WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

desirous and fulfillers of their own wills, and disordered and destroyers of the people. And such
kings, like these, are not called kings, but are called tyrants.’ 284
Therefore, the Trastamaran discourse against Pedro was not only novel but it also showed
a subtle understanding of this long tradition in not assuming that Pedro’s tyranny and apostasy
were sufficient grounds to remove him. As the historian Luís Suárez Fernández has argued, the
Trastamaran supporters knew channeled Pedro’s tyranny and apostasy into a third problem—into
the illegitimacy of his brand of authority. 285 The rallying cry of Enrique’s supporters synthesized
both images of Pedro—as a sinner and as a tyrant—into a third one of him as an enemy: “tirano
malo enemigo de Dios e de la su sancta Madre Eglesia” ‘evil tyrant enemy of God and of his
holy Mother Church.’ 286
In Trastamaran discourse, Pedro’s evil actions were the embodiment of a form of
authority inimical to the very life of the State. For example, the execution of rebellious nobles
became specifically the persecution of “hijosdalgos” ‘noble sons,’ and so represented more than
murder and despotism but the very peril of ending the state’s future by killing its progeny.
Pedro’s disfavor of older nobles, more than unjust or prideful, was represented as the banishment
of the State’s very blood by the extermination of entire noble lines. His unpopular taxes were not
only attacked as the bypassing of Castile’s legislative body, the Cortes, or the refusal of charity
to the poor but as a denial of the state’s nourishment. Even the most effective accusation against
him, his personal favor to Moors and Jews did not suffice as a lone attack against the king but
had to be framed as support for Moorish and Jewish “enemies” of the State even when such
“enemies” had long safe guarded the state’s borders and served as its financiers. Pedro was not
284 Juan Manuel 138.
285 Suárez Fernández Monarquía 25.
286 See Vicente Álvarez Palenzuela, Historia de España de la Edad Media (Barcelona: Ariel, 2002) 670-671 and
Valdeon Baruque 96-98.
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