Order and Chivalry. Jesus D. Rodriguez-Velasco

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 por heredamiento. La setena por sacarlo de captivo o por librarlo de muerte o deshonrra. La octava por aforramiento de que non rescibe precio el que lo aforra. La novena por tornarlo christiano. La dezena por morança de diez años que faga en la tierra maguer sea natural de otra.

      [The wise men of ancient times established ten kinds of natural obligation. The first, and most important is the relation which men sustain towards their natural lord, because they, as well as those from whom they are descended, were born and settled, and exist in the country of their said lord; the second is derived from vassalage; the third, that which arises through nurture; the fourth, springs from knighthood; the fifth, marriage; the sixth, from inheritance; the seventh, from rescue from captivity or liberation from death or dishonor; the eighth, from emancipation, for which the party who granted it received no reward; the ninth, arises through becoming a Christian; the tenth, through a residence of ten years in a country, although the party may be a native of another.] (4.24.2)²⁰

      The list is ordered hierarchically, as is customary in Alfonsine texts. The incorporation of chivalry within the list of natural bonds represents an innovation of the Partidas with respect to the Espéculo, Alfonso’s earlier systematic legal work, which only considered six types of natural bonds (Rodríguez-Velasco, “De oficio a estado”; “Invención”). Within the context of this innovation, Alfonso gives chivalry a prominent place. In this way, Alfonso does not only incorporate chivalry into political and juridical discourse; he also configures it as one of the principal means by which a theological hierarchy is translated into positive law.

      The reasons for the production of this innovation reside in the strategies defined by ritual, that is, by the way in which this apparatus determines power relations. This apparatus is a way of transforming the structure of the kingdom, as it gives rise to a social class that is defined by the power of the monarch to construct all categories of the nobility. Critiques of this power, which proliferate throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, point out that the king is violating a natural right by essentially creating nobles by fiat during knighting ceremonies. The argument is predicated on the notion that it is on strictly theological grounds, and without any supplementary political aspect, that the existence of the nobility is justified. The differentiation between the theological and the political issues from the work of Bolognese jurist Bartolo of Sassoferrato (1314–1357), who distinguishes between theological nobility and civil and political nobility. This differentiation, as well as the debate surrounding it—which would endure for almost two hundred years and eventually become a criteria for the formation of the modern state—provides clear evidence of the strength of the thesis presented by Alfonso X in the process of creating chivalry, its rituals, and its relation to natural bonds. The strength of these theories and the presence of the chivalric ordo throughout Europe facilitate a dialogue that generally takes the form of a debate. This debate does not have as its ultimate goal a critique of the particular elements of the ritual, but these elements offer theoretical alternatives to regal sovereignty and the central jurisdiction of the monarchy.

      The first is the case of Don Juan Manuel (1282–1348), a member of the high nobility and nephew of Alfonso X. Don Juan Manuel begins his textual activities more or less at the moment at which King Alfonso XI (1311–1350) comes of age in 1325 and assumes the throne. Don Juan Manuel has contributed to the tutoring of the young king and even served as regent; after 1325, however, he begins to distance himself from the politics set out by the monarch. The greater part of Don Juan Manuel’s written work is indeed guided by these personal political motivations. They do not dismiss, however, the theoretical and political importance of this magnate’s complex work, namely, that if he learns to write—in an inchoate sense—it is precisely to be able to develop theories regarding power relations. Don Juan Manuel’s Libro de la caballería (Book of Chivalry), in fact, written in 1325 and no longer extant, contained a rereading (most likely critical) of title 21 of the Second Partidas Judging by the summary of this work included in his Libro de los estados