ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how various constituencies in late medieval and early modern Spain – both elite and popular – used, appropriated, and refashioned this legend in order to gain support for their own millenarian visions of the future. These visions often differed radically in their programs for the coming Golden Age, but none could entirely eliminate either the hierarchical or the populist elements of the legend's original formulation in the High Middle Ages. The conquest of Granada helped confirm the idea that Ferdinand was the Hidden One in Spain – an idea he did nothing to discourage – and helped spread the possibility that he was the prophesied Last Emperor outside the Iberian Peninsula. Support for Ferdinand's prophetic role did not only exist among the secular and ecclesiastical elites of late medieval Spain, however. the legend of the Encubierto still resonated deeply in Valencia two decades after the armed rebels had been decisively defeated.
