Forging the Catholic Monarchy: Religious Orders as Elites in the Iberian Transatlantic World (16th Century)

Abstract

At the end of the 15th century, at least four fundamental historical facts converged to shape the missionary activity of religious orders in Europe: 1) the unification of the Iberian kingdoms represented by the crowns of Castile and Aragon; 2) the fall of the Moors in Granade in 1492; 3) the expansion of the exploration of the Atlantic by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, of which the discovery of America in the same year of 1492 was part; 4) the papal legitimation of Spanish expansion in unconquered lands through “royal patronage” and its equivalent, the Portuguese padroado. That same year, Elio Antonio de Nebrija (1441-1522), one of the main introducers of humanism in the Iberian Peninsula, published his Gramática Castellana (1492), as part of a major enterprise of cultural reform that would mark a radical turn in the history of the Spanish empire. Each of these facts has a particular history that we cannot analyze here. But it should be noted that they all converge in the same years and mark the beginning of a process that would continue during the following centuries.