be dealt with adequately in the present book. I have traced this transformation in various earlier studies (“De oficio a estado,” El debate, and “Invención”), and Georges Martin has advanced very similar arguments (“Control regio de la violencia nobiliaria”). The main idea is that in the thirteenth century, chivalric discourse is, above all, a discourse of the growing political power of the monarchy, a political theory in which the king seizes the political and juridical core of power.17 Chivalry constitutes one of the politico-juridical forms by which the nobility might be subjected to the central jurisdiction and it implies the construction of a social class that is furnished with systems of horizontal solidarity.
The institution of chivalry is not just an autonomous social construct, but also a natural alliance. Knighthood is not only pursuant to title 21 of the Second Partidas; rather, it is necessary to read it in relation to the concept of nature and of natural bonds as they are laid out in title 24 of the Fourth Partidas. The theory of knighthood developed in the Partidas entails reorganization of nobility and of new forms of subjection to the king.18 These new forms of subjection are based squarely on the incorporation of the idea of natural bonds: the knight, vested by the king, acquires an indissoluble natural bond with him—a bond that is directly translated from the hierarchical bonds of divine origin and theological interpretation.
Laws 13–16 of Partidas 2.21 cover the entire ceremonial process of chivalric investiture, from the moment in which the squire is prepared to receive knighthood until his sword is ungirded, with the legislator conferring all the political and institutional significance upon each gesture and movement. These four laws synthetize the entirety of chivalric knowledge and inscribe it within a theater of memory that culminates with the pain and the physical marking produced by the ritual slap—the final element in the elaboration of this ritual. The entire process adopts a sacramental form of purification, affirmation, and progressive patronage throughout the roughly twenty-four hours in which the ritual takes place. The process begins with a bath, then the head is washed, the clothes are selected, and the vigil and prayer are performed (law 13). After this, the family member contracted by the new knight is presented to his patron (law 16). The knighting and the girding of the sword take place next (law 14), followed by the patron ungirding the new knight’s sword (law 15).
By means of the ritual, the new knight develops bonds. His internal, imperceptible transformation manifests itself through the different processes in which the knight subjects himself to different entities whose hierarchical station supersedes that to which he must submit. The first of all these trials is a subjective transformation, as he must meditate on his new station and enter into direct contact with God, without any ecclesiastical mediation, while he is physically cleansed and participates in the vigil. The knight will immediately acquire three more bonds. The first is of a horizontal nature and binds him, through the idea of “brotherhood” (law 14), to the rest of his comrades, with whom he establishes ties of solidarity. The other two are vertical bonds. The first is the one that develops between him and the person who knights him, and the second is between him and the person who ungirds his sword, thereby becoming his guarantor. His subjection with regard to the person who knights him is fundamental insofar as chivalry is later described as a natural bond.19 With regard to the bond associated with the patron, it is so important that law 16 details the obligations that the new knight has just contracted with the former. Law 16 concludes with a pedagogical flourish, advising squires awaiting investiture to pay particular attention to the choice of their patron: “Et por ende los caualleros noueles, pues que tan grand debdo han con los que les descinnen las espadas, deuen catar ante que la fecho vengan quien son aquellos a quien han de rogar que sean sus padrinos pora descennirgelas” [“Wherefore new knights, since they are so indebted to those who ungird their swords should, before the deed is performed, very carefully consider who those persons are whom they request to act as their godfathers by ungirding them”] (Craddock and Rodríguez-Velasco).
The consequences of this process of acquiring bonds are crucial in the description of the structures of power and the equilibrium of powers that are produced within them. The laws allow us to dissect the organization of the social class the knight joins through this ritual and the type of relation that this class establishes with the sociopolitical ambit in which it is forged. This political structure includes the subject’s reflection on his own identity, and it can be considered as a form of “technology of the subject.” The law excludes all types of intermediation during this phase of the ritual, as it is the individual who must contemplate the theological-political conditions of his new status. It is about a process in which the subject discovers or becomes aware of his own conditions within the sociopolitical system and of the transformation that is operating within him. According to the law (Partidas 2.21.13), this self-reflection takes place during a vigil in which the time normally reserved for sleep is employed for a specific and ritual hygiene of the body that allows for the emergence of the new subject. It is in this series of modifications to the body and spirit of the knight-to-be that the creation of social class takes place, thereby integrating him into the horizontal and vertical structure previously mentioned.
On another level, this horizontal and vertical relationship founded on the creation of the chivalric subject represents the means by which the coordinates of chivalry are established—that is, the localization in political space of the very social category or ordo (which I also refer to as class). These coordinates are a strategy that enables the delimitation of chivalry within a concrete form of power relations. This localization defines how the agents that participate in the creation of social class reach mutual balance. A horizontal relationship impresses the idea of solidarity and friendship upon the knights, establishing a sense of sociopolitical equality independent of one’s dynastic origin. A vertical relationship provides two great pillars that serve to sustain chivalry. The first is the king who grants knighthood and in territorial terms transfers the concept of ordo from its theological origin. The second pillar secures the intimate relationship between the individual knight and his patron or teacher. The political, moral, and educational situation here assigns to the social class a precise mission to which these two pillars have a metonymic relation. Chivalry is not a social class liberated from all collective obligation. The key to the creation of this social class manifests itself here, therefore, in the plane of action and political defense of the monarch and that of moral action in agreement with certain educational criteria detailed in Partidas 2.21.20.
The fact that this ceremonial protocol formalizes these bonds should be viewed in light of the absence of any law, before the Partidas, with respect to the type of bond formed through the act of chivalric investiture. Alfonso X, however, could not allow such an important relationship to emerge without describing it. Title 24 of the Fourth Partidas, which deals with alliances, stipulates that nature is the most important bond among men, thereby translating and codifying hierarchical relations formerly associated with theology:
Naturaleza tanto quiere dezir como debdo que han los omes unos con otros por alguna derecha razon en se amar e en se querer bien. E el departimento que ha entre natura e naturaleza es este: ca natura es una virtud que faze ser todas las cosas en aquel estado que Dios las ordeno; naturaleza es cosa que semeja a la natura e que ayuda a ser e mantener todo lo que desciende della.
[Natural relationship means an obligation that compels men to love and cherish one another for a just reason. There is a distinction between nature and natural relationship: nature is a force which causes everything to remain in the condition directed by the bond of God; natural relationship is something which resembles nature and allows for the existence and preservation of everything derived from it.] (4.24.1)
Among these obligations, chivalry features prominently:
Diez maneras pusieron los sabios antiguos de naturaleza. La primera, e la mejor, es la que han los omes a su señor natural, porque tan bien ellos como aquellos de cuyo linaje descienden, nascieron e fueron raygados e son en la tierra onde es el señor. La segunda es la que aviene por vasallaje. La tercera por criança. La quarta por cavalleria. La quinta por casamiento. La sexta
