In 1445, John II of Castile awarded a sizeable estate southwest of Toledo to Gutierre de Sotomayor, a favored noble supporter. The land and its jurisdiction, however, were not taken from royal lands or following due process; rather, they belonged to the city of Toledo as a result of purchase from an earlier monarch. The city’s council consequently protested the grant and initiated a lawsuit for the return of its property. At stake was an issue central to the nature of kingship in Castile — the monarch’s use of “absolute royal authority.”
J. B. Owens examines Toledo’s lawsuit, known to contemporaries as the “Belalcázar lawsuit,” from its inception to its conclusion during the reign of Philip II, more than 120 years later. He treats the case as a microhistory that illuminates judicial procedure at the highest levels in Castile while revealing the tension between competing visions of “justice,” the universally...
