“of no useful value.” Instead he espoused a concept of nobility akin to Valera’s, with an emphasis on knightly obligations and ideals.42
For Cartagena, a knight could earn prestige and honor only through the defense of the realm and holy war, never through success at tournaments. But too many knights saw the games as an end in themselves, a way to make a living, a reputation, and even an advantageous marriage. Their focus on play not only led to injuries and to death but also fomented noble rivalries and thus delayed the prosecution of war with Granada.43 The tournament was not even a useful form of military training, for it lacked the true risk to life and limb that permitted a man to test his own mettle. As such, the honors and fame granted to champions were hollow. And so he lamented:
But what can we tell ourselves, when we see a land full of money and of arms, and at peace with Granada? Should the nobles fidgeting to exercise their arms pit their armies against relatives and those who should be friends, or in jousts and tournaments, of which the one is loathsome and abominable and a thing which brings dishonor and destruction, and the other a game or test only, not the principal activity of a knight? For which reason, the philosopher [Aristotle] said that one cannot determine who is strong through tournaments and tests of arms. For true fortitude can only be known through terrible and life-endangering acts done for the common good. And an ancient proverb says that sometimes the successful tournament knight is the timid and cowardly one in battle.44
The prevalence of tournaments was, for Cartagena, an urgent problem. The knights of Castile guarded the frontiers of Christendom, but, as he stressed in the Doctrinal, the “recovery” of formerly Christian lands had not significantly advanced since 1264 because of infighting and distractions. The heroes of the past had triumphed because of their unity and because of Muslim complacency, but also because of their piety and gratitude for divine aid. Invoking Santiago’s appearance at Clavijo, for instance, Cartagena held up King Ramiro I as a suitable model.45 But now it was the Christians who had become complacent. Their failure to expel Islam from Iberia posed real dangers now that a new Muslim power, the Ottoman Turks, had arisen at the other end of the Mediterranean. Fearing a “pincer movement” in which Granadan and Turkish Muslims joined against them, Cartagena reminded caballeros of their obligations. Knights in France or England could play at their games and squabble among themselves; those in Castile needed to end their frivolous rivalries and engage the real enemy.46 Noting that “jousts were banned in France at one time because it was understood that they obstructed the war in Outremer,” he explicitly compared the twelfth- and fifteenth-century situations to present the reconquest of Iberia as a holy war equal to the Crusades in its importance.47
But Cartagena was also a pragmatist. He realized that his appeals were unlikely to end tournaments, given that papal bans had failed to do so. He therefore proposed a compromise: if knights must have their tournaments and jousts, they should do so within a strict set of rules. He specifically had in mind the code of the Order of the Band, a secular military order founded in the early fourteenth century by Alfonso XI.48 For Cartagena, the order offered a number of advantages, foremost of which was order itself. It would join in brotherhood the young, ambitious, and competitive knights most likely to participate in tournaments. Its emphasis on piety and obedience would return knights’ attention to their duties. Jousting would be a pastime only and tournaments held under the order’s auspices would be both safer than in unregulated events (blunt weapons only would be permitted) and stripped of their playful and theatrical aspects. In short, Cartagena hoped that the Order of the Band would make the joust and melee what he thought they should be, military training exercises conducted in a spirit of collegiality rather than dangerous spectacles that sparked destructive rivalries and vendettas.49
Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, who was Cartagena’s student, presented a far sunnier perspective. A letrado theorist and bishop of Palencia who spent much of his life in Rome, Arévalo agreed with Valera on the link between virtue and military training, describing the practice of arms in the most glowing terms. In his Vergel de los príncipes, written in the mid-1450s, Arévalo described the importance for rulers and nobles of “honest sports and commendable exercises.”50 He began by arguing for the restorative value of such pursuits, observing that “continuous mental effort overtaxes and weakens not only the body, but also the human heart and its powers.” In need of respite from their intellectual duties, a ruler should turn to physical activity instead of passive relaxation, because, in addition to offering their own rewards, “these sports and delights are the same as comfort and repose.”51 So which kinds of physical activities were the most virtuous and necessary? Foremost was “generous and noble exercise of arms, through which not only are kingdoms and lands defended but also expanded and improved.” Second was hunting on horseback, and third was playing and composing of music.52 For each of these noble pursuits, he described twelve excellencias, or qualities.
He summarized the benefits of martial sports in the eighth excellencia, listing the many noble virtues it might foster: obedience, patience, perseverance, fortitude, magnanimity, liberty, openness, justice, and temperance. The exercise of arms also destroyed vices and evils, including injustice, pugnacity, avarice, pride, and arrogance. The ultimate goal of all this military preparation, as revealed in the twelfth excellencia, was no less than the redemption of the world and the triumph of good over evil. For “through such noble exercises and temporal deeds of arms, men are prepared and trained for the spiritual war which we have with our invisible enemies, that is to say, with the devil, and with the world and with vices.”53 For Arévalo, this spiritual war was inherently unending and required eternal vigilance. And so the ruler “should not cease the acts and exercises and preludes which are the image of war,” for such training not only kept Christian warriors fit for battle but, by improving their moral character, were themselves significant victories in the struggle against evil.54
Church observers may have been divided on the merits of martial sports but they had no such difficulties with nonmilitary spectacles. Clerics of all stations were regular participants in any number of organized performances, both secular (coronations, royal entrances, noble weddings, births, and funerals) and religious (the liturgy, processions honoring local saints, and sermons). Public spectacles were the central means by which the Church communicated with the masses and, like the organizers of tournaments, they intentionally evoked emotional responses through clothing, decoration, and formalized speech. Such displays could be as elaborate and expensive as any knightly creation. Feast day processions, for instance, often required ad hoc taxes to defray the costs of splendid decorations, troops of musicians, and sumptuous feasts. Another type of major event was public preaching. Although local priests generally gave Sunday sermons, municipal concejos or guilds would contract mendicants for holidays, when a big crowd might be expected.
Successful preachers were master performers, unafraid to give their lessons a theatrical character. They could move from invective to tears in a few moments and the emotional absorption of both preacher and flock could be so complete as to disturb those unfamiliar with the experience, like the later French traveler Barthélemy Joly, who commented that, “in their preaching, they make use of an impressive vehemence. … On this topic, two things disturb me in the Spanish sermons: the extreme, almost turbulent, impetuousness of the preacher and the continual sighs of the women, so loud and forceful that they completely disrupt one’s attention.”55
Saint Vincent Ferrer’s well-documented tour through Murcia in 1411–1412, while unusual in its scale, exemplifies the importance accorded to public preaching. Ferrer, who came to Murcia at the invitation of Pablo de Santa María, bishop of Cartagena (and father of Alfonso de Cartagena), brought a retinue of three hundred, all of whom had to be fed and lodged, a task that fell to the local Dominican prior.56 Additional preparations included the construction of a pulpit and arrangement of space for the substantial crowds who came to hear the famous preacher. Efforts were likely taken to ensure that the audience was orderly, even to the extent of forbidding mothers to bring young children “because their crying distracts the preacher,” as
