**1. Introduction**

On 21 March 1522, in Xàtiva, the second largest city of the kingdom of Valencia, a man dressed as a sailor climbed up on a catafalque, sword in hand, flanked by two other men playing trumpets. Surrounded by four harquebusiers and hundreds of soldiers, he made a speech as solemn as a sermon in which he declared himself the legitimate heir to the Trastámara dynasty and a challenger to the throne of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. He also acted as a spokesman for doctrines later deemed heretical by the Inquisition: he announced the imminent end of the world, revealed to him by Elijah and Enoch, declared victory against the Antichrist and stated that the 'Quaternity' included the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Sacrament, before asking for the goods collected at Xàtiva Collegiate church to be used in the war and to help the poor (Pérez García and Catalá 2000, pp. 140–74; Nalle 2002; Duran [1983] 2004, pp. 283–318).

The reconstruction of this figure and his speech is based on witness declarations at the Spanish Inquisition tribunal and on chroniclers who were generally against the Revolt of the Germanias, which shook the kingdom of Valencia between 1519 and 1522 with civil war-style battles between supporters of the crown and the viceroy on one side and the rebels on the other (García Cárcel 1981; Duran 1982; Vallés 2000; Pérez García 2017). In contrast, here, I aim to situate the Hidden King, or *El Encubierto*, and the ideas he echoed within a prophetic, millennialist tradition applied to the Crown of Aragon from the thirteenth century onwards. This approach will shed light on how such an eccentric figure, of obscure

origins and enveloped in a supernatural aura, embodied by various individuals, was able to revitalise the dying Revolt of the Germanias and was hunted until the mid-sixteenth century by the courts and viceroys of Valencia, who saw these 'hidden' characters as a threat to royal power, due to their express desire to supplant it. In particular, it is relevant to examine how the Hidden King's epiphany of 1522 was staged through narrations and ideas that had been circulating for centuries, both in the Court and as part of popular belief in the Crown of Aragon. To do so, images and texts will be used to explain the figure's appearance and suggestion, as well as the subversive fallout of the episode that led to subsequent repression, still seen as late as 1541 (Bercé 1990, pp. 317–23; Pérez García and Catalá 2000).

Under the Crown of Aragon grew an eschatological vision that combined the contribution of Joachim of Fiore and of the Franciscan radicalism of the Beguines and the Fraticelli with the Ghibelline imperial legacy of the Staufen and Hispanic neo-Gothic prophetism, which longed for the full restoration of Christian dominion on the Iberian Peninsula over Islam (Pou [1930] 1996; Milhou 1983; Aurell 1992; Reeves [1969] 1993; Rousseau-Jacob 2015). Although there has been a broad and detailed analysis of the dissemination and reworking of an eschatological philosophy that foresaw a sacred mission for the monarchs of the Crown of Aragon thanks to various European and Hispanic traditions that spoke of an Emperor of the Last Days, a Hidden King or a New David called upon to defeat the Antichrist and establish the millennium before the Final Judgement (Milhou 1982; Aurell 1997; Duran 2004, pp. 157–350), there has been little trace of images that represented these messianic interpretations of Aragonese royalty. This gap in historiography is particularly surprising given the attention paid to the image of royal power in this series of kingdoms and principalities united by a monarchy that was aware of the value of visual media to strengthen its authority vis-à-vis rival powers in the European and Mediterranean area and other institutions, such as the Church, Parliament (the Corts), the nobility and urban powers (García Marsilla 2000; Español 2002; Serrano 2015a). Furthermore, research into representation of the king has tended to focus on other aspects of his image through portraits and other figurative media, as well as ceremonial, coronation, funerary and majestic images, rather than on the nuanced manifestation of the monarch as a messianic subject (Hedeman 1991; Perkinson 2009; Vagnoni 2017). Aragon was not a sacral monarchy, but a singularly messianic charisma could be expected from kings whose authority relied on genealogy, conquest and the law of the land; even if no member of the House of Aragon was ever canonized, expressions of piety and millennialist prophecies contributed to establish a transcendental profile of monarchy (Jaspert 2010, pp. 183–218).

The point of departure will be the hypothesis that some royal images and apparently conventional religious iconography are compatible with readings based on sources of prophetic and millennialist thought, which help us to understand the intentions and values behind particular figurative and performative epiphanies of the dynasty that ruled the Crown of Aragon from James I (1213–1276) until Ferdinand II the Catholic (1476–1516). The use of metaphor and allegory, the commemorative function and the implicit action in eschatological visions persuaded and informed observers of events, prophecies and missions that wrapped the Aragonese kings in a uniquely charismatic aura, staged through images and ceremonies. It is even worth wondering whether or not eschatological images of the monarchy interfered in royal power's other forms of representation in the Crown of Aragon, thus making it unique. The final part of this article will discuss the possibility that the power vacuum created in 1516 by the death of the monarch may have led to the subversion of a collection of images and ideas that, although established in theory to praise royal authority, ended up challenging Emperor Charles V and royal officials in the Valencia of the Germanias.

With these purposes in mind, I will analyse the images in their specific context, which is often possible to reconstruct thanks to the abundance and diversity of the written sources available on the subject, with a view to identifying their promoters' intentions, the function they fulfilled and the reception of these images in the visual culture of this time and place.

### **2. The Messianic Prophetism of the Kings of the Crown of Aragon**

Apocalyptic thought determines the meaning of human history from the creation of the world and the coming of Christ and awaits the Last Judgement following a marked, precise temporal structure and trajectory, which is revealed in the final book of the Christian Bible as the definitive battle between good and evil and may be prophesied by visionary spirits. This belief is accompanied by the feeling, which sometimes seems to become a reality, that the end of this world is imminent and foretold by signs and events that will herald a millennium of peace and happiness after the defeat of the Antichrist until the final battle with Satan and the redemptive installation of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 20–21; Cohn [1957] 1970; McGinn 1979; McGinn 1994).

The battle against Islam and the expansion of the Christian kingdoms was inspired by the predictions of a tradition named 'neo-Gothic' due to its longing for the restoration of the old Hispania. The Islamisation of the Iberian Peninsula was considered punishment for the fall of the Visigoth kingdom and required redemption through the *Reconquista*, which had been heralded by prophecies attributed to Saint Isidore of Seville and was recalled by thirteenth-century chronicles such as *Historia gothica* by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada or *Estoria de Espana* by Alfonso X of Castile. These ideas, which drove the campaigns against *al Andalus* during the Middle Ages, predicted the definitive defeat of Islam and were invoked until the conquest of Granada in 1492 and the final expulsion of the Moors in 1609 (Milhou 2000, pp. 12–13).

In the Crown of Aragon, the royal chronicles of James I, Bernat Desclot, Ramon Muntaner and Peter IV the Ceremonious, written in Catalan and not lacking in narrative power, o ffered a providentialist view of the king's role in the war as a legislator and Christian knight in the battle against Islam and foreign enemies (Hauf 2004). These royal chronicles contained numerous predictions of a glorious destiny for the monarchs of Aragon, all the way from their birth to the moment of taking on fearsome enemies, or simply as instruments of the divine will. In his chronicle, James I told of the vision of a Franciscan from Navarre who predicted that a king of Aragon named James would restore Christianity in Spain (James I [1883] 1887, chp. 389, II, pp. 509–10). Later, Desclot and Muntaner, writing about the king's birth, described the miracles that accompanied it, to which the king himself had alluded in his chronicle (Riquer 2000, pp. 49–93; James I [1883] 1887, chp. 5, I, pp. 9–11; chp. 48 I, pp. 100–2). Muntaner also recalled a sibyl's prophecy about James II's triumph in Sardinia, seeing the pallets on the Aragonese coat of arms as rods that would punish enemies: 'And I wish you all to know that this is the lion of whom the Sibyl tells us; he with the device of the pales, will cast down the pride of many a noble manor' (Muntaner [1920–1921] 2000, p. 545, chp. 272). Identifications with biblical heroes such as David and Moses can also be found in these texts to justify acts of war and claim divine support for the Aragonese cause. For instance, Peter III, who rescued Sicily from Angevin rule, was compared with Moses as the emancipator of the Israeli people in Egypt, while the defeat of the House of Anjou was equated with the disasters su ffered by the Pharaoh and his army in the Exodus ( Ávila and Antoni 2007).

Peter III's claim to the Staufen legacy through his wife, Constance, and the War of the Sicilian Vespers (1282–1286) fostered the assimilation of Joachim of Fiore's prophetism and its pseudo-Joachimite offshoots. This approach was characterised by political support of Ghibelline power as an agen<sup>t</sup> for spiritual renovation and a tool to reform a corrupt Church, which wasted no time identifying with the Emperor of the Last Days of Judeo-Byzantine millennialist tradition (Alexander 1978; Milhou 1982; Reeves [1969] 1993, pp. 306–14; Möhring 2000; Potestà 2014). It was Arnau de Vilanova who initiated a radical, pseudo-Joachimite shift in these prophetic traditions in a number of his writings and identified Frederick III of Sicily, of Aragonese stock, as the protagonist of the *renovatio mundi*, which was to purify the Church and Christianity in general, convert Muslims and establish true evangelical life (Lee et al. 1989; Reeves [1969] 1993, pp. 314–18; Rodríguez de la Peña 1996–1997; Phillimore 2004; Rodríguez 2008). In the prophecy *Vae mundo in centum annis*, he heralded the arrival of a king, a New David, who would destroy the power of Islam in Spain and Africa until establishing a universal monarchy; the Emperor of the Last Days would then turn into a bat, which would emerge at the end of days to

defeat the Antichrist, restore the Temple of Jerusalem and establish the millennium before the Final Judgement. Vilanova's allegories of the bat and of the dragon of the Apocalypse, previously associated with Frederick II, became symbols of messianic hope embodied by the Crown of Aragon's royals. This bore significant political connotations within the context of the exaltation of the dynasty and its conflicts with the Papacy during its Mediterranean expansion in Sicily, Sardinia and, later, Naples.

Similar prophetic ideas and images were reworked by Catalan-language authors throughout the fourteenth century, as attested by a host of preserved manuscripts (Bohigas 1920–1922; Bohigas 1928–1932; Bohigas [1928] 1982); sources collected by (Rousseau-Jacob 2015). Joachimite piece *Summula seu Breviloquium super concordia Novi et Veteris Testamenti*, written in the mid-fourteenth century, is one of the most examined examples of a reshaping of prophetic expectations in accordance with religious and political circumstances. An interpretation of history was applied to contemporary events to create the sense of a climax, of the imminent arrival of a new era, heralded by extraordinary signs and figures, which would leave the calamities of the present behind and would pave the way for the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth (Lee et al. 1989; Perarnau 1991; Hauf 1996).

The Crown of Aragon thus became the centre of eschatological expectations in the fourteenth century, taking on the role Jean de Roquetaillade had assigned to the French monarchy (Aurell 1990, pp. 319–33). While royal chronicles injected providential meaning into the historical mentality of the courtly and ecclesiastic circles that read them, the Joachimite or pseudo-Joachimite prophetism put forward by Arnau de Vilanova, by Peter John Olivi in *Postilla super apocalypsim*, by the *Breviloquium* and by an anonymous writer in *De triplici statu mundi*, among others, would reach wider groups linked to the Beguines, Lullism, Spiritual Franciscans, and all those who longed for a *renovatio mundi* faced with the impending Final Judgement, through preaching and circulation through other media (Rousseau-Jacob 2015). Aspirations to reform the Church, to convert Muslims and Jews definitively and to install a regime of justice and peace after the defeat of the Antichrist won many over, thanks to the power of the millennialist beliefs and hopes that grew stronger with every crisis (Lerner 1983; Hauf 1996). These prophecies contained a hint of subversion that made their followers a target for surveillance and persecution by the ecclesiastic authorities, such as inquisitor Nicolau Aymeric, or were tolerated when distributed in the vulgar tongue alongside educational, pious materials that could be read and shared aloud, when they took the form of brief, simple texts, such as the summary in Catalan of Roquetaillade's *Vademecum in tribulatione* for laypeople (Hauf 1996; Kneupper 2016).

The monarchy was aware of the usefulness of these ideas to surround the figure of the king of the Crown of Aragon with messianic connotations, thus placing upon him, as Brother Dolcino had done with Frederick III of Sicily, hopes for Church reformation, the crusade against the infidels, the conversion of the Jews and the defeat of the forces of evil, which were conveniently equated with Islam, rival powers and even the Papacy when it opposed the Crown's plans or sides had to be taken in the times of the Western Schism. The kings made use of these expectations on solemn occasions such as speeches before their kingdoms' courts, evoking the feats of their forebears and classical and biblical examples with persuasive rhetoric and as much emphasis as they used to highlight the providential mission that ensured their subjects' support (Cawsey 2002).

Author Francesc Eiximenis (c. 1330–1409), who moved between the Court and an urban audience, was partial to preaching and the unorthodox spiritual aspects of the Beguines and other dissident movements and found himself unable to avoid conflict with the monarchy's interests. He irritated John I by evoking prophecies that heralded a change in the political order, including the end of all monarchies (except the French one), the taking of Jerusalem, the conversion of the Jews and the establishment of millennialist popular justice (Viera 1996). Following a reprimand from the monarch and the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1391, he changed his mind and removed the most problematic passages from his book *Dotzé del Crestià* in order to postpone the arrival of the millennium and safeguard the Aragonese monarchy's mission and its alliance with the Papacy represented by Pedro de Luna's title of Benedict XIII (Bohigas [1928] 1982; Lerner 2001, pp. 101–10). His contemporary saint Vincent Ferrer (c. 1350–1419) wrote an exposition and defense of his apocalyptic views in 1412 and announcing the

arrival of the Antichrist, supposed to be born in 1403, and the imminent end of the world was the core of his preaching which contributed to increase apocalyptic expectations throughout his mission (Daileader 2016, pp. 137–59).

Meanwhile, in his 1365 visions, Infant (Prince) Peter of Aragon (1305–1381), who began to practise as a Franciscan in 1358, saw Henry II of Trastámara as the Spanish lion that would crush Islam, free the Jews and go to the Holy Land to worship at the tomb of Jesus, thus discrediting the French monarchy, in which Roquetaillade had put his trust. In one of his visions in Franciscan convent of Valencia, he heard a voice that urged him to join the Castilian troops against the Muslims, making a comparison with the Israelite army entering the promised land (Pou [1930] 1996, pp. 461–561; Lerner 1983, pp. 135–53; Genís 2002, pp. 129–39). This providential support of the Trastámara dynasty doubled in value when, as part of the Compromise of Caspe (1412) Ferdinand of Antequera was named as the new Aragonese monarch. This meant that the two political branches of apocalyptic prophetism—the Castilian neo-Gothic version, which backed the Trastámara family, and the Franciscan Ghibelline variety, inspired directly or indirectly by the Joachimites—converged on the throne occupied by Ferdinand's sons, Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1416–1458) and John II (1458–1476). Ferdinand II (1476–1516) would make consistent use of prophecies, combining Castilian Neo-Gothic contributions, which foretold the restoration of unity and the liquidation of al-Andalus, with the apocalyptic predictions of the New David, restorer of Christianity, reformer of the Church, converter of Jews and champion who would lead the crusade to Africa and then to Jerusalem as a universal monarch (Duran 2004, pp. 157–258; Duran and Requesens 1997, pp. 50–67).

Prophetism strengthened Ferdinand II's royal power and his legitimacy as the king consort of Castile through his marriage with Isabelle I, who was focused on defending her right to the throne against her adversaries. In 1486, Rodrigo Ponce de León, marquis of Cádiz, identified Ferdinand as the New David, the Hidden King and the rightful successor to Fernando III who would conquer first Granada then Jerusalem and restore Christianity. Then, in 1495, when visiting the Catholic Kings, German humanist and traveller Hieronymus Münzer cited a prophecy attributed to Joachim of Fiore to recognise them as the monarchs that were to defeat Islam definitively, take the Holy Places and evangelise a new world (Milhou 1983; Milhou 2000).

But the forces of millennialist prophetism could easily take on a subversive appearance. The death of Ferdinand II in 1516 left a vacuum that the new king, and emperor from 1519 onwards with the title of Charles V, could not fill; his figure was moulded as the humanist ideal of a Christian prince, which created a fracture in Hispanic political eschatology (Pérez García 2007, pp. 212–22).

### **3. Anachronistic Images, Prophetic Images?**

Recognising reflections, connotations or rhetorical figures of an apocalyptic prophetic message and of the political eschatology of the Crown of Aragon in the preserved images available is not an easy task. It is assumed that a research strategy based on reading clues, traces and legends could o ffer additional insight of otherwise unnoticed intentions in images of the past (Ginzburg [1989] 2013, pp. 87–113). Prophecy revealed what was hidden. The message may appear embedded, even encrypted, in artworks and resist conventional iconographic analysis. Revealing it requires much more than examining texts and comparing with other earlier or contemporary images. Firstly, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century visual culture was only one pillar of what Zumthor (1987) called the triangle of medieval culture: oral expression, texts and figurative images interact in a field of communication and representation that involves all kinds of audiences. Although scholarly e fforts have mainly focused on studying prophetic manuscripts in circulation, it is important to remember that most people were introduced to these ideas via oral means: speeches, sermons, narrations and readings. Moreover, the mnemonic value of images and the use of them in preaching sugges<sup>t</sup> the multiplicity of meanings each story or figure may take on, codified by allegory and other rhetorical devices that make them enticing to decipher and that stick in the memory (Carruthers 1990; Bolzoni 2002; Baschet and Dittmar 2015; Serrano 2016). Reading or hearing a prophecy might well lend a messianic sense to royal

epiphanies while a rhetorical allusion to an iconographic type or a particular image could put familiar representations under a di fferent light in an eschatological context.

From a reception point of view, many of these images are retrospective, historical to an extent, and anachronistic, because they were created at another time or were projected to the future through memory and imagination and, in any case, continued to be observed and interpreted long after the time of creation (Didi-Huberman 2000; Nagel and Wood 2010). Their potential prophetic value comes down to their shaping of an account of the past, their structuring of it so that the future can be glimpsed and the end of time can be heralded, as is characteristic of the apocalyptic imagination. In addition to their historical or legendary character, most of these depictions were referring to a mythic past but were significant models for the present of their viewers and acquired a prospective value. They heralded the arrival of a messianic king who would fulfil prophetic expectations of victory, religious reform and conversion. Moreover, cyclical commemoration at urban festivals encouraged new interpretations of the past events adapted to day-to-day concerns and problems. Reception of images and performances appealed to irrational expectations and feelings di fficult to read apart from formal and written records, but might be embedded in clues and traces present in the local historical context.

## *3.1. The Hero's Task*

The monarchs, now cast as the protagonists of grea<sup>t</sup> feats, were soon represented in a variety of visual media inspired by the courtly exaltation of o fficial chronicles (Serra Desfilis 2002; Serrano 2011a, 2011b; Molina 2013). The battles evoked through paintings had taken place at a specific time, but their figuration played with a sense of ambiguity in the representation of time and space. The scene contains barely any topographical information and time seems to stand still at a certain point of a cyclical journey that renews in pursuit of an end. This cyclical view of time set by liturgy and the festive calendar encouraged expectations of the return and periodical renewal of the grea<sup>t</sup> events of the history of salvation and, by extension, of human history. Within this context, we can reconsider battle scenes such as the paintings of Alcañiz Castle (Teruel), of the Saint George altarpiece (London, Victoria and Albert Museum 1217–1864, Figure 1), of the altarpiece dedicated to the same saint at Jérica Town Hall, and of Alfonso V's prayerbook (Psalter and Hours, Dominican use, London, British Library, Additional 28962, f. 78r), as well as the piece painted by Pere Niçard in Mallorca, circa 1468–1470 (Mallorca, Museu Diocesà). On the murals at Alcañiz, it is possible that the representations of the taking of a city by the king of Aragon or the images of a military campaign with participation from knights of the Order of Calatrava, the lords of the castle, allude to episodes such as the taking of Valencia (1238) and the crusade against Almería at the time of James II (1309–1310), that Arnau de Vilanova encouraged with his work *Regimen castra sequentium*, as a reminder of the battle against Islam (Español 1993, pp. 30–32; Vilanova 1981).

The altarpieces in Valencia and Mallorca were commissioned by the brotherhoods dedicated to Saint George and were deeply rooted in each city. Both brotherhoods saw James I's conquest as a decisive, historic event, during which divine favour had been displayed through the miraculous appearance of Saint George next to the Christian armies, just as he had helped the crusader army in their taking of Antioch. This episode was commemorated annually with a popular festival in which the whole urban community participated and the royal standard substituted the presence of the monarch himself. According to the classic doctrine of the king's two bodies, the heir embodies dynastic continuity (Kantorowicz [1957] 1981), while at these events, the flag evoked the figure of the king, who was rarely present in the city for the occasion, to renew the meaning of the conquest as a crusade against the infidels. The standard bearer (the Criminal Justice in Valencia, the younges<sup>t</sup> Juror in Mallorca) was therefore dressed like the king, with armour, surcoat, gloves, helmet and winged dragon crest. The conquest sermon given during the festival in Valencia and Mallorca was based on passages from the royal chronicle or *Llibre dels fets* that described the taking of the two cities, and conferred a providentialist power on the events considered a crusade while projecting them onto the audience's present circumstances (Narbona 2003, pp. 173–84; Granell 2017b; Molina 2018). The

depiction in altarpieces of the battle of El Puig with saint George fighting side by side the Christian army referred not only to a historical event, but refreshed the crusader ideal in 15th century Valencia and might well have inspired Germanias rebels a hundred years later, if we account for the prominent role of the Saint George brotherhood at the beginning of the revolt and their meetings taking place in Saint George's church where the retable now in Victoria and Albert Museum was then on display (Pérez García 2017, pp. 33–54; Gil 2019, pp. 46–68). A miniature with a similar compositional structure is included in Alfonso V's psalter-book of hours, alongside the prayers the king must recite before entering battle against the infidels: *preces pro intrandum bellum contra paganos* (f. 78) from psalm 78, with a lament for the destruction of Jerusalem and the invocation of divine assistance. The royal emblems of millet and an open book personalise the king of Aragon's heraldry, which appears to be a crusader and a fleeing army, which, by its weapons and saddles, is characterised as Muslim (Woods-Marsden 1990, pp. 14–15; Español 2002–2003, pp. 107–8; Molina 2011, pp. 106–7).

**Figure 1.** Battle scene from the Altarpiece of Saint George, Valencia. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1217–1864. Used by permission.

The idea of the crusade had been encouraged by the so-called Reconquista, but in terms of political eschatology, it went beyond conquering Iberian territories and aimed to take the battle against Islam to north Africa and Egypt and, ultimately, take back Jerusalem. This mission had been foreseen for the New David, or the bat in Vilanova's prophecy. Its millennialist connotations are present in the representation of the Battle of Milvian Bridge on the Santa Cruz altarpiece at the Museo de Bellas Artes of Valencia (n. inv. 254), where Constantine's troops appear as a crusader army defeating Maxentius's legions, which are dressed and represented with signs of otherness associated with Muslims: dark skin, turbans and Andalusian saddled horses. Constantine himself is depicted twice: first envisioning the Christian sign of victory and then leading his army with a golden cross and the imperial eagle on his badge. This altarpiece, commissioned by Valencian official Nicolau Pujades, who was responsible for the Mudejars of Valencia and carried out diplomatic missions in the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, responds to the crusader spirit that drove the two expeditions against the Barbary Coast (the Armada Santa) triggered by the attack against Torreblanca (Castellón) and the theft of the Eucharist from the local church (Díaz 1993, pp. 142–201; Sastre 1996). King Martin I himself congratulated the jurors of Valencia on joining the punitive expedition against the Barbary Coast, evoking Saint Paulinus of Nola's personal offering to rescue his captive parishioners and examples from Roman history of the battle against Carthage: 'and you, without a doubt, will have power over the successors to the aforementioned Africans, as Africa is today known as the Barbary Coast' (Rubió 1908–1921, pp. 1, 390–91). It is plausible that the monarch may have wanted to recognise himself either in the victorious Constantine at Milvian Bridge or in the image of Heraclius returning the cross relic to Jerusalem in the final scene on the altarpiece (Figure 2), as he was a keen collector of relics and perhaps hoped, next to Benedict XIII, to take on a similar role to that of the Emperor of the Last Days evoked by Eiximenis at that time. In fact, Martin I had written to his son to recover a sword of Constantine from the royal palace in Palermo (Serrano 2015b, p. 661) and the aim of the 1398 and 1399 military expeditions was to retrieve the consecrated hosts of Torreblanca.

**Figure 2.** Altarpiece of the Holy Cross: Heraclius returns the Holy Cross to Jerusalem. Valencia, Museo de Bellas Artes, n. inv. 254. Used by permission.

The coronation of Ferdinand of Trastámara in Zaragoza and the 1414 royal entry to Valencia were occasions used to extol the new king. As he was elected as part of the disputed Compromise of Caspe (1412) as a descendent on the female line, with the decisive support of Saint Vincent Ferrer, it was important to legitimise his ascent to the throne with figurative, extravagant language. Beyond genealogy, Ferdinand had earned the right to the throne through conquest, by subduing his rival candidate, James of Urgell, through force. Ferdinand's success against Islam on the peninsula during the Granada War acted as a further endorsement of the king. The jurors of Valencia congratulated Ferdinand on taking Antequera in a 1410 letter, 'praying the Lord helps you to fulfil your holy purpose of conquering and submitting that perverse nation to your hands, populating its kingdom with faithful Christians and adorning it with churches and altars where God's name will be praised,' (Rubio [1985] 2003, p. 213). A Valencian tapestry from the time portrayed this Battle of Antequera (García Marsilla

2011, pp. 180–81). At the coronation, Ferdinand was presented allegorically as being favoured by fortune, blessed by the Virgin and a hero in the fight against the infidels (Salicr ú 1995; Massip 2010). It was no coincidence that these themes came up again on the carriages with tableaux vivants that paraded through Valencia for his royal entry, following the same route as the Corpus Christi procession (Narbona 2003, pp. 85–100; Cárcel and García 2013; Massip 2013–2014). A millennialist tone was evident, partly inspired by the figure of Saint Vincent Ferrer, to whom one of the carriages was dedicated (Calvé 2019), and was used to strengthen Ferdinand's legitimacy. The emblems of the gri ffin, the eagle and the tower alongside the Virgin in the garden combined a chivalric appearance with the devotion to the Virgin Mary that distinguished the new king (Ruiz 2009, pp. 74–81). Meanwhile, other carriages, such as those of the Wheel of Fortune and the Seven Ages of Man, lent themselves to more messianic connotations, like the idea of a monarch chosen to rule a world heading to its last age before the millennium (Massip 2013–2014).

### *3.2. Between Moses and Solomon: A Legislator by Divine Mandate*

In the case of Valencia and Mallorca, the monarch had also acted as the founder of the kingdoms by granting them their own laws and institutions. From James I, the role of the king as lawgiver was conceived not only on the basis of Roman imperial codes but also implied a theological aspect, since God had appeared as legislator through the ten commands. Veneration of the king and his direct connection to God as lawgiver of the Old Covenant did have figurative consequences, serving as a way to exalt the royal image beyond conventional iconography. This was confirmed by the images of the king as legislator heading the Furs de València and Privilegis del Regne de Mallorca codices. These two manuscripts are especially interesting in terms of the di fferent routes of association with the divine they propose. On the eve of the decisive Corts sessions of 1329–1330 in Valencia, when Alfonso IV declared the text *lex universalis et unica dicti Regni*, the authorities ordered a manuscript of the *Furs de la ciutat e regne de València*, a collection of the laws passed by monarchs from James I the Conqueror until that time (Villalba 1964, pp. 33–36; Ramón 2007, pp. 30–33). At the beginning of the book, we find illustrations of the monarchs sitting upon a throne in the shape of a bench, holding a sword as a symbol of justice, as the embodied sources of the city's and the kingdom's exclusive laws. These portrayals aimed to highlight both the nature of the laws and the monarch's role as founder and legislator. One of them displays a king, likely Alfonso IV, before Christ in the border image in f. 113r of the Valencian Furs, receiving the book (Ramón 2007, p. 32; Serrano 2008, pp. 62–70). Alternatively, *Llibre de franqueses i privilegis del Regne de Mallorca* (c. 1334–1341) goes further by depicting a monarch-legislator *in sede majestatis*, sitting on a throne, under an extravagant canopy and flanked by angels who crown him while he delivers the codex of privileges being copied by the scribe at the bottom (Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca, codex 1, f. 13v, Figure 3). The supposed intention of both opulent manuscripts was for the city governments to reassert the freedoms and privileges of both kingdoms, but this assertion was compatible with the figurative exaltation of royal power embodied by the providential monarch, not to be seen as an individual portrayal, but rather as a generic, dynastic image of the founder and original legislator of Mallorca and Valencia, as confirmed by the heraldry displayed in the border. To some extent, the Mallorcan codex signals that royal power is of divine origins and is consistent with the pattern of an 'in majesty' image, but this is subject to the confirmation of the privileges updated by scribe Romeu des Poal when he copies them onto the manuscript (Escandell 2012, pp. 333–37). Certainly, these symbolic depictions lacked of apocalyptic sense, but prepared the ground for a messianic perception of the king as *sacra majestas*, enhanced by a political propaganda nurtured by Ghibelline and Vilanova's prophetism in order to consolidate union of a Mediterranean power under the crown. Kingship was not only law-centered by involved also a new sense of authority and power in coronation ceremonies, funerals and speeches to the parliaments as much as royal imagery to represent a king of justice, never defeated (Corrao 1994, pp. 133–56; Serrano 2016, pp. 392–422).

**Figure 3.** Llibre de franqueses i privilegis del Regne de Mallorca. Mallorca, Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca, codex 1, f. 13v. Used by permission.
