Europe: A History (81 page)

The kingdom of Aragon, in contrast, turned to the sea. (See Appendix III, p. 1251.) Forged from the union of the Pyrenean district of Aragon with Catalonia and Valencia, it had gained an early foothold on the coast. James I the Conqueror (r. 1213–76) occupied Minorca and Majorca in the Moorish war, where he magnanimously gave Murcia to Castile. Peter III (r. 1276–85) was given the throne of Sicily in 1282 following the expulsion of the French. Sardinia was taken from the Genoese in 1326. Alfonso V (r. 1416–58) took southern Italy from the Angevins in
1442. Aragon’s domination of the western Mediterranean created an inimitable maritime community, based on Barcelona, Palermo, and Naples, where Catalan was the lingua franca and where the nobles enjoyed a regime of remarkable liberality. Disputes between the monarchs and their subjects were referred to the Justiciar of the Cortes, usually a lowly knight who was raised by his peers to the office of supreme arbiter. In 1287, by the Privilege of Union, the nobles were empowered to take up arms against any king who infringed their rights—a liberty unequalled except in Poland. The result was a nation of unusual solidarity. ‘It is as hard to divide the nobles of Aragon’, said Ferdinand V (r. 1479–1516), ‘as it is to unite the nobles of Castile.’ In the fifteenth century Aragon controlled both the largest city in Iberia—Barcelona—and the largest city in Europe—Naples.

The cultural synthesis of medieval Spain was something quite inimitable. In the five kingdoms, three main religions were practised: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism; and six main languages were spoken: Castilian, Gallego, Catalan, Portuguese, Arab, and Basque. The Christian population, dominated by the ranchers and soldiers of the central Plateau, was generally much rougher than the more urbanized and civilized Moors of the fertile south. But they were emerging from centuries of isolation, and were now in full commercial and intellectual contact with the rest of Christendom. The Spanish Jews, who had gained a foothold through the tolerance of Muslim rulers, spread throughout the Peninsula and played a prominent part in administration, medicine, learning, trade, and finance. They figured in many roles. The philosopher Maimonides of Cordoba (1135–1204), who had emigrated to Egypt, was long remembered as author of the
Guide to the Perplexed
. Samuel Halevi (d. 1361), chief tax-collector of Pedro the Cruel, who tortured him to death, was a patron of the arts. The convert Pablo de Santa María (Solomon Halevi, b. 1350) served as diplomat, Bishop of Burgos, and notorious antisemite. Earlier, disputations between the religions were popular. Later, and particularly in 1348–51 and 1391, ugly pogroms occurred. In the fifteenth century a large caste of
conversos
or New Christians—the Lunas, Guzmáns, Mendozas, Enríquez—filled the highest offices of Church and State. Nothing conveys the symbiosis more eloquently than Spanish architecture, an exquisite blend of Mediterranean romanesque, Catholic Gothic, and oriental ornament.
⁸
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In the heart of the Catholic world, politics still revolved round the triangle of rivalries between the Empire, the Papacy, and the kingdom of France. In the course of the fourteenth century, each of the three main parties was subject to such tremendous local stresses that no international victor emerged. Following the interregnum of 1254–73, the Emperors were so absorbed by the internecine affairs of Germany that Italy was abandoned. The Papacy, overwhelmed by the wars of Italy, took refuge in the Midi for nearly seventy years before falling into schism. The kingdom of France, hopelessly overrun by the Hundred Years War against England, did not recover until the middle of the fifteenth century. By 1410, when there were three emperors, three popes, and two kings of France, the leaders
of Catholic Christendom were in despair. Such was the chaos in the centre that opportunities arose for the creation of powerful new states. Apart from Aragon, the newcomers were Switzerland, Burgundy, and Poland-Lithuania.

The Holy Roman Empire was permanently weakened by the fall of the Hohenstaufen. The interregnum, which met its nadir with the execution of Conradin at Naples, ushered in decades of chaos (see p. 353). Worse still, there was little prospect that imperial power could be reasserted. By gambling so heavily on their Italian ambitions, the Hohenstaufen had condemned their successors to a position of perpetual subservience in Germany. With the imperial coffers empty, and the imperial domain dispersed, it could hardly have been otherwise. As a result the German princes perpetuated their privileges, and the elective constitution of the Empire became ossified. In 1338 the Electoral College rejected papal claims to confirm Emperors; and in the Golden Bull of 1356 the mechanics of election were fixed for the duration. Henceforth Frankfurt-am-Main was to be the site of imperial elections. A majority of votes among seven named Electors was to be decisive. The seven Electors were to be the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier and the princes of Bohemia, the Rhine Palatinate, Saxony, and Brandenburg.
*
The Emperor Charles IV, who formulated the Golden Bull, was bowing to reality. In Bryce’s famous pronouncement, ‘He legalised anarchy and called it a constitution.’
⁹

From 1273 onwards the enfeebled Empire struggled to recover. Of the nine emperors from Rudolf von Habsburg (r. 1273–91) to Sigismund of Luxemburg (r. 1410–37), only three attained the dignity of a full imperial coronation. Two—Adolf von Nassau in 1298 and Wenzel of Luxemburg in 1400—were deposed by the Electors. Henry VII (r. 1308–13), Dante’s last great hope, aped his forebears by making a progress through Italy; he was shut out of Rome and died ignominiously of fever at Pisa. His successor, Ludwig of Bavaria (r. 1314–47), having fallen foul of the Pope, took Rome by storm in 1328; but his action only provoked yet another round of anti-popes and anti-kings. Charles IV of Luxemburg (r. 1346–78) brought a measure of stability. Upgraded from anti-king to Emperor, he used the Empire to build up his beloved Bohemia. Germany was ruled for a season from the Karlstejn. High politics was disputed between four leading families—the Bavarian-based Wittelsbachs, who also held Hainault and Holland; the Luxemburgs, who held Luxemburg, Brabant, and Bohemia from 1310, Silesia from 1333, and Lusatia and Brandenburg to 1415; the Wettins of Saxony; and the Habsburgs of Austria, whose possessions spread across the south from the Sundgau to Carniola. Local politics were controlled by the ubiquitous predatory prelates, by the powerful imperial cities, or by the seething mass of petty knights. This was the age of the
Raubritter
, the robber barons, and the
Faustrecht
, the law of the fist. Late medieval Germany lacked the confident national monarchies which ruled on either side in France and in Poland. Not until the election of three
successive Habsburgs, in 1438,1440, and 1486, did the Empire begin to assume the guise of a quasi-hereditary monarchy. And even then the emperors gained little freedom of action. If particularism is the measure of the feudal system, Germany was the most feudal country of all.

In Italy, too, the Hohenstaufen left a bitter legacy. In the north, the warring communes substituted domestic for German oppression. All the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany fell under the control of one or other of the leading contenders—Milan, Florence, or Venice. This was an age of burgeoning commercial wealth and cultural splendour, but also of unending strife. The swordsmen and poisoners nourished alongside the artists and poets. In central Italy, a Concordat signed in 1275 between the Empire and the Papacy abolished all claims to imperial suzerainty over the Patrimony of St Peter. The Papal State, which, in addition to Rome, included the Romagna, the Pentapolis, the March of Ancona, and the
Campagna, found itself free but defenceless. And it was eternally racked by the restless citizens of Rome. In the south, the Papacy’s clients, the House of Anjou, which had been imported to replace the Hohenstaufen, became unbearable in their turn. The ‘Sicilian Vespers’ of 30 March 1282, when the resentful populace of Palermo massacred perhaps 4,000 of their French rulers, led to the introduction of Aragonese rule in Sicily, to the encirclement of the Angevins in Naples, and to a twenty-year war.
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The city of Florence stood in the centre of the squalls and sun-shafts of late medieval Italy. Nurtured on the wool of its beautiful Apennine
contado
, it grew in the thirteenth century into a thriving community of perhaps 100,000 turbulent
souls. Its gold coin, the florin, became standard currency far beyond Italy. An ambitious bourgeoisie, calling itself the
popolo
, organized in opposition to the traditional
comune
of the castle-based nobles of the contado—the Donati, Uberti, Cerchi, Alberti. The major and minor
arti
or guilds clamoured for a place in the city’s elected councils and rotating magistracies; and a lusty mob added to the fray. The
podestà
or governor, once an imperial appointee, was brought under municipal control. Constitutions enacted in 1266,1295, and 1343 failed to quell the uproar.