrique Rodriguez-Picavea on the estates of the Order of Calatrava in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which perhaps stops halfway in its
aim of analyzing the shaping of feudalism in the southern Castilian me
seta,28 and by Maria Bonet on the Order of the Hospital in the kingdom
of Arag?n, which focuses both on the colonizing and defensive functions
of the order and its capacity to integrate into a higher political unit, the
kingdom of Arag?n.29
FROM ECONOMY TO SOCIETY: THE BROAD FIELD

OF SOCIAL HISTORY
Social history has maintained a notable place on the Spanish historio

graphie scene. In this field there is outstanding work by American histo
rians who have taken an interest in peninsular history. Moreover, since
the late eighties social history has found sound platforms for intellec
tual discussion and exchange that had been absent in Spain until then.30
The aim of Stephen P. Bensch's monograph on medieval Barcelona is to
identify the appearance of the patriarchy that promoted, directed, and
benefited from the expansion of the city, and to explore the ways through
which patrician families consolidated their influence and reproduced
their power.31 They were the protagonists of the transformation of Bar
celona from an isolated regional center into a great trading emporium.
27- Ernesto Pastor D?az de Garayo, Castilla en el tr?nsito de la Antig?edad al Feudalismo.

Poblamiento, poder pol?tico y estructura social delArlanza al Duero, siglos VII?XI (Valladolid: Junta
de Castilla y Le?n, 1996).
28. Enrique Rodr?guez-Picavea, La formaci?n del feudalismo en la meseta meridional castel
lana. Los se?or?os de la Orden de Calatrava en los siglos XII?XIII (Madrid: Editorial Siglo XXI,
1994)
29. Mar?a Bonet, La Orden del Hospital en la Corona de Arag?n. Poder y gobierno en la Castel
lan?a de Amposta (siglos XII-XV) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas,
1994)
30. Juli?n Casanova, La historia social y los historiadores (Barcelona: Cr?tica, 2003), p. 15.
31. Stephen P. Bensch, Barcelona and Its Rulers, 1096?1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1995).
72 Aurell
The lack of a contado, the marginal role of the aristocracy within the city,
and the maintenance of public authority in the hands of the monarchy
mark a specific evolution, which prevents any mimetic application of the
Italian model to Barcelona. For his part, Te?filo Ruiz, with his monograph
on late medieval Spanish society, introduced a revised vision of social his
tory, placing special emphasis on culture.32 His latest book, focusing on
the change in the values system in Castile in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, goes more deeply in that direction.33
In Spain a similar effort was the collective volume edited by Juan Anto
nio Bonachia on different aspects of urban life in late medieval Castile.
Bonachia managed to bring together a group of experts to analyze certain
original aspects: a description of urban landscapes, the urban imaginary,
local sociability, the functioning and control of supply and consumption,
town planning management, and the ordering of municipal services, such
as cleaning, sanitation, education, and medical services.34 The medieval
history departments of the Universities of Valencia and Valladolid have
become the main research centers on urban history. At the University
of Valencia, a large group of young researchers, many of them trained
around the magnetic figure of Paulino Iradiel, have conducted some stud
ies in recent years based on interesting documentary seams that are very
up to date in methodology. In the nineties the journal Revista d'Historia
Medieval was established; it is an interesting forum for debate on Spanish
medieval studies. Some suggestive and renovating socio-urban studies have
sprung from the contributions of the British historian Philip Banks and
the Catalans Albert Garc?a Espuche and Manuel Guardia for the Historia de
Barcelona, coordinated byjaume Sobrequ?s. On the basis of an analysis of
a plan of medieval Barcelona, they present precise accounts of the social
evolution of the city, using the urban structure, the archeological remains
of the city, and the variations in its demography as documentation.35
Among the studies on the countryside there is a notable one by Paul
Freedman in which he analyzes the origins of the servitude of Catalan peas
ants.36 He focuses his study on the social conditions of the group, based on
the documentary collections of the military orders, and the Vic and Girona
32. Te?filo F. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400?1600 (Harlow: Longman, 2001).

33. Te?filo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150?1350
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, C2004).
34. Juan Antonio Bonach?a, La ciudad medieval. Aspectos de la vida urbana en la Castilla
bajomedieval (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1996).
35. Albert Garc?a Espuche and Manuel Guardia, "Consolidado d'una estructura urbana:
1300-1516," Historia de Barcelona, ed. Jaume Sobrequ?s (Barcelona: Enciclopedia Catalana,
1992), III, 37-72.
36. Paul H. Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991).
town halls. The work has the virtue of making numerous comparisons
with the situation of peasants in France, Italy, England, and Poland, which
undoubtedly helps to weaken the tendency to regard medieval Spain as
something specific and singular. A model of joint analysis of the different
elements that made up rural society is the work by Merc? Avent?n, La soci
etat rural a Catalunya en temps feudals, published in 1996.37 It is an analysis
of the society of the area of Vall?s Oriental, near the city of Barcelona,
which provides an articulate and coherent image of rural Catalan society.
The author establishes a distinction, suitably reflected in the three parts
of the work, among land, revenue, and family. She thus manages to go
more deeply into the land ownership system and the internal forms of
organization of a group of families of the Catalan peasantry.
The latest research also placed emphasis on reaching an appropriate
harmonization between urban and rural studies. Thus the study of the
social organization of space in its different versions predominates: from
the influence of feudal society on territorial structure (Carlos Estepa) to
the layout of the colonized spaces (Jos? Angel Gracia de Cort?zar), the
political and institutional side of colonization (Flocel Sabat?), and town
country relations (Jos? Mar?a Monsalvo).
The subject of the nobility has paradoxically been one of the fields least
developed by Spanish medievalists in the last twenty years. That may be
explained by the greater interest taken in urban societies than rural ones,
and in trading activities rather than agricultural ones. However, it is no
less true that the publications of Pascual Mart?nez Sope?a have involved a
methodological turnaround that contributed the revision of the nineties.38
That is clear from the monograph by Simon Barton on the aristocracy of
Castile and Le?n in the twelfth century.39 Barton analyzes that social group
by placing special emphasis on kinship and power, the composition and
structure of lineage, the use of heraldic emblems, matrimonial strategies,
and relations between the monarchy and the high nobility. There are also
noteworthy synthetic works by the Hispanicist Marie-Claude Gerbet on
the late medieval Castilian nobility.40
Studies of the ethnic and religious minorities have been one of the fields
with the greatest vitality. Ana Echevarria's perceptive studies delve deeply
37- Merc? Avent?n i Puig, La societal rural a Catalunya en temps feudals. Valles Oriental, segles
XIII-XVI (Barcelona: Columna, 1996).
38. Pascual Mart?nez Sope?a, Antroponimia y sociedad: sistemas de identificaci?n hispano
cristianos en los siglos IX al XIII, ed. Pascual Mart?nez Sope?a (Valladolid: Universidad de
Valladolid, 1995).
39. Simon Barton, The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century Le?n and Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1997).
40. Marie-Claude Gerbet, Les noblesses espagnoles au Moyen ?ge: Xle?XVe si?cle (Paris: A.
Colin, 1994).
74 Aurell
into the evolution of the attitudes of Christians toward minorities, which is
especially clear in the monograph that she devoted in 1999 to the attitude
of Christians toward Muslims in Spain at the end of the Middle Ages.41
Kathryn A. Miller has focused on the survival of Muslim communities in
Spain and their function as guardians of the Islamic faith.42
One of the most typical subjects of the new political history is the study
of borders as a space for encounters between cultures, ethnic groups, and
religions. Taking some of the scholarship produced in the North American
academic world, such as the one by Peter Sahlins on the border between
France and Spain in the modern era, as models, some Spanish medievalists
have made important contributions.43 Such is the case of Ana Rodriguez
Lopez's monograph on the territorial consolidation of the Castilian feu
dal monarchy in the reign of Fernando III (thirteenth century), where
she looks in particular depth at borders.44 Based on a processing of the
most traditional documents, Maria Teresa Ferrer Mallol has produced
minutely detailed studies of the organization and defense of the Oriola
border territory in the fourteenth century.45
In the study of Al-Andalus, the dominant historiographie feature is the
growing conviction, now a paradigm, that it was a global Islamic society in
the West.46 Arabism has matured in Spanish medieval studies over these
last twenty years, thanks also to the contributions of some Hispanists, no
tably Pierre Guichard. One good symptom of that evolution is the volume
coordinated by Mar?a Jes?s Viguera on the development of Al-Andalus
in the eleventh century and the formation of the Taifa kingdoms.47 This
is a collective work, integrated into the Historia de Espa?a begun many
years earlier by Ramon Men?ndez Pidal. It is naturally uneven, but the
4L Ana Echevarr?a, The Fortress of Faith. The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century
Spain (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
42. Kathryn A. Miller, "Muslim Minorities and the Obligation to Emigrate to Islamic Terri
tory: Two Fatwas from Fifteenth-Century Granada," Islamic Law and Society, 7 (2000), 256-88,
and Kathryn A. Miller, "Negociando con el infiel. La actividad mercantil musulmana en la
Espa?a cristiana," in El Mediterr?neo medieval y renacentista, espacio de mercados y de culturas,
ed. Jaume Aurell (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2002), pp. 213-32.
43. Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: Univ.
of California Press, 1989).
44. Ana Rod?guez L?pez, La consolidaci?n territorial de la monarqu?a feudal castellana. Expan
sion y fronteras durante el reinado de Fernando III (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cient?ficas, 1994).
45. Mar?a Teresa Ferrer Mallol, Organitzaci? i defensa d'un territori fronterer. La governaci?
d'Oriola en el segle XTV (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient?ficas, 1990).
46. See the excellent survey in Maria Jes?s Viguera Molins, "Al-Andalus, de Omeyas a
Almohades," in La historia medieval en Espa?a (note 4) pp. 51-148.
47. Mar?a Jes?s Viguera Molins, Los reinos de taifas. Al-Andalus en el siglo XI (Madrid: Espasa
Calpe, 1994).
final result is a good reflection of the way that discipline is improving

in Spanish medieval studies. In this case the work of the Hispanists has
been particularly effective, since they have brought new life to some old
subjects with new methodologies, such as the documented monograph
by Olivia R. Constable on trade in the peninsular Islamic world published
in 1994.48
The history of religiosity may have been one of the least practiced ap
proaches in Spanish medieval studies over the last two decades. There are
some exceptions, however, such as the monograph that Maria Angeles
Garc?a de la Borbolla has devoted to the hagiography of Castile and Le?n
in the thirteenth century.49 Following the parameters of French historical
studies, the monograph is a rounded study of a genre that has had strong
roots in contemporary medieval studies but that had never been much
practiced in Spain.
Spanish medieval studies has also benefited from the unending seam
of Mediterranean history. In this sphere there has been a conjunction of
interests between foreign and native researchers. The conscientious, sug
gestive work by David Abulafia on Mallorca has been an effective model
for the study of cultural and trade relations between the various urban
centers along the shores of the Mediterranean.50
Following the guidelines of the classic study by Jos? Angel Garc?a de
Cort?zar of the monastery of San Mil?n de la Cogolla, various monographs
have been published over the last few years on the spiritual, cultural, and
colonizing function of the monastic centers of medieval Christian Spain.
Julia Montenegro focuses her analysis of the monastery of Santa Maria
de Piesca on its influence on the surrounding territory.51 Ana Castellanos
undertook an analogous study, though perhaps a more interesting one
from a methodological point of view, of the monastery of Santa Mar?a de
Pedralbes in Barcelona.52
The history of food is a chapter apart in Spanish medieval studies, fairly
disconnected from the other approaches but with satisfactory results,
48. Olivia R. Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain. The Commercial Realignment of
the Iberian Peninsula (900?1500) (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994).
49. Maria Angeles Garc?a de la Borbolla, "La praesentia" y la "virtus": la imagen y la funci?n
del santo a partir de la hagiograf?a castellano-leonesa del siglo XIII (Santo Domingo de Silos:
Abad?a, 2002).
50. David Abulafia, A Mediterranean Emporium: The Catalan Kingdom of Majorca (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994).
51. Julia Montenegro Valentin, Santa Mar?a dePiasca. Estudio de un territorio a trav?s de un
centro mon?stico (857-1252) (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1993).
52. Anna Castellano, Pedralbes a l'edat mitjana: historia d'un monastir femen? (Barcelona:
Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 1998).
76 Aurell
which are the product of research projects carried out with rigor and
dedication. There is a notable monograph by Juan Vicente Garcia Marsilla
on food in Valencia in the late Middle Ages.53 The study is also an interest
ing methodological contribution, because it tries to relate food systems to
social hierarchies. The history of food is not simply a history of nutrition;
it transcends phenomena with sociological, cultural, and even ideological
contents. There are portraits of the strategies of the councils for urban
supply, the social dimension of the subsistence crisis, or more exactly, the
forms of sociability around the table as symbols of social identity.
Gender history is perhaps one of the great victims of the methodological
lag of Spanish medieval studies. True, there are some exceptions, but in
general the ground remains fairly barren for the moment. There are some
collective studies, such as the one published in 1988 on women's work in
the Middle Ages in Spain, though perhaps they need more knowledge of
the epistemological and methodological currents that have developed in
gender history in England and the United States.54 In any case, we should
mention the work of Milagros Rivera, who analyzes the situations and
thought of medieval women through current feminist ideas.55 In Spanish
medieval studies works of this kind have been fairly much conditioned by
feminist demands. However, gender history might have developed even
less had it not been for that practical interest.
The history of books and their medieval readers has been the object of
some magnificent studies byjocelyn N. Hillgrath, for the case of medieval
Mallorca,56 and Pedro C?tedra, for readings of the late medieval Castilian
nobility, though lately he has concentrated more on the modern era.57
Last, in this broad section we should mention the work of some medieval
art historians, such as Joaqu?n Yarza and Francesca Espa?ol, or the law
historians who have received the heritage of the great juridic-institutional
school developed in Spain in the fifties and sixties with their prestigious
research organ, the Anuario de Historia del Derecho Espa?ol.
53- Juan Vicente Garc?a Marsilla, La jerarqu?a de la mesa. Los sistemas alimentarios en la
Valencia bajomedieval (Valencia: Diputaci?n de Valencia, 1993).
54. El trabajo de las mujeres en la Edad Media hispana, ed. Angela Mu?oz Fern?ndez and
Cristina Segura Gra??o (Madrid: Laya, 1988).
55. Milagros Rivera Garretas, Textos y espacios de mujeres (Barcelona: Icaria, 1990).
56. Jocelyn N. Hillgarth, Readers and Books in Majorca (1229?1550), 2 vols. (Paris: C.N.R.S.,
1991).
57. Pedro M. C?tedra, Nobleza y lectura en tiempos de Felipe II: la biblioteca de Don Alonso Osorio,
Marqu?s deAstorga (Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y Le?n, Consejer?a de Educaci?n y Cultura,
2002).
THE NEW POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY:
RENOVATION FROM WITHIN
The new political history has gained ground in recent years as one of
the hegemonic thematic and methodological approaches on the scene
of Spanish medieval studies. It is not just a matter of recovering old sub
jects, such as biography, and informing them with new methodological
vigor. One special feature of the renewal is that it adopts new approaches
that look at the reality of government from the point of view of the deep
mechanisms that explain the exercise of power, its reproduction and im
age, and justification and legitimization. The new Spanish medieval studies
is interested in subjects such as the border, the representation of power,
or historiography as a political instrument, which until now had only been
studied as complements to other subjects considered more central. The
new historians are trying to abandon the postulates of the old political
history (kingdoms, courts, territorial administration) to analyze the history
of the assumption and representation of power, in which there is a mixture
of sociological, economic, anthropological, and ideological components
with the aim of ensuring the exercise of domination.
There are three recently published works that well reflect these new
tendencies. The common factor is that they are all written by leading
medievalists, established in the academic world for years, all born in the
thirties and forties. All of them are engaged on biographies of some of
the great protagonists of medieval Spain. These are Julio Valde?n's biog
raphy of Caliph Abderraman III (2001 ),58 Jos? Enrique Ruiz Dom?nec's
biography of Gonzalo Fern?ndez de C?rdoba, known as El Gran Capit?n
(2002),59 and the biography Jos? Luis Mart?n has just published on King
Enrique IV (2003).60 It is noteworthy that each of the three medievalists
had taken quite different lines in the seventies and eighties: Jos? Luis
Martin had always stayed in the sphere of a diplomatic history indebted
to the most rooted neopositivist tradition, Julio Valde?n had been one
of the leading exponents of the renewal brought about by Marxism, and
Jos? Enrique Ruiz Dom?nec had always been at the cutting edge of in
novation, energetically confronting both nineteenth-century positivism
with German roots and Marxist economics.
Through biography there is an interesting phenomenon?that of the
58. Julio Valde?n, Abderram?n Illy el califato de C?rdoba (Madrid: Debate, 2001 ).
59. Jos? Enrique Ruiz-Dom?nec, El Gran Capit?n: retrato de una ?poca (Barcelona: Pen?nsula,
2002).
60. Jos? Luis Mart?n, Enrique TV de Castilla: Rey de Navarra, Pr?ncipe de Catalu?a (Hondar
ribia: Nerea, 2003).
78 Aurell
methodological convergence of three medievalists with such different intel
lectual itineraries.61 Once again the influence of French historiography as
serts itself. Georges Duby's biography of Guillaume le Mar?chal and Jacques
Le Goff's of St. Louis have no doubt been models, but I think there is
something more, reflected both in the choice of subject and genre and in
the choice of methodology. The three medievalists do not hesitate to use
chronicle sources, though they propose a revised reading of the texts. At
the same time, the three works are written as narratives, which has allowed
them to be published by popularizing publishing houses. In this sense,
Jos? Enrique Ruiz Dom?nec has been a pioneer by publishing in 2000 a
suggestive historical tale of the Barcelona merchant Ricard Guillem, in
which he used the most modern narrative techniques. Ruiz Dom?nec took
the historical stories told years ago by modernists such as Carlo Ginzburg,
Natalie Z. Davis, or Simon Schama as his model.62 Those stories should not
be confused with the historical novel in fiction, a genre that has become
quite widespread in Spain with more or less success, also among some
medievalists from the academic world, as in the case of Jos? Luis Corral.
Ruiz Dom?nec's story of El Gran Capit?n is the one that perhaps shows
the greatest mastery of new narrative techniques and corresponds best
to the spirit of the new historiography, which needs a narrative that is
impeccable not only from the material point of view (based on rigor
ous documentation) but also the formal one (presented accessibly, far
removed from academic jargon, and following a coherent plot).63 Jos?
Luis Martin's portrait of Enrique IV has the virtue of unabashedly using
literary sources, which in recent decades had been considered spurious
by Spanish medieval studies. Finally, Julio Valde?n's study of Abderraman
III opts decidedly for the technique of the master narrative, which is quite
paradoxical coming from a historian trained in the classical school of
positivism of Ramon Men?ndez Pidal.
The innovation these three medievalists introduced is not based on the
choice of themes or genre but, rather, on their treatment of the materials
they deal with. The return to tradition is something like what Georges
Duby had accomplished in the late seventies with his now classic book
on the three orders, or the imaginary of feudalism. The great influence
of the French medievalist came to full fruition in his examination of the
6i. See also the biographies by Joseph F. O'Callaghan, The Learned King. The Reign of
Alfonso X of Castile (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), and Manuel Gonz?lez
Jim?nez, Alfonso Xel Sabio, 1252-1284 (Palencia: La Olmeda, 1993).
62. One of the latest books in this direction: Simon Schama, Rembrandt's Eyes (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
63. Justifications about this theory in Hayden White, The Content of the Form. Narrative
Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989).
ideological foundations of feudalism in this book. Duby had managed to

renew the methodological tools of medieval studies through an analysis
of one of its central phenomena.
One of the subjects that has generated the greatest interest in the new
Spanish medieval studies is kinship, in its anthropological and political
dimension. Indeed, the relations among family, kinship relations, and
access to power were subjects that had been practiced by Spanish medi
evalists in recent years. The first step was the book edited by Reyna Pas
tor, entitled Relaciones de poder, de producci?n y parentesco en la Edad Media
y Moderna, published in 1990, although it was still too conditioned by
its rather antiquated Marxist orientation. A greater methodological in
novation was carried out by Jos? Enrique Ruiz Dom?nec, who devoted a
carefully documented study to the kinship system in the feudal world of
medieval Catalonia.64
Along the same lines, though going deeper into the political dimension
of lineage, is the suggestive monograph by Martin Aurell on the matrimo
nial policy of the counts of Catalonia and their relation to Catalan expan
sion in the Middle Ages.65 Of special interest is the analysis of the way of
structuring ecclesiastical and aristocratic doctrinal discourse on marriage
with the different strategies of the counts to adapt their matrimonial
policy to the requirements of territorial expansion. It reflects the tension
produced when the changeable character of social practices is opposed
to the stable convictions of ecclesiastical doctrine, which always sought to
establish free consent over the consensus of the matrimonial practices of
the medieval aristocracy. It relates with precision the changes in the social
status of women, who pass from the predominance of the hypergamic
practices of the early centuries of the Middle Ages to their decline with
the triumph of the princely lineages in the central centuries.
From the point of view of the new political history through lineage,
perhaps the most characteristic monographs published recently are the
work of both Josep Fern?ndez Trabal on the social rise of the Bell-lloc
family in Girona in the late Middle Ages, and Lluis To, who produced an
original study of the figure of the hereu ("heir") in medieval Catalonia,
which shows the weight of heritage in the evolution of the peasant family
in the Middle Ages and its central place in an understanding of the layout
of the feudal system.66
64. Jose Enrique Ruiz Dom?nec, L'estructura feudal. Sistema de parentiu i teor?a de Valian?a
en la societat catalana (c. 980?c. 1220) (Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona: Edicions del Mall,
1985).
65. Martin Aurell, Les noces du comte: Mariage et pouvoir en Catalogne (785?1213) (Paris:
Publications de la Sorbonne, 1994).
66. Llu?s To Figueras, Familia i hereu a la Catalunya nord-oriental (segles X?XII) (Barcelona:
Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 1997).
8 o Aurell
All these studies, though they later followed quite different paths, started
from Georges Duby's idea that property was woven in the Middle Ages
through the complex threads of the lineage systems: the structure of kin
ship was superimposed on the feudal order, thus constructing a complex
mesh that blew apart the links established by the social feudal hierarchy
from inside. That line of argument, which may not have gone far beyond
these works, has borne more fruit from the point of view of the modern
ization of Spanish medieval studies than that of the eternal debate on the
territorial structure of the Peninsula in the Middle Ages. The territorializa
tion debate, which had received the legacy of the essentialist debate, had
reached a dead end from which it could only be extracted by a study of
lineage that was more in accordance with the new methodologies.
In this context, the warm welcome given to Adam J. Kosto's investiga
tions into the agreements of the feudal hierarchy in medieval Catalonia
comes as no surprise.67 The young American researcher thus continued
Thomas Bisson's mastery of medieval Catalonia.68 Bisson's legacy is a large
school of Hispanists for Catalonia, something that has also been attempted
by Robert I. Burns for medieval Valencia.69
The new political history is also to be found in studies of old subjects
with renewed methodologies. That is the case in the suggestive mono
graph on the political function of the pilgrimage route to Santiago pub
lished in 1997 by Jos? Luis Barreiro.70 The pilgrimages to Santiago were
a recurrent theme in Spanish medieval studies throughout the twentieth
century. The bibliography is enormous,71 but Barrero aimed to give a
radical methodological twist to the issue by devoting a large part of the
book to detailing the epistemological principles he has based his study on:
a synthesis between hermeneutics and sociology, designed for a proper
understanding of the social facts in order to establish, from a sociological
and anthropological point of view, a definition of the "system of mean
ings" that the Santiago road has for medieval society. His methodological
arsenal extends from the formulations of the sociology of social action
and systemic sociology to Hans G. Gadamer's eclectic hermeneutic theory,
Leopold von Ranke's "godly ideas," J.G. Droysen's "moral powers," and
67. Adam J. Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written
Word, 1000?1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001).
68. Thomas N. Bisson, Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia,
1140-1200 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998).
69. Robert I. Burns, Islam under the Crusaders: Colonial Survival in the Thirteenth-Century
Kingdom of Valencia (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1973).
70. Jos? Luis Barreiro Rivas, La funci?n pol?tica de los caminos de peregrinaci?n en la Europa
medieval. Estudio del camino de Santiago (Madrid: Tecnos, 1997).
71. See the collective work El Camino de Santiago y la articulaci?n del espacio hisp?nico (Pam
plona: Gobierno de Navarra, Departamento de Educaci?n y Cultura, 1994).
W. Gamson and Ch. Tilly's "broad social processes" and "enormous com
parisons."
In the context of the new political history, Jos? Manuel Nieto Soria and
Flocel Sabat? have been concerned with the royal ceremonies as systems
of propaganda and legitimization of the monarchical institution, from
the moment of coronation to the organization of the funeral.72 Adeline
Rucquoi has published a suggestive and well-documented study of medi
eval Valladolid,73 but her main contribution to Spanish medieval studies is
related to her work as editor and coordinator of collaborative volumes, fo
cusing on the medieval genesis of modern Spain and other aspects related
to the new political history, such as the discourse and images of power.74
The new cultural history has not spread very widely in Spanish medieval
studies; its results are still sparse. In the line of Te?filo F. Ruiz's efforts to
integrate the new cultural history into social history or, as Roger Chartier
proposed, to turn the social history of culture into the cultural history of
society, is the volume written jointly by the historian Jaume Aurell and the
philosopher Alfons Puigarnau on the culture of the Barcelona merchants.
The book was defined by the journal Annales as a fine example of social
and cultural historical anthropology around an urban space and a social
type, through their "spirit" and "image," which proposes the concept of
cultural fragmentation for the Barcelona of the late Middle Ages.75
PHILOLOGY, BETWEEN NEOPOSITRTSM AND THE

RENEWING ACTION OF THE PERIPHERY
Medieval studies is a particularly propitious field for an encounter between

historians, philologists, and linguists. However, Spanish academic tradi
tion is excessively conditioned by the nineteenth-century German model,
which is why philology has been academically linked since its origins with
linguistics and starkly separated from history. Moreover, there has been
no true dialogue between history and philology, which is why the three
disciplines are still unfortunately following rather independent paths.
Lastly, the administrative and bureaucratic compartments have carried
72. Jos? Manuel Nieto Soria, Ceremonias de la realeza: propaganda y legitimaci?n en la Castilla
Trast?mara (Madrid: Nerea, 1993); Flocel Sabat?, Lo senyorrei ?s mort: actitud i cer?monies deis
municipis catalans baix-medievals davant la mort del monarca (Lleida: Universit?t, 1994).
73. Adeline Rucquoi, Valladolid au Moyen Age: 1080?1480 (Paris: Editions Publisud,
1993)
74. Gen?se m?di?vale de l'Espagne moderne: du refus ? la r?volte: les r?sistances, ed. Adeline
Rucquoi (Paris: Diffusion, Les Belles Lettres, 1991).
75. Jaume Aurell and Alfons Puigarnau, La cultura del mercader en la Barcelona del siglo XV
(Barcelona: Omega, 1998).
82 Aurell
more weight than the aspiration to a medieval studies that truly integrates
history, literature, and linguistics.
That has meant that in Spanish medieval studies there has not been
much tradition in interdisciplinary research projects, though there are
exceptions. Among them are some volumes published jointly by experts
in the two disciplines. In 2002 a magnificent study of El Cid and his
time was published; it was coordinated by Carlos Alvar, Fernando G?mez
Redondo, and Georges Martin and focused on the epic dimension of
the narratives about El Cid Campeador.76 The monograph is strikingly
cohesive?something difficult to achieve for a collective volume?and
tackles a variety of themes from linguistic, literary, contextual, social, and
cultural perspectives: the exaltation of the values of revenge, dishonor
or honor; the mythologizing and transmission of the figure of El Cid
in different historical periods; the influence of aristocratic lineages and
clans and their relation with the monarchy; the concept of power and its
linguistic materialization; the strong moral component of the successive
editions of the history of El Cid; and last, the expression of the story in
iconography.77
As for the specific development of Spanish philology, a large biblio
graphical output that may be included in the generic current of neopositiv
ism is predominant. In the face of this output, which lacks methodological
nerve and epistemological renovation, a revision movement has been
generated in Spanish medieval studies. True, the postulates of the new
philology, developed starting in the late eighties in some North American
academic spheres, have not caught on. But medieval Spanish philology
has also generated its "renewal from within," resting on three pillars:
the work of the great masters, the work of the Hispanists, and the fruits
harvested by a series of philologists who may be considered "peripheral,"
because they have pursued doctoral study outside Spain, usually on one
of the American campuses with a long Hispanicist tradition.
Among the great masters, the philologist Ramon Men?ndez Pidal
( 1869-1968) ,78 the linguist Emilio Arlarcos Llorach ( 192 2-1998) ,79 and
the Romanist Mart?n de Riquer stand out; their work is of great quality
and considerable extension, but it is Riquer who is still working today. The
76. El Cid: de la materia ?pica a las cr?nicas caballerescas, ed. Carlos Alvar, Fernando G?mez
Redondo, and Georges Mart?n (Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de
Alcal?, 2002).
77. About this topic, see also Francisco Javier Pe?a P?rez, El Cid Campeador. Historia, leyenda
y mito (Burgos: Dossoles, 2000).
78. E. Michael Gerli, "Inventing the Spanish Middle Ages: Ramon Men?ndez Pidal, Span
ish Cultural History, and Ideology in Philology," La Cor?nica, 30 (2001), 111-26.
79. An excellent work about his life and bibliography in Homenaje a Emilio Atareos Llorach
(Madrid: Gredos, 2001).
most noteworthy contributions of Mart?n de Riquer over the last few years
have been his anthology of medieval Catalan poets, an up-to-date study of
knights' armor, an edition of the poetry of the Catalan troubadour Guillem
de Bergued?, an edition of the novel Tirant lo Blanch, and with Isabel de
Riquer, a compendium of medieval Catalan troubadour poetry.80 Among
his disciples Francisco Rico has continued with his pioneering work on
Spanish literature, though recently he has turned to literary criticism and
Italian studies, as well as quite original subjects, such as his recent con
tribution on discourse about taste.81 Lola Badia, for her part, has turned
to comparative literature and, with Anthony Bonner, has looked deeply
into the wide-ranging sphere of Llullism.82
Among the second broad group, the Hispanists, there are the daring
projects for cataloguing and publishing primary sources, carried out for
many years by Charles Faulhaber, and the magnificent studies published
since the seventies by Alan Deyermond on the most important Castilian
literary texts.83 Thomas Montgomery's book on the Spanish medieval
epic perhaps broaches an excessively ambitious subject, but it is useful
as a methodological referent in the study of the shaping of the "myth,"
so typical of warrior societies, which is handed down from generation to
generation through the ritual function of the epic. The historical vestiges
and traces of mythology reach the historian and philologist through their
linguistic and stylistic traces.84 The works of Maria Rosa Menocal on Al
Andalus show how Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together in peace
for a time in that realm. Solidly researched and splendidly written, her
works are excellent approaches to the world of Islamic Spain through
literature.85
The work of the Hispanists has an excellent organ of distribution, the
journal La cr?nica. Spanish Language and Medieval Literature, published in
80. Antolog?a de poetes catalans: un millenni de literatura, ed. Mart?n de Riquer (Barcelona:
Gutenberg, 1997); Mart?n de Riquer, Caballeros medievales y sus armas (Madrid: Instituto
Universitario "General Guti?rrez Mellado," 1999); Mart?n de Riquer, Les poesies del trobador
Guillem deBergued? (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1996); Mart?n de Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch,
novela de historia y de ficci?n (Barcelona: Sirmio, 1992); La poes?a de los trovadores, ed. Mart?n
de Riquer and Isabel de Riquer (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2002).
81. Francisco Rico, Los discursos del gusto: notas sobre cl?sicos y contempor?neos (Barcelona:
Destino, 2003).
82. Lola Badia and Anthony Bonner, Ram?n Llull: vida, pensamiento y obra literaria (Barce
lona: Emp?ries, 1988).
83. Bibliography of Old Spanish Texts, comp. Charles B. Faulhaber et al. (Madison: Hispanic
Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1984) ; Alan Deyermond, La literatura perdida de la Edad Media
castellana: cat?logo y estudio (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1995).
84. Thomas Montgomery, Medieval Spanish Epic. Mythic Roots and Ritual Language (Uni
versity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1998).
85. Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created
a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002).
84 Aurell
England since 1972, which is most of all outstanding for the contributions
oriented toward text criticism. From the perspective of the Romance lit
eratures, the journal Romance Philology, published in Berkeley, California,
since 1947, is outstanding.
Last, in the third group, among those who received their academic train
ing in North America, the most noteworthy is Jes?s D. Rodriguez Velasco,
who published a work of methodological gravitas on fifteenth-century
Castilian chivalry in 1996. Velasco set out to analyze Castilian chivalry by
setting it in relation to its European framework.86 The method adopted
is to relate the fifteenth-century Castilian treatises with their antecedents
in the period between 1250 and 1390 and link them with the writings of
Latin antiquity and the medieval West. The current of his work may be
associated with the history of literary culture. Also connected by her aca
demic training with the University of California, Berkeley, Mar?a Morras
has concentrated on literary criticism and the edition and interpretation of
texts from medieval Castilian literature, especially the fifteenth century.87
Also worthy of mention are the studies of medieval Latin historiography
by Juan Gil, Emma Falque Rey, and Antonio Maya.88
CONCLUSION
In concluding, I would like to draw some general insights from this over
view of tendencies in Spanish medieval studies. Nowadays, there is no
predominant current. True, a pragmatic neopositivism espoused by the
majority of medievalists is based on the postulates of nineteenth-century
German historical studies and the French methodological school. But
there is no shortage of attempts at renewal "from within" through the
recovery of old subjects, albeit endowed with a new methodology (the
biographical story, social history, the new political history, the new cultural
history, and the history of religiosity). All that helps to endow Spanish
medieval studies with a curious mixture of tradition and modernity, be
tween conservatism and innovation.
Methodological revision, when it has existed, has come fundamentally
from three spheres: the recent reappraisal of some scholars born between
86. Jes?s D. Rodr?guez Velasco, El debate sobre la caballer?a en el siglo XV. La tratad?stica
caballeresca castellana en su marco europeo (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y Le?n, 1996).
87. Libros de Tulio: De senectute, De los oficios/Alonso de Cartagena, ed. Mar?a Morras (Alcal?
de Henares: Universidad de Alcal? de Henares, 1996).
88. Chronica Hispana saeculi XII, ed. Emma Falque, Juan Gil, and Antonio Maya (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1990); Lucae Tudensis Chronicon mundi, ed. Emma Falque (Turnhout: Brepols,
2003).
the thirties and forties through the retrieval of the biographical story; the
work of the Hispanists, basically from North America and France, through
the practice of social history; and the contributions of young historians
and philologists trained on the periphery, many of them at North Ameri
can universities, at all events far from the Spanish academic world.
No stable programmatic link between philologists and historians has
been achieved. The two spheres continue to be too distant, both from a
strictly academic point of view and from that of research. Lack of commu
nication has increased, due to both the rigidity of the Spanish academic
system and the uncritical reluctance aroused by the currents related to
postmodernism and the new medieval studies that originated in the North
American academic world. The idea of the conception of historical texts
as literary artefacts and the practice of reading primary sources as texts
(which has helped to bring together historians, linguists, and literary
historians in other academic spheres) have been misinterpreted, which
has widened the radical separation between the mode of interpreting
primary sources, historical texts, and literature.
Unfortunately, a certain conceptual weakness lingers among many Span
ish medievalists. The cultivation of methodological and epistemological as
pects is regarded as an excessively theoretical task, which distorts research
into primary sources. Moreover, there is scarcely any dialogue between
historians and researchers in other social sciences such as sociology, an
thropology, or linguistics. Although the lack of theoretical information
is palliated in part with the new generations of medievalists, the situation
still has to improve.
Until the eighties the influence of French medieval studies on Spanish
medieval studies predominated. In the nineties the model switched to
North American medieval studies. British historiography has continued
to play a minor role in Spanish medieval studies, though paradoxically its
influence on modern and contemporary studies has grown.
There is a "lost generation" in Spanish medieval studies, the research
ers born in the sixties and seventies. The ones who have survived have
taken refuge on the "periphery," have been belatedly incorporated into
the Spanish academic system, or have had to find a place abroad or in
private universities.
The Spanish academic system is still deficient, because it tends toward
corporate thinking. The problem is that no objective and genuinely ex
ternal grading system has been achieved. Endogamy reproduces itself
because it continues to be a common practice for Spanish universities to
hire their own doctoral students.
The publishing system does not encourage the distribution of really
high quality recent research. There is an excessive distance between uni
86 Aurell
versity publishers who prize scholarship and commercial ones who give
priority to popularization. The former usually publish PhD theses, done
at the university of the publisher, whose subjects are only of interest to a
specialized minority and whose language all too often degenerates into
academic jargon. The latter only trust established historians, and so it is
unlikely that any really revisionary research will find an outlet. That holds
back the reception of new methodologies even more.
The academic system, with its incessant stimulation of quantity over
quality, generates mediocrity in research. That affects both those who are
already established, because they do not need external stimulation, and
those who are opting to become established, who urgently need to swell
their curriculum vitae with more publications, but with no concern for
their quality.
The diagnosis is severe in some points, but perhaps the hopes are
greater. The gradual globalization of the scientific world, which has also
affected the Spanish academic world, will in the end impose a radical re
thinking of the present practices of selecting teaching and research staff.
At the same time, the tradition of cordiality and sincere affection that has
always existed among Hispanists and Spanish researchers will certainly
contribute to a gradual normalization, modernization, and prestige of
Spanish medieval studies.

A Secret Realm - Current Trends in Spanish Medieval Studies

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A Secret Realm: Current Trends in Spanish Medieval Studies

Author(s): Jaume Aurell

Jaume Aurell, University of Navarra

i. Miguel ?ngel Ladero Quesada, "Aproximaci?n al medieval studieso espa?ol (1939

Journal of English and Germanic Philology?January

a good theoretical framework from which to start.3 The best documented

THE PRECEDENTS: THE BURDEN OF INTELLECTUAL

9- Gonzalo Pasamar, "La influencia de Annales en la historiograf?a espa?ola durante el

THE EIGHTIES: THE CONVERGENCE OF

In the eighties modern tendencies put in a belated appearance, because

DEFENDERS OF THE TRADITION: DIPLOMATIC HISTORY,

in 1996 Ernesto Pastor D?az de Garayo published a suggestive study of the

FROM ECONOMY TO SOCIETY: THE BROAD FIELD

Social history has maintained a notable place on the Spanish historio

27- Ernesto Pastor D?az de Garayo, Castilla en el tr?nsito de la Antig?edad al Feudalismo.

32. Te?filo F. Ruiz, Spanish Society, 1400?1600 (Harlow: Longman, 2001).

final result is a good reflection of the way that discipline is improving

ideological foundations of feudalism in this book. Duby had managed to

PHILOLOGY, BETWEEN NEOPOSITRTSM AND THE

Medieval studies is a particularly propitious field for an encounter between

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