To do otherwise would be to open themselves to ridicule, to inadvertently promote undesired ideas, or to risk the crowd getting out of control. This meant that they were forced to adjust their messages to fit the expectations of spectators or, rather, to fit their own perceptions of what those expectations might be. In order to achieve their own purposes, Fernando de Antequera, the conspirators at Ávila, Miguel Lucas, and others had to meet their audiences, composed primarily of commoners, halfway. This could take a number of forms: they might deliberately employ familiar themes and turn these in new directions, they could pander to the crowd by telling them what (elites thought) they wanted to hear, or they softened a message by presenting it in ambivalent terms. What they could not do was explicitly tell the crowd what to think; spectators had to reach their own conclusions. They did so by weighing the ideas presented to them through their personal experiences and through the dominant discourses in Castilian society.
CHAPTER 2
The Meanings of Civic Space
For Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, the birth of his son and heir was a momentous occasion, one that he marked with a flurry of celebrations, both public and private, that lasted several days.1 He began by formally presenting baby Luis to the people of Jaén. Well-wishers were admitted to his palace in strict order (nobles and officials, then noblewomen and their maids, merchants, artisans, peasants, and finally common women). Miguel Lucas then emerged to the shouted congratulations of the crowd and, hoisted on the shoulders of two knights, joined an impromptu parade to the church of Santa María Magdalena. There he asked nuns to join him as he prayed for his son. Next on his crowded itinerary was a lunch with high-ranking officials at the palace, followed by jousts in the afternoon and public banquets at all the parish plazas in the evening. The next day began with more banquets, now in the parish cemeteries, and further popular entertainments. Regidor Fernándo de Berrio led a live wolf through the streets with hunting dogs and horns while mummer shows, dances, and skits ensured that a range of diversions were available.
Six days later, on 18 April, Luis was baptized in the cathedral. The journeys to the cathedral and back to the palace were in formal procession, but Miguel Lucas then walked with the people to a bullfight at the Plaza del Arrabal, outside the city walls. There he, as was his custom, “with the regidores and other knights and squires, ascended a viewing stand (mirador) of the kind made for such events. This was very finely adorned with the best French tapestries and others made of silk.”2 The day ended with a private banquet at the palace, while those outside were treated to a free meal and the various performances in the streets and plazas continued unabated. Castilian nobles often marked key events in their lives—births, deaths, marriages—with public displays of munificence, the usual intent of which was to confirm their own social standing. Miguel Lucas was nothing if not thorough, however. In fêting his son, he aimed not only to enhance his reputation by appealing to all his many constituencies but also to unify and transform civic topography.
Some of his displays deliberately inverted customary uses of particular spaces (a wild animal in the streets, banquets in the cemeteries) and were meant to fix the day in public memory. Others (sporting events and free meals) exhibited the constable’s generosity, while his ostentatious prayers in the cloister and cathedral proved his piety. The egalitarian processions to the Magdalena and the Arrabal, moreover, demonstrated his affinity for the masses and singled out particular neighborhoods for his attention. No parish failed to receive at least some notice, as smaller banquets and entertainments were offered in each. Miguel Lucas thus transformed the birth of Luis de Iranzo from a notable event within the city’s ruling family into a celebration of Jaén itself in all its guises—as a unified entity, as Christian, as a collection of barrios, as both sacred and profane, as a highly stratified society and an egalitarian brotherhood. In other words, he portrayed Jaén as an authentic community, but also emphasized it was a community centered on himself.3
The civic community Miguel Lucas proclaimed and the displays through which he proclaimed it were indelibly linked. The tournaments and theatrics that proliferated in fifteenth-century Castile were urban phenomena, requiring the physical environments, artisanal skills, financial resources, and organizational expertise cities fostered. Only in cities, moreover, were there crowds sufficient to make the effort worthwhile. But urban settings did more than provide the logistical capacity to conduct mass spectacles. As the physical and social stage on which such performances were conducted, cities had an indelible impact on their content and reception.
A civic spectacle was more than a village event writ large. Living in a city, according to fifteenth-century authors, was transformative; the urban environment had powerful and lasting effects on one’s personality and character. But its effect was not necessarily positive. Someone daily stimulated by positive, temperate sights and sounds would be energetic and creative. But that same person would fall prey to lassitude and degenerate behavior if regularly oppressed by an unforgiving climate or crime or decrepit buildings. It was not only the physical milieu that mattered, however. To fully realize their personal potential, citizens required opportunities to cultivate their minds and bodies, including access to parks, musicians, teachers, and a close-knit, supportive society and the leisure time to make use of all of these. Public spectacles, from this perspective, were integral to a city’s proper functioning, allowing the community moments to withdraw from quotidian cares and to come together as a unified body social. Jean-Charles Payen has argued that, without cities, “le théâtre ne peut exister.”4 In fifteenth-century Castile, the reverse was also true.
The commentaries that expressed such opinions centered on philosophical descriptions of ideal cities, but they were not wholly theoretical. Fifteenth-century accounts of Seville and Córdoba, for instance, applauded them for actually creating model environments. Neither of their authors, however, succeeded in considering the cities in their totality. They focused instead on those districts with which they were most familiar and that best fit their agendas. This reveals a central feature of medieval Castilian cities: their division into neighborhoods or quarters with distinct characters. The fragmentary quality of cities had a number of consequences for the experience of public spectacles. It defined potential audiences, for instance, as individuals tended to move within limited areas of their city, frequenting the same streets and markets while staying close to familiar people and sights. For all but the most anticipated or publicized events, the composition of the crowd largely reflected the demographics of its immediate surroundings. By determining the collective influences on members of the audience, the location of an event thus predicted, to some degree, its reception.
Strong neighborhood allegiances also influenced individual identities. While a person might describe oneself as a native of Jaén and take great pride in this heritage, professions of parish affiliation and occupation that qualified the general statement of Jiennense birth were more meaningful because they explained which Jaén one hailed from. Those presenting spectacles to the public had to navigate sentiments of both unity and divisiveness, leading them to promote a myth of civic solidarity while confirming existing social divisions and hierarchies.
Public spectacles were a primary means through which civic elites communicated with those under their authority. Rulers like Miguel Lucas did this by making use of the ways in which people emotionally and cognitively navigated their urban environments. They employed specific civic spaces—public buildings, markets, plazas, streets, and landmarks—to define, clarify, or augment the messages expressed in their spectacles. In some cases, this was a simple association of a pageant with a location whose meaning was well defined. Those meanings, however, could be and often were mutable. At times, rulers were able to shift or transform them to better suit the purposes of their spectacles. Works of ephemeral architecture, or structures built for a particular event, were a favored means of doing so. By constructing barriers and viewing platforms, elites underlined the stratified nature of civic society by assigning a spatial hierarchy to formerly egalitarian spaces. But not all ephemeral structures were overt attempts to confirm
