Abstract
Between 1460 and 1473, when the Muslim kingdom of
Granada was the only one that remained to conquer to the Christians of the
Iberian Peninsula to complete the Reconquest of their land, Lucas de Iranzo, an
ennobled villain, governed Jaen –a city and region bordering Granada– in an
absolute manner. A chronicle of the time, Relación de los fechos del muy magnífico e más
virtuoso señor el señor don Miguel Lucas muy digno condestable de Castilla, dedicated to the exaltation of the excellence of
that character, Lucas de Iranzo, contains very valuable information on sports
in Castile in the fifteenth century. In fact, it is the chronicle that most
extensively deals with the sports recreations of all the history of the
Castilian chronicles: game of reeds, dance, bullfighting, run the ring,
chasing bears, skirmish on horseback, hunting, egg fights, pumpkin fights,
jousts, tournaments, are widely described. In
this article we make a historical analysis of the sports content of the
chronicle. We will be guided in particular by Norbert Elias' theory on violence
and sports violence in history. We note in the course of the chronicle - which is
written at the end of each year - a rapid disappearance of the most violent
sports, which were typical of medieval warrior societies, especially jousting
and tournaments. The disappearance of violent sport was replaced by an
abundance of spectacular, festive and always peaceful sporting events. Such
spectacles always had a single individual protagonist, the excellence of the
governor Lucas de Iranzo, and two great collective protagonists in which the
chronicle never individualizes, the people and the knights.
The Governor's excellence,
his political absolutism and the advent of non-violent sport came together. The
governor was able to anticipate the advent of the modern Renaissance by means
of an attractive theatricalization of these sporting exhibitions. If Norbert Elias states that
the (internal) control of violence in western societies appears for the first
time in history with the advent of the modern age, and this would be reflected
in a less violent sport, we observe that this change, this advent, is taking
place in Castile at that time. In fact, this change is coming ahead of the time
when it would be due to, precisely with the sporting narratives of the
chronicle of Lucas de Iranzo written between 1458 and 1471. Lucas de Iranzo's
chronicle is the first historiographical manifestation of the historical change
to non-violence in sport in the kingdom of Castile
IJAHSS by IPRPD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.