Order and Chivalry. Jesus D. Rodriguez-Velasco

a compendium on chivalry based squarely on Alfonsine law.²¹

      The only reference Don Juan Manuel makes to a knighting ceremony is in the Libro del cavallero et del escudero, a work directly influenced by the Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria (Book of the Order of Chivalry), composed between 1279 and 1283 by Mallorcan philosopher Ramon Llull (1232–1316). Llull’s work causes a fundamental turn away from Don Juan Manuel’s previous positions, particularly regarding knightly investiture. The knighting ceremony that Llull describes is much more complex than the one devised by Alfonso, since apart from describing the gestures and movements of the ceremony, Llull also specifies the mode in which mass should be conducted and the type of sermon that should be delivered. According to Llull, the cavayler spiritual [spiritual knight] plays a fundamental role in this ceremony, while the secular role is reduced to the participation of he who conducts the ceremony, without the participation of a patron (197–200). The symbolism of arms that Llull develops is also decidedly religious, rendering the knight a bearer of a series of theological and political values (201–6), while Alfonso explicitly distances clerics from all chivalric ceremonies and from chivalry itself.²² Finally, Llull’s Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria fits within the broader Llulian project (De arte inveniendi veritatis, (The Art of Finding the Truth), which develops a logical and philosophical system of tropology and anagogy.²³ This system forms the axis around which Llull’s notion of chivalry revolves and serves as the ultimate source for the creation of truth. Llulian discourse is based on theology and philosophy and is thus inseparable from a concern with the production of truth.

      When Don Juan Manuel opts for the production of theological and philosophical truth within an explicitly Llulian framework, as opposed to the production of legal truth as framed by Alfonso, it is because he wishes to pose a specific question: how would it be possible to create a new political framework that supersedes the construction of sovereignty designed by the juridical model of central monarchic jurisdiction. He engages chivalry to explore the theological bonds of the nobility, steering away from the Alfonsine proposition to create a uniquely political or civil nobility.

      Llulian influence in Don Juan Manuel is not only evident in the reproduction of the chivalric fable and its relation to the pedagogical fable (e.g., the hermit teacher, the book in which both read). We also see it in its own content, in the symbolisms and figures used by the Castilian noble, as well as in his knowledge about nature. The symbols and figures depict the arms of the knight as traces or marks of a theological mission. As established by Llull, who is in dialogue with the chivalric French literature of the Arthurian cycle known as the Vulgate, the achievement of knighthood resides in a transformation of the candidate’s body by its vestments. This external modification of the body is, however, a process that may alter the soul. Each of the pieces of the knight’s armor provides the body with means of defense or attack, but these amount to no more than a visible representation of the invisible process that is taking place: the pieces of armor are the theological virtues that dress the soul, and the sword mirrors the Christian cross. Knowledge of Nature, not unlike knowledge of natural relations, is an apparatus or strategy whereby a body of knowledge is mystically transmitted to a knight who aligns himself with an estate and officium of theological origin.

      Don Juan Manuel’s reading is a strategy to separate the knight, or the noble, from the sort of subjection Alfonso imposes. This apparatus defines a power relationship that does not surpass the realm of the perceivable and therefore cannot be controlled either juridically or jurisdictionally. For Don Juan Manuel, the knighting ritual is also a sacramental act that emulates priestly ordination. As such, it does not define a social construction, but rather a holy office within a theological hierarchy. It bears remembering that his doctrine of the three orders and their sacramental aspects derives from a reading of the angelic hierarchy developed by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 500 C.E.). The elderly knight (now a hermit) who educates the squire in Juan Manuel’s book describes the investiture ceremony in a straightforward manner, as a way in which all bonds and systems of subjection and dominion are effectively eliminated: “la cavalleria a mester que sea y el sennor que da la cavalleria et el cavallero que la reçibe et la espada con que se faze. Et asi es la cavalleria conplida, ca todas las otras cosas que se y fazen son por bendiçiones et por aposturas et onras” [“chivalry requires that the lord who performs the knighting and the knight himself be present along with the sword with which the act is performed. Thus is chivalry fulfilled, and all else that takes place during the ceremony is meant to accrue blessings, adornments, and honors”] (Cinco tratados, 13).²⁴

      The sobriety of the Libro del cavallero et del escudero (Book of the Knight and the Squire) shatters the Alfonsine ceremonial system and its corresponding juridical and political significance. Don Juan Manuel is mainly concerned with what might be termed a “clean” transmission: he who is a knight bestows knighthood upon one who is not, given that “este estado non puede aver ninguno por si sy otri non ge lo da” [“one cannot have this estate by his own will if someone else does not bestow it upon him”] (Cinco tratados, 13). In this conveyance of knightly status, however, the Book of the Knight and the Squire does not offer any explicit form of domination by the one who performs the knighting over the one who is knighted.

      Over his nearly twenty-five-year writing career, Don Juan Manuel did not always hold the same opinion on the topics he wrote about. It seems reasonable to assume, for example, that in his no-longer-extant Book of Chivalry he accepted, albeit nominally, Alfonsine theories of chivalry. He soon reconsidered his position, however, as he sought increased independence for the nobility vis-à-vis central sovereignty and jurisdiction that the monarchy sought to establish. Between one ritual and the other, between that of Alfonso and that of Don Juan Manuel, a subject liberation movement is articulated, although in this case it is a noble subject, a rico hombre that hopes to safeguard his jurisdictional and political rights before a growing monarchic power. Don Juan Manuel is a noble who not only considers himself to be the king’s peer, but also sees himself as the only legitimate member of the royal genealogy who might still wear the crown.²⁵

      A few years after having composed the greater part of his work on political theory (likely soon after 1335), Don Juan Manuel returns to the subject of chivalry in the Libro de las tres razones (Book of the Three Reasons). Here Don Juan Manuel distinctly observes the political turn that chivalry is taking through the efforts of Alfonso XI. For this king, as for his great-grandfather Alfonso X, chivalry can be wielded as a constitutional and institutional tool to dominate the nobility and consolidate monarchic power. It is this project that Don Juan Manuel aims to control while never acknowledging the king’s right to knight him.

      In fact, Alfonso XI requests this right of Don Juan Manuel, along with other members of the high nobility in 1332. During his coronation ceremonies, Alfonso XI asked that all nobles allow themselves to be knighted by his hand and that they accept the system of subjection that such a ceremony imposed. Most nobles acquiesced, but Don Juan Manuel refused. He even went so far as to break the natural bond of vassalage that he had with Alfonso XI. In the Book of the Three Reasons. Don Juan Manuel explains the reasons why he cannot be knighted yet is able to knight others. This idea contradicts the principle that he advanced in the Book of the Knight and the Squire, which states that only knights can grant knighthood. His revised thinking amounts to a fracturing of chivalric rituals: he does not simplify them as he does in the Book of the Knight and the Squire; instead he completely erases them. Don Juan Manuel thus denies the potential universality of investiture, illustrating at least one case in which it cannot be applied. This exception constitutes the will to create a crisis of the law itself.

      The debate surrounding chivalric investiture directly affects the highest ranks of the kingdom’s hierarchy. Historical documents frequently point out that as many nobles as commoners rejected knightly investiture.²⁶ These considerations are systematically accompanied by a description of the king’s program to transform the institution of chivalry. From another perspective, the construction of chivalry is also frequently accompanied by a description of its decadence. It refers to an alleged lack of rigor throughout texts that debate chivalry in both secular and clerical spheres, as it was invented and formalized both morally and legally to fulfill complex processes of social and political transformation by