Familial Honor and Physical Space on the Castilian Frontier in the Fifteenth Century

• In Event: Honor and Violence in Renaissance Europe

Abstract

One of the most powerful forms of chivalric honor in fifteenth-century Castile was the honor related to an individual’s linaje — a person’s living family and ancestors. This familial honor was largely an accumulation of the deeds and prestige of the great knights of a linaje and could be passed down from father to son. This paper argues, though, that the honor of a man’s linaje also resided in physical spaces in the Castilian frontier. Violently gaining or maintaining control of these physical spaces could powerfully augment a man’s honor as well as the larger corporate honor of his linaje. Suffering a loss of these spaces would result in serious shame. Specifically, this paper will examine the place of Gibraltar in the familial honor of the Ponce de León and the Guzmán linajes and the importance of Medina Sidonia for the Guzmanes.

Author

• Samuel A Claussen, California Lutheran University