Honor and war. Tension between the reality of war and ideological discourse in castilian chronicles of the first half of the fourteenth century

Abstract

Chronicles represented one of the principal instruments used by different medieval powers to project ideas that legitimized and eulogized their authority. Warfare therefore frequently constitutes a key element of these texts. During the reign of Alfonso XI, the Crown of Castile promoted works that not only justified and glorified the king’s political activity, but also invoked an idealised image of warfare. This image was based on the idea of warfare as an honourable activity and the exclusive domain of a social elite, and therefore did not reflect real military practice. The authors of these works also considered the defence of the king’s honour a valid justification for war, even when this conflicted with more pragmatic attitudes. The Royal Chronicler Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid managed to reconcile the two in order to maintain the monarch beyond criticism. onicler, achieved to combine both in order to maintain the monarch beyond criticism. This approach was not exclusive to Castilian Chronicles, as it also constituted a characteristic element of other contemporary texts, like the works of Froissart or the French Royal Chronicles. This paper concludes that, rather than providing a reliable account of an event, chronicles often based their narratives on a series of common images and ideas that reflected a predetermined ideological discourse.