A Window on the Valencia of Jaume the Conqueror: A Five-Year Core Sample, 1264-1270

Abstract

During the years 1265 to 1270 King Jaume I culminated his career as warrior and hero of Christendom, amid diplomatic triumphs, commercial expansion, and military glory, ending however in personal humiliation and the collapse of his plans for a Jerusalem crusade. The kingdom of Valencia, then in a period of intense post-conquest consolidation, was central to his activities. This article surveys the 500 documents in the king's registers about Valencia for that short period, organizing them around the themes of Physical Space, the Human Geography both political and economic, the Fiscal Space, the Juridical Space, the Sacret Space, the "Parallel Societies" of Jews and Mudejars, the world of women, and the Murcian Crusade in Valencian Perspective. Each of the hundreds of elements comprising this five-year panorama is accompanied by the number of a document or documents from the forthcoming third volume of the Diplomatarium of King Jaume. The structure and dynamics of his new kingdom are revealed in this abundance of anecdotes, personal glimpses and self-enclosed narratives of those remarkable documents and their obiter dicta.