Con mucha afecçión e buena voluntad por seruir a bien público: la noción «bien común» en perspectiva urbana. Cuenca en el siglo XV

Abstract

For the common good. The definition of the notion «common good» constitutes, not only but especially in the urban arena, one of the most relevant political mechanisms. In this case, these instruments directed to achieve two specific goals: in the first place, identifying what the notion «common good» could be or represent in each case; in the second place, formulating and reformulating the relationships woven not only inside the town but also outside it, taking the notion «common good» as an ideological referent used by a specific town, by each town, by all the cities and towns of the kingdom. Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyse, on the one hand, the way in which the urban world faced its own definition of what the notion «common good» was or should be; and, on the other hand, the way in which towns, in their relationships with other socio-political agents (and specifically the monarchy) manipulated this definition pursuing two main objectives: first, to shape the extent of those relationships; and second, to mould the form in which these relationships had to link towns and other agents, relativising the extent of the towns’ subjection to the latters through the affection of the satisfaction of the towns’ common good to the content of these relationships. To this end, I will use the city of Cuenca, in the fifteenth century, as a case study.