THE MEDIEVAL HERITAGE OF IBERIA’S CHRISTIAN KINGDOMS 39
phase, added a strong sense of religious superiority
and mission.
The Reconquest also helped to shape the char-
acter of the Castilian economy. As the Muslims fell
back, vast tracts of land came into the possession
of the crown. The kings assigned the lion’s share
of this land to the nobility, the church, and the
three military orders of Calatrava, Alcántara, and
Santiago. As a result, Castile, especially the area
from Toledo south (New Castile), became a region
of enormous estates and a very wealthy, powerful
aristocracy.
The Reconquest also ensured the supremacy
of sheep raising over agriculture in Castile. In a
time of constant warfare, of raids and counterraids,
the mobile sheep was a more secure and valuable
form of property than land. With the advance of
the Christian frontier, much new territory—fre-
quently too arid for easy agricultural use—was
opened to the sheep industry. The introduction of
the merino sheep from North Africa around 1300,
which coincided with a sharply increased demand
in northern Europe for wool, gave a marked stimu-
lus to sheep raising in Castile. By the late thirteenth
century, a powerful organization of sheep raisers,
theMesta, had established themselves.In return
for large subsidies to the crown, this organization
received extensive privileges, including the right to
move great fl ocks of sheep across Castile from sum-
mer pastures in the north to winter pastures in the
south, with frequent injury to the farmlands and
woods in their path. The great nobles dominated
the sheep industry as well as agriculture. Their
large rents and the profi ts from the sale of their
wool gave them an economic, social, and military
power that threatened the supremacy of the king.
The Castilian towns represented the only
counterpoise to this power. The advance of the
Reconquest and the need to consolidate its gains
promoted municipal growth. To attract settlers
to the newly conquered territory, the king gave
generousfueros (charters of liberties) to the towns
that sprang up one after another. These charters
endowed the towns with administrative autonomy
and vast areas of land that extended their juris-
diction into the surrounding countryside. The
towns were governed by elected judicial offi cials
known as alcaldes and by members of the town
council, called regidores. The economic expan-
sion of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and
the growth of the wool trade, above all, made the
Castilian towns bustling centers of industry and
commerce. The wealth of the towns gave them a
peculiar importance in the meetings of the con-
sultative body, or parliament, known as the Cor-
tes. Since the nobles and the clergy were exempt
from taxes, the king had to request funds from the
towns’ deputies, who, in exchange for their assent
to taxation, typically required royal redress of town
grievances previously presented in the form of peti-
tions for justice. In the words of historian Joseph
F. O’Callaghan, “Unless the king or the regents
promised to govern rightly, they could not expect
the cortes to agree blindly to a levy of taxes.”
The Castilian towns had their time of splen-
dor, but in the fi nal analysis, the middle class re-
mained small and weak, and it was overshadowed
by the enormous power of the great nobles. Aware
of their weakness, the towns joined their forces in
hermandades, military associations that resisted
the aggressions of the nobles and sometimes of the
king. But the posture of the towns was essentially
defensive. Without the aid of the king, they could
not hope to impose their will on the aristocracy.
As Muslim power waned, the great nobles
turned from fi ghting the infi del to battling the
king, the towns, and one another. In the course of
the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries, the nobles
gained the upper hand in their struggle with the
king, usurping royal lands and revenues and often
transforming the monarch into their pawn. The
degradation of the crown reached its lowest point
in the reign of Henry IV (1454–1474), when there
was an almost total breakdown of central gov-
ernment and public order. Beneath this anarchy,
however, the continued expansion of economic life
inspired a growing demand for a strong monarchy
that could establish peace and order.ARAGÓN
The medieval history of the smaller, less populous
kingdom of Aragón differed in important ways
from that of Castile. The king of Aragón ruled