La revuelta de las comunidades. Una vision desde la sacristia

Abstract

The origin of clerical leadership of the comunero rebels in the diocese of Zamora can be linked with a unique combination of local circumstances. Manipulation of church assets by powerful ecclesiastical and lay interests elsewhere were crucially divisive, and the harbouring in Zamora of priceless relics coveted by the archbishopric of Toledo offered an ambitious but unspiritual bishop, Antonio Acuña, leverage to bid for the primacy of Spain. Betrayed by the discrepancy between his ambition and the aspirations of the rebels, the disgraced bishop, languishing in a royal prison, was reduced to the expectation of relief from some of the aristocratic connections implicated in the revolt in the first place. A crucial figure in an apparent plot to "spring" Acuña from the dungeons of Simancas, was an obscure prebendary of the remote diocese of Guadix, Lucas de Tauste. Between June 1522 and February 1525, he took over key points in the southern part of the diocese of Zamora. Had Acuña succeeded in breaking out and covering some 45 sparsely populated miles down the Douro valley, he would the have had a safe route to the Portuguese frontier. Tauste's connections suggest that the aristocratic backing indispensable for such a venture came from the Mucia alum magnate, the marquis of los Vélez, and that the situation was part of a major confrontation between the marquis and the duke of Alba for control of the resources of the kingdom of Murcia.