El poder de la nobleza en los ámbitos regionales de la corona de Castilla a fines del Medievo: las estrategias políticas de los grandes linajes en La Rioja hasta la revuelta comunera

Abstract

During the last decades of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the sixteenth, a permanent and violent struggle for hegemony took place in the region of Rioja between three families of the high nobility –the Manrique, the Arellano and the Velasco. This indicates that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella´s success in pacifying the kingdom and in the political subjection of the high nobility was very limited. To provide a more detailed demonstration of this thesis, this article analyses the strategies employed by these three lineages of the high nobility to increase their power in Rioja where they possessed their seigneurial estates. Consideration is given to their relationships with nobles of middle rank who were lords of vassals in the region; with monasteries and other ecclesiastical institutions; and finally with royal towns.