The emergence of the Galician language in administrative writing during the reign of Alfonso X (r. 1252–1284)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Historiographic tradition attributes to King Alfonso X the adoption of Castilian as the language of the monarchy. However, attention has rarely been drawn to the fact that during his reign, the use of Galician in notarial writing became the standard for legal documentation. Alfonso created a legal framework for royal notaries and promoted their establishment in his territories. The main hypothesis of this article is that, in line with the linguistic policy of the monarchy, this new body of notaries played a key role in the generalisation of Galician in administrative writing. That being so, the substitution of Latin by Romance in legal documentation did not reflect a desire for communicative efficiency so much as a policy of secularisation that challenged the ecclesiastical monopoly of written culture and sought the autonomy of the state from the church.