Acknowledgments
The authors must thank a number of people and institutions that helped make this volume possible. First, we wish to thank the hard-working and highly competent people at Brill for their great efforts over the many years during which this book has moved inexorably from conception to production. In particular, there are Julian Deahl, now retired, who encouraged the authors throughout this process and with admirable patience awaited the results; Marcella Mulder who has seen to the painstaking task of coordinating with the authors the submission of the manuscript; and Gert Jager, whose patience and high degree of professionalism was responsible for putting the text into its final form for publication, a task that involved a thousand details. They have been, as always, a pleasure to work with. We owe a debt to Kelly DeVries, the editor of Brill’s military series, who has been a stalwart supporter of this project. Nor can we forget Dr. Scott Brestian, the head of a scholarly team whose archeological efforts in the region around Nájera, has provided the authors with invaluable information about the great battle of 1367. We also express our gratitude to the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Education and Culture and U.S. Universities for its generous grant that helped make it possible for the authors to travel to and explore the area of Spain over which the War of the Two Pedros and the Castilian Civil War were fought. Our special thanks go to Nicholas Agrait at Long Island University, a good friend and expert on late medieval Castilian history, whose work on the fourteenth century has proven invaluable to us when researching this book. To the anonymous reader of our manuscript, the authors extend their unbounded appreciation for the careful attention given to this work. We have made the corrections pointed out and inserted references to the works suggested for inclusion. We thank all the above as well as our future readers for their patience and insight, earnestly hoping that the present volume will seem an adequate reward for their attention.
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Because of the great time and effort this work has cost in bringing it to a conclusion, I am extremely grateful to the vast number of people who have helped make it possible. I will thus take a moment to express my heartfelt thanks.
First, I must express my appreciation to my parents, Vestal and Zita Kagay, who spent a good portion of their lives in assuring a secure environment for their four children, which included a first-class education, one which provided a true head-start in life. This acknowledgment must include my brothers, Jerry and Dan Kagay, and my sister, Kay Bennett, each of whom has supported me in their own way.
Without a varied but remarkable group of professors, advisers, and academic colleagues who have long directed my academic training and have shared the triumphs and failures that characterize every intellectual career, especially one as long as mine, experiences, this and all my other books could not have been written. The most important of these very important people are: (1) Dr. Bede Lackner, my first history teacher at the University of Dallas who opened up for me the broad vistas of medieval history, and (2) Dr. Joseph F. O’Callaghan, my mentor at Fordham University, who helped focus my graduate studies on medieval Spain and provided a bright path of scholarship and honorable activity for me and all of his other students to follow. Their example in the study and writing of history has continued to this very day as both have entered their ninth decade.
I would also like to thank two of my closest friends and colleagues who have helped shape my life both as an academic and a person: Theresa Vann, a fellow member of Fordham’s Graduate Program, with whom, I have produced two books, shared many laughs, and weathered the unpredictable directions that academic life can occasionally entail; and Andrew Villalon, my close friend since the early 1980s, who has also served as co-editor and co-author of eight books since 1998, while we were jointly delivering over twenty conference sessions during the past two decades.
My appreciation also goes out to my colleagues in the two scholarly organizations to which I feel the most closely associated: namely, the Texas Medieval Association (TEMA) and De re militari: The Society for Medieval Military History (DRM). Among a large group of friends in these organizations I would like to especially recognize the following: Jeremy Adams, Kelly DeVries, James “Dick” King, and Clifford Rogers.
And finally to the librarians and archivists associated with the many libraries and archives I have utilized for this and other works including the Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, the Cowen-Blakely Memorial Library of the University of Dallas, the University of Georgia Library System, the Southern Methodist University Library System, and the University of Texas Library System.
Donald J. Kagay
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The generation of a book supplies one with a rare opportunity to thank those who have over the years in some way or another helped make possible its creation. This includes not only those with a direct role in shaping the work itself, but also those with a role in shaping its author.
Consequently, I shall take a moment to express much-deserved thanks to a number of people and institutions:
To my parents, Luis J.A. Villalon and Josephine Matthews Villalon, to whom I owe so much, for a generous, understanding, and mind-expanding upbringing, one that always placed stress on the importance of education and scholarship. Also, to my sister, close friend, and greatest fan, Anne Villalon Speyer. And to my step-mother, June Megor Villalon.
To the various academic institutions where I received my education; in particular, Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, and just up the road at Yale University, in New Haven.
To a fine cadre of teachers, mentors, and academic colleagues who over the course of many decades have played a noteworthy role in my education and without whom my career as a teacher and scholar would not exist. To name only a few of the most important: J.H. “Jack” Hexter, C. Bradford Welles, Ursula Lamb, John Boswell, and Harry Miskimin.
To two of my closest friends and colleagues who over the course of many years helped shape my life both as a scholar and as a person: Norman Murdoch, one of the most loyal people I have ever known, who always had my back and without whom I would probably never have gotten a job in academe; and Donald Kagay, my co-editor, co-author, academic collaborator (and drinking buddy) for some three decades.
To my many colleagues in the two academic organizations where I feel most at home and have carved out a niche; to wit, De Re Militari: the Society for Medieval Military History (DRM), and the Texas Medieval Association (TEMA). Among many others in those organizations, I would single out for mention Kelly DeVries, Clifford Rogers, and John Hosler, all of whom have played a role in helping shape this book as well as my career in medieval military studies.
To various friends and colleagues with whom I worked in the now defunct University College at the University of Cincinnati for their friendship and encouragement; in particular, one of the most dedicated and productive scholars I have ever met, Mark Lause.
To a long series of computers of various makes and models, starting in the 1980s with the Exxon 500 Word Processor, without which (whom?) I would never have completed my Ph.D. dissertation or, arguably, produced any publishable material whatsoever.
To the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Cincinnati and, in particular, to its former head, Lowanne Jones. At a critical moment in my career, RLL “took me in from the cold” and then treated me with a generosity rare in the academic world, one that is well beyond my ability to repay except by reminding them that I have not forgotten.
To the history department staff at the University of Texas where I concluded my teaching career and to Alan Tully, head of the department during most of my time there, who helped bring the 2010 meeting of the Texas Medieval Association to Austin and who helped my wife and me in the wake of a bad injury I sustained in Britain that same year.
To Natasha (aka April Jehan Morris) who took over much of the organizing work for that TEMA conference; so much so that without her it would never have taken place.
To the librarians and archivists, photocopiers and microfilmers associated with the many libraries and archives I have utilized in researching this and other works. These include principally the University of Cincinnati Library System, the Hamilton County Public Library, the Spanish Archivo Histórico Nacional, Biblioteca Nacional, and the Archivo General de Simancas, the Hispanic Society of America, the University of Texas Library System, and Vatican Collection at the library of Washington University in St. Louis. Among the people working for these institutions, the following stand out: Sally Moffitt, Daniel Gottlieb, and Thomas White at Cincinnati; Consuelo Gutierrez del Arroyo at the AHN, and Isabel Aguirre at Simancas.
To generations of kitties who have been my “fuzzy muses.”
(Saving the best for last) to my wife, fellow scholar and world traveler, and fellow ailurophile, Ann Twinam (Villalon), who has shared my life for almost five decades and without whose love and encouragement (and occasional prodding) my academic career would have gone nowhere!
L.J. Andrew Villalon