The Crown and the Nobility:
The Molinist Ideology of Crónica de Castilla's Portrayal of the Reign of Alfonso VIII.

Abstract

The anonymous Crónica de Castilla (c. 1300) was written at a time of political instability, when tensions between vying factions of the nobility of the Kingdom of Castile and the Queen Regent, María de Molina, erupted into civil war. Pretenders to the throne threatened her Regency and called into question the legitimacy of her son, Fernando IV. The Crónica de Castilla’s narrative of the reign of Alfonso VIII of Castile (another reign which began with a turbulent interregnum) contains large sections which relate to the nobility, leading some scholars to believe that the Crónica de Castilla represents a branch of post-Alfonsine historiography emanating from the aristocracy and that the text is based on a lost *Estoria nobiliaria. Others argue that it is an example of Molinist literature, patronised by the Regent in order to assert her control over the nobility. I shall demonstrate how important aspects of the Molinist ideology are present in the Crónica de Castilla, including: the idealisation of the King-nobility relationship; the promotion of an emerging social group, the concejos, whose influence grew during María de Molina’s Regency; the diffusion of a hybrid chivalric code which was intended to act as a guide for influencing the nobility’s behaviour; the creation of a new image of royal women, based on spirituality; the dissemination of the royal lineage of Maria de Molina and her son that can be traced back to Leonor Plantagenet. Episodes which relate to the nobility during the minority of Alfonso VIII and episodes which relate to great Iberian queens are tools which are combined in the Crónica de Castilla in order to promote this Molinist ideology throughout medieval Spain, providing a strong theory that Maria de Molina was a patron of this text.