24.04.2013 Views

WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

State. 253 The first change was the simultaneous establishment of Castilian as the vernacular<br />

grammar of literature, science, and law and the success of the centralized royal bureaucracy over<br />

its regional and feudal counterparts. 254 The newly centralized political hierarchy facilitated the<br />

diffusion of knowledge amidst local elites through the adoption of one vernacular and one<br />

system of knowledge. This central language managed to counteract the use of other vernaculars<br />

(i.e., Gacilian, Catalan, Leonese, Valencian, Aragonese) and hence facilitated the flow of one<br />

culture, that of clerical bureaucrats, into the general daily life of most nobility. 255<br />

The second change took place with the proliferation of knowledge within everyday urban<br />

reach. The fourteenth century saw the opening of universities, not in the countryside or near<br />

monasteries, but within the immediate reach of the upper urban classes in Valladolid and<br />

Salamanca and also of minor “escuelas urbanas” ‘urban schools’ in Toledo, Cuenca, and<br />

Seville. 256 The nearness of the clerisy to the university brought both the arts and the material<br />

tools for their production within reach of the urban nobility. The dissemination of the library and<br />

scriptorium across Castile’s cities brought secular lords close to the everyday tools of the<br />

contemplative life if not to its ideals. This was such a successful way to incorporate the<br />

contemplative and active lives that, in its efforts to balance political regional interests, the<br />

ambulatory Castilian court consistently returned to the two epicenters of knowledge creation in<br />

Spain—Toledo and Valladolid—to exert its legislative duties.<br />

We can deduce that the contemplative life took hold in Iberia in a very physical plane.<br />

Nobles did not simply wish to understand and write about abstract ideas but valued the<br />

253 Jose María Monsalvo Antón, La Baja Edad Media en los Siglos XIV-XV (Madrid: Sintesis, 2000) 181.<br />

254 See María Asenjo González, “La Aristocracización Política en Castilla y el Proceso de Participación Urbana<br />

(1252-1520),” La Monarquía como Conflicto en la Corona Castellano-Leonesa, ed. José Manuel Nieto Soria (Silex:<br />

Madrid, 2006) 142-149 and José Manuel Nieto Soria, Iglesia y Genesis del Estado Moderno en Castilla (Madrid:<br />

Complutense, 1993) 164-171.<br />

255 Monsalvo Antón 200.<br />

256 Ibid. 181-183.<br />

157

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!