Read Online 1492: The Year Our World Began by Felipe Fernández-Armesto - Free Book Online Page B

jousted twice.” The king displayed a tribute on his shield that read, “I suffer without making sound / For as long as I am bound.” The king’s secretary, however, confided the underlying purpose of assembling the monarchs’ most powerful supporters: they had to know who was with themand who against them. The magnates had their own agenda, according to Alonso de Palencia: they intended to exploit the occasion to distract Ferdinand from matters of state and lure him into expenditure and concessions.
    Not all the nobility upheld the standards of chivalrous behavior. One of the most barbarous cases on record concerned Don Fernando de Velasco, brother of the highest courtier in the kingdom, who burned to death some yokels who, in their drunkenness, had mistaken him for a Jewish rent collector and abused him accordingly. The king replied to subsequent complaints that he regretted the wretches’ deaths, without benefit of prior confession, but that Velasco had acted nobly in exacting satisfaction for the outrage they had committed against him.
    Noble scions began to throng Castile’s many universities. Education, as well as arms, conferred nobility. “My lineage is for me enough, / Content to live without expensive stuff” was Alonso Manrique’s motto, but he was an accomplished poet. With the expansion of taste came an increased interest in the accumulation of wealth. The Admiral of Castile (whose title was a hereditary dignity, not a naval office) obtained a dyestuffs monopoly from the crown, though he employed an agent to run it for him: a wealthy Genoese merchant in Seville—Francisco da Rivarolo, who was one of Columbus’s financial backers. The Dukes of Medina Celi, who were in the vanguard against Granada, had their own merchant fleet and tuna fishery and processing plant. Their neighbors and rivals, the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, invested heavily in another growth industry of the time—sugar production. All noblemen had to be good estate managers in order to keep pace with inflation, which was beginning to be a normal feature of economic life. The Medina Celi dexterously increased their income from food rents and seigneurial taxes, and the record books of monastic and clerical lordships show how they increased incomes to match rising costs.
    Some writers questioned the true nature of nobility, pointing out, under the influence of Aristotle and his commentators, whose works were easily accessible in every serious library, that gentility lay in thecultivation of virtue. “God made men, not lineages” was a theme of Gómez Manrique, knight, poet, warrior against the Moors, and close courtier of the king and queen. This did not mean that all men were social equals, but that humble men could rise to power if they possessed the requisite merit. The king could ennoble those who deserved it. The merits that earned ennoblement could be intellectual. “I know,” declared Diego de Valera, “how to serve my Prince not only with the strengths of my body but also with those of my mind and intellect.” Alonso de Palencia’s Treatise on Knightly Perfection personifies Chivalric Practice as a Spanish nobleman in search of Lady Discretion. He finally encounters her in Italy, the homeland of humanism.
    These modifications of noble behavior and language should not be mistaken for a “bourgeois revolution.” Although they spread their wings economically and culturally, nobles remained true to the traditions of their class, whose virtue was prowess and whose pursuit was power. As Isabella’s secretary wrote to a magnate wounded in battle with the Moors, “The profession you make in the order of chivalry obliges you to undergo more perils than common men, just as you merit more honor than they, because if you had no more spirit than the rest in the face of such affrights, then we should all be equals.” 21
    Because of the court’s obligation to impress, ostentation and pageantry were an important part of court daily life.