Just released the reign of Carlos I, the War of the Communities of Castile broke out (1520-1522), a civil dispute that took place throughout the length and breadth of the crown between community members and royalists. The former took up arms for various reasons, the main ones being already known to all: on the one hand, with the landing of the new monarch, power began to be held by the Flemish clerics and nobles who accompanied the grandson of the Catholic Monarchs, which caused discomfort among the Castilian social elites, who felt that their arrival would mean a loss of power and social status. On the other hand, the monarch’s desire to become emperor caused fiscal demands on the Castilians were in crescendo in order to finance the imperial election.
The widespread discontent led to the search for an alternative candidate for the throne, in this case a female candidate, since went to queen Juana I, mother of the current king. However, the candidacy was undone due to its decline since it was considered that His Majesty suffered from serious mental problems that would prevent him from reigning, a disease that on the other hand was more than debatable (you can read the article published in 2019 in this same magazine and written by Alba Frasquet Álvarez: «Juana I de Castilla… La Loca?»). The fracture became more visible at the moment in which the high nobility and the peripheral Castilian territories, such as Andalusia, supporters of the then emperor, reorganized themselves.
As is well known, on April 23, 1521, the conflict practically ended with the royalist victory in the famous battle of Villalar. In addition, the following dawn the three community leaders were convicted and sentenced in that place in Valladolid: Juan de Padilla, Juan Bravo and Francisco Maldonado (see Illustration 2), all three being beheaded:
«…the Lord Mayors Cornejo and Salmerón and Alcalá said that they declared and declared Juan de Padilla and Juan Bravo and Françisco Maldonado as guilty in aver seydo trydores of the royal crown of these kingdoms. As a penalty for their curse, they said that they were condemned and sentenced to natural death and the confiscation of their property and trades for the Chamber of Their Majesties as traitors. And they signed it. Baby doctor. The graduate Garçía Fernández. The licensed Salmerón. And then, incontinently, the said sentence was carried out and those who were said were beheaded…” (General Archive of Simancas: AGS. PTR, leg. 5.16.)
That said, in this article the ideology of the comuneros is studied by analyzing their economic, political and religious ideology; Leaving aside the warlike vision. It is true that this article arises from a particular interest increased by the celebration this year of the fifth centenary of the execution of the aforementioned characters. The War of the Communities of Castile was a major event in the second and third decade of the intense 16th century and we must thank Dr. Joseph Pérez, recently deceased, for the numerous and valuable studies on it. (To learn more about the relationship between the comuneros and Queen Juana I, read: Pérez, Joseph, 2013. Juana la Loca y los Comuneros. In: István Szászdi León-Borja, María Jesús Galende Ruiz, coord. Empire and tyranny: the European dimension of the Communities of Castile. Valladolid: University of Valladolid, pgs. 471-482)
commoner ideology
The study of the War of the Communities of Castile has existed hand in hand with modern and contemporary historiography, being treated differently over the centuries. Likewise, it has been used by some to obtain political gain, “the truth is that, years after the repression of the revolt, not only was historiography reluctant to identify traces of certain political ideas in the demands of the comuneros, but also that the expression of these ideas aroused strong reluctance even in the purely theoretical debate —which is good proof of the perception that contemporaries had of the importance they had in the revolt— before new European contexts produced in the second half of the century XVI the reactivation of the theme of resistance” (Merle, 2017: p. 37). The historians of the modern age, as characterized by their exalted monarchical fidelity, considered the War of the Communities of Castile a shameful fact and in their studies they treated it as a trifle. However, in the middle of the 19th century, historians defended the comuneros for the first time. Likewise, the liberals of that time, marking their historical perspective, considered the rebels their predecessors in the fight against absolutism and the defense of human rights.
Ideals that underlie the War of the Communities of Castile
The war was carried out by individuals from different classes, highlighting from the role of Castilian nobles, such as the same leaders executed in Villalar, to “popular participation in a movement that some recent historiographical production tends to pose as a game exclusively for the elites, or to interpret as the homogeneous development of a political ideology imposed from above» (Oliva, 2014: p. 306). Adolfo Jorge Sánchez affirms that the historical figure of Fernando de Roa, a professor at the University of Salamanca in the fifteenth century who held the Chair of Moral Philosophy and the acclaimed First Chair of Theology, is usually highlighted as a precursor of the ideals that underlie the War of the Communities of Castile. He is considered the advocate of the citizen cause against the popular classes and the blood nobility and a clear defender of the king’s submission to the community and his rights. It does not seem clear that Roa can be described as an author with a vocation for political activism, although his work should be considered a call in defense of the Castilian bourgeoisie and a cry against royal excesses, at the same time that it is one of the successful formulations of the concepts of limited monarchy and elective principality.
Fernando de Roa proposes an elective monarchy with a limited mandate in time, as long as corruption, typical of the hereditary kingdom, decreases, as well as bets on the incipient bourgeoisie to occupy magistracies. This system of citizen government would have as gear some fair and equitable laws called to prevail over the set of individual wills. «The elective and limited monarchy in time tries to correct the propensity to corruption that is observed in the hereditary kingdom, as well as the excesses that occur when the monarch thinks of his position as a privilege in person forgetting his vocation of service.
The government of the middle class justifies it in the greater inclination to virtue that the mediocre (middle classes or citizens) against the nobility and the common people, since the citizen middle class balances the strength of the noble minority and the majority of the dispossessed people. Thus, it is observed the same mistrust towards the nobility and the popular; but it should also be added that an important sector of the population, made up of women, illegitimate children, expatriates and manual workers, is decidedly excluded. Of course, the property of goods and wealth seems to have a decisive influence in Roa’s thought to determine the political capacity of the different social actors, since the possession of wealth is a symptom of political prudence; as long as it does not lead to irresponsible greed» (Sánchez, 2018: p. 36).
In short, the king would be chosen by the citizen class, which at the same time would act as moderator between the nobility and the lower classes of society. The magistracies that would administer power would rotate among prudent, free, equal citizens, respectful of the laws, lovers of peace and harmony. Therefore, it would be the incipient bourgeoisie that would be in charge of laying down and deposing laws, judging and legislating.
Conception of a new treasury, fiscal and financial order by the community members
The community members designed a truly novel institutional model for the time. They believed that the courts of Castile, by politically representing all the cities and all the kingdoms of the crown, should be configured with the best channel of political action against the new monarchy. The communities had the purpose of converting the courts into a representative assembly, within its objective of institutionalizing the revolt. The community model, which can be observed from the analysis of the Representation drawn up in Tordesillas in 1520, it would be revolutionary, since the courts would have their own political nature and would be indifferent to the power of the Crown, dependent only on the will of the kingdom and its inalienable rights. The treasury program exposed in the chapters of Tordesillas was not carried out effectively due to a series of problems derived from the conflict at the time, and the fiscal practice was devoted exclusively to subsidizing the armies.
In the conception of a new financial, fiscal and treasury model, revolutionary proposals became more evident, taking into account the fact that «the comuneros counted in their favor –since the beginning of the reign of Carlos V– with vitiated financial practices, initiated in Brussels in 1516 and revalidated in Castile from the end of 1517, based on the constant increase of income and irregularities in its management, of the systematic recourse to credit and debt and of money transfers from the Hispanic kingdoms to the interests of both the house of Burgundy (maintenance of the court of Flanders) and that of Habsburg (imperial election)» (Carretero, 2018: p. 36). The comuneros proposed that the courts control the management and spending of all the ordinary and extraordinary income of the Castilian hacienda, as well as the prohibition of creating new tax figures; as long as the mechanisms close to greed and corruption that made possible the diversion of huge amounts for the exclusive benefit of the power groups of the Carolina court were put an end to.
The emperor did not attend to the demands for better management of the economic resources of the kingdom that was going through a critical period economically, politically and socially. When her majesty suppressed the Castilian alterations, «the Board of Tordesillas assumed all the responsibility of government, concentrating all the superior powers of the kingdom, declaring the Royal Council dispossessed of its functions for moral and political reasons. The 26 members of the Council were considered corrupt because they had taken advantage of their positions to enrich themselves. Among them, Francisco de Vargas stood out, whose income was extremely high (…), although the other directors were also considered guilty of having favored the businesses of the Flemish to the detriment of the natives of the kingdom» (Antón, 2014: p. 110). Consequently, the community members had to administer the hacienda of…