Concubinarios, herejes y usurpadores: justicia eclesiástica, comunicación y ‘propaganda’ en Las Montañas del obispado de Burgos en el siglo xv

Abstract

This essay examines ecclesiastical justice in fifteenth-century Castile by analyzing some examples from the northern part of the Diocese of Burgos, called Las Montañas, with the aim of observing two fundamental questions for understanding Castilian society: the use of the bishop’s justice as a social justification of the power of the Church and the use of the courts of justice as spaces of conformation and control of popular attitudes regarding ecclesiastical authority. First, we will explain the characteristics of the church’s ordinary justice. Secondly, we will analyze the organization of justice in the bishopric of Burgos and, thirdly, the ecclesiastical judicial labour in the territory of the Mountains in relation to three topics: clerics with concubines, religious deviations and the usurpation of goods and rights of the Church. Finally, this essay aims to observe the way that discourses emitted by ordinary Episcopal courts constituted a coercive form of religious communication and oral propaganda upon which the Church based its power of persuasion.