1B - Social issues and policies: the nobility, the peasantry, urban communities and the Church
Learn how the Catholic Monarchs dealt differently with nobles, peasants, towns and the Church. Use those differences to judge whether stronger monarchy changed the social order or made an existing hierarchy more stable.
Nobles as rivals and partners
Isabella and Ferdinand sought to restrain independent noble power without abolishing noble society. Great families possessed estates, armed followers and jurisdiction over communities. During succession conflict, these resources could support a rival monarch. Once a ruler's authority was established, the same resources could help govern and defend the kingdom.
The crown recovered some castles, offices and revenues acquired during disorder and increased the role of legal officials in royal administration. It also brought military orders such as Santiago, Calatrava and Alcántara increasingly under royal control. Their lands, income and armed traditions had made the position of their masters politically important. Crown administration of the masterships reduced the risk of a major independent rival and enlarged royal patronage.
Much noble wealth survived. Mayorazgo, or entail, helped great families keep estates together through inheritance. Nobles retained lordship over many communities and served as commanders, diplomats and courtiers. Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba's career shows how aristocratic military service could enhance rather than undermine royal power. The Royal Academy of History's account stresses the importance of agreements preserving noble status after the succession war.
Mayorazgo
An arrangement that kept designated family property together by directing its inheritance to a particular successor, usually preventing its division or sale.
The result was a bargain: the monarchy restricted noble challenges to the crown while protecting much of the social and economic hierarchy. “The nobles were destroyed” therefore confuses a reduction in political independence with the disappearance of aristocratic power over society.
Peasants and uneven reform
Peasant experience depended on region, landholding and obligations, so one reform cannot stand for the whole countryside. Most people still depended on agricultural work and faced rents, dues, harvest risk and taxation. Restored order might make cultivation and markets safer without reducing what a landlord demanded or giving a poor labourer land.
In Catalonia, remensa peasants resisted being tied to their holdings and the burdens known as the bad customs. Ferdinand's Arbitral Sentence of Guadalupe in 1486 abolished remensa obligations and other abusive practices in return for specified payments. The settlement followed earlier unrest and a renewed revolt in the 1480s. It was a substantial change in peasants' legal position, but it preserved the wider system of lordship and included penalties and compensation. The Archive of the Crown of Aragon's description makes both sides of this settlement clear.
Castilian policy also involved competing interests. The crown supported the Mesta and the movement of sheep because wool exports and flock taxation yielded revenue. Protection of pasture and migration routes could obstruct cultivators wishing to enlarge arable farming. Some nobles, church institutions and other large owners benefited from pastoral privileges, while smaller farmers could face costs. Do not assume every agricultural problem came from sheep: climate, insecure harvests, land distribution and market conditions also mattered.
A useful comparison therefore uses two criteria. Guadalupe altered a particular set of legal burdens; general royal policy left rural inequality largely intact. The monarchy could improve security and settle a major dispute while continuing to favour powerful landowners in other settings.
Towns, order and elite government
Urban communities could welcome a stronger monarchy because faction, violence and insecurity disrupted commerce. Towns helped support the Santa Hermandad, while royal justice could offer protection against a local rival. Merchants benefited when roads became safer and disputes could be settled with more predictable rules. Supporting royal authority could thus serve a community's practical interests.
Royal intervention also limited municipal independence. Corregidores supervised justice and government in Castilian towns. In the Crown of Aragon, Ferdinand used different arrangements, including the regulation of the eligible names from which some municipal office-holders were selected by lot, known as insaculación. Such methods could curb faction without making municipal government democratic. Control over eligibility still mattered.
Regidores, the members of Castilian town councils, frequently came from established elite families. Merchants, artisans and poorer residents had different access to power. A royal officer and a local oligarchy might cooperate over taxation or order while excluding much of the population. The crown often governed through these elites because it lacked the personnel to administer every community directly.
The same town could therefore gain greater security but lose some freedom of decision. Benefits were also uneven within it: a wealthy merchant might gain from commercial stability while a labourer faced high food prices and indirect taxation. This distinction prevents the unsupported inference that policies favourable to “towns” benefited all townspeople equally.
Compare security, political participation and material welfare separately. Improvement in one does not establish improvement in all three.
Church reform and royal partnership
The Church was a partner in government as well as an object of reform. Bishops and other clerics served as advisers and administrators; churches and monasteries owned land, received dues, and provided education and charity. Royal support for religion could strengthen legitimacy, while clerical expertise and income helped the crown govern.
Isabella and Ferdinand sought more influence over appointments, favouring suitable and loyal candidates. Their powers were strongest in newly established church structures such as Granada, where papal grants of patronage gave the monarchy important rights. They did not simply become heads of an independent national church: the Pope retained spiritual authority, and royal claims had to be negotiated with Rome.
Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, archbishop of Toledo from 1495, promoted discipline within religious orders and better clerical education. Reform addressed problems such as lax observance and the neglect of religious duties. It also met resistance from people whose customs, income or authority were threatened. Reform was intended to strengthen Catholic practice; it was not Protestant rejection of the Church.
Cisneros founded the university at Alcalá in 1499. It became a centre for scholarship, including the Complutensian Polyglot Bible project. The Ministry of Culture's account of Alcalá connects this university project with the development of printing and learned religious study. Scholarship in original languages could coexist with the suppression of religious dissent; “religious policy” was not one undifferentiated programme.
Church reform and royal control overlapped but served distinct purposes. A more disciplined clergy could improve teaching and pastoral work, while influence over appointments and resources could make church leaders more useful to the monarchs. The Church's property and privileged place in society largely remained.