Enemies in the Plaza. Thomas Devaney

and to the crowd of the high expectations of a monarch. As God’s regent on earth, he was above worldly reproach but was subject to divine judgment for his actions. The theme of humility and the quest for virtue, subtle though it often was, is a constant in fifteenth-century Castilian tournaments. While publicly proclaiming their status and power through wealth, literary diversions, and military proficiency, the nobility returned time and again to the values of their order, to the integrity of past heroes, to their holy mission.

      From a cynical perspective, this is unsurprising. After all, knights owed their social station to their supposed ideals of piety, generosity, and asceticism. They could do no less than pay lip service to this standard for the benefit of the people, while they were bedecked in rich apparel and prancing about on fine chargers as a prelude to long nights of playacting, dancing, and drink. But the very pervasiveness of the theme points to a real insecurity; nobles knew what was expected of them, sincerely admired the heroes of the past, and did not delude themselves into thinking that the Cid or Fernán González would have behaved so. If they devoted themselves to wholly realizing one aspect of the model, that of physical courage, they did not reject its other facets but took pains to remind themselves, even in moments of revelry, of what true knighthood meant. In subordinating but not abandoning these lofty aspirations, the caballería kept alive the hope—in themselves as well as in the people—that they would someday be worthy of them.

      Huizinga and others have condemned fifteenth-century knights for propping up an outdated ideal with the same tired scenes to the point where the repetition stripped the spectacles of their original beauty.³⁸ Perhaps, however, the endurance of a few dominant motifs is evidence of their lasting utility rather than of an inability or unwillingness to move forward. The themes of the tournament were archetypal—war, love, and virtue—and their sensory expression through sound and color was compelling. Even today, the glittering knights and bright banners of the joust are evocative images of the Middle Ages. Because they were based on fundamental ideas, their meanings were malleable. Knightly spectacles were adapted to each moment, each new set of circumstances.³⁹ The Farce of Ávila, though drawing on the same set of social understandings and staged in a similar manner, has little in common with the joyful larks of Juan II’s court. Neither bears much resemblance to the ideal of knightly virtue advocated by Valera and Arévalo.

      The frontier gave added resonance to the debates over the meaning and propriety of knightly tournaments. In one sense, it struck some observers as odd, even offensive, that knights would play at war while their “real” enemies lay just over the horizon. In another, just as jousts permitted nobles to symbolically define themselves and justify their place in society, the frontier was the one place in Castile where their redemption could be achieved in actuality: here play fighting and savage battle went hand in hand. The marriage of tournament and drama that evolved over the course of the fifteenth century was perhaps most fully realized on the frontier. Amiable enmity and physical insecurity provided a rich source of themes with which to play as well as a pressing need for magnates to engage with local populations. In Jaén, for instance, Miguel Lucas used tournaments and public displays of military skill as real training tools, his knights might compete against each other one day and raid Granada the next. But he also arranged complex theatrical performances to complement those tournaments, with mêlées and skirmishes often held on or near major holidays. In these productions, there was only a fine line between the political and social functions of the spectacle and the pure diversion of the entremeses. In all of his pageants, Iranzo made full use of visual elements—colorful costumes, coats of arms, and sumptuous embellishments—and constant music in order to heighten the audience’s sense of unreality and to create a fantastic and diverting environment in which quotidian cares could be forgotten. From productions such as this, in which the dramatic element sometimes overshadowed the military training, it was only a small step to pure drama, to transforming the entremeses from sideshow into main event, as at Ávila.

      The defense of and theoretical justification for military exercises and contests were, in part, responses to steady but, by the fifteenth century, generally passive clerical condemnation of tournaments and spectacles that dated back centuries. In the twelfth century, church luminaries such as Bernard of Clairvaux as well as multiple popes harshly condemned the frivolity and vanity of knights, leading to a ban on tournaments. In the later Middle Ages, however, as more worldly clerics came to dominate the church, there was a shift in emphasis and in tone as the proper conduct of secular knights, and not their very existence, became the central issue. Didactic exhortations replaced, for the most part, the severity of Bernard and his ilk.⁴⁰

      In fifteenth-century Castile, the prominent bishop of Burgos, Alfonso de Cartagena, saw tournaments as an analogy for the faction fighting and civil wars that had plagued the country. Arguing that two unworthy activities dominated nobles’ time, “the one is in conflicts of the kingdom, the other is in games of arms,” Cartagena devoted an entire section of his mid- 1440s Doctrinal de los caballeros, a compilation of Castilian laws relating to chivalry, to an impassioned plea that such games be banned.⁴¹ He was particularly opposed to the fanciful and idealistic notions of knighthood presented in romances such as Amadís or the Arthurian legends, which he dismissed as reading material “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