Articles

Making the Case for Spain’s Possession of Jerusalem: Diego de Valdés’s De dignitate regum regnorumque Hispaniae

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Abstract

This article offers a brief textual history, summary, analysis, and complete edition of Chapter 17 of Diego de Valdés’s De dignitate regum regnorumque Hispaniae (1602). This little-studied text merits our attention as a uniquely layered assertion of Spanish rights to the throne of Jerusalem in the early modern period. Valdés is unique among his contemporaries in not simply insisting on the legal validity of Spanish pretensions to Jerusalemite kingship but, more interestingly, in situating such claims within the broader historical sweep of dynastic transmissions of the title from the eleventh century to the present. Valdés’s granular view of the history of the title yields a diachronic critique of Spain’s perennial rival, France, that at the same time inscribes a more polyphonic set of Spanish connections to the throne of Jerusalem across the centuries.

Keywords: Spain, France, Kingdom of Jerusalem, Philip III of Spain, Diego de Valdés