We want to know and be clearly informed’
Official records, unofficial correspondence and oral communication in the fourteenth-century Crown of Aragon (Majorca, Sardinia, Sicily)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12528847 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alessandro Silvestri (0000-0003-1750-4486, Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici (DIPSUM), Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 554-579 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Review of History Revue européenne d histoire (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1350-7486 • E-ISSN: 1469-8293 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13507486.2023.2201291 |
| OpenAlex | W4386627027 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
Starting in the 1340s, the Crown of Aragon strengthened its position in the Western Mediterranean by absorbing the Kingdom of Majorca (1343), reincorporating the realm of Sicily (1392) and securing its control over constantly rebellious Sardinia (1420). To govern those territories, which were distant from the royal court and separated by sea, the kings of Aragon developed a pervasive information strategy that facilitated the retrieval of data from their archives and the transformation of that data into useful knowledge that kept them informed about the three islands’ administration. The monarchs developed regional series of registers specifically dedicated to Majorca, Sardinia and Sicily in which orders and ordinances pertaining to the islands were recorded and they created or strengthened territorial archives for preserving records and accounts produced in the localities. They also relied on a network of accountable officers and informants who updated them via official and unofficial letters and, finally, they gathered intelligence using envoys who travelled continuously across the Mediterranean to inform the Crown on a vast range of affairs pertaining to the islands. This essay explores these topics during the long fourteenth century, using the records and correspondence preserved in various archives of the Catalan-Aragonese world and emphasizing the role of both the written word and oral communication for ruling a late-medieval composite polity like the Crown of Aragon
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Catalan · Crown (dentistry · Ethnology · Geography · German · Humanities · Political science · Politics · Polity · Realm · History · Law · Medieval History and Crusades · Medieval Iberian Studies · Medieval Literature and History
Europe in the late Middle Ages.
Fiscalidad real y municipal en la Mallorca del siglo XV
Swine at the chancery and locks to chests
The Liber feudorum maior of the counts of Barcelona
The New Culture of Archives in Early Modern Spain
Archives of the Mediterranean
The Paper Revolution in Europe
The Empirical Empire
| Highly cited | No |
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