Aragonese Sicily as a Model of Late Medieval State Building

Resumen

This paper illuminates the role played by Sicilian cities in state building in the late Middle Ages through their involvement in the intense process of negotiations between the king and his subjects. This study heads in the opposite direction of the interpretations that negate the existence of municipal freedom and allege the existence of an exclusively top-down model of power relationships between king and kingdom. The focus is on one of the main royal officials in local government—the capitaneus or captain, who was intended to be the king’s instrument of control. The captain gradually came to represent the municipal will and his role was defined by decision-making interaction between the king and local governments. The dynamics surrounding the captaincy go well beyond the local sphere and will lead us to address the positive effects of the encounter of various political traditions in the Crown of Aragon. This in turn, made the establishment of new political balances possible, which had a crucial role in government building in Sicily