Enemies in the Plaza. Thomas Devaney

and cathedral proved his piety. The egalitarian processions to the Magdalena and the Arrabal, moreover, demonstrated his affinity for the masses and singled out particular neighborhoods for his attention. No parish failed to receive at least some notice, as smaller banquets and entertainments were offered in each. Miguel Lucas thus transformed the birth of Luis de Iranzo from a notable event within the city’s ruling family into a celebration of Jaén itself in all its guises—as a unified entity, as Christian, as a collection of barrios, as both sacred and profane, as a highly stratified society and an egalitarian brotherhood. In other words, he portrayed Jaén as an authentic community, but also emphasized it was a community centered on himself.³

      The civic community Miguel Lucas proclaimed and the displays through which he proclaimed it were indelibly linked. The tournaments and theatrics that proliferated in fifteenth-century Castile were urban phenomena, requiring the physical environments, artisanal skills, financial resources, and organizational expertise cities fostered. Only in cities, moreover, were there crowds sufficient to make the effort worthwhile. But urban settings did more than provide the logistical capacity to conduct mass spectacles. As the physical and social stage on which such performances were conducted, cities had an indelible impact on their content and reception.

      A civic spectacle was more than a village event writ large. Living in a city, according to fifteenth-century authors, was transformative; the urban environment had powerful and lasting effects on one’s personality and character. But its effect was not necessarily positive. Someone daily stimulated by positive, temperate sights and sounds would be energetic and creative. But that same person would fall prey to lassitude and degenerate behavior if regularly oppressed by an unforgiving climate or crime or decrepit buildings. It was not only the physical milieu that mattered, however. To fully realize their personal potential, citizens required opportunities to cultivate their minds and bodies, including access to parks, musicians, teachers, and a close-knit, supportive society and the leisure time to make use of all of these. Public spectacles, from this perspective, were integral to a city’s proper functioning, allowing the community moments to withdraw from quotidian cares and to come together as a unified body social. Jean-Charles Payen has argued that, without cities, “le théâtre ne peut exister.”⁴ In fifteenth-century Castile, the reverse was also true.

      The commentaries that expressed such opinions centered on philosophical descriptions of ideal cities, but they were not wholly theoretical. Fifteenth-century accounts of Seville and Córdoba, for instance, applauded them for actually creating model environments. Neither of their authors, however, succeeded in considering the cities in their totality. They focused instead on those districts with which they were most familiar and that best fit their agendas. This reveals a central feature of medieval Castilian cities: their division into neighborhoods or quarters with distinct characters. The fragmentary quality of cities had a number of consequences for the experience of public spectacles. It defined potential audiences, for instance, as individuals tended to move within limited areas of their city, frequenting the same streets and markets while staying close to familiar people and sights. For all but the most anticipated or publicized events, the composition of the crowd largely reflected the demographics of its immediate surroundings. By determining the collective influences on members of the audience, the location of an event thus predicted, to some degree, its reception.

      Strong neighborhood allegiances also influenced individual identities. While a person might describe oneself as a native of Jaén and take great pride in this heritage, professions of parish affiliation and occupation that qualified the general statement of Jiennense birth were more meaningful because they explained which Jaén one hailed from. Those presenting spectacles to the public had to navigate sentiments of both unity and divisiveness, leading them to promote a myth of civic solidarity while confirming existing social divisions and hierarchies.

      Public spectacles were a primary means through which civic elites communicated with those under their authority. Rulers like Miguel Lucas did this by making use of the ways in which people emotionally and cognitively navigated their urban environments. They employed specific civic spaces—public buildings, markets, plazas, streets, and landmarks—to define, clarify, or augment the messages expressed in their spectacles. In some cases, this was a simple association of a pageant with a location whose meaning was well defined. Those meanings, however, could be and often were mutable. At times, rulers were able to shift or transform them to better suit the purposes of their spectacles. Works of ephemeral architecture, or structures built for a particular event, were a favored means of doing so. By constructing barriers and viewing platforms, elites underlined the stratified nature of civic society by assigning a spatial hierarchy to formerly egalitarian spaces. But not all ephemeral structures were overt attempts to confirm the social order. Fanciful wooden palaces, castles, or arches, for instance, could turn a market square into a scene from a romance or a cathedral plaza into a frontier citadel that must be defended from infidels. Regardless of their specific form, the purpose of all such edifices was the same: to make spectators more amenable to the message behind a performance. This strategy was based on contemporary understandings of what a city was and what it meant to live in one. While it was not limited to cities on the frontier, of course, the use of spectacle and of the mutable meanings of urban spaces was of particular importance to the rulers of borderlands cities. Amiable enmity and physical anxiety meant that elites often had to address important issues obliquely. Their need for effective modes of expressing their readings of social and religious issues combined with an abundance of themes with which to do so, making the region a crucible of political pageantry.

      For fifteenth-century thinkers, cities were more than mere aggregations of people and buildings; they were natural and artificial environments that profoundly influenced the character of those who dwelled in them. In this they differed from the thirteenth-century Partidas, which described the city as “a place surrounded by walls” and a “communal gathering of men—the old, those of middling age, and the young.”⁵ Drawing upon a body of work that included classical authors such as Aristotle and Strabo as well as more recent travel literature including the Mirabilis urbis Romae and humanist descriptions of other Italian cities, several Castilian authors commented on how an agreeable setting benefited human temperament. Among them was Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, who stressed the importance of situating a city in an advantageous location, particularly one with a temperate climate.⁶

      He also devoted significant attention to issues relevant to the frontier and perhaps inspired by it. Although he did not refer specifically to the amiable enmity of the border with Granada, Arévalo argued that too much contact with foreigners undermined the social structure of a city “because people are naturally eager to try new customs and things, from which great inconvenience and harm comes to the city and which is the beginning of corruption within it.”⁷ Instead, he proposed that commerce with foreigners take place in smaller towns and villages located on the water (or on the frontier), a solution that kept outsiders segregated from the general population and allowed the city to remain free of possible contagion.

      On military matters, Arévalo decreed that leaders should ensure that their cities be well prepared for war, with a unified citizenry and extensive stockpiles of provisions and weapons. The most significant of these preparations was the fostering of a disciplined and well-prepared standing cavalry militia. By describing in detail the attributes of such horsemen and the training required to develop their potential, Arévalo underscored their central and indispensable role in his idealized city. They were not only to provide physical security to the populace but also to defend municipal honor and morality. Arévalo would brook no attempts to water down these holy duties: “Although the caballeros nowadays do not swear specifically to these things, they swear to them silently in accepting the knighthood, and they are no less hypocritical than if they were to do something contrary to what they expressly vowed.”⁸ The city, as conceived here, revolved around knights; if they failed to uphold their venerable traditions, the social structure would inevitably fall.

      As we have already seen, Arévalo saw public military training as an essential component in the creation of an urban militia that was both morally sound and effective in combat. But he did not limit the benefits of public