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Performative openness and governmental secrecy in fourteenth century Valencia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2023

Adam Franklin-Lyons
Adam Franklin-Lyons*
Affiliation:
Emerson College
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Adam_franklinlyons@emerson.edu
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Abstract

In the fourteenth century, the urban council of Valencia tried to balance maintaining the secrecy of their government with a perceived need to publicise their actions. The council knew from experience that information vacuums could be dangerous. Feuds between noble groups made the urban council wary of the secret actions of council members. Food shortages and the anti-Jewish riots in 1391 also pressured the council to project a public face of action to quell urban unrest. In response, the city enacted a performative publicity: a public show of information dissemination concerning the normal operations of government that still occluded the actual discussions of the council.

French abstract

French Abstract

Au XIVe siècle, le Conseil de Ville de Valence essaya d'équilibrer la nécessité de maintenir le secret de son gouvernement avec le besoin perçu localement de rendre publiques ses activités. Au Conseil de Ville on savait, par expérience, que l'absence totale d'information pouvait être dangereuse. Nombre de querelles entre groupes nobles avaient rendu ce Conseil méfiant des possibles actions secrètes de ses membres. À la suite de pénuries alimentaires comme des émeutes anti-juives de 1391, le Conseil de Ville entreprit d'organiser des annonces publiques afin d'étouffer les troubles urbains. La ville choisit donc, en réponse, de mettre sur pied des opérations de communication sous la forme d'avis à la population, avec diffusion d'informations sur les opérations normales du gouvernement, les débats propres au Conseil restant verrouillés par le secret.

German abstract

German Abstract

Im 14. Jahrhundert versuchte der Stadtrat von Valencia, die erforderliche Geheimhaltung der Regierungsgeschäfte mit der als notwendig empfundenen Publizität seiner Maßnahmen in Einklang zu bringen. Der Rat wusste aus eigener Erfahrung, dass ein Informationsvakuum gefährlich sein konnte. Fehden zwischen Adelsgruppen ließen den Rat misstrauisch gegen Geheimaktionen einzelner Ratsmitglieder werden. Auch Nahrungsmittelverknappungen und anti-jüdische Ausschreitungen im Jahre 1391 setzten den Rat unter Druck, ein öffentliches Aktionsgebaren in Angriff zu nehmen, um städtischen Unruhen vorzubeugen. Die Stadt reagierte darauf mit der Inszenierung performativer Publizität: die Verbreitung von Informationen über normale Regierungsvorgänge wurde öffentlich zelebriert, dabei aber der tatsächliche Diskussionsverlauf im Rat verdeckt gehalten.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 38 , Special Issue 1: Bureaucratic secrecy and the regulation of knowledge in Europe over the longue durée: obfuscation, omission, performance, and policing , May 2023 , pp. 31 - 52
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

1 Boin, Arjen, ‘t Hart, Paul, Stern, Eric and Sundelius, Bengt, The politics of crisis management: public leadership under pressure, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2017), 78Google Scholar.

2 Lett, Didier and Offenstadt, Nicolas, ‘Les pratiques du cri au Moyen Âge’, in Lett, Dider and Offenstadt, Nicolas eds., Haro! Noël! Oyé!: Practiques du cri au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2003), 9–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marco, Mercedes Gallent and Paniagua, José María Bernardo, ‘Comunicación en tiempo de peste: “Les Crides” en la Valencia del XV’, Saitabi 51–52 (2001/2002), 118–20Google Scholar; Soria, José Manuel Nieto, ‘El pregón real en la vida política de la Castilla Trastámara’, Edad Media 13 (2012), 79–81Google Scholar.

3 Kim Lane Scheppele, Legal secrets: equality and efficiency in the common law (Chicago, 1988), 21–3; David Pozen more recently applied the concept of ‘deep’ and ‘shallow’ secrets to the workings of government and used the idea to create a taxonomy of secret keeping similar to what is argued in this article; see ‘Deep Secrecy’, Stanford Law Review 62, 2 (2010), 265–75.

4 Karma Lochrie, Covert operations: the medieval uses of secrecy (Philadelphia, 1999), 3–4.

5 Scholars are increasingly studying these tactics in the modern world, especially with the disaggregation of information brought on by social media; for a recent example, see: Boin, Hart, Stern and Sundelius, The politics of crisis management, 80–8.

6 There are a number of excellent studies about the interactions between the bandos and the government of Valencia, several by one of the best known historians of the urban institutions of the city, Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno; see Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘La contestación a los próceres. Pugna de facciones y desórdenes en Valencia (1376–1478)’, Studia histórica. Historia medieval 39, 2 (2021), 175–201; Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘Vida pública y conflictividad urbana en los reinos hispánicos (siglos XIV–XV)’, in Las sociedades urbanas en la España medieval: XXIX Semana de Estudios medievales, Estella, 15 a 19 de julio de 2002 (Pamplona, 2003), 541–89; Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, Valencia, municipio medieval: poder político y luchas ciudadanas (1239–1418) (Valencia, 1995), 139–67; for similar work on a town south of Valencia itself, see José Hinojosa Montalvo, ‘Bandos y bandositats en la gobernación de Orihuela en la Baja Edad Media’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 36, 2 (2006), 713–50.

7 David Michael Gugel, The social and cultural worlds of elite Valencian youth, 1300–1500 (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, Center for Medieval Studies, 2016), 181–4, 204–5.

8 The three main series are contained in the Archivo Histórico Municipal de Valencia [Hereafter AMV]; Manuals de Consell series A; Cartas Missivas series G; and Clavaria Comuna series J.

9 For a description of the importance of the Valencian letter collections, see: Agustín Rubio Vela, Epistolari de la València medieval (Valencia, 2003), 23–9.

10 For an excellent description of the politics of the conquest, see: Thomas Barton, Victory's shadow: conquest and governance in medieval Catalonia (Ithaca, 2019), 261–5; on the promulgation of the initial charter of the city, called the furs, see: Mariano Peset Reig, ‘Els Furs de València: Un texto de leyes del siglo XIII’, in Francisco Javier Palao Gil and María Pilar Hernando Serra eds., Los valencianos y el legado foral: historia, sociedad, derecho (Valencia, 2018), 37–42.

11 Antoni Furió, ‘La ciudad y el reino de Valencia en la Baja Edad Media: prosperidad material, esplendor cultural y debilidad política’, in Reino y ciudad: Valencia en su historia: del 18 de abril al 15 de julio de 2007 (Madrid, 2007), 90–2.

12 The original costums of Valencia borrow heavily from Lleida's costums, although in general there was significant overlap in the content of town charters from Barcelona, Zaragoza, Tarragona, and other urban centers; Pedro López Elum, Los orígenes de los ‘Furs de València’ y de las Cortes en el siglo XIII (Valencia, 2001), 109–20.

13 The size of the council varied, but was usually fairly large – 80 in Girona, 100 in Barcelona; Albert Reixach Sala, ‘Mundo laboral, política municipal y trends económicos en las ciudades catalanes d la baja edad media: el ejemplo de Gerona (1340–1440)’, in Jesús Ángel Solórzano Telechea and Arnaldo Sousa Melo eds., Trabajar en la ciudad medieval Europea (Logroño 2018), 352 and 366–8; Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘Orígenes sociales de los tres estamentos ciudadanos en Valencia medieval’, Estudis: Revista de historia moderna 16 (1990), 20–1.

14 Most cities routinely kept the nobility out of the power structure of the city seeing major landowners as holding different interests than urban governments and working against especially mercantile interests. In Italy, large cities like Florence had complicated relationships with the nobility, who participated especially in earlier iterations of town government. These nobility were often later removed from town offices as artisans and merchants came to dominate urban governments; see Peter Sposato, ‘Chivalry in late medieval Tuscany and Florence: current historiography and new perspectives’, History Compass 16, 7 (2018), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hic3.12458; John Najemy, A history of Florence, 1200–1575 (Malden, 2006), 35–43. In the Crown of Aragon, both the nobility and the cities existed ostensibly under royal oversight, but at court noble and urban factions did frequently find themselves at loggerheads; cities especially in the regions of Aragon and Catalonia, kept the nobility at arm's length, legally excluding them from most functions of urban government; see: Josep Fernandez Trabal, ‘De Prohoms a ciudadanos honrados: Aproximación al estudio de las elites urbanas de la sociedad catalana bajomedieval (s. XIV–XV)’, Revista d'historia medieval 10 (1999), 334–5; Máximo Diago Hernando, ‘La participación de la nobleza en el gobierno de las ciudades europeas bajomedievales: análisis comparativo’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 37, 2 (2007), 802–6; Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘Orígenes sociales’, 24–7.

15 These exact numbers varied in the thirteenth century, but the number of jurats stabilized in 1329 and the exact makeup of the council was codified in 1363; see: Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘Cultura política y comunidad urbana: Valencia siglos XIV–XV’, Edad Media: Revista de historia 14 (2013), 177–9; Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘Orígenes sociales’, 24–6; Álvero Santamaría Arandez, El Consell General de Valencia en el tránsito a la modernidad (Valencia, 2000), 43–57.

16 Narbona Vizcaíno, Valencia, municipio medieval, 167–70; the city government routinely took steps to limit the violence and curb such influence, often with little effect. At the end of the fourteenth century they attempted to ban anyone involved in public feuds and the accompanying violence from participation in government, but quickly found that participation was so pervasive it became hard to find sufficient numbers of people without a role in the violence to even staff the town offices; Salvador Carreres Zacarés, Notes per a la història dels bandos de Valencia (Valencia, 1930), 141. Letters to the king also describe in detail the pervasiveness of involvement in the bandos; see Rubio Vela, Epistolari, letters 134–136, 271–82.

17 Emilia Salvador Esteban, ‘Bandos y fórmulas de solaridad. La instrumentalización de las rivalidades de los poderosos por la Corona’, in Salvador Claramunt Rodríguez ed., El món urbá a la Corona d'Aragó del 1137 als decrets de Nova Planta, XVII Congrés d'Història de la Corona d'Aragó (Barcelona, 2003), 21–2; Carlos López Rogríguez, ‘Guerras privadas nobiliarias y paz pública en el reino de Valencia (1416–1458)’, in María Isabel Loring Garía ed., Historia social, pensamiento historiográfico y Edad Media: homenaje al Prof. Abilio Barbero de Aguilera (Madrid, 1997), 643–67; Gugel, The social and cultural worlds of elite Valencian youth, 182.

18 Salvador Esteban, ‘Bandos y fórmulas de solidaridad’, 21–22; Remedios Ferrero Micó, ‘“Pau e treua” en Valencia’, in Estudios dedicados a Juan Peset Aleixandre (Valencia, 1982), 1.

19 José Toledo Girau, Los correos en el reino de Valencia (Valencia, 1958), 11–4; Juan Martínez Ferrando, ‘Los correos de la Curia Regia en la Corona de Aragón a Principios del Siglo XIV’, Analecta sacra tarraconensia: Revista de ciències historicoeclesiàstiques 17 (1944), 105–7.

20 There are many examples, usually paying a runner or captain of a small coastal skiff called a Llaüt to take notices to the islands of Ibiza or Mallorca or to confirm sightings from the islands or other areas of the mainland; for a few such payments, see: AMV Clavaria Comuna J-21, f. 30r; J-24, f. 16v and 31r; J-25, f. 2r.

21 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 5v–6v; see also: AMV Clavaria Comuna J-24, f. 5v and J-25, f. 2v.

22 AMV Clavaria Comuna J-24, f. 12r.

23 ‘en grans diversitats’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 61v.

24 AMV Cartas Missivas G3-5, f. 25v.

25 Lett and Offenstadt, ‘Les pratique du cri’, 20–1; Thierry Dutour, ‘L’élaboration, la publication et la diffusion de l'information à la fin du Moyen Âge (Bourgogne ducale et France royale)’, in Haro! Noël! Oyé!, 150–1; Gallent Marco and Bernardo Paniagua, ‘Comunicación en tiempo de peste’, 123–8.

26 Nieto Soria, ‘El pregón real’, 81–4.

27 AMV Manual de Consell A-18, f. 34r–v or 113r; see also A-16, f. 44v, 73v–74r, or 186v–187r.

28 Marie Kelleher, ‘Eating from a corrupt table: food regulations and civic health in Barcelona's “First Bad Year”’, eHumanista 25 (2013), 59–62; Kelleher, The measure of woman: law and female identity in the Crown of Aragon (Philadelphia, 2011), 105–7.

29 ‘raonablement no puxa sobre aço ignorancia al⋅legar’, AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 189r; see also: 196v or 233r.

30 ‘Ab la present publica crida notifica generalment les dites coses per ço que aquelles sien a cascuns mainfestes’, AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 34v.

31 Lett and Offenstadt, ‘Les pratiques du cri au Moyen Âge’, 144–6.

32 For a few examples, see: AMV Manual de Consell A-16, f. 44r; A-18, f. 39v; A-19, f. 165r–v.

33 AMV Manual de Consell A-16, f. 262v; see also: Nieto Soria, ‘El pregón real’, 87–8.

34 ‘jutge e jutgessa d'arborea’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 7v.

35 These announcements appear every few pages in most of the council records with virtually identical language, stating that the council was called, ‘with a public cry at the sound of the trumpet’ [ab crida publica a so de nafil]. Similar descriptions start nearly at the beginning of the entire record series; the first noted instance seems to be in August 1341 when the council was called, ‘with messages and a public cry’ [ab albarans i ab crida publica]. There is no note prior to that meeting of a particular change in practice, only in the change in description, so it is impossible to know if they suddenly began calling every meeting in 1341 or simply began writing down that they did; AMV Manual de Consell A-4, f. 62r.

36 ‘facen rao i justici sumariament…mostrant son fet i son dret legitimament’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 126r.

37 ‘com sien privades…’ AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 126r.

38 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 1r; I have used the description at the beginning of the year 1389, which is a generally unremarkable year. The language from other years is generally nearly identical and appears repeated in numerous places throughout the documents.

39 ‘sens art e sens mal engeny’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 1v.

40 ‘seran dites en consell esser tenidores secretes’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 2v.

41 Esther Martí Sentañes, ‘The power and control of information in municipal representation in the Catalan courts: the Consell de Prohoms of Lleida in the fifteenth century’, Parliaments, estates, and representation 39, 3 (2019), 298.

42 ‘…que los consoyllers manen tenir secret’; Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona, Consell de Cent 1B-7, 1322, f. 40r.

43 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 88r–v.

44 ‘exemple i terror d'altres’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 88v; The city had petitioned and received the royal right to punish Muslim pirates only days before, probably explicitly for this public act, see: Rafael Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘El trienio negro: Valencia, 1389–1391; Turbulencias coetáneas al asalto de la judería’, La España Medieval 35 (2012), 187.

45 Nieto Soria, ‘El pregón real’, 92–3.

46 The most famous famine riot in the Crown of Aragon is undoubtably the Barcelona revolt in 1334, when a group of angry citizens, egged on by a charismatic preacher, took over the grain market, attacked the urban and royal officials, and eventually looted the homes of some of the council members; see: Carme Batlle I Gallart, La crisis social y económica de Barcelona a mediados de siglo XV (Barcelona, 1973), 47–50; Kelleher, ‘Eating from a corrupt table’, 58–60; Adam Franklin-Lyons and Marie Kelleher, ‘Framing Mediterranean famine: food crisis in fourteenth-century Barcelona’, Speculum 97, 1 (January, 2022), 66–8.

47 George Dameron has described in detail how a reliable grain supply became one of the core markers of governmental legitimacy in the Italian city-states during the thirteenth century, ‘Feeding the Medieval Italian city-state: grain, war, and political legitimacy in Tuscany, c. 1150–c. 1350’, Speculum 92, 4 (2017), 976–1019; see also: Antoni Riera i Melis, ‘Crisis cerealistas, políticas públicas de aprovisionamiento, fiscalidad y seguridad alimentaria en las ciudades catalanes durante la baja edad media’, in Luciano Palermo, Andrea Fara and Pere Benito eds., Políticas contra el hambre y la carestía en la Europa medieval (Lleida, 2018), 245–9.

48 For a general description of market control tactics, see: Adam Franklin-Lyons, Shortage and famine in the late-medieval Crown of Aragon (University Park, PA, 2022), 55–62.

49 For a couple examples of compulsory procession attendance, see AMV Manual de Consell A-16, f. 87r–v and 230v–231r.

50 AMV Manual de Consell A-16, f. 89v–91r; the discussion of the Sicilian ships is followed immediately in the text by the statements of the public crier.

51 AMV Clavaria Comuna J-20, f. 14v.

52 AMV Clavaria Comuna J-25, f. 23v.

53 AMV Clavaria Comuna J-25, f. 32v, 33v, and 44r. Valencia often negotiated with Seville in secret due to political tension between the kings of Castile and Aragon; see Franklin-Lyons, Shortage and famine, 152–3.

54 Antoni Furió, ‘Disettes et famines en temps de croissance: une révision de la crise de 1300 - Le Royaume de Valence dans la première moitié du XIVe siècle’, in Monique Bourin and François Menant eds., Les Disettes dans la conjoncture de 1300 en Méditerranée occidentale (Rome, 2011), 399–406; Antoni Riera i Melis, ‘Crisis cerealistas, políticas públicas’, 262–8; AMV Manual de Consell A-, f. 239r–v; AMV Cartas Missivas G3-3, f. 1r and 6r.

55 ‘persona secreta’, ‘alcuns serviis’, and ‘secretament promesa’; AMV Clavaria Comuna J-14, 52v.

56 During the famine of 1374, the Pope in Avignon memorably ordered his Vicar in Italy to root out any hoarding, saying that hoarders ‘can rightly be called murderers of the poor’ [qui recte dici possunt pauperum homocide]; see Jean Glénisson, ‘Une administration médiévale aux prises avec la disette: La question des blés dans les provinces italiennes de l'Etat pontifical en 1374–1375’, Le Moyen Âge, 4th series, 5–6 (1951), 313–4.

57 ‘lo dit honrat consell duptan que perventura no sien bastants’, AMV Manual de Consell A-16, f. 47r.

58 AMV Manual de Consell A-18, f. 86v.

59 Agustín Rubio Vela, ‘Valencia y el control de la producción cerealista del reino en la baja Edad Media: orígenes y planteamiento de un conflicto’, in Demografía y sociedad en la España bajomedieval: Aragón en la Edad Media, sesiones de trabajo (Zaragoza, 2001), 57–60.

60 Emissaries came from the three branches of the court – noble, ecclesiastical, and urban – and generally voted, participated, debated, and attempted to influence royal policy through their workings at court, see Germán Navarro Espinach, ‘La jerarquía política de un sistema urbano: el brazo de las universidades en las cortes medievales de Aragón’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 48, 1 (2018), 118–21; Germán Navarro Espinach, ‘Las cortes del reino de Aragón en la Edad Media (1283–1516)’, e-Humanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 7 (2015), 231–44; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 17r.

61 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, 21r–22r.

62 The list of charges included numerous other acts, including asking the king to allow an expansion of the Jewish quarter; for a thorough description of the background and political fights around the accusations, see: Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘El trienio negro’, 186–90.

63 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 68r–v, 69v–70r and 74v–75r.

64 ‘no si covenia resposta per letra mas a viva veu per missatgers’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 61v.

65 ‘en aquella pus secreta manera’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 61v.

66 Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘El trienio negro’, 189.

67 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 190r–v and 180v–181v.

68 ‘les dites peraules detractories no esser veres i que aquelles o semblants porien engenrar discordies i seditions’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 118v.

69 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 155v.

70 The riots themselves have been well researched, especially looking at the consequences for the Jewish communities throughout the Iberian Peninsula. On the origins of the riots in Seville, see Maya Soifer-Irish, ‘Towards 1391: the anti-Jewish preaching of Ferrán Martínez in Seville’, in Cordelia Hess and Jonathan Adams eds., The medieval roots of antisemitism: continuities and discontinuities from the middle ages to the present day (London, 2018), 306–19; on the riots in the Crown of Aragon more generally, see Benjamin Gampel, Anti-Jewish riots in the Crown of Aragon and the royal response, 1391–1392 (Cambridge, 2016); and for a couple of articles more specifically about Valencia, see Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘El trienio negro’, 177–210; and Abigail Agresta, ‘“Unfortunate Jews” and urban ugliness: crafting a narrative of the 1391 assault on the jueria of Valencia’, Journal of Medieval History 43, 3 (2017), 320–41.

71 Agresta, ‘“Unfortunate Jews”’, 320–1.

72 Notably, this exchange appears in the royal archives, but not in the city's own meeting records; see Gampel, Anti-Jewish riots, 24.

73 Gamepl, Anti-Jewish riots, 287.

74 David Nirenberg, Neighboring faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the middle ages and today (Chicago, 2014), 78.

75 Agresta, ‘“Unfortunate Jews”’, 327–8.

76 Agresta's Reading, which is both compelling and insightful, describes how this mirrors claims of Jewish blindness and unwillingness to see the truth of their own (Christian) salvation; Agresta, ‘“Unfortunate Jews”’, 330.

77 ‘terror i exemple dels presents’; AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 243v.

78 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 244r–v.

79 Gampel, Anti-Jewish riots, 328.

80 Gampel, Anti-Jewish riots, 45–49; Agresta, ‘“Unfortunate Jews”’, 329–30.

81 Narbona Vizcaíno, ‘El trienio negro’, 182–3.

82 ‘Vil e orreu e fals parlar’, AMV Cartas Missivas G3-5, f. 44v.

83 Narbona Viczaíno, ‘El trienio negro’, 183.

84 AMV Clavaria Comuna J-25, f. 20v.

85 Vizcaíno, Rafael Narbona, ‘Violencias feudales en la ciudad de Valencial’, Revista d'Història Medieval 1 (1990), 70–1Google Scholar; other cities with significant noble involvement in urban government, especially in Castile, also suffered similar disruptions and violence because of the persistence of noble feuds; see Hernando, Máximo Diago, ‘La incidencia de los conflictos banderizos en la vida política de las ciudades castellanas a fines de la Edad Media: el caso de Cuenca’, Hispania. Revista española de Historia 69, 233 (2009), 684–5Google Scholar; de Atalaya, Santiago Ponsoda López and Milla, Juan Leonardo Soler, ‘Violencia nobiliaria en el sur del Reino de Valencia a finales de la Edad Media’, Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval 16 (2009–2010), 339–45Google Scholar.

86 Rodríguez, Carlos López, Nobleza y poder político: el reino de Valencia (1415–1446) (Valencia, 2005), 249ffGoogle Scholar.

87 AMV Manual de Consell A-19, f. 266r.