Nobles fechos en la frontera : métaphores et pratiques chez les hidalgos de la corniche cantabrique au Bas Moyen Âge

Abstract

The present work deals with the issue of the frontier from the point of view of the petty nobility in so-called Green Spain during the Late Middle Ages, as reflected in the historiographical work of one of its members, Lope García de Salazar. In the peculiar universal history treatise that is the Libro de las buenas andanças e fortunas, García de Salazar used many of the common places borrowed from his multiple literary and historiographical referents, but also reflected topics and facts that were specific to the frontiers of the Crown of Castile in the 15th century : the Cantabrian coast, the border with the Kingdom of Navarre and the Andalusian frontier. García de Salazar also argues that the violent petty nobility of “lords without manor” also adopted frontier-like attitudes in their factional and kinship conflicts; we may speak of the concept of “intimate frontiers”. With the aid of recent historiographical contributions and the ideas of anthropologists such as Carmelo Lisón Tolosana and Fredrik Barth, we examine the ideological and material projection of alterity in the social practices of the nobility of Northern Iberia during the Late Middle Ages.

Keywords

• nobility
• Castile
• historiography
• frontier
• violence
• war