Time sometimes blurs memory; which usually corrects history, until it surprises us. It happens, for example, when someone wants to get closer to the 15th century in Valencia and discovers that the city and its kingdom were at that time the cultural and economic center of the Mediterranean, the gateway to Renaissance humanism under the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous and the place where they emerged. the great references of literature in Valencian/Catalan, what is known as the golden century of Valencian letters: Ausiàs March, Joanot Martorell, Jaume Roig or Isabel de Villena, among many others.
It was, de facto, the capital of the Crown of Aragon, in the cosmopolitan sense of the term, the epicenter of the European publishing industry, a geography suitable for the growth of art, letters and monumental architecture within the framework of the so-called international Gothic and, Furthermore, the place from which many of the monarch’s wars and some of the Crown’s great expansion projects in the Mediterranean were financed. One more fact: it was the time in which a Valencian family controlled the Catholic church from the middle of the century; Let’s say we’re talking about the Borgias.
Rafael Narbona, professor of Medieval History at the University of Valencia, is one of the best experts on the 15th century in Valencia and the effects that the reign of the Magnanimous had on the international projection of Valencia. Narbonne offers the economic and political notes that explain how the conditions were generated to turn the city into the “Babylon” of the Crown of Aragon. “It was a period in which the economic effervescence of the city of Valencia was consolidated, which would lead it to plenitude in the second half of the 15th century.”
The process began around 1375 when the city and the kingdom it capitalized began to form part of the international trade routes; It would soon become the center of finance and international commercial contracting, of bills of exchange and of capital that moved between Italy and Flanders (especially in the 15th century), until the city became an axis predisposed to compete with the traditional hegemony of Barcelona. in the articulation of the insular domains of the Crown (Mallorca, Sicily, Sardinia and Naples). And he adds that “between 1462 and 1472 the Catalan Civil War and its disastrous consequences will end up swinging the economic and political center of the Crown of Aragon from Barcelona to Valencia.”
In the political field, Narbona points out that although the Catalan vote was fundamental for the new dynasty to obtain the throne in the Compromise of Caspe, “the truth is that it soon became predisposed against the new king by continually requesting new prerogatives and privileges that “A king with a Castilian political background was not willing to take over.” The worst crisis came when the king confronted Castile: “This conflict was considered by Catalonia as a family matter of the king and they resisted financing the campaign, which they considered unrelated to the interests of the Crown, on the other hand, Valencia, almost alone, He recruited an army to support the king’s claims, crossing the border of Castile between 1428 and 1432, which accentuated the harmony between the king and the kingdom.” This caused the Magnanimous to establish his house and court in Valencia between 1425 and 1432. permanently even if he continued to travel. “València became a kind of capital of the Crown of Aragon, when Barcelona had traditionally been.”
Antoni Furió, also a professor of Medieval History at the UV, edited the volumes of the proceedings of the La veu del Regne congress two years ago. 660 years of the Generalitat Valenciana. On that occasion he commented that “if the 14th century was the birth and development of the Generalitat, the 15th century is that of its consolidation and definitive institutionalization, this will take place in 1418, during the reign of the Magnanimous.” The Valencian political modernity of the moment is summarized by Furió with one idea: “The Generalitat Valenciana had a formula of parliamentarism and constitutionalism more similar to the Anglo-Saxon world than to the monarchies of France and Castile.”
The economic and political context laid the foundations for the emergence of culture. It was promoted by the Magnanimous mainly in Naples, recovering the Latin classics and promoting humanism in the Italian style, that is, in Latin. On the other hand, a good part of all the young knights who accompanied the young King in his Mediterranean campaigns (there were not a few Valencians) “continued and considerably increased their writing practices in Catalan in the form of chronicles, diaries, lyrical and epic poems, erotic literature. and manners of the time, unleashing a practice of personal writing absolutely unknown until then.”
In this context, the ebullition of culture occurred in Valencia. Never has the language of Catalans and Valencians achieved such prestige beyond the borders of the Crown of Aragon (in Rome and Naples Catalan was spoken to carry out international political negotiations).
Ausiàs March, who was a companion in arms of the monarch, wrote his verses at this time and later, rediscovered, he became a universal poet in Catalan. He was married to a sister of Joanot Martorell, another indisputable reference of the moment, author of Tirant lo Blanch, the book of chivalry that was saved from the flames by the priest and friend of Alonso Quijano, Don Quixote. The list of authors is long, and they all wrote in their own language. Isabel de Villena, Jaume Roig, Joan Roís de Corella, Pere March, Bernat Fenollar and Jordi de Sant Jordi were protagonists of a unique period in a Valencia that was one of the most attractive cities in Europe. In the 16th century the decline came, but that is another story.
