Disobedience, Resistance and Restoration of the Social Order in Castile and Leon in the Middle Ages: Customary Practices in the Face of Power

Reflection on the nature of obedience and resistance in the Early Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula can offer a glimpse of the politics, practices and intellectual production of the Iberian empires of the Early Modern period. This chapter argues that, in medieval times, resistance was conceived as a legitimate, and even obligatory, collective action for peasant communities, nobles and kings alike. Socialized in community religious-moral representations based on custom, its members confirmed their positions through public and performative practices of recognition. By way of counterpoint, the chapter ends with an example of the only resistance not considered legitimate: religious dissent. The conclusion is that a contextual and contingent analysis is necessary to account for the variety of systems of norms and values of the time and, consequently, the forms of response of the various groups involved.