notes to pages 8–16 159
34 ( 1964 ): 141 – 62 ; and Antonio Pérez Martín, “La institución real en el ‘ius com-
mune’ y en las Partidas,” Cahiers de linguistique hispanique médiévale 23 , no. 1
( 2000 ): esp. 313 – 17.
20. Joseph R. Strayer, “The Laicization of French and English Society in the
Thirteenth Century,” Speculum 15 , no. 1 ( 1940 ): 76 – 86 ; idem, On the Medieval
Origins of the Modern State; and Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A
Study in Mediaeval Political Theology.
21. Ramon Muntaner, Crònica in Les quatre gran cròniques, ed. Ferran Soldev-
ila, chap. 292 : “[P]oden fer compte que seran sobirans a tots los reis del món e prín-
ceps, així de crestians con de sarraïns.” The French kings also spoke of themselves
as “sovereigns” in this period. See Philippe de Beaumanoir (d. 1296 ), Coutumes de
Beauvaisis, XXXIV, 1043 [my emphasis]: “Voirs est que li rois est souverains par
dessus tous, et a de son droit la general garde de tout son roiaume.”
22. David Abulafia, The Western Mediterranean Kingdoms, xvi.
23. Allen J. Fromherz, The Almohads: The Rise of an Islamic Empire, provides
a useful and readable introduction to the dynasty.
24. Maribel Fierro, The Almohad Revolution: Politics and Religion in the Is-
lamic West during the Twelfth – Thirteenth Centuries; Maribel Fierro, “Alfonso X
‘The Wise’: The Last Almohad Caliph?” Medieval Encounters 15 , no. 2 ( 2009 ):
175 – 98 , esp. 175 ; and Amira K. Bennison and Maria Ángeles Gallego, “Religious
Minorities under the Almohads: An Introduction,” Journal of Medieval Iberian
Studies 2 , no. 2 ( 2010 ): 143 – 54 , esp. 143. For the broader religious context, see Mer-
cedes García- Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform: Mahdīs of the Muslim
West.
25. David Nirenberg, Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in
the Middle Ages and Today, 88.
26. A criticism also made by Ernesto Laclau, “Bare Life or Social Indeter-
minacy?” in Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and Life, ed. Matthew Calarco and
Steven DeCaroli; and Agrama, Questioning Secularism, 27. On coercive violence,
see Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 900 – 1990 ; and Brian
Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change: The Origins of Democracy
and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe. On the decision, see Carl Schmitt, Politi-
cal Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab;
and Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel
Heller- Roazen.
Chapter One
- The handwritten “Catálogo de los documentos de los registros,” begun by
Alterachs in the eighteenth century, is a partial catalog to the thirteenth- century
documentation and resides on the shelves at the Archive of the Crown of Aragon.