An ongoing process of State building
On the ground, the territory Alfonso X[1] inherited in 1252 was a recently constituted kingdom. His father Ferdinand III[2] had reunified León[3] with Castile in 1230, then conquered Andalusia[4] along with the ancient caliphate town of Cordoba[5] in 1236, then the (since 1171) Almohad capital of Seville in 1248. Alfonso X did not, strictly speaking, enlarge it but he had a firm grip on its totality. Conversely Philip the Fair[6] governed directly only the royal demesne; he helped growing it by joining Champagne to it. Major Feudal principalities (Burgundy[7] and especially the endlessly troublesome Flanders[8]) still existed and the apanage[9] system left sizeable provinces in the hands of other members of the royal family.
In respect of the Empire and the papacy, Castile enjoyed considerable autonomy. Alfonso X laid claims to the old Hispanic Empire on the basis of a local tradition that held that such a title fell to a sovereign ruling over three kingdoms. From 1256, he also pretended to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire since his mother was a German princess. Elected king of the Romans in 1257 at the same time as a rival, Richard of Cornwall[10],he continued to contend for the title until 1275. He remained the undisputed master of his clergy on whom Rome had little influence. One generation later, the kingdom of France seemed to be still at the conquest stage. Taking advantage of the Holy Roman Empire's weakness, it was only beginning to assert its full independence. The king had a very thorny relationship with pope Boniface VIII[11] whose power infringed on his own at two levels. At a fiscal level, the king of France lost the décimes[12] of his clergy after a first conflict between 1301 and 1303. Philip the Fair, excommunicated by the pope, sought to take him to court for heresy. The episode culminated in the “Anagni schiaffo” when the pope was humiliated shortly to die. The balance of power Philip achieved with his successor Clement V [13]on the strength of his own clergy's backing confirmed the king of France's victory, over the pope's theocratic claims. In 1312, the latter deserted the Knights Templar[14] in order to avoid the posthumous trial of Boniface VIII.
The build-up of the state met more resistance in Castile than in France. Alfonso X's imperial candidacy brought with it increased fiscal pressures. An assembly created by his father and representing the realm, the Cortes[15], was called very regularly to give its assent. Starting in 1255, the monarch sought to unify the law, first at municipal level with the Fuero Real[16]. Thereafter, between 1256 and 1265, he turned his attention to the law as a whole with the composition of a major law code the Siete Partidas[17] which offered a synthesis of medieval, Roman canon and feudal law, in the framework of his imperial bid. These centralising initiatives confronted him to multiple rebellions: four of them were led by powerful aristocratic families, one came from the realm's Muslim population and defiance brewed in the cities and in the church. In 1282, faced with the question of his succession, these hostile forces supported his second son Sancho[18]'s rebellion and Alfonso died disempowered. The fiscal question was also pivotal in Philip the Fair's France, owing to the growth of royal bureaucracy and to the war against Flanders. In order to overcome objections to this growing tax burden, he called in 1314 the Estates of the kingdom, the first “representative” assembly in France, a full sixty years later than Castile. The conflict with the papacy further made it clear that the king intended to be the only arbiter of justice. Yet dissent did not coalesce into revolt.
