Santa Hermandad was a type of military peacekeeping association of armed individuals, which became characteristic of municipal life in medieval Spain, especially in Castile. Modern hermandades in Spain, some of which evolved from medieval origins, are now for the most part religious confraternities retaining only a military structure and ethos.
Posada de la Santa Hermandad, in Toledo, Spain, dating from the 15th century, now a historic site
Papal bull of Pope Urban VIII, 1637, sealed with a leaden bulla.
The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Castile and León upon the accession of the then Castilian king, Ferdinand III, to the vacant Leonese throne. It continued to exist as a separate entity after the personal union in 1469 of the crowns of Castile and Aragon with the marriage of the Catholic Monarchs up to the promulgation of the Nueva Planta decrees by Philip V in 1715.
Equestrian heraldic of King John II of Castile in the Equestrian armorial of the Golden Fleece 1433–1435. Collection Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.
The Surrender of Granada (Francisco Padilla, oil on canvas, 1882)
Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs (The return of Columbus)
"The Comuneros Padilla, Bravo and Maldonado in the Patíbulo", by Antonio Gisbert, 1860.
