Legal enemies, beloved brothers: high nobility, family conflict and the aristocrats' two bodies in early-modern Castile

 1. I am really grateful to Miriam Nyhan and Susana Mateus for their kindness and generosity in editing this article.

Abstract

In this article the conflicts and alliances between different Dukes of Pastrana, lords of a Grandée household, and their relatives are analysed from two viewpoints. The first perspective shows how litigation between early-modern aristocratic siblings for family inheritance was a very common phenomenon. Secondly, litigious kin were allies in the political and social arena. With these features in mind, this paper provides an explanation of aristocratic behaviour as the consequence of the composite nature of aristocratic identity and the two juridical bodies used by the elites. According to this juridical theory, sovereigns were juridically composed of two bodies. The first one was political, representing eternal royalty. The second one was natural, meaning the physical person of each king. As will be stated in the article, this royal conception of the two bodies was adopted by the nobility and played an important role in aristocratic family conflicts.

Keywords:

• aristocracy
• siblings
• family conflict
• litigation
• juridicial bodies
• noble identity

Notes

 1. I am really grateful to Miriam Nyhan and Susana Mateus for their kindness and generosity in editing this article.

 2. According to cognate criteria, all descendants of a common ancestor through male or female lines were taken into account.

 3. Mertes, The English Noble Household, 1250–1600, 162; Heers, Le clan familial au moyen age, 23.

 4. “[…] there was a condensation, a gathering together about the male line, a progressive affirmation of a dynastic state of mind, which undoubtly became more marked among those possessing castles but which was nonetheless common to the entire aristocracy.” Duby, “Lineage, Nobility, and Chivalry in the Region of Mâçon during the Twelfth Century,” 36.

 5. Beceiro Pita and Córdoba de la Llave, Parentesco, poder y mentalidad. La nobleza castellana, siglos XII–XV, 51 and 232.

 6. However, the goal was not attained by all of the aristocracies. As an English nobleman complained in 1559, “primogeniture was often the exception, not the rule.” Bastress-Dukehart, “Family, Property, and Feeling in Early Modern German Noble Culture,” 10.

 7. Bastress-Dukehart, 238; Doubleday, Los Lara. Nobleza y monarquía en la España medieval, 22.

 8. Doubleday, 75.

 9. For inheritance customs of Western Europe and its consequences see the collective and classic Goody, Thirsk and Thompson, eds. Family and Inheritance. Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800.

10. The first Castilian Trastamara rulers were Enrique II (1369–79), Juan I (1379–90), Enrique III (1390–1406), and Juan II (1406–54).

11. On the Castilian mayorazgo the most important work dealing with the topic is still Clavero, Mayorazgo. Propiedad feudal en Castilla, 1369–1876.

12. On the general debate on the legitimacy of entailment and the rights of the cadet sons with the English case see Spring, Law, Land, and Family: Aristocratic inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800, 67–9.

13. Clavero, 125–30.

14. Quoted in Clavero, 130.

15. Clavero, 130–1.

16. Clavero, 135.

17. “The Castilian aristocracy was almost as litigious as the king. As property owners and heirs to large estates, grandees, and titulos were cought in an endless web of disputes over dowries, entails, inheritances, donations, landownership, and seigneurial obligations that came increasingly to court after the mid- fifteenth century,” Kagan, Lawsuits and litigants in Castile, 71.

18. See for instance, Atienza Hernández, Aristocracia, poder y riqueza en la España moderna. La Casa de Osuna, siglos XV–XIX.

19. Jurists and entailment documents always referred to the law of God in order to legitimate the mayorazgos. Inés de Pedraza's entailment is a good case in point. In 1488 she entailed her domains and created a mayorazgo to be inherited by her eldest son. As it was explained in the foundation document, entailing her goods was fair because “en la divina Escritura se habla que los primogénitos habían muchas prerrogativas y excelencias sobre los otros sus hermanos” (“in the Holy Bible the first-born sons are said to have more privileges and honours that their younger brothers.”) Quoted in Clavero, 131, n. 13.

20. For the meaning of prefiguration and fulfilment I am referring to, see Auerbach, Figura, especially 88–90.

21. Gen., 26, 27 (KJV).

22. Gen., 27, 28: 29 (KJV).

23. Pastor, Nobleza virtuosa, 61.

24. As Álamos de Barrientos stated in 1598, “los pleitos en todo son guerras civiles” (“lawsuit and civil war are the same thing”). Álamos de Barrientos, Discurso político al rey Felipe III, al comienzo de su reinado, 114.

25. On the Mendoza lineage during the period of its emergence see the classic Nader, The Mendoza Family in the Spanish Renaissance, 1350–1550.

26. The best biography of Don Ruy Gómez de Silva still is Boyden, Ruy Gómez de Silva, Phillip II, and the Court of Spain.

27. Boyden, 11–12.

28. In the decade of 1560 the revenues of the royal rents granted by the king to the Prince of Eboli amounted 9,099,750 maravedíes per year. Boyden, 87.

29. Salazar y Castro, Historia Genealógica de la Casa de Silva, 489–90; Boyden, 142.

30. AHN-SN [Archivo Histórico Nacional-Sección Nobleza], Osuna, C. 1759, D. 8 (1).

31. Boyden, 148.

32. The Grandes were considered the king's cousins and enjoyed certain Court ceremonial privileges that provided them with a high degree of social pre-eminence. Moreno de Vargas, Discurso de la nobleza de España, 57v. Dukes were always Grandes. The king could grant other noble titles of the noble hierarchy (counts, marquises and so on) with the Grandeza. In the sixteenth century the prestige of the Grandeza was beyond discussion. However, during the seventeenth century it was too easily granted and even sold by the Monarchy and the Grandeza lost part of its social value. Domínguez Ortiz, Las clases privilegiadas en la España del Antiguo Régimen, 77 and 82. According to the great seventeenth-century genealogist Salazar y Castro, Ruy Gomez the Silva was Grande since 1568 when he became Duke of Estremera. Salazar y Castro, 493.

33. For the periodisation of sixteenth-century nobility indebtedness see the classic Jago, “The Influence of Debt in the Relations between Crown and Aristocracy in Seventeenth- Century Castile”, 218–36. For criticism see Yun Casalilla, La gestión del poder. Corona y economías aristocráticas en Castilla (siglos XVI–XVIII), 109–11.

34. Yun Casalilla, 58.

35. Boyden, 142.

36. Melchor Herrera, the Fugger and Grimaldo were the main creditors of the House in 1573. The Dukes of Pastrana owed them around 40 million maravedíes. Boyden, 143–4.

37. As it has been pointed out by Bartolomé Yun, “una vez constituidas, esas nuevas ramas iniciaban una dinámica de crecimiento que no sólo afectaba al conjunto social, sino que redoblaba el grado de conflicto interno dentro del propio grupo, como demuestran las continuas luchas de bandos o la abundancia de pleitos con que se inaugura la Edad Moderna” (“Once the cadet Households were created they developed a dynamic of growing that increased conflicts in the social group, as demonstrate violent struggles and the high degree of litigation at the beginning of the Early modern period.”) Yun Casalilla, 108.

38. Reed, “Mother Love in the Renaissance: The Princess of Eboli's Letters to Her Favorite Son”, 152–76.

39. This fiefdom included the villages of Melito and Rapolla, lands in Francica, Francavilla, Anguitulla, Pizzo, Carida, Monte Santo and the baronies of Roca and Mendiola, feudal rights over San Lorenzo. The lord of Francavilla owned also the jurisdiction over these territories as well as economic rights. Salazar y Castro, 468.

40. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2080- 12 (3).

41. On Napolitan feudal law and inheritance rules see Delille, Famille et proprieté dans le royaume de Naples (XVe–XIXe siècle), especially 27–57; Santamaria, I feudi, il diritto feudale e la loro storia nell'Italia meridionale.

42. It has being stated that during the 1560s Don Diego was closer to the duke of Alba's faction than to his son-in-law's one. Boyden, 134–9. As Doña Ana complained, Don Ruy Gomez because of his marriage had “heredado muchos trabajos y pleitos y desabrimientos, y a mi padre por suegro, que es el que nunca trató sino en dárselos y en entender y hacer quimeras como acabarnos y destruirnos” (“inherited troubles, and lawsuits, and offences, and my father happened to be his father in law, who was the origin of all those problems and who spent his time trying to destroy us”.) Quoted in Muro, Vida de la princesa de Éboli, 208.

43. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2080- 12 (3).

44. “… y la dote que yo la dicha Princessa traxere, y pareciere auer traydo a poder del dicho Principe de Eboli, mi señor y marido, por bienes dotales mios propios, y las arras que pareciere auerme dado y prometido, y todos los demas bienes que yo despues he y huuiere auido y heredado, y que en qualquier manera me pertenezcan y pertenecieren por bienes mios libres, que esten cobrados, o no, porque de todo el valor dellos entra y se comprehende, y queda y ha de quedar, y incluyrse en el valor de los dichos bienes deste dicho mayorazgo, hasta en la concurrente cantidad” (“… and the dowry I, the forementioned Princess, could provide with the forementioned Prince of Eboli, my lord and husband, and all the goods I got after my marriage or that I will get must be included among our entailed properties”.) AHN-SN, Osuna, c. 1759, d. 8 (1), f. 13v.

45. Notwithstanding this, he almost got it. After his wife's death in 1576, Don Diego married the daughter of the Duke of Segorbe and Cardona, Doña Magdalena de Aragón, who was pregnant when he himself died in 1578. The Pastranas were relieved when Doña Magdalena's baby happened to be a female. Boyden, 138.

46. Coolidge, “Choosing Her Own Buttons: The Guardianship of Magdalena de Bobadilla,” 133.

47. Reed, 166, 169.

48. Helen Reed underlines “her knowledge of the intricate legal system and mastery of detail.” Reed, 165.

49. The donatio inter vivos happens to be a sort of universal way of avoiding succession laws. See for instance Carrol, “Life interests and inter- generational transfer of property avoiding the law of succession.”

50. Salazar y Castro, 541.

51. Salazar y Castro, 547–8.

52. On the topic see Guglielmi, “La viuda tutora (Italia del Centro y del Norte. Siglos XIII–XV)”; Coolidge, “‘Neither dumb, deaf, nor destitute of understanding’: Women as Guardians in Early Modern Spain.”

53. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2028- 7 (4).

54. Celso, Repertorio vniversal de todas las leyes destos reynos de Castilla, abreuiadas y reduzidas en forma de repertorio decissivo, f. 90.

55. AHN-SN, Osuna, c. 3104, d. 2, f. 1v.

56. Not to be confused with the Don Diego, Count of Salinas, aforementioned. Diego was not an unusual name among the cadets of the House of Pastrana.

57. AHN-SN, Osuna, C. 3104, d. 2, f. 94v.

58. AHN-SN, Osuna, C. 3104, d. 2, f. 24.

59. AHN-SN, Osuna, C. 3104, d. 2, f. 27.

60. For details of this marriage plot see Cabrera de Córdoba, Relaciones de las cosas sucedidas en la Corte de España desde 1599 hasta 1614, 444–6.

61. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2025- 20.

62. The best biography of Don Diego is included in the monograph on his government of Portugal by Gaillard. Gaillard, Le Portugal sous Philippe III.

63. Gaillard, 335.

64. Venegas, Agonía del tránsito de la muerte.

65. Ruiz Molina, Testamento, muerte y religiosidad en la Yecla del siglo XVI, Yecla, 23–4.

66. Nogueira and Hespanha, “A identidade portuguesa,” xi.

67. Brunner, Vita nobile e cultura europea, 59.

68. “Every noble, however modest his stature, felt himself possessed of honor. This claim to honor was a claim to privilege and distinctiveness: it justified political autonomy, even rebellion against the crown.” Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth- Century France, xi.

69. Kantorowicz, Los dos cuerpos del rey. Un estudio de teología medieval.

70. Kantorowicz, 188, 319.

71. Quoted in Jago, 224.

72. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2025- 19 (3).

73. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2511- 2.

74. AHN-SN, Osuna, leg. 2511- 2.

75. Barrionuevo, Avisos, III, 267–268.