Técnica, tiempo y ornato: el reloj público en Castilla entre los siglos XIV-XVI

Abstract

History of Spanish horology is barely known. Few researches have been carried out about it, most of them from the perspective of local history and each one is focused on a particular clock or on the clocks of a particular locality. In addition to this, they seldom include historical data before the 17th and 18th centuries. The exception is a collective book on medieval horology in the kingdom of Aragon published in 20151 that can be taken as a starting point for future research. No similar work has been done for the Kingdom of Castile until our doctoral dissertation. We have focused our research on the social impact of the horological technology on the Castilian society, particularly in urban environments. We have studied how the public clock arrived to Castile, how it spread as a urban accessory and as a private object for domestic use. In order to know the arrival paths of mechanical horology we have studied the different forms of time reckoning used in the Iberian Peninsula in the 14th and 15th centuries. We have tried to establish a chronology of diffusion and to know what motivated cities, institutions and individuals to spend their money on clocks. Public horology is connected to new way of telling time that was absolutely different from previous systems based on the canonical hours, the traditional bells signals and the sun´s position in the sky. Turret clocks were not only time telling devices, but also powerful symbols with several meanings depending on their context.