Juan de Beaumont, prior del Hospital: promoción al cargo y control de la Orden por parte de una facción nobiliaria en Navarra (1433-1451)

Abstract

This paper analyses the circumstances that led John of Beaumont to take office as prior of the Hospitaller
order of St John of Jerusalem in Navarre in 1435, as well as his first actions undertaken as governor of the
priory, until the outbreak of the Navarrese civil war in 1451. The Hospitaller documentation, guarded in
the National Historical Archive of Madrid and in the National Library of Malta, complemented by relevant
information from collections of the General Archive of Navarre, reveal that a period of intense changes in
the guidelines of the Hospitaller order took place throughout these fifteen years. Considering the political
context of the first three decades of the fifteenth century, not only in Navarre but also in the rest of the
Peninsula, it is of interest to focus on the effort made by one of the noble factions of the Kingdom of
Navarre, namely the Beaumonts, to control the management and the organization of the priory of St John.