Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez (Apr 2008)

Régence et continuité de l’œuvre royale

  • Alexandra Beauchamp

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/mcv.1040
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 38, no. 1
pp. 201 – 218

Abstract

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Traditionally, the kings of Aragon and their contemporaries drew up several wills in the course of their reigns. This was the case with Pedro IV (1336-1387), seven of whose wills, drawn up between 1356 and 1379, were known until now. This article examines a bundle of papers from 1354, consisting of a will and two codicils to it, hitherto unpublished, drawn up by the monarch before leaving the Peninsula to command a military expedition to Sardinia. In addition to royal orders on his burial, religious donations, organisation of his succession and his children’s inheritance, these papers contain a very detailed proposal for a regency in the event that the monarch should die before his first-born, the Infante Juan, then three years old, reached his majority. This original plan reveals a mature concept of the exercise of royal power and Pedro’s fears for the future of the Crown of Aragon.

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