Rex institutor scholarum: sapiential kingship in the Leonese-Castilian chronicles and the origins of the University of Palencia

Abstract

Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and Lucas de Tuy discourse on kingship is the most relevant Latin source available for scholars who deal with political ideology in the Spanish Thirteenth Century. The two chroniclers’ narrative of Alfonso VIII’s role in the foundation of the universities of Palencia and Salamnca should be analyzed taking into account the topos of Sapiential Kingship. This political theology was influential in any way, even if it were just a rethorical piece in praise of the Castilian King. These sapiential images of Kingship, being part of the proto-national Neo-gothic myth, were an enrichment of the Castilian political discourse as a new source of legitimation of power. The same narrative was being deployed by chroniclers in Thirteenth Century France, like the Chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis. The Rex sapiens political archetype, linked to Roman and Imperial themes as important as the renovatio gothorum or the translatio studii, is a key factor not only for a better understanding of Thirteenth Century Spanish Political Thought but also for a better contextualization of the data provided by the two chroniclers on the foundation of the first Spanish Universities.