By My Absolute Royal Authority

Justice and the Castilian Commonwealth at the Beginning of the First Global Age
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-1-58046-201-3
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 3, 392 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 771 g

Reihe: Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe

A study of the kingdom of Castile's judicial administration that brings together political ideas and political action by giving serious attention to how well royal justices were able to handle difficult, prominent lawsuits that raised politically troubling questions and involved major litigants.

"By My Absolute Royal Authority": Justice and the Castilian Commonwealth at the Beginning of the First Global Age is a study of judicial administration. From the fifteenth century to the seventeenth, the kingdom of Castileexperienced a remarkable proliferation of judicial institutions, which historians have generally seen as part of a metanarrative of "state-building." Yet, Castile's frontiers were extremely porous, and a crown government that could not control the kingdom's borders exhibited neither the ability to obtain information and shape affairs, nor the centrality of court politics that many historians claim in an effort to craft a tidy narrative of this period.

Castilians retained their loyalty to the monarchy not because of the "power" of the institutions of a developing "state," but because they shared an identity as citizens of a commonwealth in which a high value was given to justice as an ultimate purpose of the political community and a conviction that the sovereign possessed "absolute royal authority" to see that justice was done. This expectation served as a foundation for the political identity and loyalty that held together for several centuries the disparate and globally-dispersed domains of the Hispanic Monarchy, but perceptions of how well crown judicial institutions worked were a fundamental determinant of the degree of support a monarch could attract to meet fiscal and military goals.
This book maps part of this unfamiliar terrain through a microhistory of an extended, high profile lawsuit that was carefully watched by generations of Castilian leaders. Justices from the late fifteenth century to the reign of Philip II had difficulty resolving the conflict because the proper exercise of "absolute royal authority" was itself the central legal issue and the dispute pitted against each other members of important groups who demonstrated a tendency to give prominence to different interpretive schemes as they tried to comprehend their world. The account brings together political ideas and political action by giving serious attention to how well royal justices were able to handle difficult, prominent lawsuits that raised politically troubling questions and involved major litigants.

J. B. Owens is Professor of the History and Director of the Glenn E. Tyler Collection at Idaho State University, where he specializes in Spanish history and the use of Geographic Information Systems for research and teaching.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Owens, J B

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Rethinking the Hispanic Monarchy in the First Global Age
John II's Controversial Reward
The Catholic Monarchs and the Legacy of John II
Rebellion against Crown Administration as a Defense of Absolute Royal Authority
Pursuing Justice: Due Process, Procedure, and the Adjudication of a Major Lawsuit in the Absence of Coercive Muscle
Making Judgments: Letrado Theories and Interpretive Schemes
Philip II, the Great Fear, and the New Authoritarianism
The Paradox of Absolute Royal Authority