Grace and justice in the spanish monarchy: building peace amid conflict in Castile in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

This chapter examines the pattern of conflict-generation and peace-building in Castile during the early modern era. It includes a qualitative casuistic analysis of pardon appeals submitted to the king as a strategy to avoid harsh judicial sentences. The evidence allows us to reconstruct representative patterns for the Crown of Castile concerning the agents who operated in the judicial system and legal arenas, the resolution of penal conflicts, and the building of public peace. We also examine the meaning of royal grace as a superior power capable of resolving disputes, fixing judicial mistakes, and dispensing equitable decisions over a wide range of conflict scenarios. As such, this chapter presents a novel perspective on royal justice that emphasises the participative nature of justice and challenges the traditional viewpoints that have characterised Castilian justice during the modern era as a weak, corrupt, and repressive system.