previously limited to courtly audiences.
While the Farce of Ávila was unusual in its direct political significance, it drew on the relatively recent practice of presenting courtly exhibitions as public entertainments. This trend had gained momentum in the fifteenth century as nearly every extraordinary event or holy day was taken as an excuse for recreation or as the object of a ceremony. The range of spectacles enacted on the streets and plazas of Castilian cities is seemingly endless: processions, tournaments, mime shows, dramas, and bullfights. These marked occasions including royal visits, religious events (such as Corpus Christi, Christmas, and Epiphany), the anniversaries of key dates in civic history, noble weddings, funerals, and births, and so on. Local fêtes were often the liveliest, but external events, especially royal deaths and coronations, were publicly commemorated throughout the realm. The Farce of Ávila, for instance, was understood to make Alfonso king in Ávila only. For his crowning to be meaningful, nobles elsewhere needed to accept his claim and enact similar public rituals in their towns.18 By conspicuously sponsoring a variety of events and by controlling their content, urban nobles sought to maintain or extend their influence at the expense of their rivals.
Long-term frontier fighting and political instability exacerbated the situation. Because of the military requirements of war against the Muslims, specifically the need for large numbers of horsemen, the nobility lacked the monopoly over the role and accoutrements of the mounted warrior enjoyed by their counterparts in France and England. Members of urban militias, the caballeros de cuantía (or de premia), could claim at least some of the honors and obligations of knighthood, even though they lacked titles, and even some merchant associations adopted the trappings of chivalry.19 Political innovations dating to the mid-fourteenth-century accession of the Trastámara dynasty provided other rivals. The first of the Trastámras, Enrique II (1369–1379)had overthrown his predecessor in a lengthy civil war. Because his hold on the throne was insecure, he rewarded his followers with privileges and extensive grants of lands. The result was a transformation of the high aristocracy, as families prominent since the eleventh and twelfth centuries made way for the “new” nobility, which consisted mostly of formerly minor branches of the great old noble houses.20 To balance the power of the new nobles, Enrique turned to the letrados, giving them control of the audiencia, the king’s own court of law with jurisdiction in cases involving the nobility.
While challenged by caballeros de cuantía and letrados, nobles could not even take solace in their ancient and storied lineages. Most, even those of the highest rank, traced their privileges and titles only as far back as the Trastámara accession, highlighting the contingent nature of their position. Just as they had replaced the old nobility, so too could they be replaced. So, in order to defend their privileges, the nobility had to identify those qualities that distinguished them and made their class socially relevant.21 It was not wealth (merchants had that, after all) or land (many noble lands remained, in theory, the property of the royal fisc) nor horse and armor (knights and urban militias fought with the same equipment and in the same manner) nor influence (which was shared with the letrados).
Ultimately, many chose to argue that true nobility derived from personal virtue. Authors like Diego de Valera and Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo emphasized that nobles and knights should earn their social status through lifelong service and an unremitting dedication to honor and prudence. These authors never lost sight of the nobility’s principal vocation of fighting, which differentiated them from the caballeros de cuantía, whose distaste for their military duties was notorious. For the true knight, lack of a civilian calling made possible the regular attention to military training necessary to his proper station: “Those who have been made knights and given very noble horses and arms suitable for mounted battle are enjoined to exercise these weapons in peacetime, so they will be the more ready whenever war looms.”22
These authors consciously wrote of the world as it should be, not as it was, setting a high standard. Arévalo, for instance, concluded his Suma de la política with a list of the qualities possessed by a good knight, including the admonition that “every knight should be well armed and poorly dressed,” a piece of advice no doubt disconcerting for the knights and lords whose lush attire is minutely described in many chronicles.23 But they dressed in this manner not solely from personal conceit. The bright clothes, gorgeous trappings, and general pomp that suffused their public exhibitions of military training—for such was the rationale behind their many tournaments, jousts, mêlées, and hunts—were different means of confirming their rank and place in the social hierarchy.
Armed with learned treatises that elevated their training exercises to an act of virtue, nobles throughout Castile missed no opportunity for displaying both their martial skills and their talents for putting on a good show. Johan Huizinga has argued that the knightly ideal was, at its heart, more an aesthetic than a moral code, one that presented honor in combination with egoism and audacity.24 Civic spectacles, especially those with a military theme, were the ideal venue for displaying all these to the whole of society. The esteem these events supplied to those who hosted and engaged in them is incalculable. And this prestige was not only presented to their peers but displayed “above all before the eyes of the people who, just as they acclaimed monarchical power during royal entradas, were dazzled by the power, valor, and skill of the aristocracy.”25
Although elusive, the virtuous ideal of those like Valera and Arévalo was not wholly ignored. It endured as a source of inspiration, a goal to be forever sought, even if only rarely attained. Nor were these authors the sole arbiters of what it meant to be noble. Though unwilling to cast aside their finery, many nobles and knights did spend their careers and often their lives in pursuit of what they saw as the epitome of knighthood: military success. During times of war, there were occasions aplenty for the bold to win glory and fame. But during peacetime, such opportunities were in short supply. This inspired a powerful disgust for kings who signed truces with Granada. It meant the frontier nobles with an urge to wage war on their own initiative were never without a supply of willing volunteers.
For many, however, the only routes to martial renown were tournaments and jousts, bitterly contested sports that at times carried a real threat of serious injury or death and therefore served as a proxy for the battlefield. For Arévalo, it was this danger, the fact that it was more than playacting, that made tournaments a worthy sport: “Particularly admirable is the joust, more so than target practice and other games of chance, because it is difficult and brings one into danger, instilling the virtue of fortitude. Moreover, the tournament is a sport even more noble than the joust, because it more closely resembles war, and is more pronounced in its danger and test of strength.”26 Putting on these contests was obligatory for all aristocrats with social aspirations and there was never a shortage of participants. Many young and often penniless hidalgos, or hereditary nobles, traveled from competition to competition throughout Castile and even beyond in search of fame and advancement.27 Balancing these little-known contestants were senior nobles, famous men whose presence raised the profile of a tournament. The chroniclers described the most dazzling contests as more than entertainments or diversions, as events significant in their own right, moments when love or honor or fame was won and lost.28
The romances and poetry of the fifteenth century, in singing the praises of knights errant who risked their lives for the respect of their peers and the adoration of eligible women, bring their readers into a highly charged atmosphere of rivalries, real fighting, maimed contestants, and the brilliant play of sound and color.29 The dramatic and romantic aspects of the knightly tournament were deliberate, an integral part of the action rather than a distraction or a backdrop. The challenges, oaths, and love interests that often organized these events reveal a blurring of the distinction between reality and fiction, as caballeros built episodes from the great romances into their own life stories.30 In doing so, they gave to these sports narrative dimensions, a plot and protagonist. A tournament was rarely just a test of skills between two or more combatants, but a pivotal moment in their lives in which they sought to put into practice and on display their love, virtue,
