Francesc Eiximenis and the Catalan idea of corruption in the late medieval Crown of Aragon

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to reconstruct the meaning of the concept of political corruption in late medieval Catalonia. It discusses a hypothesis that views the period between 1350 and the end of the fifteenth century as the critical stage for the development of political ideas in the Principality of Catalonia. In order to do so, the paper uses a methodology based on two overriding premises: reconstructing the social history of concepts, and conducting a critical analysis of a variety of written primary sources to overcome the tendency of some intellectual history studies that relied too much on the works of a few canonical authors.