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In the name of a distant king: representing royal authority in the county of C astile, c .900–1038
Author(s) -
Escalona Julio
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
early medieval europe
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1468-0254
pISSN - 0963-9462
DOI - 10.1111/emed.12134
Subject(s) - charter , representation (politics) , politics , unitary state , agency (philosophy) , political authority , power (physics) , history , law , order (exchange) , political science , genealogy , sociology , social science , physics , quantum mechanics , finance , economics
This article explores the representation of royal power in the tenth‐century county of C astile by contrasting the low degrees of effective royal agency within the county with a dominant charter‐writing tradition that coupled king and count in the synchronisms of the dating clauses. The components of the C astilian charter corpus are broken down and compared to other areas in northern I beria, in order to suggest that, rather than a mere regional charter‐writing tradition, this practice reflects a widespread political culture that sought to legitimize the counts' unitary leadership of C astile by reference to a prestigious yet distant royal figure.