Ruling through court: The political meanings of the settlement of disputes in Castile and Álava (ca. 900–1038)
Abstract
The settlement of justice has been seen in recent decades as a powerful tool of governance in the Early Middle Ages. This paper aims to study justice in the county of Castile between the tenth and eleventh centuries in order to observe different strategies of authority and consensus. These strategies acted in different political contexts and on different scales, and this paper focuses on the role played by counts, ecclesiastical aristocracies and rural societies in the construction of a...