Ten years later, Alfonso’s son, Sancho, with the support of the estates assembled at Valladolid, stripped the king of royal authority. Alfonso had fueled the unrest by executing the noblemen he suspected of treason without due process of law and by proposing to cede the kingdom of Ja en to his grandson, Alfonso de la Cerda, thereby threatening the unity of the Castilian kingdom. As O’Callaghan sees it, Alfonso’s downfall was due not to any inadequacy in his laws, whose aim was to build a “well-ordered and prosperous kingdom,” or to their incomplete application, or even to baronial opposition, but to the king’s “failure to adhere to the legal standards articulated in his law codes” (40, 100). Despite these setbacks, O’Callaghan insists, the Alfonsine Codes continued to be in force. To demonstrate their practical impact, he makes use of administrative records culled from published collections of documents from major ecclesiastical institutions and municipal councils. For example, to illustrate how the arbitration procedure laid out in the codes worked in real life, O’Callaghan examines the decades-long lawsuit between the monastery of San Salvador de O~na and the town of Fr ıas, both located in the Burgos province (133–34). Although the book mainly follows the sequence of topics in the Partidas, O’Callaghan occasionally deviates from it for the sake of the argument, prioritizing some matters over others. In the code, the entire first partida (24 titles) is dedicated to canon law, signaling the interdependence of secular and religious matters and emphasizing the king’s duty to enforce the church’s mandates. In O’Callaghan’s account, church-related topics take a back seat to the discussion of the king and his secular authority. One can surmise that this rearrangement of topics is intended to mirror the real situation in Castile, where the monarchy lacked sacramental character and openly dominated the church. Following this logic, the chapter on religious minorities should have occupied a more central place in the book. Despite their relatively small numbers, Jews and Muslims played a significant role in the affairs of the realm. The revolt of the Mud ejars (Castilian Muslims) comes up repeatedly in the book because of the heavy political and financial toll it took on Alfonso’s kingdom. The taxes from Jewish and Muslim aljamas (communities) helped the king finance his many expensive projects, and Jewish officials farmed his revenues, frequently clashing with local powers to advance royal interests. Yet religious minorities are relegated to the book’s penultimate chapter, placed, as they were in the Partidas, right after the section on crime and punishment. In the last chapter, the argument takes an unexpected turn when O’Callaghan asks: “What lessons can el Rex Magister teach us about the practice of government?” What follows is less a legal exegesis than an impassionate political discourse, a “mirror for princes” written for our own age. Taking his material directly from the Second Partida, O’Callaghan enumerates the necessary qualities of a political leader (he should “choose his words deliberately”; “not be longwinded”; always abide by the truth; never lie or brag; and practice “the virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice”), and finds the sitting US president distinctly lacking in these qualities. Unlike King Alfonso, who professed his intention to govern in the interests of all people (even if, in the end, he failed to practice what he preached), the president delights “in sowing division in the body politic by setting one group against another” (254–55). One can easily envision this fearless nonagenarian historian walking into the Oval Office and slamming his indictment of presidential character on its inhabitant’s desk. No doubt the president would ignore the lesson, as so many have done before him, but at his own peril: “Unaware or careless of the honor and majesty associated with the exalted office that he holds, our president has inflicted great injury upon it. The task of restoring respect for the presidency after his departure will be an onerous one. His fate is yet to be determined, but the inexorable march of the law may yet call him to account. He might learn a lesson from King Alfonso whose tyrannical behavior cost him his kingship” (256).
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