Premio del Rey Recipients
The Premio del Rey was established in 1990 by a generous gift from Rev. Robert I. Burns, SJ. It is to be awarded biennially for the best book written on the medieval periods in Spain’s history and culture, 500–1516 CE.
2018
Michelle Armstrong-Partida, Defiant Priests: Domestic Unions, Violence, and Clerical Masculinity in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya (Cornell Univ. Press)
2016
Nuria Silleras-Fernandez, Chariots of Ladies: Francesc Eiximenis and the Court Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Cornell Univ. Press)
2014
Janina M. Safran, Defining Boundaries in al-Andalus: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Islamic Iberia (Cornell Univ. Press)
2012
Marie Kelleher, The Measure of Woman: Law and Female Identity in the Crown of Aragon (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press)
2010
Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Cornell Univ. Press)
2008
Katrin Kogman-Appel, Illuminated Haggadot from Medieval Spain: Biblical Imagery and the Passover Holiday (Penn State Univ. Press)
2006
Brian Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300 (Cambridge Univ. Press)
2004
Jeffrey Bowman, Shifting Landmarks: Property, Proof, and Dispute in Catalonia around the Year 1000 (Cornell Univ. Press)
2002
Adam Kosto, Making Agreements in Medieval Catalonia: Power, Order, and the Written Word, 1000-1200 (Cambridge Univ. Press)
2000
Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126-57 (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press)
1998
Simon Barton, The Aristocracy in 12th-Century León and Castile (Cambridge Univ. Press)
1996
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton Univ. Press)
1994
Teofilo Ruiz, Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press)
1992
Paul Freedman, The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (Cambridge Univ. Press)
1990
Bernard Reilly, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065-1109 (Princeton Univ. Press)
2018 Premio del Rey
Michelle Armstrong-Partida, University of Texas at El Paso
Defiant Priests: Domestic Unions, Violence, and Clerical Masculinity in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya (Cornell Univ. Press)
This meticulously researched and documented book uses diocesan visitation records to show that a majority of parish priests in late medieval Catalonia cultivated marriage-like relationships and utilized violence to maintain authority in their communities. Grounded in the history of gender, violence, and the family, and in regional and church history, Defiant Priests challenges commonplace assumptions about clerics in post-Gregorian, post-Lateran IV Europe. Michelle Armstrong-Partida’s evidence and conclusions will be important for Iberianists and medievalists of all stripes.