Thursday, March 28

The mystery of the keys to the Kingdom of Mallorca offered to Carlos V and for whose copy the authorities paid 7,000 euros


In an atmosphere of unrestrained euphoria, Palma City Council presented last August one of the two long-awaited and revered ‘claus’ of the Regne de Mallorca (keys to the Kingdom of Mallorca). It was a historic moment. In the midst of the commemoration of the 500 years of the ‘Germanies’, an artisan revolt that, in parallel to the rebellion of the comuneros in the Crown of Castile, put the nobility and the upper classes of the island in check, and, with this, the stability of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Charles V was emperor, the Consistory wanted to show a unique piece of Majorcan gold work that the ‘agermanats’, faced with their imminent defeat, offered the monarch in 1521 as a symbol of peace and fidelity.

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placed on a cushion of red damask fabric with gold fringes, the government team exhibited the relic as a “historic find” after years of research and incessant search. During the act, the Mayor of Palma, José Hila, and the Councilor for Culture, Llorenç Carrió, explained that the precious Renaissance key, forged in gold, had passed into over the centuries by various owners until in 1849 it came into the hands of the Rothschild dynasty, an illustrious family of German-Jewish origin. Later, both ended up at Christie’s, which put them up for auction in 2000. While trace of one of them was lost, the other ended up in the collection of a buyer from Dallas (United States), who decided to give it up temporarily. to Palma.

Faced with the mystery that hangs over them, several historians have thoroughly investigated everything related to these unique jewels over the last decades, including Eulàlia Duran, author, among other works, of The revolutionary movement of the Germanies. Ideology and social consciousness (2021, Leonard Muntaner). In 1983, Duran published an article in the magazine Serra d’Or in which he highlighted that 16th-century Catalan goldsmithing is rich in documentary references, but few pieces have been preserved. “Most of those that have come down to us are of a religious nature: chalices, monstrances, patens, jewels, cult objects in general. The location of a goldsmith’s work of art is, therefore, an event, especially if it is of exceptional quality and, moreover, civil”. Such is the case, he added, of “the extraordinary golden keys of the Kingdom of Majorca”.

The location of a goldsmith’s work of art is an event, especially if it is of exceptional quality and, moreover, civil, such as the extraordinary golden keys of the Kingdom of Mallorca

Eulalia Duran
historian

Given the scope that, therefore, involved recovering the relic, the City Council, in the absence of certifying its authenticity, was proud to show a piece erected as an emblem of an era. Or, as the political group MÉS per Palma revealed, as a symbol of the defeat of the ‘Germanies’ as a popular revolt in which the popular classes “claimed values ​​such as freedom and social justice against authoritarianism and abuses of power ”.



From euphoria to fiasco: the key is not authentic

However, three months later, the revelation came out that shattered the expectations of the municipal team: the key that had been presented in the solemn act was not the original, but a historical recreation of the 19th century. Given this circumstance, Carrió stated that, despite the final dating, it does not match the initial hopes of having a contemporary object of the ‘Germanies’, it is a gold piece made by hand, so it continues to contain “a vindication of the legacy” of that episode.

Specifically, the Consistory paid a total of 7,000 euros for the special transfer of the piece as well as for insuring it against possible eventualities, according to municipal sources, who specify that Cort requested three budgets for it and finally opted for the more economical.

One of the people who had expressed misgivings about the authenticity of the piece was Marià Carbonell, professor of Modern Art History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​specializing, among other areas, in the fine arts of the Corona d’Aragó, as well as in Majorcan Renaissance and Baroque painting. Speaking to this medium, Carbonell explains that he had “more than reasonable doubts” that this piece was original. “I would not say a forgery, but a historical fake, that is, a historicist reconstruction of something that could have been in the 16th century from some old keys that have been preserved”, he abounds.

“Too perfect to be from the 16th century”

There are several elements that, according to the historian, denote that the key is not the authentic one: “The typology is too perfect to be from the 16th century. Of the few keys that have been preserved from that time, there is none of this noble material that is as perfect as this one.” On the key is an inscription: ‘To the Sacred, Caesarean, Catholic and Royal Majesty; behold the ‘Claus’ [llaves] of your Regne de Mallorca, that the magistrates and the fathers of the res publica, together with the inhabitants of this kingdom, present to His Majesty as a token of sincere fidelity’. “This inscription is written in Roman capital letter, that is, as if it were a XVI piece, imitating the ancient Roman letter. But it is clearly seen that it is a forgery, an invention”, asserts the professor, who also alludes to the decoration and enamel of the key, typical of the 19th century and not the 16th.

Not in vain, after the presentation of the key in the Town Hall, the conservator and director of the Castell de Bellver, Magdalena Rosselló, stated that, although in her first review the indications pointed to the authenticity of the key, it was necessary to carry out an investigation to background to certify it with greater security. “After 500 years we cannot take anything for granted,” she remarked.



The revolt against fiscal pressure and the privileges of the oligarchy

The enigmas thus hover over one of the most important symbols in the history of Mallorca, framed in a transcendental stage in the evolution of the island. As Eulàlia Duran explains in her article, the people of Mallorca, “like those of Valencia and in general those of all the countries of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown”, rose up “against the authorities and the privileged classes” between the years 1519 and 1523, the first of the reign of Charles I (Charles V of Germany), within the framework of what is known as the ‘Germanies’ movement, whose members protested against the increase in tax pressure and the concentration of property in the hands of the oligarchy .

And it is that, throughout the sixteenth century, popular revolts became a common social phenomenon at European level, showing throughout the continent the social imbalances arising from a deep economic recession caused by many wars and the increase in pressure fiscal. Uprisings against the seigneurial regime, such as the Peasants’ War in Germany (1524-1525), or uprisings against the power of urban oligarchies, the discredit of institutions and the growing authoritarianism of the modern State, such as the Ghent revolt (1539 -1540), are just a sample of European rebellions. In the Hispanic monarchy, the first modern dissidences were the revolt of the comuneros in Castile (1520-1521) and the ‘Germanies’ in the territories of the Corona d’Aragó.

In Mallorca, the objective of the rebels was to gain a share in the political and economic power of the island. “Simple people carried love for God, fidelity to the King and the desire to structure a more efficient, honest and fair administration in their blood”, affirmed the historian Álvaro Santamaría, in 1971, in the magazine mayurqah. The armed clashes and the subsequent repression caused thousands of deaths, with the main leaders of the revolt executed after the royal troops took control of the island, and all this at a time of restructuring of the system after the crisis that devastated feudalism . As historians point out, the restructuring was resolved in numerous cases with the defeat of the peasants and the imposition of abusive conditions by the landowners, allies of Carlos V.



In 1841, the historian Antonio Furió, in his Historical memory of the uprising of the Mallorcan community members in 1520, recalled the end of the revolt in this way: “This is how these champions of freedom gloriously ended their careers, whose memory has always been cared for by the tyranny of blackening… Nothing is more just, nothing more decorous, nothing more laudable than defending national freedoms, oppose tyranny and die, if necessary, victims of its fury. Colom and his illustrious companions of martyrdom knew how to imitate the heroic example set for them from the gallows by the champions of Castilian liberties in the fields of Villalar. They died not as assassins, but as valiant captains whose harness was broken and their lance splintered, disastrous fate delivering them into the power of their adversaries.”

It was in this context, “in this distressing end of the year 1522”, says Duran, that the gold keys were ordered to be manufactured in order to ingratiate themselves with Emperor Carlos V. According to the Baron de Gurrea, Lieutenant General of the Kingdom of Mallorca , the initiative and financing were carried out by various individuals. “And these individuals: wouldn’t that be an ambiguous way of calling the authorities ‘agermanades’, not recognized as such?” the researcher asks. The historian recounts how, once they were made, the merchant Bartomeu Ventallol was appointed to take them personally to the emperor, who was in Valladolid at the time. He, however, decided to reject them. Ventallol returned to the island with the two relics.

The keys, testimony of a revolutionary mentality

Months later, on March 24, 1523, Ventallol would be sentenced to the galleys after having served, “with little success”, according to Duran, as a messenger for the twinned authorities in October 1522, when the navy anchored in the bay of the Ciutat de Mallorca . The golden keys returned to the hands of the jurors of Mallorca, who in turn handed them over to Gurrea. In the following years, the emperor unsuccessfully tried to recover them.

Over the centuries, several Majorcan scholars tried to trace the jewels, “magnificent and unusual works of art” which, as Duran underlined in the magazine Serra d’Or, “they have the double virtue of being goldsmith jewels and at the same time a graphic testimony of a revolutionary mentality, like a swan song that preceded the surrender of the Ciutat de Mallorca on March 7, 1523”. The researcher also highlights that those who paid for and commissioned them “were obviously in tune with the modern and best Renaissance currents.” “Socially more advanced than their opponents, culturally the ‘agermanats’, or at least their leaders, also showed great refinement,” she adds. At least that is how it came off the keys to the Kingdom of Mallorca, a symbol of an ascending social class, prior to the bourgeoisie and at the same time traditional and modern.



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