Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians (New Middle Ages The) [1st ed. 2024] 9783031450648, 9783031450655, 3031450647

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THE NEW MIDDLE AGES

Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians Marcelo E. Fuentes

The New Middle Ages Series Editor

Bonnie Wheeler English and Medieval Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX, USA

The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

Marcelo E. Fuentes

Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians

Marcelo E. Fuentes New Jersey City University Jersey City, NJ, USA

ISSN 2945-5936     ISSN 2945-5944 (electronic) The New Middle Ages ISBN 978-3-031-45064-8    ISBN 978-3-031-45065-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image credit - agefotostock / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgments

I could have never imagined as a child in Puerto Montt, Chile, that someday I would be authoring an academic book in the United States. The improbable bridge between that kid who liked reading more than anything and the adult I am today is made of people: those who raised me, those who helped me, and those who loved me. Michelle M. Hamilton deserves a paragraph of her own. She took a leap of faith when she recruited me for the graduate program of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. I had been out of graduate school for more than ten years and I could barely write in English, but she believed in my potential, became my graduate director and my advisor, and gently criticized every single page I wrote for years until they finally became acceptable. This book would simply not have been possible without her extraordinary support. Other professors to whom I am deeply indebted are María Inés Zaldívar, without whom I would have hardly imagined studying at an American university or having an academic career; the late Conrado Guardiola Alcover, who made me fall in love all over again with Iberian medieval literature; Dora Dias and Sophia Beal, who revealed to me the unparalleled beauty of Portuguese language and Lusophone cultures; Ana M. Montero, who so gently supported me during my first conference presentation and publication in English; and Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Marcy E. Schwartz, William Viestenz, and Mandy Menke, who have kindly contributed to my research and career with their teaching, feedback, and letters of recommendation. v

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Some very special thanks are owed to the Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and particularly to two of its consultants, Rose Miron and Sarah Selz, who patiently helped me polish my ungrammatical, insecure English writing, until it became good enough to apply for jobs and publish articles. My gratitude also to the reviewers at Palgrave Macmillan who helped transform my proposal and the previous draft of this book into something much better. Several institutions contributed to the research behind this book with financial support. Thanks to the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship that, by encouraging me to study Portuguese, widened my academic interests and the scope of my research. Thanks also to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities for multiple research fellowships and travel awards that allowed me to focus on my writing and present preliminary versions of some of this research at several academic conferences, especially at the International Congress on Medieval Studies hosted by Western Michigan University. A grant from the Luso-American Development Foundation and the National Library of Portugal was indispensable for me to do research in Lisbon for Chaps. 4 and 6 of this book. Another research travel grant, this time from the Graduate School at the University of Minnesota-­ Twin Cities, allowed me to visit innumerable libraries, museums, and places of worship in Spain and Portugal while completing research for Chaps. 3, 4, and 6. Because love makes everything else possible, I finally acknowledge the most important people: those whose caring presence is, in some way or another, in every page I write. My parents, Graciela Ampuero and Pedro Fuentes, may never be able to read this book written in a foreign language, but their pride on their kid’s literary instincts is at the root of my entire life and career. Same about my brother, Luis Fuentes, whose passion for books, music, and culture modeled and fed my own. My two children, Joaquín and Santiago Fuentes, generously provided all the smiles and playtime any academic writer needs to complete a long project. Their mother, my ex-wife, and now my wonderful friend, Sabrina Doré, has illuminated decades of my life with her continuous help and devotion. Finally, my partner Erika Belli has accompanied me during much of the final writing of this book while making everything better with her daily tenderness and joy. My love and appreciation for all of them.

Contents

1 I ntroduction: Friendly Chivalrous Enemies— Contradiction, Stereotypes, and Colonialism in the Representations of Muslims by Medieval Christians  1 Contradictory Muslims in Medieval Iberian Studies   4 Ambivalent Versus One-Sided Depictions of Non-Christians   9 Contradiction, Stereotypes, and Colonialism  15 Three Notes on Terminology  22 2 I ndispensable Enemies, Subjects, and Friends: The Political Instrumentalization of Muslims in the Cantar de mio Cid 31 The Cid, His King, and the Muslims Between Them  33 The Cid’s Contradictory Portrayals and Relationships with Muslims  38 A Diversity of Representations and Relationships with One Common Goal  45 3 T  he Learned Conquerors and Their Muslims: Intercultural Conflict and Collaboration in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Llibre dels fets 55 Alfonso X and Jaume I as “Authors” and Conquerors  56 Christian Expansionism and Ambivalence Toward Muslims  61 Killing, Befriending, and Protecting Muslims  68

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Contents

A Competition of Power and Reputations  80 The Rebellious Muslims and the Christian Kings  87 Muslims as Symbols and Examples  95 4 F  rom Great Muslim Heroes to Good Christian Subjects: Converting the Legend of the Seven Infantes of Lara 99 The Estoria de España and Its Contradictory Muslims 101 The Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro and a Hero’s Conversion 111 The Crónica geral de Espanha de 1344 and the Triumph of Christian Colonialism 114 5 A  cross the Mediterranean and Beyond: Fighting Islam by Embracing Muslims in Tirant lo Blanch121 The Authorship Debate and the Representations of Muslims 123 The Fall of Constantinople and Tirant’s Rewriting of History 128 The Muslim Siege of Christendom 132 Chivalrous, Wise, and Helpful Muslims 138 Crusade and Conversion at the Service of Christian Colonialism 145 6 A  n Empire of Faith and Its Infidels: Portuguese Colonialism and Muslims, According to Os Lusíadas and Its Sources153 The Role of Muslims in the History of Portugal 155 Using History, War, and Religion to Support the Avis Dynasty 163 The Providential Role of Portugal and the Papal Endorsement of Colonialism 168 Friendly Muslims and Portuguese Expansionism 174 The Ambivalent Pragmatism of Portuguese Colonizers 183 7 C  onclusion: Christian Supremacy and Contradictory Non-Christians Beyond Muslims and Iberia191 Works Cited203 Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Friendly Chivalrous Enemies— Contradiction, Stereotypes, and Colonialism in the Representations of Muslims by Medieval Christians

According to the thirteenth-century law code Las siete partidas, compiled in the court of king Alfonso X of Castile, Islam is “como denuesto de Dios” (“like an insult against God”).1 Despite such strong words, the next article in the same code is surprisingly conciliatory and even protective toward Muslims and their right to not be forcibly converted: “Por buenas palabras et convenibles predicaciones se deben trabajar los cristianos de convertir á los moros para facerles creer la nuestra fe et para adocirlos á ella, et non por fuerza nin por premia” (“Christians should strive to convert Muslims with good words and reasonable preaching, in order to make them believe our faith and bring them to it, and not by force or pressure”).2 Such tolerance is very soon forgotten when another article details the punishments for Muslims who have sex with Christian women: to be stoned to death if she is virgin or married and to be whipped if she is a prostitute and it is the first time, but to be killed along her if they have been caught before.3

 Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, 3: 675.  Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, 3: 676. 3  Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, 3: 681. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_1

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Other works sponsored by Alfonso X abound with similar fluctuations between derogative, cordial, and aggressive attitudes toward Muslims: the poems collected in the Cantigas de Santa Maria present Muslims sometimes as barbaric enemies or treacherous allies and other times as chivalrous and gracious even in war; the historiographical project Estoria de España idealizes a few heroic Muslims while depicting others as diabolical invaders and destroyers of the Iberian Peninsula. Far from being exclusive to Alfonsine texts, such ambivalence toward Muslims appears in a variety of works written in several Iberian languages across the Middle Ages and until early modernity, including some as well-known as the Castilian heroic poem Cantar de mio Cid, the Valencian romance Tirant lo Blanch, and the Portuguese epic Os Lusíadas. In all these texts, the contradictory representations of Muslims by Christians seem to elude traditional discourses about either intercultural tolerance in the Iberian Peninsula or a prolonged, belligerent clash between both religious groups. In Orientalism, one of the foundational texts of postcolonial studies, Edward Said wrote that the real problem with European depictions of “Oriental” peoples and cultures was not that they were misrepresentations but that they operated “as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting.”4 Similarly to the Orientalist depictions studied by Said, the ambivalent representations analyzed in this book are part of a colonial context: they appeared and proliferated precisely during those centuries in which Iberian Christians were bent on conquering the south of the Peninsula or extending their influence beyond it to other continents while openly fighting against Muslims or competing with them. Because of this, and in dialogue with postcolonial ideas that emphasize the complex and often counterintuitive relationships between colonizers and colonized, I see the ambivalent depictions of Muslim difference as a two-pronged strategy to reach an unequivocal political purpose: to justify the conquest of non-Christian territories and populations through the affirmation of Christian supremacy. The contradictory representations of Muslims and their relationships with Christians were extremely useful for colonial purposes because their concurrent depictions of virtuous and wicked Muslims helped explain the actions both friendly and hostile of Christians toward them. Instead of attempting to portray a cultural or ethnic other in any accurate or 4

 Said, Orientalism, 273.

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trustworthy way, Iberian Christian authors utilized Muslim characters to showcase the abilities of their own leaders to simultaneously destroy non-­ Christian adversaries, create alliances with them, and rule them with benevolence. Through their presentation of both negative and positive traits that could motivate equally ambivalent reactions from their enemies and colonizers, contradictory depictions of Muslims became essential to demonstrate the superiority of Iberian Christians and, consequently, to advocate for their right to dominate non-Christians. The crucial importance of a colonial context for the representations of Muslims by Iberian Christians makes it a topic especially well-suited to connect both medieval studies and postcolonial theory, a dialogue that has already been fecund for a couple of decades, even when some scholars have questioned its pertinence: Gabrielle Spiegel, for example, has argued against superimposing postcolonial ideas “on periods and persons for which they were never designed and to which they simply do not apply” since “a postcolonial society has a historical specificity and density that is not easily translated into premodern worlds.”5 But others have discovered exactly the opposite: that, as Simon Gaunt writes, “the lack of fit between a modern theoretical framework and a premodern text may in fact be highly productive for thinking about the historical specificity of both the framework and the text.”6 Other scholars have even contested that supposed “lack of fit” by arguing that medievalists were already “engaged in projects that resonate compellingly with the critical impulses of postcolonialism” long before postcolonial theory appeared; additionally, some of the founders of this critical school themselves questioned colonialism as a strictly modern phenomenon, pointing out that “modernity” is precisely a concept often used by colonizers to relegate the colonized to a precolonial, primitive, or archaic status.7 While one could also go too far in the opposite direction by eliminating any historical constraint, as when Jeffrey Jerome Cohen affirms that “just as there was never a time before colony, there has never yet been a time when the colonial has been outgrown,” a reasonable compromise is to simply recognize that colonial issues preceded modernity, as it is patent from Robert Bartlett’s famous and straightforward thesis about how “Europe, the initiator of one of the  Spiegel, “Épater les médiévistes,” 249–250.  Gaunt, “Can the Middle Ages Be Postcolonial?,” 161. 7  Holsinger, “Medieval Studies,” 1200; Ingham and Warren, “Introduction: Postcolonial Modernity,” 2–3. 5 6

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world’s major processes of conquest, colonization and cultural transformation, was also the product of one.”8 This simple fact makes it clear how postcolonial theory and medieval studies can support each other, especially when defining postcolonialism in a similar way to how Nadia Altschul does, as “a critical engagement with the myriad cultures produced in the multileveled contacts between colonizers and colonized; with the transactions, contradictions, collaborations, and resistances that exist from all sides of the colonial encounter.”9 From this perspective, there is no doubt that medieval Iberia in general and the colonial interactions between Iberian Christians and Muslims in particular should occupy “una posición de relieve en el estudio del postcolonialismo medieval y renacentista” (“a prominent position in the study of medieval and Renaissance postcolonialism”), as argued by Julian Weiss.10 My study contributes to demonstrate how colonial issues, postcolonial theory, and Iberian medieval literature can intersect to uncover new dimensions and answers to long-standing critical questions.

Contradictory Muslims in Medieval Iberian Studies The alternation between hostile and empathetic views of Muslims in texts written by Iberian Christians has received scholarly attention since the late nineteenth century, when Ramón Menéndez Pidal inevitably noticed the intriguing “relaciones mutuas de los dos pueblos enemigos” (“mutual relations of the two enemy peoples”) when analyzing the legend of the infantes of Lara, in which the Christian heroes are first killed and then avenged by Muslims from the Caliphate of Córdoba.11 Decades later, when Américo Castro published España en su historia: Cristianos, moros y judíos in 1948, the ambivalent interactions of Christians and non-­ Christians became one of the central topics of Iberian studies. Although Castro’s concept of convivencia has been frequently misrepresented as the rosy picture of a tolerant multicultural Iberia, his work actually explains Peninsular history and culture through the interplay of collaboration and hostility between faiths: for Castro, medieval Iberian Christians defined their identity by imitating some of the customs, culture, and values of  Cohen, “Introduction: Midcolonial,” 3; Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 314.  Altschul, “Postcolonialism,” 590. 10  Weiss, “El postcolonialismo medieval,” 189. 11  Menéndez Pidal, La leyenda de los infantes de Lara, 16. 8 9

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Muslims and Jews, while at the same time subduing them.12 These contradictory attitudes toward cultural difference were, according to Castro, generated by the tension between political interests and religious views: “The Spaniards, molded in their structure by the historical impulse of three beliefs, were tolerant because of the exigencies of politics, and intolerant because of the totalitarian, omnipresent character of their belief.”13 Later scholars have better defined the ways in which both hostile and collaborative interactions occurred simultaneously among medieval Iberian groups. David Nirenberg focused on the need of periodical, ritualized aggression to establish community borders and, paradoxically, to sustain coexistence: “Violence was a central and systemic aspect of the coexistence of majority and minorities. Convivencia was predicated upon violence; it was not its peaceful antithesis. Violence drew its meaning from coexistence, not in opposition to it.”14 Staying closer to Castro’s ideas, María Rosa Menocal emphasized the contradictory attitudes of Christian Iberians toward Muslims in different spheres of life, which resulted in the admiration of Muslims as cultural models and their loathing as military and religious enemies: The conceptual error that has plagued all sides of the study of what some call medieval Spain, and others al-Andalus, and yet others Sefarad […], is the assumption that these phenomena, reconquest and convivencia, are thoroughgoing and thus mutually exclusive—that, to put it directly to the example, those whose commitment to the military and religious victory of Christian state over Muslim state in Toledo would not be building a monument to that victory that said loudly and clearly that the culture of the

12  Castro, España en su historia, 622. David Nirenberg points out that “though there is no reason why convivencia need designate only harmonious coexistence, it has in fact acquired this meaning among certain historians who have romanticized the concept.” Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 8. This misinterpretation of Castro’s work has transformed him into a convenient straw man for critics like Serafín Fanjul, who defends his own very negative view of Muslim Iberia by disparaging “la idílica Arcadia inventada por Castro” (“the idyllic Arcadia invented by Castro”). Fanjul, La quimera de al-Andalus, 29. A correct understanding of the original meaning of “convivencia” also makes it unnecessary to try to refine the concept as Ana Carrasco Manchado does when proposing “convivencia jerarquizada” (“hierarchical coexistence”). Carrasco Manchado, De la convivencia a la exclusión, 26. 13  Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, 229. 14  Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 245.

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v­ anquished was superior to, or perhaps indistinguishable from, their own. And yet that is exactly what happened.15

Robert Burns observed a similar ambivalence in public and personal attitudes toward religious difference in Iberia: while both Muslims and Christians “nourished a posture of public hostility toward the other— expressed in its laws, religion, refusals, exclusive communities, attitudes, and sense of superiority,” such a stance was “conventionalized, even impersonal, freeing individuals occasionally to act humanly across the social boundaries and to share significant psychological elements, values, and mentalities.”16 Burns quickly clarifies that “this was not tolerance. Neither people would have conceded that our modern tolerance was a virtue”; however, “it is a modus vivendi, an experience not without its human warmth and practical respect for irreconcilable difference. And it provided an effective ground for unremitting cultural interchange.”17 Brian Catlos has similarly examined the effect of the divide between personal and public attitudes on intercultural relations, while also considering changes of behavior in different spheres of life. Catlos proposes three “modes of self-identification” that regulated the interaction between Muslims and Christians. First, the “ecumenian” mode “relates to formal, dogmatic-informed religious identity […]; it is the mode in which people imagined themselves as ‘Christians’ or ‘Muslims’—rigidly defined and mutually exclusive groups.”18 Second, the “corporate” mode “is the stratum of law, regulation, and institution,” in which “corporations and institutions, whether lay or ecclesiastical, must by their nature adopt a pragmatic approach to policy.”19 Finally, the “local” mode “corresponds to individuals and informal collectives […]. It is the sphere of syncretism, of intermarriage and cross-communal friendship and solidarity, as well as of unorganized communal violence and intuitive and ill-defined, but powerful, currents of anxiety and reaction.”20 Catlos’ ideas are especially useful for understanding how contradictory attitudes toward cultural difference can coexist not only in the same society or religious group but even in the same text or individual. According to his model, for instance, a Christian  Menocal, “Visions of Al-Andalus,” 14.  Burns, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 51. 17  Burns, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 51. 18  Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 525–526. 19  Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 526. 20  Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 526. 15 16

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author may utilize some hateful Islamophobic rhetoric in an “ecumenian” mode and simultaneously accept Muslims as convenient political or commercial partners in a “corporate” mode, while at the “local” level he can maintain both personal friendships and enmities with different Muslim neighbors. The examination of Christian-Muslim relationships by scholars such as Nirenberg, Menocal, Burns, and Catlos is very helpful to explain the ambivalences of those interactions in real life but not necessarily in literary and historiographical texts. Even if the different cultural groups of Iberia were inevitably intermingling and having both antagonistic and friendly interactions all the time, Christian authors could have perfectly well ignored all that complexity and depicted Muslims in a more simplistic way by using only negative stereotypes, which would have been just as convenient to demonstrate their religious and political superiority. After all, textual representations rarely try to depict the chaotic, contradictory texture of real life and much less so during the Middle Ages: instead, literary and historiographical works usually portray the world according to predetermined patterns in order to support systems of ideas. In this sense, both historiography and literature are discourses of power that communicate not only what is real or what is possible but also what is desirable: both historiographical and literary texts express ideal views of what a society should aspire to be and, in this way, they attempt to shape reality. As Thomas Glick affirms: History seems scarcely distinguishable from myth. Historians, whether critical or not, at one point or another in their work, embody in the past values which seem to them to be the most significant or enduring of a given peoples’ experience. Since values are culturally or socially defined, historians, from this perspective, engage in a process of myth-building.21

In a similar vein, Hayden White has criticized the “reluctance to consider historical narratives as what they most manifestly are: verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature that they have with those in the sciences.”22 For White, indeed, “historical narratives are not only models of past events and processes, but also m ­ etaphorical  Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, xi.  White, “The Historical Text,” 82; his emphases.

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statements which suggest a relation of similitude between such events and processes and the story types that we conventionally use to endow the events of our lives with culturally sanctioned meanings.”23 Because of this, literary structures and elements are not accidentally or superficially present in historiographical texts: they are indispensable for historiography’s ultimate purpose of making sense out of scattered events.24 Such intimate connection between historiography and fiction appears even more prominently in medieval texts, because, in Janet Coleman’s words, “the nature of reliable evidence is at issue in medieval historiography and epistemology, intimately bound up with the nature of language and men’s confidence in its conventionally established means to refer to and report nontextual evidence accurately.”25 Thanks to this confidence in language’s reliability, historiography could be used to support ideological purposes even more effectively than imaginative literature. “Especially in the Middle Ages, historical writing, precisely to the degree that it claimed to be free of imaginative elaboration, served as a vehicle of ideological elaboration,” writes Gabrielle Spiegel: “The prescriptive authority of the past made it a privileged locus for working through the ideological implications of social changes in the present and the repository of contemporary concerns and desires.”26 Literature, for its part, is no less of “a vehicle of ideological elaboration,” since literary texts “both mirror and generate social realities, are constituted by and constitute social and discursive formations, which they may sustain, resist, contest, or seek to transform depending on the individual case.”27 Literature and other arts perform the fundamental role of “inventing imaginary or formal ‘solutions’ to unresolvable social contradictions,” as explained by Fredric Jameson, who, because of this, thinks that “the aesthetic art is itself ideological, and the production of aesthetic or narrative form is to be seen as an ideological act

 White, “The Historical Text,” 88.  The relations between historiography and fiction have been discussed since Antiquity: at one extreme of that debate, there are people like nineteenth-century Leopold von Ranke, for whom historians “must seek to show the past ‘as it actually/essentially was’—wie es eigentlich gewesen”; at the other extreme, “some cultural theorists’ discussions of history and fiction do indeed come perilously close to denying the value of the discipline of history altogether.” Curthoys and Docker, Is History Fiction?, 3, 5. 25  Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories, xvi. 26  Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 5. 27  Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 10. 23 24

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in its own right.”28 Ideology, textual representation, and social reality, in sum, constitute a triangle in which every vertex simultaneously transforms and is transformed by the other two.

Ambivalent Versus One-Sided Depictions of Non-Christians The relevance of such a dynamic interplay between people’s ideas, texts, and lives can be better appreciated when comparing the Christian representations of Muslims with those of Jews. I have said before that, no matter what happened with their interactions in real life, Christians writers could have chosen to reduce Muslims to completely negative stereotypes, and this is exactly what they usually did with Jewish characters. Jewish people arrived to the Iberian Peninsula with the Roman Empire, if not earlier, and they were indispensable participants in Iberian societies, cultures, and economies since ancient times until they were expelled by the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I of Castile and Fernando II of Aragon, in 1492 and by Manuel I of Portugal in 1497.29 However, the same Christian texts that offer contradictory representations of Muslims ignore Jews or transform them into abominable caricatures without any positive aspects: the only two Jews in the Cantar de mio Cid are greedy and not-too-bright moneylenders; unless they are predestined to convert to Christianity, Jews in the Cantigas de Santa Maria are criminals that serve the devil, kidnap and kill Christian children, or enjoy desecrating images of Jesus and the Virgin.30 Tellingly, most of the Castilian, Portuguese, and Aragonese authors that I analyze tend to see the world as divided between Muslims and Christians, with Jews and other religious groups (generally referred to as Gentiles or Pagans) included much less frequently, mostly as individuals in isolated episodes. Therefore, although the situation of Jews as subjects of Iberian Christian rulers may be legally and culturally comparable to that  Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 64.  Scholars who write in English usually refer to the Catholic Monarchs as “Isabella” and “Ferdinand,” but at the same time they do not normally anglicize the names of Manuel I or Alfonso X. For the sake of consistency, I will try to use the original Castilian, Portuguese, or Catalan names of most people, although this is not always possible to determine when some of these individuals had family connections and political responsibilities that spanned several kingdoms with different languages. 30  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 100–198, 1429–1438; Cantigas de Santa Maria, cants. 3, 6, 12, 34, etc. 28 29

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of Muslims, their ideological importance differed greatly because of the Jews’ lack of military power and their limited political influence. Muslims, instead, had the political and military strength to make them impossible to overlook in even the most triumphalist Christian fantasies. In Robert Bartlett’s words: Muslims had a far more articulated and universalist religion than the pagans of eastern and northern Europe and could rely on written scripture, their own law and the prospect of help from, or refuge among, coreligionists in neighbouring Islamic countries. They were part of a wider world which easily matched the West in power, wealth and culture.31

Christian texts could easily condemn or dismiss Jews while conceding them the status of subjects as their only social role. Muslims had to be contested and fought before being finally incorporated as subjects through surrender pacts but also as useful partners in alliances. Because of this, the contradictory representations of Muslims in historiographical and literary texts written by Iberian Christians are more than the expected result of the equally ambivalent social relations between medieval Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. Instead, those depictions are defending and propagating fundamental ideas about the role, value, and importance of Muslims in opposition or subjugation to Christian power. There are a couple of clues that strongly support the ideological significance of those representations. On the one hand, the works that contain these kinds of depictions appear during the same centuries in which Iberian Christians are succeeding at conquering and occupying the territories populated by Muslims mainly in the south and east of the Peninsula. On the other hand, several of these texts were composed and copied under the patronage of some of the most powerful Christian rulers of Iberia, such as the king Alfonso X of Castile and León, the king Jaume I of Aragon, and the count Pedro Afonso of Barcelos. Both the internal coherence and ideological intentionality of the works in which I am mainly interested in this book—namely, the Cantar de mio Cid, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Llibre dels fets, the Estoria de España, the Crónica geral de 1344, Tirant lo Blanch, and Os Lusíadas— may be better revealed by comparing them with other medieval texts that follow an entirely different method in order to defend their Christian  Bartlett, The Making of Europe, 296.

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ideals. All the main works in my corpus include strong statements about how wrong Islam is, how sinful Muslims are, or how the elimination of Muslims constitutes a service to God and Christendom, while they simultaneously present a variety of Muslim characters who collaborate with Christians, protect them, convert to Christianity, and/or become good subjects of charismatic Christian leaders. There are other writings by Iberian Christians in which Muslims are reductively seen as only the religious enemies to be expelled or annihilated, therefore promoting a form of Christian-Muslim relationship that better agrees with the crusading initiatives instigated by Rome and supported by other European powers. Not everybody agrees on the properness of the term “crusade” for military campaigns unrelated to Palestine and the Holy Places, but there is overwhelming evidence of how popes equated holy wars in the Middle East with the fight against Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula: “Some historians have suggested that crusades aimed elsewhere than to the East were deviations from an original ideal, but in fact the first deviation occurred during the First Crusade, was proposed by the originator of crusading, and stemmed from a concern of his to preserve an initiative that pre-dated it.”32 Because of this, Jonathan Riley-Smith defines a crusade as “a holy war fought against those perceived to be the external or internal foes of Christendom for the recovery of Christian property or in defence of the Church or Christian people,” a description that encompasses religious wars not only in Iberia but also in the Baltic, Languedoc, Bohemia, and Italy.33 Even if one prefers a narrower definition of crusade, as Goñi Gaztambide does by only including those campaigns specifically connected to the granting of indulgences by the Church, this still applies to many campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula, since “Alexander II granted participants in a projected expedition into Spain a remission of sins comparable to later crusading indulgences. From then on Gregory VII, Urban II, Paschal II, and their successors took great interest in the struggle to

32  Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 7. See also Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada, 61–62; Mastnak, “Urban II,” 234–238. 33  Riley-Smith, The Crusades, xxviii–xxix.

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drive the Muslims out of Spain, declaring that effort to be tantamount to the crusades to the Holy Land.”34 The impact of such crusading initiatives and discourses can be appreciated in those Iberian texts that advocate for the annihilation or expulsion of every last Muslim from the Peninsula, as required by the belligerent rhetoric of Urban II, in which “the conflict between Christians and Muslims was of central importance and became irreconcilable, driving Christians into a God-willed war of extermination.”35 The fifteenth-­ century Portuguese chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara, for example, affirms in his Crónica da tomada de Ceuta that “a uida destes jmfiees nom he amtre nos per uirtude da sua própria força, soomente por uoomtade do Senhor Deos, ao quall praz dar lugar que nos dem fadiga e trabalho” (“these infidels continue to live among us not by their own strength, but only by the will of God, who allows them to give us toil and work”); however, because Muslims had already fulfilled their role of increasing the resiliency and faith of Christians, Zurara thought the time had come for the Portuguese and God to finally destroy them.36 A similar defense of the extermination of Muslims can be found in many other medieval and early modern Iberian texts: for instance, in the thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González, whose hero is said to be “de los moros vn mortal omiçero,/dizien le por sus lides el vueytrre carniçero” (“a deadly murderer of Muslims, so that they called him the cutthroat vulture”); in the fourteenth-century Crónica da tomada de Lisboa, in which the king of Portugal and his troops kill “tantas companhas de mouros, que os rios do sangue corriam pelas praças da dita cidade” (“so many Muslim troops, that rivers of blood ran through the squares of the city”); or in Gonzalo de Arredondo’s sixteenth-century Vida rimada de Fernán González, which praises the Castilian count for burning “todos los moros […]/en foguera muy ‘straña” (“all Muslims in a great pyre”) and for bringing 34  Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada, 46; O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 209. To reinforce the equivalence between fighting for a Christian East and for a Christian Iberia, several popes authorized combatants that had vowed to crusade in Jerusalem or Egypt to instead join the troops of the kings of Castile or Portugal; as a result, men from all over Europe participated in some of the battles against Iberian Muslims between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. Riley-Smith, The Crusades, 139–141. See also Edwards, “Reconquista and Crusade,” 166; Erdmann, A idea de cruzada em Portugal, 18; Mastnak, “Urban II,” 237–238. 35  Mastnak, “Urban II,” 241. 36  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 161.

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“entera destruyçión/a las gentes rrenegadas” (“total destruction to the renegade people”).37 In contrast with those deeply Islamophobic texts, the main works I study in this book do not advocate for the destruction or expulsion of Muslims as the Christians’ ultimate goal. Instead, these works’ authors envision an Iberian Peninsula undoubtedly destined by God for Christians, but they also recognize that such conquest can only be attained through alliances and agreements with Muslims. Part of the reason behind this is purely pragmatical: when a text like the twelfth-century Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris presents the Leonese and Castilian troops devastating the territories between Seville and Córdoba, torching cities and castles, butchering the Muslim “sacerdotes” (“priests”) and “doctores” (“scholars”), and burning their books, this blood-spattered picture could maybe satisfy a Pope or a northern crusader, but it would look absurdly ineffective to a realistic Iberian ruler.38 Why would he burn down the places where his men will soon have to live? Why would he destroy the fields and animals that his subjects will need to survive? More importantly, to exterminate the inhabitants of the region would transform it into a waste land: in order to keep a productive territory, farmers, shepherds, artisans, servants, and builders are needed. Why not simply use the local manpower, instead of attempting the expensive, complicated, and maybe unfeasible task of importing colonizers from another kingdom? And if most of the local workforce are Muslims, why would an aspiring ruler alienate them by massacring their authorities and burning their valuable books? As pointed out by Brian Catlos, the policies of Christian rulers regarding Muslims were not determined by “the ruminations of the decretalists on the toleration of peaceful subject Muslims” but by these communities’ “capacity to exploit economic niches and create wealth both for themselves and for their Christian collaborators (and exploiters). Those Muslim communities that were most successful at this—those of the kingdoms of Aragón, Castile, Navarre, and Valencia—were those that survived the longest.”39 In a similar vein, David Wacks notices that “one of the most enduring aspects of the Christian Iberian culture of conquest is the recontextualization of Islamic monuments and institutions within a Christian society: 37  Poema de Fernán González, 54; Crónica da tomada de Lisboa, 79; Arredondo, Vida rimada de Fernán González, 6, 8. 38  Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, 167. 39  Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 440.

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mosques are converted into churches, banners are lowered and new ones raised over fortresses, monuments are changed to reflect the culture of the conquerors.”40 Two of the most famous cultural monuments in Spain, the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra of Granada, are precisely Muslim constructions adapted and repurposed to serve as a church or a palace complex for Christians. Instead of pointlessly destroying buildings and objects, transforming them into displays of legitimate power was a process that paralleled and complemented the conversion of previous enemies into subjects. Iberian Christian rulers had an extensive and especially nuanced knowledge of the realities of religious war and intercultural politics. Members of the royal families in Castile, León, Portugal, and Aragon knew that a crusading flourish here and there could benefit their reputations as defenders of Christianity, but they were also aware that religious fanaticism was mostly a hindrance to effective military, political, and administrative decisions. Because of this, Iberian rulers and warriors frequently clashed with foreign supporters in their treatment of Muslim enemies.41 For example, during the siege and capture of Barbastro in 1064, French combatants “displayed a fanaticism toward the Muslims that differed from the comparative tolerance of peninsular Christians”; as a result of these divergent views on how to deal with the Muslim population of Barbastro, “the defenders were assured that they could depart in safety, but the Christians massacred them, raped their women, and enslaved their children.”42 Almost a century later, in 1147, something similar happened during the siege of Lisbon, when northern crusaders joined the troops of the first king of Portugal and their intention to annihilate all Muslims clashed with King Afonso’s desire to transform them instead into his new subjects.43 Foreign clergy particularly disagreed with the leniency of Iberian Christian leaders toward Muslims. A well-known example was the conflict between Alfonso VI of León and the archbishop Bernard of Sédirac after the conquest of Toledo. Alfonso had promised the Muslim inhabitants to preserve their great mosque, “as a necessary part of a policy designed at once to retain as large a part as possible of the Muslims population in Toledo and to demonstrate to the taifa kings of the peninsula that his aims were  Wacks, Framing Iberia, 103.  García Fitz, “Las minorías religiosas,” 20–21. 42  O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 27, 26. 43  Erdmann, A idea de cruzada em Portugal, 24. 40 41

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limited and moderate rather than the beginning of a crusade against them and their faith.”44 Oblivious to these economic and political purposes, the Gasconian archbishop took advantage of the king’s departure and, with the complicity of Alfonso’s Burgundian wife, he converted the mosque into a Christian cathedral. According to Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, the thirteenth-century historiographer and archbishop who included this story in his Historia de rebus Hispanie, Alfonso was so “indignatus […] et dolore accensus” (“incensed and spurred by pain”) that only the pleas of the inhabitants of Toledo stopped him of burning Bernard and the queen alive.45 It sounds quite improbable that the king really intended to kill his wife and an archbishop to avenge the violated rights of Toledan Muslims; however, this story clearly shows the desire of Alfonso VI himself, later writers, and those writers’ royal patrons, to present him as a ruler who valued and protected his non-Christian subjects.

Contradiction, Stereotypes, and Colonialism Christian Iberian leaders had a double and contradictory need to present themselves as the legitimate owners of the Peninsula (and therefore to depict Muslims as intrinsically wrong in their religious beliefs and political claims) and also as rulers who could defend the religious and cultural difference of Muslims. Far from unique, such a conundrum is actually characteristic of many colonial situations, in which the new conquerors or settlers require the collaboration of the same people they are fighting against. Cultural representations are especially useful in these circumstances, because they offer a way to conciliate opposites, mainly through stereotypes. Minorities in general are well aware of this phenomenon through which their right to exist may be both affirmed and questioned through the simultaneous utilization of opposite stereotypical depictions. It would be hard to find a more eloquent example of such contradictions than the following summary by Konstantyn Jelenski of all the incompatible reasons why Jews were discriminated in twentieth-century Poland: Because they lack culture and because they are overly cultured. Because they are superstitious, backward and ignorant, and because they are damnably capable, progressive, and ambitious. Because they have long, hooked noses,  Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla, 182.  Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, 206.

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and because it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from “pure Poles.” Because they crucified Christ and practice ritual murder and pore over the Talmud, and because they disdain their own religion and are atheists. Because they look wretched and sickly, and because they are tough and have their own fighting units and are full of Khutspah. Because they are bankers and capitalists and because they are Communists and agitators.46

In another more recent and closer-to-home example, Hispanic immigrants like me are stereotyped in the United States as fun-loving, lazy, and irresponsible; other stereotypes portray us as working beasts that can do the hardest jobs for next to nothing. What these contradictory representations imply is that white Americans deserve their privileges because they possess a much more respectable work ethic and also that we should be grateful for their appreciation and any opportunities we receive from them. The contemporary examples of Jews in Poland or Hispanics in the United States make clear the pointlessness of discussing if a stereotypical representation is accurate or not, because its only purpose is to serve the interests of those who create and propagate them. Stereotypes “function as a form of social control,” in which “the assessment that is offered in a stereotype is based on the leading precepts and preoccupations of those who reproduce them, and it is this assessment that underlies the perception and positioning of the ‘difference’ it regards.”47 This difference-making operation is especially useful in a colonial or imperialistic context, in which power differentials are fed and amplified by ethnic and cultural otherness. Going back to my last example, the contradictory depictions of Hispanic immigrants are inseparable from a political context in which the United States have continuously tried to dominate Latin American countries through any means possible, including invading our territories and upending our governments; when these political and economic disruptions have forced our people to migrate to the States, the stereotypes about our laziness and criminality have fueled our demonization among American politicians and voters, while the stereotype of us as hard workers has allowed companies and consumers to benefit from our labor while paying us as little as possible. Contradictory stereotypical representations are effective despite, or because, their absurdity, which allows those with more power to have their cake and eat it too:  Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 29.  Pickering, Stereotyping, 5.

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to exploit the downtrodden while presenting themselves as the “good guys” whose only interest is to help them out. This is of course the exact ideological operation behind Rudyard Kipling’s infamous poem “The White Man’s Burden,” in which Europeans and their American descendants are called to civilize those “new-caught, sullen peoples” characterized by their ambivalence of “half-devil and half-child.”48 “The stereotype is a complex, ambivalent, contradictory mode of representation, as anxious as it is assertive,” through which “colonial discourse produces the colonized as a social reality which is at once an ‘other’ and yet entirely knowable and visible,” explains Homi Bhabha.49 Furthermore, Bhabha writes that fixity, a mode of representation that includes stereotype among its discursive strategies, “is a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place,’ already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated … as if the essential duplicity of the Asiatic or the bestial sexual licence of the African that needs no proof, can never really, in discourse, be proved.”50 This anxious reiteration appears prominently in the writings of Iberian Christians on Muslims: for these authors, Muslims were the well-known, familiar “moros,” with whom Christians had fought and coexisted for centuries; at the same time, their literary works present Muslims as mysterious, unreliable others, who can go from cordiality to violence at any moment. Accordingly, Muslims’ reactions toward Christian dominion were described as simultaneously unexpected and inevitable. If they accepted submission, this proved the religious and political superiority of Christians; if they resisted, Muslims just confirmed their depravity and ignorance. No matter what Muslims decided to do, Christians had a fitting, prejudiced, and derogatory explanation for it. A different but complementary view is that of Abdul JanMohamed, for whom “any evident ‘ambivalence’ is in fact a product of deliberate, if at times subconscious, imperialist duplicity, operating very efficiently through the economy of its central trope, the manichean allegory,” which transforms “racial difference into moral and even metaphysical difference.”51 This means that “the imperialist is not fixated on specific images or stereotypes of the Other but rather on the affective benefits proffered by the  Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” 111.  Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 100, 101. 50  Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 94–95. 51  JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory,” 61. 48 49

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manichean allegory, which generates the various stereotypes.”52 The emphasis in JanMohamed is not on contradiction and fixity, as in Bhabha, but on multiplicity and fluctuation. This is an important point, since, as long as the oppositional difference between colonizer and colonized remains, the ways in which that difference is expressed may vary not only considerably but also unpredictably. The ambivalences of the depictions of Muslims by Iberian Christians go far beyond sympathetic and hostile portrayals: they multiply while assigning a number of both positive and negative characteristics (chivalrous/barbaric, loyal/treacherous, docile/ belligerent, etc.) to equally heterogeneous roles and positions: enemies, allies, rulers, vassals, relatives, etc. All these different representations have only one thing in common: their constant affirmation, through any means, of “the moral authority of the colonizer” and “the inferiority of the native [or, more broadly, the colonized or the other] as a metaphysical fact,” in JanMohamed’s words.53 In spite of their diverse and incongruous content, depictions of Muslims by Christian authors coincide on their desire or need to emphasize the Muslims’ difference and inferiority while reinforcing the authority of Christianity and Christian rulers over them. The agency of Christians in their colonial depictions of Muslims should not be understood as a one-way operation in which Christian authors and rulers are immune to any action, resistance, or influence from those they are attempting to control. Quite the opposite: while the relationship between the colonizers and the colonized is intrinsically asymmetrical, the interaction between them is always a struggle and a negotiation in which all parties are somehow transformed. European powers may have forever altered Africa, Asia, and the Americas, but Europe would also be unrecognizable without the impact of those peoples it colonized, because every participant in a colonial relationship is changed by it, despite some having the political power to disseminate their own version of history and others being subjugated through military campaigns and textual representations. Mary Louise Pratt summarizes the connection between those at both ends of this interaction by writing: While the imperial metropole tends to imagine itself as determining the periphery (in the emanating glow of the civilizing mission or the cash flow of development, for example), it habitually blinds itself to the reverse  JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory,” 68.  JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory,” 84.

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dynamic, the powers colonies have over their “mother” countries. For instance, empires create in the imperial center of power an obsessive need to present and re-present its peripheries and its others continually to itself. It becomes dependent on its others to know itself.54

Although “metropole” and “peripheries” are inadequate terms in the context of medieval Iberia because of the chaotic political fragmentation of the Peninsula, the colonial interactions described by Pratt in a very different setting are also observed in the texts I analyze: the more Iberian Christians wanted to flaunt their political power and religious orthodoxy, the more attention they paid to Muslims in their literary and historiographical works. And, after centuries of Iberian Christians defining themselves and their polities through their representations of Muslims, they became so dependent on them that, when Muslims were no longer a significant threat in the Iberian Peninsula, Christian authors transferred the same patterns of representation to the rest of the Mediterranean and the world. Indeed, that obsessive dependence pointed out by Pratt becomes only more intense in those early modern Portuguese authors that I include in my sixth chapter, for whom “the history of the country is now considered to be almost exclusively the recording of its overseas expansion. The nation was living on and for the Orient.”55 Muslims were not only prominent in these writers’ accounts about Africa and Asia, but their contradictory representations could also be recycled and adapted to fit other non-Christians. In fact, as long as Iberian Christians were involved in colonial endeavors in their own Peninsula or overseas, their ambivalent interactions with Muslims played a central role in how they saw themselves and how they represented any kind of ethnic, religious, or cultural difference. This book attempts to not only analyze the contradictory portrayals of Muslims in texts written by Iberian Christians but also show the development and persistence of those literary depictions from the Middle Ages to early modernity, despite the profound transformations experienced by the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the world during those centuries. Because of this, each following chapter focuses on only one or two central works that are representative of a specific moment in that history, while using examples from many other texts to support their analysis. In this way, we can distinctly see how contradictory colonial representations are already  Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4.  Catz, “Consequences and Repercussions of the Portuguese Expansion,” 331.

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found in the twelfth-century Cantar de mio Cid; they develop in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century works such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Llibre dels fets, the Estoria de España, and the Crónica geral de 1344; and they culminate in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with Tirant lo Blanch and Os Lusíadas, two texts that conflate the complex interactions of Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia with their new encounters across the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Indian Ocean. In my second chapter, I explain how the alternately derogatory and sympathetic depictions of Muslims, along with the complementary colonial strategies that advocated for fighting against them and for negotiating with their cultural difference, are central to the heroic ideals of the twelfth-­ century Castilian epic Cantar de mio Cid. Indeed, this heroic poem clearly shows how the acquisition of power in a politically fragmented and culturally diverse Iberia depended not only on military strength but also on forging alliances and governing heterogeneous subjects. Through their crucial roles of enemies to be defeated, allies with whom to negotiate, and subjects to rule, Muslims become instrumental for the Christian hero to acquire the wealth, military reputation, and political power that the Cantar de mio Cid celebrates. The third chapter of this book highlights the ideological similarities between two apparently disparate thirteenth-century works: the autobiographical narrative in Catalan Llibre dels fets and the compilation of Marian poems in Galician-Portuguese Cantigas de Santa Maria. These books were either written or sponsored by two Iberian kings, Jaume I of Aragon and Alfonso X of Castile, with parallel political and cultural views on how Christian rulers should interact with the Muslim populations that they needed to integrate into their kingdoms. Despite their own territorial and personal rivalries, both monarchs aspired to conquering and administrating Muslim territories in the Iberian south, the eastern coast, and the Balearic Islands, and both works show the continuous alternation between conciliatory and aggressive gestures used by these Christian kings to transform their Muslim enemies into allies or subjects. In this way, the authors create a textual world in which their Muslims characters are contradictory stereotypes that cannot escape from their colonial fate: either because of their docility or because of their rebelliousness, their benevolence, or their savagery, Muslims are destined to death or subjugation by ambitious Christian rulers such as Alfonso and Jaume. The fourth chapter focuses on the legend of the infantes of Lara, whose inclusion in the thirteenth-century Estoria de España (another cultural

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project sponsored by Alfonso X of Castile) unsettles some of the work’s ideological foundations, which defended the rights of Christian kings to rule the Peninsula because of their alleged Roman and Visigothic forebears, while presenting Muslim rulers as illegitimate invaders to be killed or expelled. The story of the infantes of Lara, however, depicts Andalusi Muslims as heroic figures that selflessly protect and avenge the victims of a family feud among Christians. After the Christianization of the main Muslim hero in a rewriting of the Estoria de España, fourteenth-century Portuguese adaptations of the legend in the Livro de linhagens and the Crónica geral de 1344 gradually reconstruct its plot by eliminating or reversing all those elements that formerly contested Christian supremacy. In this way, we can observe the step-by-step transformation of a story that highlighted the alliances between different religious and cultural groups in Iberia into a narrative that glorifies the subjugation of Muslims to Christians. In the fifth chapter, I study the resemblance of the contradictory representations of Muslims in previous medieval works and in fifteenth-century Tirant lo Blanch, despite this Valencian chivalric romance being set in a much vaster Mediterranean context that includes a variety of Muslim groups from North Africa to Constantinople. Because of such similarities, I disagree with other scholars who have attributed the book’s inconsistent depictions of Muslims simply to its multiple authorship, and I focus instead on their usefulness for colonial purposes. At a time when Iberian rulers were testing the possibilities of extending their political or commercial dominion to other continents and when Granada, the last Muslim kingdom of the Peninsula, was about to fall under the power of the Catholic Monarchs, Tirant lo Blanch shows how similar ideological and literary strategies to those that helped justify the subjugation of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula during previous centuries could be successfully applied in other regions of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at the beginning of the Age of Exploration. My sixth chapter further studies the durability of medieval representations of Muslim difference during modernity by examining the sixteenth-­ century epic Os Lusíadas, by Luís Vaz de Camões, and its justifications for Portugal’s expansionism and transformation into the first global Iberian empire. In an even more complex world that now extends from the Americas to the Moluccas, Camões still predominantly focuses on Muslims as the main allies, adversaries, and subjects of Iberian Christians while presenting them with the same contradictory stereotypes from the Middle

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Ages and with the same main purpose of advocating for their colonization. The connection between the ambivalent contacts of Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia and their modern alliances and confrontations overseas is made explicit by Camões, who continuously quotes and reinterprets previous chronicles in order to celebrate Portuguese victories across the centuries and to predict the worldwide and definitive triumph of Christian colonialism over non-Christians. As previously said, the political power and cultural ascendancy of the Islamic world made it much more difficult for medieval and early modern Christians to simply ignore Muslims or to reduce them to negative stereotypes, as they did with other religious and cultural minorities. Because the intricate exchanges between the two dominant groups in the Iberian Peninsula required a more ambivalent textual approach, Christians had to develop contradictory depictions of Muslims in order to justify their own colonial purposes while acknowledging the tremendous complexity of ethnic, religious, and cultural difference. As I will further explain in my seventh and last chapter, we can feel the impact of this process even now, both because the modern descendants of those medieval Iberians went on to colonize faraway lands from the Americas to Southeast Asia and because other European powers later imitated and challenged the colonial practices of Portugal and Spain. For these reasons, the conflicting treatment of Muslim difference by Iberian Christians has become deeply significant for the conformation of relationships between Christian Europeans and the rest of us until today.

Three Notes on Terminology 1. “Hispania,” “Spain,” and “Iberia” Like most contemporary scholars writing in English, I use “Iberia” or “the Iberian Peninsula” to refer to a geographical zone that was divided during the Middle Ages among a variety of Muslim and Christian polities. Medieval and early modern authors, however, often talked about a geographic/political/cultural entity named “Espanna” or “España” (as in the title of a chronicle sponsored by Alfonso X, Estoria de España), which can create some confusion about what they meant, considering that “España” or Spain as a nation-state would not exist yet for several more centuries.

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Medieval “España” derives from Latin “Hispania,” which “meant, for Christians, all the peninsula, and included the Muslim-occupied lands,” according to María Rosa Menocal.56 The specification “for Christians” is important, because “for the Arab historians its equivalent, Ishbaniya, was usually applied only to Christian Spain. Al-Andalus, for the Arabs, similarly could encompass either the whole peninsula or only the portion under Muslim rule.”57 There was a consistent tendency, in both local and foreign languages, to alternate between designating part of the Peninsula and its entirety by the same name: in the Occitan used by the troubadours from Languedoc, where the term “espanhol” or “espaignol” first appeared, “Espanha” sometimes referred to the whole Peninsula, sometimes to the Iberian Christian kingdoms, and other times only to Castile.58 According to Glick, “Spania” could also be understood as encompassing “broadly the area which had fallen within the Visigothic sphere of influence, sometimes even including the region of Narbonne, on the northern side of the Pyrenees.”59 Medieval Hispania could extend not only past the Pyrenees in the north but also past the Strait of Gibraltar in the south, as when Isidore of Seville enumerates Hispania’s “provincias sex: Tarraconensem, Cartaginensem, Lusitaniam, Galliciam, Baeticam, et trans freta in regione Africae Tingitaniam” (“six provinces: Tarragona, [Nova] Carthago, Lusitania, Gallaecia, Baetica, and, across the strait and in Africa, Tingitana”).60 At the same time, when thinking of Hispania in more political than geographical terms, medieval Iberians oscillated between “una pretensión de unidad idealizada y una realidad constitutivamente plural” (“an idealized claim to unity and a constitutively plural reality”), as expressed by Carlos de Ayala Martínez: especially since the thirteenth  Menocal, “Visions of Al-Andalus,” 12.  Menocal, “Visions of Al-Andalus,” 12. 58  Alvar, La poesía trovadoresca en España y Portugal, 295–297. Américo Castro also mentions the Occitan origin of “español,” which appears in the Peninsula just in the thirteenth century; before that, the only term that could include the inhabitants of several different Iberian Christian kingdoms was simply “cristiano.” Castro, The Spaniards, 10–11. 59  Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, xx–xxi. 60  Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologías, 2: 186. Isidore was taking into consideration Roman and Visigothic precedents when establishing this link between the Iberian Peninsula and Africa, since “in Roman times the province of Mauritania Tingitana (now Morocco) formed part of a larger administrative unit known as the Diocese of Spain. When the Visigoths established their dominance over all of Spain in the sixth century they also asserted claims to Mauritania, but it is difficult to ascertain the extent of their authority there.” O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade, 3. 56 57

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century, powerful Castilians tended to see the Peninsula as a unity, while other Christian Iberians emphasized the cultural and political plurality of “Hispaniae” or “las Españas.”61 The ambiguity of the terms “Hispania” and “España” explains the scholarly consensus in the English-speaking world to differentiate between the geographical term “Iberia” or “Iberian Peninsula” and the individual identification of each Iberian polity (as the Caliphate of Córdoba, the kingdoms of León or Granada, the Crown of Aragon, etc.) It is important to notice that the same ambiguity, however, was extremely useful for ambitious Christian leaders during the Middle Ages. When Alfonso X of Castile commissioned the tomb of his father, Fernando III, he ordered inscriptions in Latin, Castilian, Hebrew, and Arabic. These inscriptions call Fernando not only king of Castile, Toledo, León, Galicia, Seville, Córdoba, Murcia, and Jaén, but conqueror of “totam Hispania(m)” or “toda España” (“all Spain/Hispania”).62 Since the extent of “Hispania” or “España” was debatable, the properness of the title was impossible to determine, just like when Alfonso VI of León called himself “imperator totius Hispanie” (“emperor of all Hispania”) and “rex Spanie” (“king of Spain/Hispania”) or when thirteenth-century Castilian-Leonese authors simply conflated Spain/Hispania with Castile.63 Thus, a terminological problem for modern scholars could be a convenient source of imaginary power and political propaganda for medieval leaders. The vagueness of the term “España” still existed in the late Middle Ages and early modernity. Zurara’s Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, written in the mid-fifteenth century, includes this revealing conversation between a North African old man and a Portuguese child, as remembered by that same child as an adult: Chegamdosse a mim começoume de oolhar pregumtamdome domde era. e eu lhe disse como era espanholl. Nom uos pregumto disse elle, senom de que lugar sooes da Espanha. E eu lhe rrespomdi como era naturall da çidade de Lixboa. Essa çidade disse o uelho, em que rregno he. E eu lhe rrespomdi como era do rregno, de Portugall.

61  Ayala Martínez, “Realidad y percepción de Hispania,” 224–225; Nogales Rincón, “From the Five Kingdoms to the Hispanic Monarchy,” 13. 62  Dodds, Menocal, and Balbale, The Arts of Intimacy, 200–201. 63  Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 692; Nogales Rincón, “From the Five Kingdoms to the Hispanic Monarchy,” 13.

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(He approached and started asking me where I was from, and I told him I was “Spanish” [Iberian]. That is not my question, he said, but rather where in “Spain” [the Iberian Peninsula] are you from. I replied that I had been born in the city of Lisbon. And that city, said the old man, what kingdom is it in? I replied that it belonged to the kingdom of Portugal).64

To answer the simple question of where he is from, this fifteenth-­ century boy first thinks of the Iberian Peninsula, then of his hometown, and he only comes up with the name of his kingdom when asked specifically about it. A century later, Luís de Camões still frequently refers to the Portuguese as natives of “Espanha” and the love for his kingdom juxtaposes with his celebration of the entire Peninsula: while “a nobre Espanha” (“noble Spain/Hispania/Iberia”) is “cabeça ali de Europa toda” (“head of all Europe”), Portugal is “cume da cabeça/de Europa toda” (“the crown of the head of all Europe”).65 And once again, the ambiguity of “Espanha” becomes fruitful for ideological purposes: both Zurara and Camões take pride on the feats not only of Portuguese heroes but also of all “espanhois” (“Spaniards/Iberians”) including the Castilian Cid and Alfonso VI of León.66 2. “Moros,” “mouros,” and “sarraïns” Castilian and Catalan “moro,” as well as its Portuguese cognate “mouro,” are terms with a charged and complicated history. “Strictly speaking, Moors were the Mauri, Berbers who lived in the Roman province of Mauretania,” writes Glick: “The etymology of moro, however, is Greek mauros, meaning black.”67 These different geographic, ethnic, and racial meanings come together in the medieval use of the terms “moro” and “mouro,” a couple of “dramatically slippery” words that may allude to an inhabitant of Mauritania, to anybody from North Africa, or to all Muslims.68 In the main texts of my corpus, however, “moro” or “mouro”  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 56.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, sts. 17, 20. 66  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 37; Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, sts. 23–24. 67  Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain, xxii. Isidore of Seville believed that the “Mauri” were originally Greek “Medi,” who traveled to Africa, became darkened by the hot climate, and began therefore to be called “blacks” by the inhabitants of Libya. Isidore of Seville, Etimologías, 1: 762. 68  Blackmore, “Imagining the Moor,” 28–30. 64 65

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can be generally interpreted and simply translated as “Muslim.” It is true, as Ross Brann points out, that these terms “underscored for Christian readers not only the Muslims’ religious and cultural otherness but also and more particularly their ‘foreign,’ racialized African origins.”69 Despite this, most of the texts here analyzed usually refer to both Iberian and foreign Muslims as “moros” or “mouros,” and the context often makes clear that they are not concerned at all with their geographical origin or ethnic background. A good example of this purely religious use of the term is found in this quote of the Estoria de España: “Quando este Mudarra Gonçales llego de Cordoua a Salas, que lo fizo su padre batear, e torno lo cristiano, ca antes moro era” (“When Mudarra González came from Córdoba to Salas, his father had him baptized, and he became a Christian, since he was a Muslim before that”).70 In a similar vein, “moros” and “cristianos,” that is, Muslims and Christians, are often presented as two opposed and sometimes complementary groups in several texts of my corpus.71 Before “Mauri,” “moros,” and “mouros” became the favorite terms for Iberian authors to refer to Muslims, there was a variety of Latin denominations for them: “Saraceni, Agareni, and Ismaelitae, all derived from the Book of Genesis (Gen. 16–17, 21, 25), appear primarily in the early Latin sources,” writes O’Callaghan: “Also of biblical origin, but quite anachronistic, were the words Chaldeans, used in the Hebrew Bible with reference to Babylon, and Moabites, a people settled east of the Dead Sea.”72 These and other more aggressive terms, such as “infidels” or “enemies of the cross of Christ (inimici crucis Christi),” later gave ground to “Mauri” and “moros,” which “eventually supplanted nearly all of the other biblical and ethnic terms in common usage.”73 Among the main texts of my corpus, the sole exception to the predominance of “moro” and “mouro” is the Llibre dels fets by Jaume I of Aragon. Although Jaume also utilizes the term “moros,” he overwhelmingly  Brann, “The Moors?,” 312.  “Edición de la Versión crítica de la Estoria de España,” 350; chap. 182. 71  There are other Iberian texts in which these terms are, instead, highly problematic. For example, in the fifteenth-century Crónica dos feitos de Guiné, Gomes Eanes de Zurara uses “mouro” to mean either “any non-Christian African” or “Muslim” even in the same passages, as when he writes that Portuguese explorers encountered some “mouros” (“non-­ Christian Africans”), but they could not find out if they were “mouros ou gentios” (“Muslims or Gentiles”). Zurara, Crónica dos feitos notáveis, 1: 57, 58. 72  O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 15–16. 73  O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 15–16. 69 70

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prefers “sarraïns”: while “moro” and “moros” appear 89 times in the Llibre dels fets, “sarraïns,” “sarraïnes,” and other variants of the same word (“sarrahí,” “sarraý,” etc.) appear 340 times.74 Catalan “sarraïn” derives from Latin “Saracenus,” a term even more contemptuous than “Maurus.” While “Maurus” simply alludes to having dark skin and an African origin, “Saracenus” involves a biblical imposture, which reinforces the a­ ccusations against Muslims as distorters of the Judeo-Christian tradition: Isidore of Seville explains that Muslims call themselves “Saraceni” “quia ex Sara genitos se praedicent” (“because they say that they descend from Sarah”), although they actually descend from her slave Hagar and Hagar’s son, Ishmael, and they should therefore be better known as “Agareni” or “Ismaelitae.”75 It is important to notice that Jaume does not differentiate between the meanings and the contexts of “moro” and “sarraïn,” not even to distinguish between local and foreign Muslims. Because of this, “sarraïn” in the Llibre dels fets can be generally interpreted as “Muslim,” just like “moro” or “mouro.” Similarly to what happened in Castilian and Portuguese, the term “moro” also ended up being predominant in Catalan, as observed in Tirant lo Blanch, which was written two centuries after the Llibre dels fets: “Los personajes musulmanes del Tirant son, incluso los turcos, ‘moros’” (“All Muslim characters in the Tirant are ‘Moors,’ even the Turks”), writes María José Rubiera, and she adds: En la documentación valenciana de los siglos XIV y XV se utiliza este concepto para designar a los musulmanes reinícolas o foráneos y a las aljamas, morerías, conservándose la antigua denominación de sarracenos para los documentos en latín, aunque la denominación de la lengua vulgar, es decir, moros, va invadiendo igualmente la documentación latina. (In the Valencian documents of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this concept is used to designate both the Muslims of the kingdom and the foreigners, and the aljamas are called “morerías,” while the old denomination of “Saracens” is reserved for the documents in Latin, although these are also infiltrated by the denomination in the vulgar language, that is, “Moors”).76

3. “Religio” and “ley”  Bruguera, “Vocabulari integral,” 267, 312.  Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologías, 1: 748. 76  Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam, 47. 74 75

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When interpreting medieval “moros,” “mouros,” and “sarraïns” as “Muslims,” there is one more cultural problem: a medieval “Christian” or “Muslim” is not simply somebody who believes in Christianity or Islam but somebody whose entire life, from his diet to his neighborhood and profession, may be determined by his belonging to a religious group. In contemporary Western culture, a religion is something that mostly concerns issues of personal conscience and morality; in medieval Iberia, instead, being a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew involved a legal status and civil duties similar to those of the citizens of modern nation-states. Actually, our use of “religion” has many similarities with medieval “religio,” which, for example for Thomas Aquinas, referred “to interior acts of devotion and prayer, […] more important than any outward expressions of this virtue.”77 “Religio” and its derivations, therefore, were not exactly what Pedro Afonso of Barcelos, Joanot Martorell, or Luís de Camões had in mind when writing on the differences between Christians and non-­ Christians. While Iberian Christian authors sometimes differentiated their own “fe” (“faith”) from other peoples’ “sectas” (“sects”), their favorite general term was “lex,” “lei,” or “ley” (“law”), which comprehended the spiritual commitment of believers along with their social responsibilities and rights. In Las siete partidas, for example, Alfonso X defines a Jew as “aquel que cree et tiene la ley de Moysen segunt que suena la letra della, et que se circuncida et face las otras cosas que manda esa su ley” (“one who believes in the law of Moses and practices it according to its writings, and who is circumcised and does all the other things ordered by such a law”), while, as already quoted, he thinks that the Muslims’ law is “como denuesto de Dios” (“an insult against God”).78 What after the sixteenth century came to be known as “Islam,” during the Middle Ages, was simply “referred to as the ‘law of Muhammad’ or the ‘law of the Saracens.’”79 As summarized by Lucy Pick, medieval law “encompasses not only theology and anthropology, but other notions as well, such as the idea of being bound to a community, and as a community. It is much more than a set of rules and sanctions; it is a system of interwoven beliefs, ethics, liturgical and extra-liturgical practice.”80

 Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion, 7.  Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, 3: 669, 675. 79  Tolan, Saracens, xv. 80  Pick, “What Did Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada Know about Islam?,” 234. 77 78

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A fundamental problem with such a totalitarian, all-encompassing view of a religious “law” was the difficulty that it created for integration between different groups, as explained by Joseph O’Callaghan: Christian and Muslim societies were mutually exclusive, by reason not only of social and legal differences, but above all because of religion which suffused every facet of life. Daily interaction between Christians and Muslims did contribute to a degree of acculturation, especially in matters of language and social usage, but there was no real possibility of the full integration of Christians into Muslim society of Muslims into Christian society. In each instance Christians or Muslims could only be protected minorities with limited political and legal rights.81

Those same circumstances complicated the possibility of conversion: because each “law” highlighted the “influence that one’s religious beliefs had over the totality of one’s life and actions,” conversion for Muslims “meant not only the abandonment of Islamic theological ideas and religious beliefs, but also the abandonment of an entire legal system and the acceptance of both Christian doctrine and the civil law of the Christian community.”82 Brian Catlos similarly emphasizes how, because religious identity “structured one’s social and economic relationships both by circumscribing marital opportunities and through informal, but powerful, networks centered on communities of worship,” acquiring a new religion “demanded both social marginalization and cultural conversion—a daunting prospect few were prepared to undertake.”83 This situation explains why Muslim-Christian conversion appears in the texts of my corpus mostly as a fantasy. When Muslims become baptized in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Estoria de España, or Tirant lo Blanch, they do not make this decision after being patiently taught and persuaded by Christians but as the result of a spontaneous and miraculous change of heart. John Tolan explains that these representations of Christianized Muslims in Iberia and the rest of Europe are literary motifs mostly based on “the conversions of pagan kings of old,” which allowed Christians to imagine that Muslims “could also be transformed into allies through a few dramatic and

 O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 10.  O’Callaghan, “The Mudejars of Castile and Portugal,” 56. 83  Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 340, 341. See also Catlos, The Victors and the Vanquished, 249–259. 81 82

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exemplary conversions.”84 Although in the historical record many Muslims indeed became Christians (and many Christians became Muslims), the Iberian authors of my corpus were seemingly not thinking of any familiar, real-life examples when writing about conversions, probably because fantastic circumstances and supernatural explanations were more useful for their ideological goals. To use “religion” in a medieval context, therefore, is a problematic choice that may induce confusion, but to which I have not found a satisfactory alternative. “Faith” would stress even more the private, personal aspects that characterize modern religious experiences while further excluding the cultural, social, and political dimensions that were central to medieval believers. “Law” may be the most proper term from a medieval perspective, but its widespread use would constantly interfere with the juridical, more common meaning of the word. Without a better option, in consequence, I have resigned myself to referring to medieval Christianity and Islam as “religions” while emphasizing and often reminding the reader of all the other aspects of life that premodern Iberians normally associated with their adherence to these systems of belief.

 Tolan, Sons of Ishmael, 69.

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CHAPTER 2

Indispensable Enemies, Subjects, and Friends: The Political Instrumentalization of Muslims in the Cantar de mio Cid

The main difference between the colonizer and the colonized should be a simple one: the first one can freely have and enjoy his own cultural products, religious ideas, political achievements, and the second one cannot. In other words, the colonizers should be able to exist by themselves, independently, without the colonized. But, in all honesty, can they really do that? From an entirely material perspective, colonizers can rarely survive, much less thrive, without the help of the colonized: they need not only their hard work but also their knowledge, information, and techniques. From a simply logical or even ontological point of view, the entire identity of the colonizers as such depends on having somebody else at their service: nobody can be a colonizer by himself, the same way no single creature can be a pater familias or a chairperson. In a famous passage of his Phenomenology of Spirit, G.  W. F.  Hegel describes the conflictive encounter of “two opposed shapes of consciousness”: the lord or master, who “is the independent consciousness whose essential nature is to be for itself,” and the bondsman or servant, who “is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another.”1 This seems to be so at the beginning, but, after a long “life-and-death struggle,” something unexpected happens: “The object in which the lord has achieved his lordship has in reality turned out to be 1

 Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 115.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_2

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something quite different from an independent consciousness. What now really confronts him is not an independent consciousness, but a dependent one.”2 The interdependency between master and servant reproduces itself continuously in a colonial context: deceptively simple in their asymmetrical inequality, colonial relationships are also life-and-death struggles that may end up unmasking those with more power as the ones who most need others to survive. And one of the ways in which the colonizers express their need for the colonized is through their copious, compulsive writing about them: it was through this incessant writing, for instance, that “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self,” in Edward Said’s words.3 The Castilian epic Cantar de mio Cid exemplifies the dependency of the colonizer on the colonized in multiple ways. At the beginning of the poem, the Christian hero has been exiled by his king and has lost all his possessions and reputation; because of this, the only way for him to recover his fortune is to conquer territories from Muslims and to become their lord (literally, their Cid, from the Arabic sayyid).4 In this strictly material sense, the Cid and his wealth are fully dependent on the Muslims that fight against him, ally to him, or serve him; but, additionally, defeated and subjugated Muslims are useful for the hero, his king, and other Christians to compare their respective skills as either warriors or rulers. In order to fulfill those different roles, Muslim characters need to be depicted in varied and contradictory ways: they have to be hostile and ferocious for the Christians to obtain glory when fighting against them but also chivalrous and loyal so they can respect alliances and surrender pacts. This ambivalence is not only found in the representations of Muslims but also in the depictions of their relationships with Christians and especially with the Cid: the hero and his interactions with Muslims are no less contradictory than Muslims themselves. All these disparate characterizations and relationships, however, serve the common end of arguing for the superiority of Christians and the legitimacy of their dominion over Iberian lands and peoples. In other words, Muslims are as useful for the Christian characters to gain wealth and honor as for the Christian author to justify colonialism:  Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, 116–117.  Said, Orientalism, 3. 4  On the meaning and etymology of the title “Cid,” see Viguera Molins, “El Cid en las fuentes árabes,” 85–86. 2 3

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in both cases, Muslims are fully instrumental, essential only to the extent that they are convenient for the purposes and needs of Christians.

The Cid, His King, and the Muslims Between Them The Cantar de mio Cid (also known as Poema del Cid or Poema de mio Cid) is a Castilian heroic poem from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, which fictionalizes some of the feats carried out by the legendary military leader Rodrigo or Ruy Díaz de Vivar, nicknamed the “Cid.”5 Representations of Muslims and intercultural relationships in the Cantar de mio Cid derive from the historical context of its Christian hero, who witnessed or participated in a series of events that were decisive in the power struggles among Iberian polities and their diverse ethnic, cultural, and religious communities. Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar reached adulthood during the reign of Fernando I and served Fernando’s son, Alfonso VI, two rulers who enabled the lasting hegemony of León-Castile over the Iberian Peninsula, especially by subjugating Muslim kingdoms. In fact, at the death of Fernando I in 1065, such supremacy was practically incontestable: The three strong taifa kingdoms of Zaragoza, Toledo, and Badajoz had all been forced to recognize [Fernando’s] overlordship, to pay parias regularly, and had yielded up portions of their territories of greater or lesser extent. He had made his strength felt, as well, in the rather more distant Muslim realms of Valencia and Sevilla. Among the major kingdoms of Spanish Islam only Córdoba and Granada had gone untouched. In the Christian north, Navarra had become a vassal state, given up territory, and was pinned against the Pyrenees by León-Castilla and Zaragoza. Aragón was still a petty principality of the northeastern foothills and remote Barcelona no more than a struggling if ambitious county.6

Iberia by then was an assortment of Christian and “taifa” kingdoms, as are known the smaller Muslim polities derived from the breaking up of the caliphate of Córdoba at the beginning of the eleventh century. This situation made hegemony over the Peninsula a complicated business that 5  A summary of the discussion about the dating of the Cantar de mio Cid can be found in the edition of the poem by Alberto Montaner, according to whom the poem can be dated with almost total certainty around 1200. Cantar de mio Cid, 281–289. 6  Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla, 13.

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Fernando I and other rulers solved not as much through territorial conquest as through the singular institution of parias, “a form of tribute exchanged in return for ‘protection,’” as summarized by Brian Catlos: As long has the kings continued to pay, Fernando would provide them with troops and defend them from any Muslim or Christian princes. It was a brilliant strategy. Without having to conquer and occupy those kingdoms, and without having to subdue or displace their populations, Fernando simultaneously filled his coffers and prevented competing Christian powers from gaining footholds of their own in al-Andalus.7

After years of warring against his siblings, Alfonso VI finally reunited his father’s territories, continued with the parias system, and added Toledo to his kingdom in 1085. The political importance of these achievements was reflected on Alfonso VI being the first Leonese king to call himself “emperor” as a way to emphasize the legitimacy of his hegemony over the entire Peninsula, including Christian and Muslim territories.8 Alfonso’s high-flown titles included “divina gratia rex et imperator” (“king and emperor by divine grace”), “imperator totius Hispaniae” (“emperor of all Hispania”), “totius orbis Hispaniae imperator” (“emperor over the entire land of Hispania”), “ab ipso [Christo] constitutus imperator super omnes Hispaniae nationes” (“appointed by Christ as emperor over all peoples of Hispania”), and similar variations.9 Papal claims of suzerainty over the Peninsula were an additional factor that drove Alfonso to use imperial titles, therefore implicitly rejecting Pope Gregory VII’s claims that “the kingdom of Spain was given by ancient constitutions to Blessed Peter and to the Holy Roman Church in right and ownership.”10 In this way, 7  Catlos, Infidel Kings, 76. For a more detailed explanation on parias and their history, see O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 165–171. 8  Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 672; Ayala Martínez, “Realidad y percepción de Hispania,” 214. Some contemporary documents referred to Alfonso’s father as “imperator,” but there is no evidence that Fernando ever adopted such title in an official way. Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 680–681; Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 1: 110; Sirantoine, Imperator Hispaniae, 157–161. 9  Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 695–696, 706–710; García-Gallo, “El imperio medieval español,” 214–218; Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 2: 727–733; Sirantoine, Imperator Hispaniae, 208–210. 10  O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 29. See also Gambra, Alfonso VI, 1: 696–698; Ganshof, The Middle Ages, 90; Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 1: 233–235; Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla, 103–104.

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Alfonso’s role as king of León and Castile became entwined with his hegemonic position among all Iberian rulers and his proud independence from foreign powers like the Papacy. None of Alfonso VI’s imperial titles or ambitions are mentioned in the Cantar de mio Cid, despite him being one of its main characters. Both Alfonso’s political independence and Peninsular hegemony, however, are contextually important to better understand his relationship with the Cid, which the Cantar depicts in ambiguous and sometimes puzzling terms. On the one hand, the poem’s Alfonso first unfairly exiles Rodrigo and then, in a well-intentioned but ill-considered act, marries his daughters to two less-than-heroic noblemen, the infantes of Carrión.11 On the other hand, the Cid’s unwavering loyalty to his king is showcased and lauded by the poem, and, after Rodrigo wins Alfonso’s favor back, such devotion is compensated with praises and honors by the king himself. The equivocal representation of Alfonso as a flawed king who, nevertheless, deserves the dogged allegiance of the hero Rodrigo has created endless debates about the interpretation of episodes and lines such as this praise of the Cid by some anonymous villagers of Burgos: “¡Dios, qué buen vassallo, si oviesse buen señor!” (“What a good vassal. If only he had a good lord!”).12 Are the villagers criticizing the king, openly calling him a bad lord in contrast with his good vassal, Rodrigo? Or are they just wishing Rodrigo luck on finding another good lord, now that his king has exiled him? These are just two options among many that scholars have suggested for that line, but all of them revolve around better defining the complicated relationship between Rodrigo and his king.13 Because both Alfonso’s and the Cid’s reputations rested greatly on their conquest of Muslim territories (the taifa kingdoms in the south of Iberia, in the case of Alfonso; the principality of Valencia, in the case of 11  “Infantes” should properly be the children of a king, but in the Iberian Peninsula the term was used more loosely to refer to the children of high noblemen. The Portuguese Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro explains that “porque os de Lara e os de Carriom foram de mais alto sangue que havia em Castela e decendiam dos reis, por esso lhes chamarom ifantes” (“the infantes of Lara and Carrión were called this way because they were of the noblest blood in Castile and descended from kings”). Livro de linhagens, II/1: 148. 12  Cantar de mio Cid, v. 20. Unless otherwise stated, the English translations of quotes from the Cantar de mio Cid come from The Poem of the Cid, ed. Ian Michael and trans. Rita Hamilton and Janet Perry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1975). 13  For a summary of the long discussion about the meaning of this line, see Querol Sanz, “El verso 20 del Poema de Mío Cid.”

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Rodrigo), the affective, economic, and social interactions between the two of them are deeply mediated by their colonial relationships with Muslims. Although almost casually, Muslims are mentioned twice in one of the episodes that best portray the tension between the powerful king and his invincible vassal. During the last time the two of them appear together in the poem, Alfonso sees Rodrigo riding his favorite horse and the king comments with astonishment: “¡Yo lo juro par Sant Esidro el de León/ que en todas nuestras tierras non ha tan buen varón!” (“I swear by St Isidore, whom we venerate in León, that there is not such a man as you in all our land”).14 Then Rodrigo offers the horse to the king as a present, because, according to him, there is no better horse “en moros ni en cristianos” (“among Muslims or Christians”).15 Alfonso refuses, however, by acknowledging (in an act of true or false modesty) his own inferiority as a rider and a warrior: “Si a vós le tolliés, el cavallo no havrié tan buen señor,/ mas atal cavallo cum ést pora tal commo vós,/pora arrancar moros del campo e ser segudador” (“If I took this horse from you he would not have so good a master. Such a horse is fit for such a man as you—to defeat Moors in battle and follow them in pursuit”).16 The apparent acceptance by Alfonso of Rodrigo’s superior skills when riding on the battlefield and fighting Muslims had been already foreshadowed 400 lines earlier, when Alfonso invited Rodrigo to occupy the king’s seat and incredibly told him: “¡Maguer que a algunos pesa, mejor sodes que nós!” (“Some may not like it, but you are still better than us!”).17 In his edition of the poem, Alberto Montaner lessens the importance of what sounds like “un elogio excesivo en boca del rey” (“an excessive compliment from the king’s lips”) by saying that “se trata de una fórmula de cortesía que no hay que tomar en sentido literal” (“it is a formula of courtesy that should not be taken literally”).18 The later episode of the horse, however, seems to confirm the opposite: that Alfonso’s praise of Rodrigo is not merely a “polite expression,” but it is intended to sound excessive and shocking to both the king’s court and the audience of the poem.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 3509–3510.  Cantar de mio Cid, v. 3514. I am not using Hamilton’s and Perry’s translation for this phrase in order to preserve the literal expression. 16  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 3517–3519. 17  Cantar de mio Cid, v. 3116. I do not use Hamilton’s and Perry’s translation here since, probably because the king’s words sound so startling, they radically reinterpret them as: “Although many will begrudge it to you, I give you the place of greatest honour.” 18  Cantar de mio Cid, 187. 14 15

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The mention of “moros” as instrumental in the deferential struggle between Alfonso and Rodrigo is not the only instance in which Muslims appear as useful to determine the value of a Christian knight on the battleground. Two hundred lines earlier, another Muslim fulfills the same function during a dispute between one of the Cid’s followers, Pedro Bermúdez, and one of the infantes of Carrión, Fernando González. In front of the king and his court, Pedro reminds Fernando of an incident during the siege of Valencia, when he had to intervene in a confrontation between Fernando and a Muslim to save the cowardly infante’s life: Vist un moro, fústel’ ensayar, antes fuxiste que a él te allegasses. Si yo non uviás, el moro te jugara mal; passé por ti, con el moro me of de ayuntar, de los primeros colpes ofle de arrancar. (You caught sight of a Moor and went forward to pit yourself against him, but you ran away instead, before you came up to him. If I had not gone to your aid, that Moor would have got the better of you. I outstripped you, engaged the Moor and defeated him at once).19

One of the fundamental ambivalences in the depictions of Muslims by Iberian Christians can be noticed here: because Muslim characters have a predominantly instrumental value, they are often reduced to stereotypical roles such as those of the ferocious enemy or the skillful warrior; still, they need to be worthy opponents for their defeat to honor Christians. If Muslims were intrinsically inferior to Christians, even a bad Christian like Fernando González would easily defeat them and battlefields would soon be covered by seas of Muslim blood, as it happens in more Islamophobic and crusading Iberian texts like the thirteenth-century Poema de Fernán González or the fourteenth-century Crónica da tomada de Lisboa. Instead, during most battles in the Cantar de mio Cid, Muslims are depicted as not that different from Christians when defending their lands or earning a living as warriors, and Christians need to be brave and worthy in order to prevail and subjugate them.

 Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 3318a–3321.

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The Cid’s Contradictory Portrayals and Relationships with Muslims Crusading discourses and ideas are not entirely absent from the Cantar de mio Cid, but they are mostly relegated to those fragments of the poem that narrate the conquest of Valencia and its defense against the Almoravids. During these episodes, for the first and only time the Cantar de mio Cid calls Muslims “las yentes descreídas” (“the infidel hordes”), a derogatory term which is instead ubiquitous in the Poema de Fernán González.20 The Islamophobic tone is not associated to the character of Rodrigo either but instead to the foreign cleric Jerome of Périgord, who arrives “de parte de orient” (“from France”) simply because he ardently wishes “que s’ viesse con moros en el campo” (“to come to grips with the Moors himself”).21 Before the decisive battle against the Almoravids, bishop Jerome pronounces the only unmistakable crusading speech of the poem: “El que aqui muriere lidiando de cara,/préndol’ yo los pecados e Dios le abrá el alma” (“I absolve from sin all those who die with their faces to the enemy; God will receive their souls”).22 In fact, Jerome, who in battle against the Almoravids “es farto de lidiar con amas las sus manos,/non tiene en cuenta los moros que ha matados” (“had had all the fighting he could wish for, and he had lost all count of the Moors he had slain”), looks like a cartoonish representation of crusaders from further lands.23 Such portrayal is certainly related to his status as the only non-Iberian warrior among the Cid’s troops: as María Rosa Menocal stresses, the poem “contains a single character—a Frankish churchman, to boot, rather than any Castilian—who speaks and behaves as a wild-eyed Moorslayer, as the later mythology tells us all Christians did.”24 This was not an unusual situation in the Peninsula: the contrast between Jerome’s bloody fanaticism and the Cid’s more lenient ways mirrors the different attitudes of Iberian and foreign clerics or soldiers toward Muslims. In spite of their different attitudes when dealing with Muslim enemies, Rodrigo does not censor Jerome and instead appoints the belligerent cleric as bishop of Valencia in a surprisingly speedy decision. Immediately after Jerome’s arrival, the Cid confides to his second-in-command, Minaya:  Cantar de mio Cid, v. 1631; Poema de Fernán González, sts. 60, 82, 89, 102, 174, etc.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1288, 1293. 22  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1704–1705. 23  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1794–1795. 24  Menocal, “Introduction,” xv. 20 21

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“En tierras de Valencia fer quiero obispado/e dárgelo a este buen cristiano” (“I shall establish a bishopric in Valencia and give it to this good Christian”).25 Three lines later, the poem states: “A este don Jerónimo ya l’otorgan por obispo,/diéronle en Valencia o bien puede estar rico” (“Don Jerome was appointed Bishop of Valencia, which would be a wealthy see for him”).26 Both the urgency of this appointment and the appearance of a crusading tone in the poem may be explained by historical events. The only document which historians today consider signed by Rodrigo in person is a charter of endowment conceded to Jerome and the cathedral of Valencia in 1098. This charter “explicitly states that Jerome had been unanimously and canonically acclaimed and elected and had been consecrated bishop ‘by the hand of the Pope’ (per Romani pontificis manus) and elevated by the liberty of a special privilege (specialis privilegii libertate).”27 Simon Barton considers as “the most plausible conclusion” that “El Cid, anxious to reinforce the independence of his principality in spiritual as well as temporal matters, had himself requested prior to 1098 that Valencia be placed under the direct authority of the papacy rather than under that of the primate of the Spanish church, the archbishop of Toledo.”28 Richard Fletcher and Georges Martin agree with Barton on Rodrigo’s role behind this canonical arrangement.29 For Rome to concede this special privilege to the bishop of Valencia, however, Rodrigo probably had to argue the importance of the city and its ruler in a war against Muslims: the charter of 1098 alludes to this by explaining that God himself appointed the “invictissimus princeps Rodericus Campidoctor” (“invincible leader Rodrigo the Champion”) to avenge centuries of calamities and humiliations inflicted by Muslims to Christians.30 The framing of the conquest of Valencia as part of a holy war was therefore essential for the historical Rodrigo to protect his new dominion from both Muslim attackers and Christian competitors, and the Cantar de mio Cid is merely reflecting that fact when imbuing precisely these episodes with an openly crusading spirit. Such a connection between the political purposes of the historical Rodrigo and the poem’s sudden exacerbation of a crusading tone may be further reaffirmed by its similarities to another literary text about the same  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1299–1300.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1303–1304. 27  Barton, “El Cid, Cluny and the Medieval Spanish Reconquista,” 527. 28  Barton, “El Cid, Cluny and the Medieval Spanish Reconquista,” 527. 29  Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid, 183; Martin, “El primer testimonio cristiano,” par. 8. 30  Martin, “El primer testimonio cristiano,” par. 14. 25 26

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character and events but composed earlier in Latin. The Historia Roderici, probably written not long after Rodrigo’s death, offers the same stark opposition between the Cid and Muslims when Valencia is sieged by the Almoravids: only in this episode, Rodrigo is presented as the protector of the entire Peninsula from “Sarracenorum gentes” (“the Sarracen peoples”), because “nisi uero tam cito uenisset, ille barbare gentes Yspani totam usque ad Cesaraugustam et Leridam iam preoccupassent atque omnino obtinuissent” (“if he had not acted so swiftly, those barbarous peoples would have occupied and subjugated all Hispania through Zaragoza and Lérida”).31 Both literary representations are congruent with the fact that “a significant shift in El Cid’s reputation and public image occurred during the very final stages of his career,” according to Barton: “Territorial rulers, as the taifa kings could have told him only too well, required ideological support and legitimacy if they were not to go under, something that the Cluniacs, through Bishop Jerome, were only too willing to provide, by presenting Rodrigo’s conquest as a divinely sanctioned enterprise.”32 Catlos explains how the Cid’s Christianization of Valencia, which included the repurposing of the main mosque as a cathedral, resulted in “a popular perception among Spaniards and Christians abroad that the Cid was a hero of Christendom and a foe of its ‘pagan’ enemies.”33 That late elevation of Rodrigo’s repute among Christians has influenced for centuries how readers approach the Cantar de mio Cid and how modern critics have decontextualized or recontextualized the main character’s conflicting relationships with Muslims to better serve their ideological agendas. Between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, prominent Spanish and foreign scholars held acrimonious discussions about the stance of both the historical and the literary Cid in regard to Muslims. On the base of medieval Arabic sources, Orientalists like José Antonio Conde and Reinhard Dozy questioned the credibility of the Cantar de mio Cid and its portrayal of Rodrigo as loyal to his king, respectful of the law, and magnanimous with his enemies. For instance, two 31  Historia Roderici, 84. The dating of the Historia Roderici has been much debated, but there is some agreement about the work being composed close to Rodrigo’s death in 1099: Barton and Fletcher argue for an early twelfth-century composition and Catalán specifies a date between 1102 and 1110, which was also the date originally proposed by Menéndez Pidal. Barton and Fletcher, “Introduction to the Historia Roderici,” 92–97; Catalán, El Cid en la historia, 20, 277–280; Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 2: 917–919. 32  Barton, “El Cid, Cluny and the Medieval Spanish Reconquista,” 542. 33  Catlos, Infidel Kings, 75.

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Andalusi historians from the twelfth century, Ibn ʿAlqama and Ibn Bassām, present Rodrigo as an always shrewd and frequently brutal warlord; they call him “the tyrant” (al-ṭāgiya), “the oppressor” (bā’iqa), Alfonso’s “dog” (kalb), while his name (Ruḍrı ̄q or Luḍrı ̄q) or his appellative (al-Kabiyaṭūr) is often accompanied by the formula “may God punish him” (waqama-hu Allāh) or “may God damn him” (laʿana-hu Allāh).34 If sometimes the Cid shows some mercy toward his enemies in these Arabic sources, it is simply because such indulgence plays to his economic or political advantage. For example, the fourteenth-century historian Ibn ʿIḍārı ̄, in a passage probably taken from the Cid’s contemporary Ibn ʿAlqama, describes the joy and hopefulness of recently conquered Valencians when they realized that neither Rodrigo nor his men wanted to harm them.35 Such relief, however, must be understood in relation to the brutality of the preceding siege of the city, when Valencians were starving to death and, to those who escaped and tried to take refuge in the Christian camp, the Cid’s troops “les sacaban los ojos, les amputaban las manos, les rompían las piernas, o los mataban, por lo cual los valencianos preferían morir dentro de la ciudad” (“gouged their eyes out, cut off their hands, broke their legs, or killed them, and therefore Valencian people would rather die in the city”).36 In reaction to those Arabic chronicles and the defense of their trustworthiness by Conde and Dozy, the two most prominent Spanish philologists of the early twentieth century, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo and Ramón Menéndez Pidal, enthusiastically praised the Cantar de mio Cid as

34  Viguera Molins, “El Cid en las fuentes árabes,” 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, etc. The lost Al-Bayān al-wa ̄ḍiḥ fı ̄ l-mulimm al-fa ̄diḥ by Ibn ʿAlqama was quoted by many medieval chroniclers, including Ibn al-Kardabūs, Ibn ʿIḍārı ̄, and the authors of the Estoria de España. Ibn Bassām’s passages on the Cid from his Al-dhakhı ̄ra fı ̄ maḥa ̄sin ahl al-Jazı ̄ra have been translated to Spanish and included, along with all existing Arabic sources on Rodrigo, in Viguera Molins’ article. 35  Ibn ʿIdari, Al-bayan al-mugrib, 77. 36  Ibn ʿIdari, Al-bayan al-mugrib, 75. It is important to notice that this bleak portrayal of the Cid does not depend exclusively on him being a political and religious enemy, since Arabic sources do not present all Christian leaders in the same way. For example, Muslim chroniclers describe the conquest of Valencia by the Cid as much crueler than the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI while emphasizing Rodrigo’s personal responsibility for the destruction of the city and the suffering of its inhabitants. Benaboud, “La imagen del Cid,” 126.

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a faithful and positive depiction of an exemplary national hero.37 Menéndez Pidal decried the “triunfo de la cidofobia” (“triumph of ‘Cidophobia’”) during the nineteenth century and blamed those Orientalists that gave undeserved importance and credibility to some malevolent Arabic historians.38 Menéndez Pelayo, in a similar vein, criticized “el tipo, en gran parte imaginario, del Cid condottiero y soldado de fortuna, asalariado indistintamente por cristianos y musulmanes, devastador de comarcas enteras y saqueador de iglesias, cruel en sus venganzas y pérfido en sus tratos, medio moro en su vida y hasta en sus vestimentas” (“the mostly imaginary stereotype of the Cid as a condottiero and soldier of fortune, employed equally by Christians and Muslims, destroyer of entire regions and plunderer of churches, cruel in his revenge and perfidious in his dealings, half-Muslim in his life and even in his clothes”), which he considered an invention by Dozy.39 For Menéndez Pelayo and Menéndez Pidal, the valorization of the epic poem went hand in hand with the rehabilitation of the “real” Rodrigo Díaz: the more faithful to reality the poem was considered, the better for the historical Cid and his reputation as the quintessential Spanish Christian hero.40 The historical record, however, is unmerciful toward any fantasy of the Cid as a fervent defender of his homeland or his religion. In fact, Rodrigo simply sustained the military and political strategies of convenience that 37  Banús and Galván, “‘Seco y latoso,’” 120–123. Evidently, any kind of nationalism would be impossible to find in the Cantar de mio Cid, written centuries before the conformation of Spain as a nation-state. It could be argued that the poem contains some traces of “proto-­ nationalism,” according to the definition of this concept by Eric Hobsbawm: a communitarian feeling based, among other lesser factors, on “the consciousness of belonging or having belonged to a lasting political entity.” Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism, 73. But even “proto-nationalism” seems improbable in Castile before the influential works of thirteenth-­ century historians like Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and the scholars of the court of Alfonso X, who wrote decades after the Cantar de mio Cid was composed and more than a century after Rodrigo died. 38  Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 1: 29, 5. 39  Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 1: 8. 40  The views of Menéndez Pelayo and Menéndez Pidal on the Cid as a Spanish hero were equally indebted to the Romantic idea of a “Volksgeist” or “national spirit” and to the nationalist nostalgia of the “generación del ’98.” Armistead, “Menéndez Pidal.” Unfortunately, this nationalistic portrayal of Rodrigo was later exploited by official propaganda and educational curriculum during Franco’s dictatorship, which resulted in anthologies and handbooks of Spanish literature promoting for decades a jingoistic misinterpretation of the poem. Lacarra, “La utilización del Cid”; Gómez Moreno, “El Cid y los héroes de antaño”; Banús and Galván, “‘Seco y latoso.’”

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previous and contemporary Iberian rulers, such as Fernando I and Alfonso VI, used to deal with their Muslim enemies, allies, and subjects. Unsurprisingly for a twelfth-century Iberian warrior, Rodrigo fought equally against Muslim and Christian adversaries, and he did not make significant religious distinctions among his allies and vassals either. In addition to this, there are some reliable sources on the Cid’s sympathy toward Islamic culture and customs, from his famous Arabic nickname (sı ̄di or sayyid, that is, “my lord” or “master”) to this famous passage by Ibn Bassām: “Dicen que ante él se enseñaban los libros y se leían las biografías [heroicas] (siyar) de los Árabes, y que al llegar a la historia de al-­ Muhallab se arrebató de emoción, gustándole y asombrándose de ella” (“It is said that the books and the heroic biographies of the Arabs were studied and read in his presence, and he was seized with emotion when he heard the story of al-Muhallab, which delighted and amazed him”).41 Some Islamic influence over Rodrigo seems very plausible, even without going to the extremes of Dozy, for whom the Cid “était plutôt musulman que catholique” (“was more Muslim than Catholic”) or Catlos, who entitled a book section on the Cid “A Christian Sultan in the Age of ‘the Reconquest.’”42 Even Menéndez Pidal recognized Rodrigo’s inclination toward Islamic culture, although he considered it not very pronounced in comparison to some of his contemporaries like King Pedro I of Aragon, who used to sign his documents in Arabic.43 In addition to this attenuation of the Cid’s presumed affinity with Islamic culture, Menéndez Pidal notices two distinct rules of conduct in the interaction between Rodrigo and Muslims: Con los musulmanes de raza española el Cid quiere convivir en justicia, respetándoles escrupulosamente religión, leyes, costumbres y propiedad. […] Pero los moros españoles abrieron el Estrecho a los almorávides, y ante este contubernio a que se entregan las razas hispánicas con las africanas, el Cid 41  Viguera Molins, “El Cid en las fuentes árabes,” 63. Both the authenticity and meaning of the passage by Ibn Bassām have been debated: while Menéndez Pidal and others thought that the Muslim historian was presenting Rodrigo as particularly learned and sensitive to Islamic culture, Viguera Molins believes that Ibn Bassām wanted to highlight the cultural superiority and artistic mastery of Muslims, capable of seducing even their worst enemies. Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 2: 571–573; Viguera Molins, “El Cid en las fuentes árabes,” 88. 42  Dozy, Recherches sur l’histoire, 253; Catlos, Infidel Kings, 67. 43  Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 2: 571.

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adopta una nueva actitud, opuesta y terminante: la guerra con los invasores no puede acabar en convivencia, sino en eliminación del africano. (The Cid wanted to lawfully coexist with the Muslims of Spanish origin, respecting scrupulously their religion, laws, customs, and property. […] However, Spanish Muslims opened the Strait of Gibraltar to the Almoravids and this collusion between the Hispanic and the African races caused the Cid to adopt a new, opposite, and decisive attitude: the war against the invaders could not end up in coexistence, but only in the elimination of Africans).44

The choice of the derogatory word “contubernio” (“collusion” or “conspiracy,” but also “concubinage”) to describe the collaboration between Iberian Muslims and North African Almoravids says more about Menéndez Pidal’s prejudices against “African races” than about medieval Muslims or the Cid. The same prejudices were expressed by Menéndez Pelayo when he praised “el gran servicio que el Cid prestó al cristianismo y á la civilización de Occidente” (“the great service provided by the Cid to Christianity and Western civilization”) when Rodrigo alone could stop the “nube de langostas que abortaron los arenales de la Libia para abrasar hasta el último retoño de la brillante cultura arábigo-andaluza tan floreciente en los reinos de Almotamid el de Sevilla y de Almotación el de Almería” (“swarm of locusts, aborted by the sands of Libya with the purpose of burning down even the last sprout of the brilliant Arabo-Andalusi culture, which had flourished during the realms of al-Muʿtamid of Seville and al-Muʿtaṣim of Almería”).45 Such quotes by Menéndez Pidal and Menéndez Pelayo should serve as caution against the easy path of distancing Rodrigo’s supposedly cordial attitudes toward local, Iberian Muslims, from his hatred for Muslim “invaders” from Africa, either in the historical record or in the Cantar de mio Cid. Most of the Muslims fought by the Cid in the poem are Iberian and one of his longest and bloodiest battles is against Muslim troops from Valencia.46 The poem also acknowledges the brutality of the siege of Valencia: although it does not mention Christians torturing Muslims as the Arabic chronicles do, the epic comments sympathetically on the famine in the city: “¡Mala cueta es, señores, aver mingua de pan,/fijos e  Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid, 2: 601.  Ménendez Pelayo, La epopeya castellana, 14. 46  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 625–809. 44 45

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mugieres verlos murir de fanbre!” (“It is indeed a cruel fate for men to be without food and to watch their wives and children dying of hunger”).47 In comparison to Iberian Muslims, the Almoravids certainly represented a more dangerous and unmanageable threat to the northern kingdoms of the Peninsula, mainly because their religious radicalism excluded any possibility of alliances with Christians. However, neither in the historical record nor in the Cantar de mio Cid it is possible to establish a clear distinction between the Christian perceptions of Iberian and African Muslims and much less in episodes like their attempt to recover Valencia, when both local and foreign Muslims momentarily overcome their cultural and ethnic differences to present a common front against Rodrigo’s troops.48

A Diversity of Representations and Relationships with One Common Goal The ambivalent representations of Muslims and their relationships with Christians in the Cantar de mio Cid can be better understood as part of a skillful instrumentalization of religious and cultural difference: for the political interests of the poem’s author and his community, the Cid’s outstanding abilities to negotiate with Muslims and rule them were as important as his military prowess when defeating them. The poem tellingly omits the historical Rodrigo’s service under the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, whom he defended against Christian Aragonese troops during his first exile from Castile: the epic presents the Cid as cordial toward Muslims but never under their command, because this would seriously undermine its colonial purposes. For the same reason, the Cid’s generally compassionate attitude toward Muslims is not based on any moral principles or religious convictions but instead on purely political and economic interests. For example, Rodrigo justifies not annihilating all Muslims in the recently conquered Alcocer, not out of any humanitarian motives, but simply for the benefit of him and his troops:

 Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1178–1179.  My position partly agrees with Lacarra, who criticizes authors like Erich von Richthofen, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, and Edmund de Chasca for putting forth a different attitude of the Cid toward Peninsular and African Muslims; instead, she affirms the generalized cruelty of Rodrigo toward all Muslims, except for practical and military reasons. Lacarra, El Poema de mio Cid, 192, 195. 47 48

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Oíd a mí, Álbar Fáñez e todos los cavalleros; En este castiello grand aver avemos preso, los moros yazen muertos, de bivos pocos veo; los moros e las moras vender non los podremos, que los descabecemos nada non ganaremos, cojámoslos de dentro, ca el señorío tenemos, posaremos en sus casas e d’ellos nos serviremos. (Listen to me, Álvar Fáñez, and all my knights. We have gained great wealth in capturing this stronghold; many Moors lie dead and few remain alive. We shall not be able to sell our captives, whether men or women. We should gain nothing by cutting off their heads. Let us allow them to return to the town, for we are masters here. We shall occupy their houses and make them serve us.)49

David Wacks rightly comments on these lines: “This is colonialism in a nutshell; Christians are not to deport or kill Muslims, but rather subjugate them politically and exploit them by occupying their space and appropriating their resources.”50 It is important, however, to emphasize that the line “los moros yazen muertos, de bivos pocos veo” (“many Moors lie dead and few remain alive”) shows how killing Muslims and exploiting them are not two opposite actions, but instead they complement each other as part of a colonial project. This is why the poem can equally extol Rodrigo’s skills at slaying Muslims and negotiating with them while explaining his seemingly contradictory actions as a consequence of his pressing circumstances at that moment. The same colonial logic that manages to reconcile Rodrigo’s cruelty and compassion toward Muslims does something similar with his material interests and Christian principles: the cold pragmatism of the Cid outweighs his religiosity but does not negate it. For the author of the poem, material gain, military victory, and spiritual salvation do not oppose or even hinder each other. A clear example of this is the way in which the Cid publicizes the siege of Valencia with the purpose of enlarging his troops: Por Aragón e por Navarra pregón mandó echar, a tierras de Castiella enbió sus mensajes: quien quiere perder cueta e venir a ritad, viniesse a mio Cid, que á sabor de cavalgar, cercar quiere a Valencia por a cristianos la dar.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 616–622.  Wacks, Framing Iberia, 134.

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(He sent messengers through Navarre and Aragon and to the land of Castile to proclaim that anyone who was eager to exchange poverty for riches should come to the Cid, who had a mind to ride out to besiege Valencia and restore it to the Christians.)51

A slight suggestion of a crusading purpose appears at the end of the Cid’s announcement, but what he really offers to his prospective soldiers is “ritad” or wealth, which the epic frequently relates to the plundering of the Muslim camps, as noticed by Israel Burshatin: “Moorish weapons, tents, and horses exist in the poem only to be detached from armies whose defeat is episodic and invariable.”52 It is noteworthy that the Cid addresses his message to people from several Iberian Christian kingdoms and not only to his fellow Castilians. Because many of the central conflicts in the poem are not between the Cid and Muslims, but between him and other powerful Christians such as his own king, the count of Barcelona, or the infantes of Carrión, Rodrigo’s open offer may be interpreted as part of this political rivalry in which taking a Muslim city is also a way to compete with other Christian leaders. In the end, the Cid’s “pregón” suggests that his plan to conquer Valencia has several purposes at once: to crusade against Muslims, to acquire wealth, and to show his strength among Iberian Christian rulers. However, only the final two objectives are relevant until the conclusion of the poem, when Rodrigo achieves such wealth and power that his daughters are worthy of marrying into royalty: “¡Ved cuál ondra crece al que en buen ora nació/cuando señoras son sus fijas de Navarra y de Aragón!/Oy los reyes d’España sos parientes son” (“See what honour accrued to the Cid when his daughters became Queens of Navarre and Aragon. Today the Kings of Spain are related to him”).53 While the poem inconsistently mentions Rodrigo’s religious purposes only some of the times he conquers Muslim cities or defeats the Almoravid armies, the political and economic goals of his military endeavors are continually and unambiguously established. The conflation of religious, political, and economic interests sometimes results in apparent conflicts between them. For instance, when troops from Valencia intend to recover Alcocer, the Cantar de mio Cid offers an  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1187–1191.  Burshatin, “The Moor in the Text,” 101. 53  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 3722–3724. 51 52

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incoherent series of justifications for combating them. First, Minaya, Rodrigo’s second-in-command, formulates a sound and simple rationalization for war: “De Castiella la gentil exidos somos acá,/si con moros non lidiáremos, no nos darán del pan” (“We have left our homes in fair Castile. If we do not fight the Moors they will starve us out”).54 However, as soon as the battle against the Valencian attackers begins, a tone of religious war unexpectedly appears: “¡Feridlos, cavalleros, por amor del Criador!” (“Attack them, my knights, for the love of God!”), exhorts the Cid to his troops, while “los moros llaman—¡Mafómat!—e los cristianos,— ¡Santi Yagüe!” (“the Moors called on Muhammad and the Christians on St James”).55 The victory of the Cid is further praised as “tan buen día por la cristiandad” (“a great day … for Christendom”).56 But once the battle ends, the poem abandons the crusading tone and returns to the usual relationships of convenience with Muslims. The Cid not only allows the Muslims from Alcocer to continue living in their city, under his power, but he also gives them part of the booty: “A so castiello a los moros dentro los an tornados;/mandó mio Cid aún que les diessen algo” (“The Cid ordered that the Moors of Alcocer, who were now allowed to return to the fortress, should receive their share”).57 When the same “moros de la frontera” (“frontier Moors”) who fought to recover Alcocer try a different method and offer the Cid 3000 silver marks in exchange for the city, Rodrigo gladly accepts, because, anyway, the surrounding land is poor and barren.58 All the religious zeal and animosity that fueled the battle have vanished without a trace. Even more surprisingly: Cuando mio Cid el castiello quiso quitar, moros e moras tomáronse a quexar: —¡Vaste, mio Cid, […]! ¡Nuestras oraciones váyante delante! Nós pagados fincamos, señor, de la tu part.— Cuando quitó a Alcocer mio Cid el de Bivar, moros e moras compeçaron de llorar. (When the Cid decided to leave the fortress all the Moors were sorry to see him go. ‘You are going, Cid,’ they said. ‘May our prayers go before you! We  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 672–673.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 720, 731–732. 56  Cantar de mio Cid, v. 770. 57  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 801–802. 58  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 840, 845, 838. 54 55

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are well satisfied with the way you have treated us.’ When at last he took his departure from Alcocer, the Moors wept).59

As strange as it may seem that the inhabitants of Alcocer bless their Christian conqueror, express their satisfaction with serving him, and cry over his departure, their reaction is not unprecedented in the poem: the Muslims of Castejón also recover their city for even the same price of 3000 silver marks, and, when Rodrigo leaves, “los moros e las moras bendiziéndol’ están” (“the Muslim men and women are blessing him”).60 While the Cid decides against keeping Alcocer because of the low quality of the land, his reason to sell Castejón is very different and helps explain the implausible reaction of “los moros e las moras.” In less than thirty lines, the author mentions three times that King Alfonso is getting closer and therefore Rodrigo fears for his safety and that of his men: “Comidiós’ mio Cid, el que en buen ora cinxo espada,/el rey Alfonso, que llegarién sus compañas,/que l’ buscarié mal con todas sus mesnadas” (“The fortunate Cid, reflecting that King Alfonso might arrive with his army and seek to harm him and his vassals”); “buscarnos ie el rey Alfonso con toda su mesnada./ Quitar quiero Castejón” (“King Alfonso might come after us with his entire army, so I shall leave Castejón”); “en Castejón non podriemos fincar,/cerca es el rey Alfonso e buscarnos verná” (“we cannot remain in Castejón, for King Alfonso is not far off and will come in search of us”).61 The contrast could not be more striking between Alfonso’s threatening actions against his most loyal vassal and the Cid’s relative fairness and compassion even with Muslim captives. While Rodrigo is such a good lord that Muslims prefer to serve him instead of being free, the king harms those he should protect: besides banishing his best warrior, Alfonso unwisely marries Rodrigo’s daughters to the cowardly and cruel infantes of Carrión, with almost fatal consequences to the young women. The exaggerated reaction of the Muslims who bless the Cid and cry over his departure shows again their instrumental importance to depict the  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 851–856.  Cantar de mio Cid, 541. This is my translation, more literal than Hamilton’s and Perry’s. The Historia Roderici mentions similar strategies employed by Rodrigo in other places: in Valencia, the Cid devastates the surrounding towns that present resistance while showing compassion toward those that surrender peacefully; in Murviedro, he is admired as merciful when he does not fulfill his threat of slaughtering its inhabitants and allows them instead to abandon their city. Historia Roderici, 84–85, 95–96. 61  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 507–509, 528–529, 531–532. 59 60

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Christian hero as equally skillful at both killing non-Christians and ruling them. This was not a minor issue during the decades in which the poem was composed, between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a period when Iberian Christian leaders were increasingly learning that ruling over the cultural diversity of the Peninsula’s inhabitants was as much of a challenge as conquering their enemies’ territories. Ultimately, in both the epic and the historical record, almost everything that the Cid obtained in the form of wealth, political power, or religious and military reputation was due to his Muslim allies, enemies, and servants. The defeated Muslims of Valencia made possible the independence of Rodrigo as governor of his own city and the surrounding territory. The Muslims that he confronted in battle gave him his wealth. The Almoravids’ attempts to reconquer Valencia allowed Rodrigo to reach an unprecedented level of prestige as a defender of Christian Iberia. Significantly for the fame of Rodrigo as transmitted by the Cantar de mio Cid, Muslim figures were fundamental to conveying his renowned compassion and “mesura,” which can be translated as “moderation” but also “restraint” and “courtesy.” In stark contrast with the torturer and slaughterer of Muslims depicted by Arabic chronicles, the hero of the poem is a Christian lord that repeatedly earns the gratitude and admiration of his religious and political opponents thanks to his equanimity. But this equanimity is only possible because, correspondingly, so many Muslim characters are depicted as honorable and faithful. The contradictory personality of the Christian ruler that can be both ruthless and merciful depends on the contradictory depictions of Muslims as fearsome enemies and loyal allies or servants. And the ambivalence of this entire conflicting relationship only makes sense in a colonial context in which destroying the other and assimilating him are two complementary instead of mutually exclusive operations. The bond between Rodrigo and Abengalvón, the ruler of Molina, exemplifies and summarizes the contradictions of the various relationships between the Cid and Muslims. The tendency to consider the Cid and Abengalvón as (either personal or ritualized) friends has traditionally prevailed, with scholars often taking more or less literally the several statements of the poem about the Muslim being Rodrigo’s “amigo,” “amigo de paz” (“friend of peace”), or “amigo natural” (“natural friend”).62 For example, Michael Harney has written about Rodrigo and Abengalvón’s ritualized friendship, whose “amical imperatives […], in the pre-state  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1464, 1479, 1528, 2636.

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world of kin-ordered society, supersede all but the closest ties of blood kinship. The intimacy and trust between the two men is strikingly reiterated.”63 The trust is undeniable, according to the epic: Rodrigo puts Abengalvón in charge of the safety of his wife and daughters when his family moves from Castile to Valencia. However, it is hard to find in the poem any “intimacy” between Abengalvón and the Cid, and there is one passage that actually denies any closeness between them. When Abengalvón greets Minaya, he does it with unusual familiarity: “Sonrisándose de la boca ívalo a abraçar,/en el ombro lo saluda, ca tal es su usaje:/—¡Tan buen día convusco, Minaya Álbar Fáñez!” (“He came forward to embrace him, kissing him on the shoulder as was his custom. ‘Good day to you, Minaya Álvar Fáñez,’ he said”).64 Abengalvón’s next words, however, show that his seemingly friendly alliance with Rodrigo is merely a matter of self-preservation: Traedes estas dueñas por o valdremos más, mugier del Cid lidiador e sus fijas naturales; ondrarvos hemos todos, ca tal es la su auze, maguer que mal le queramos non ge lo podremos far, en paz o en guerra de lo nuestro abrá, ¡mucho l’ tengo por torpe qui non conosce la verdad! (By bringing these ladies here you are giving us a welcome opportunity to do honour to the wife and daughters of the Cid Campeador. Such is his destiny that, even if we wished, we could do him no harm. He will always get the better of us in peace or in war, and whoever does not acknowledge this I consider a fool.)65

In these lines, the Muslim ruler of Molina recognizes that it would be impossible for him not to comply with Rodrigo’s requests. If the Cid needs something from him, he will obtain it “en paz o en guerra” (“in peace or in war”); therefore, it is more convenient to be his ally than his enemy, an undeniable fact that would, however, sound entirely inappropriate if said by a closer companion to the Cid, such as Álvar Fáñez or Martín Antolínez. The calculated pragmatism of Abengalvón’s words does not help support either the possibility of a friendship between the two characters or the interpretation of the Muslim as “the very spirit of  Harney, Kinship and Polity, 69.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1518–1520. 65  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 1521–1526. 63 64

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chivalry,” “the emblem of courtesy,” or “the earliest incarnation of the idealized Moor in Spanish literature,” as argued by Michael Gerli.66 Abengalvón indeed corresponds to a common Muslim stereotype in Iberian literature: that of the chivalrous Muslim whose good qualities make him an ideal ally or servant of Christians. But this stereotypical portrayal is far from an idealization, because the real purpose behind it is not to praise Muslims but to justify their subjugation to Christian rulers. The interaction between the Cid and Abengalvón is simply transferring the political system of parias to a personal sphere: in a similar way to the inhabitants of Zaragoza, who have nothing to fear from Rodrigo’s troops because they have already paid him tribute, Abengalvón knows he is safe as long as he continues acting as his reliable and submissive ally.67 For his part, the Cid can put his full trust in Abengalvón, because both know that the Muslim would pay for any disloyalty with his life. Because of this, when the thirteenth-century Estoria de España combines the narrative of the Cantar de mio Cid with other sources, including the lost chronicle by Ibn ʿAlqama, “Abengalvón is defined as a loyal vassal, but there is no reference to any personal friendship between him and the Cid. Despite Abengalvón’s virtues, his admirable actions were not particularly praised, since they were regarded as normal duties required by his subordinate position.”68 In sum, the Cantar de mio Cid presents a protagonist vastly different from both the cruel tyrant in the Arabic chronicles and the patriotic Christian hero promoted by Menéndez Pidal and other Hispanists. Rodrigo’s complexity as a character is based on his flexibility to navigate among the stormy conditions of Iberian politics while always obtaining some profit from his interactions with competitors, enemies, and subordinates. In this network of relationships, Muslims have a fundamental role in facilitating the entire political and economic ascent of the Cid, from exiled vassal to ruler of his own principality, while being depicted by the poem in contradictory ways in order to justify the colonial ambitions of Christian leaders. In this way, the instrumentalization of Muslims operates simultaneously in the poem’s fictional world, for Rodrigo’s gain, and in the context of the poem itself, for the benefit of the Christian community to which the anonymous author belonged.  Gerli, “Liminal Junctures,” 261.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 941–942. 68  Liuzzo Scorpo, Friendship in Medieval Iberia, 156. 66 67

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From that perspective, it would have been unimaginable for either Rodrigo or the poem’s author to advocate for the expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula: while they were deeply involved in defending the territorial and economic interests of their Christian communities, those same interests required the presence of Muslims as either allies or subjects. The acceptance of this reality is implied by the expression “moros e cristianos,” used in the poem to mean “everybody,” “the whole world,” as when Rodrigo brags about being feared by “moros e cristianos” or when his daughters ask the infantes of Carrión to be beheaded instead of abused, so “moros e cristianos departirán d’ esta razón” (“everyone [literally: ‘Muslims and Christians’] will condemn this action of yours”).69 In a similar way, when the author writes that a mount will be forever associated with the Cid, he writes that “mientra que sea el pueblo de moros e de la yente cristiana,/el Poyo de mio Cid así l’ dirán por carta” (“[it] will be known in the records of both Moors and Christians for all time as El Poyo de Mio Cid—Hill of the Cid”).70 On these lines of the poem, Américo Castro comments: “After four hundred years of the Moorish presence, a writer of the twelfth century believed that the consuetudinary situation would last as long as his world.”71 My analysis explains why Christians would not only accept such a “consuetudinary situation” but also embrace it for their own benefit. At one point in the poem, during a moment of intense happiness after defeating the Almoravid king Búcar, Rodrigo thanks God for his wealth, power, and a military reputation that has even reached Africa, and he briefly imagines even more glorious possibilities of conquest beyond the Iberian Peninsula: ¡Grado a Dios, que del mundo es señor! Antes fu minguado, agora rico só, que he aver e tierra e oro e onor […]. Allá dentro en Marruecos, o las mezquitas son, que abrán de mí salto quiçab alguna noch, ellos lo temen, ca non lo piensso yo; no los iré buscar, en Valencia seré yo, ellos me darán parias con ayuda del Criador, que paguen a mí o a qui yo ovier sabor.  Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 2498, 2729.  Cantar de mio Cid, v. 901. 71  Castro, The Spaniards, 88. 69 70

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(Thanks be to God, the Lord of this world. Once I was poor and now I am rich, for I have wealth, lands and property […]. Over the sea in Morocco, where the mosques are, they are afraid that I shall perhaps attack them one night. I have no intention of doing so, for I shall not seek them out, but shall remain in Valencia. They will, please God, render me tribute to be paid to me or to anyone whom I shall appoint to receive it.)72

The Cid considers crossing to Africa, but he immediately recoils from such hubris: he will instead stay in his own city, where he will anyway receive parias from the Almoravids. The poem does not clarify how the Cid intends to do this: either he imagines becoming so powerful that distant lands will tribute to him without any need to attack them (something that he has already done with several towns in the Iberian Peninsula) or he is alluding to obtaining the Almoravids’ “tribute” in an indirect way, by defeating them and getting their spoils every time they come back to battle with him. In any case, considering that all the lands and wealth for which he is thanking God were obtained from Muslims, including those from North Africa who had tried to retake Valencia, it seemed logical that any further territorial or political aspiration would be focused on other lands inhabited by Muslims, especially those that were just across the Strait of Gibraltar. As we will see in the next chapters, this possibility became a constant temptation for medieval Iberian leaders such as Fernando III of Castile and León, who for a long time planned that “fecho de allent mar” (“feat across the sea”), or his son, Alfonso X, who ruled for a few weeks over the African port of Salé, or the Portuguese kings that finally, during the fifteenth century, extended their dominion to the north of Africa and created a transcontinental empire. In all these cases, colonial endeavors overseas were conceived as an extension of the same colonial dynamics already existent in the Iberian Peninsula, where Christian leaders like the Cid depended on Muslims to acquire wealth and lands, compete with other rulers, and forge their reputations in contact with their non-­Christian adversaries, allies, and subjects.

 Cantar de mio Cid, vv. 2493–2495, 2499–2504.

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CHAPTER 3

The Learned Conquerors and Their Muslims: Intercultural Conflict and Collaboration in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Llibre dels fets

Decades before Homi Bhabha wrote about the contradictions of colonial stereotypes or Abdul JanMohamed explained their conflicting variety as generated by a central trope attempting to maintain the distance between the colonizer and the colonized, Albert Memmi had already noticed the absurd ambivalence of these representations: “The traits ascribed to the colonized are incompatible with one another, though this does not bother his prosecutor. He is depicted as frugal, sober, without many desires and, at the same time, he consumes disgusting quantities of meat, fat, alcohol, anything; as a coward who is afraid of suffering and as a brute who is not checked by any inhibitions of civilization, etc.”1 And just like postcolonial theorists from decades later, Memmi noticed that the reason for these contradictions should not be sought in any real traits of the colonized but in the interests of the colonizer: “It is useless to seek this consistency anywhere except in the colonizer himself. At the basis of the entire construction, one finally finds a common motive; the colonizer’s economic and basic needs, which he substitutes for logic, and which shape and explain each of the traits he assigns to the colonized.”2 1 2

 Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 127.  Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 127.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_3

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Both the contradictory depictions of Muslims and the colonial needs behind them are prominent in a couple of literary works closely associated with two powerful Christian kings from thirteenth-century Iberia: the Llibre dels fets, written or most probably dictated by Jaume I of Aragon, and the Cantigas de Santa Maria, sponsored and maybe partially composed by Alfonso X of Castile. In these texts, the two rulers themselves appear as central characters who frequently interact with Muslims in a variety of complex and sometimes incongruent roles. Similarly to the character of Rodrigo Díaz in the Cantar de mio Cid, the Christian monarchs are presented as fearsome destroyers of Muslim enemies, savvy creators of alliances with them, and benevolent rulers of mudéjares or Muslims subjects. The ambivalent depictions of Alfonso and Jaume depend on the contradictory representations of Muslim characters, who supposedly motivate the kings’ actions through both their docility and their rebelliousness, their benevolence and their savagery. It is easy, therefore, to read the Llibre dels fets or the Cantigas de Santa Maria and to erroneously think that the authors are trying to portray and understand the complexity of Muslims when, ultimately, their texts are reducing Muslims to pretexts for the conciliatory and aggressive gestures used by Jaume and Alfonso to subjugate them according to their own colonial ambitions. Because of this, no matter the many ways in which Muslims are (often stereotypically) represented, they are always framed by literary depictions and a political situation in which they cannot win: either because their hostility provokes Christians to defeat them or because their good qualities make them easy to subdue, the contradictory Muslim characters exist to satisfy the needs of the Christian kings to transform them into colonial subjects.

Alfonso X and Jaume I as “Authors” and Conquerors Alfonso X of Castile and Jaume I of Aragon were alternately competitors and allies in several political struggles in the Iberian Peninsula, in addition to being in-laws since 1246, when Alfonso married Jaume’s 10-year-old daughter, Violante. The two kings’ seemingly differing personalities influenced their posthumous reputations: for centuries, the more reserved Alfonso has been remembered as “el Sabio” or “the Learned” (often mistranslated as “the Wise”) and larger-than-life Jaume as “el Conqueridor” or “the Conqueror.” However, despite his love for books and sponsorship of cultural endeavors, Alfonso was also a warrior who started participating

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in the military operations of his father at age 16 and extended Castilian dominion even to North Africa, although not for long. Similarly, in addition to leading the conquests of Valencia and the Balearic Islands, Jaume composed the autobiographical Llibre dels fets, a text whose literary qualities match its historiographical value. In other words, Jaume could have equally deserved the epithet of “el Savi” and Alfonso could have been known as “el Conquistador.” As summarized by Robert Burns, “the two kings afford a fascinating contrast not because one was an ‘emperor of culture’ and the other a magnificent ‘conqueror,’ but because each was at once patron and warrior in such different ways and such different balance.”3 It is fundamental for my analysis to first clarify the connection between the kings and the texts, in an age when authorship, translation, adaptation, and patronage were processes often undifferentiated or greatly confused, a problem that will continue haunting us for most of this book. In the case of the Llibre dels fets, Jaume’s authorship has been much debated, but there exists overwhelming evidence in favor of the king of Aragon as its main creator. As Damian Smith argues, the text shows a deep knowledge of all the events in Jaume’s life, along with their own perspective on those events, justifications for them, and even feelings and intimate memories.4 Because of this, recent studies on the Llibre dels fets mostly take for granted its authorship by the king of Aragon, as when Jaume Aurell affirms that the monarch “edits, colors, and structures the narrative of his own deeds, transforming them from experience into literary legend.”5 The only obvious exception to the king’s authorship is the one-sentence ending in which somebody else interrupted Jaume’s narration to record his death.6 Also, there is some disagreement about the book’s prologue, in which Josep Pujol notices clear evidence of Jaume’s involvement, while Aurell thinks it was written by a court official after the king died.7 In any case, excepting those two short passages at the beginning and at the end of the book, the

 Burns, “Castle of Intellect,” 18.  Smith, Introduction, 6. 5  Aurell, Authoring the Past, 54. 6  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 386–387; chap. 566. All the English translations of quotes from the Llibre dels fets come from James I of Aragon, The Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon: A Translation of the Medieval Catalan Llibre dels Fets, trans. Damian Smith and Helena Buffery (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). 7  Aurell, Authoring the Past, 45; Pujol, “¿Cultura eclesiàstica?,” 167. 3 4

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Llibre dels fets was almost undoubtedly conceived and dictated by Jaume I in person.8 The circumstances surrounding the writing of the Cantigas de Santa Maria are much more complicated, not less because they are part of a lengthy discussion about the connection between Alfonso X and the prolific cultural production of his court. Traditionally, most manuscripts and published editions of the works associated with Alfonso’s court have presented him as the nominal author, although the monumental dimensions of those texts are enough to eradicate the possibility that he personally wrote, or even was able to read, all of them: the Cantigas de Santa Maria include more than 400 poems in a variety of meters, the legal code Las siete partidas comprehends 2010 pages in its last Spanish edition, and the only published version of the historiographical work General estoria fills ten thick volumes, whose editing required the collaboration of eight scholars.9 Alfonso himself clarified his role as an “author” when, during the General estoria’s retelling of the biblical Exodus, he compared it with God’s intellectual authorship of the Bible: Podemos entender e dezir que compuso Nuestro Señor las razones de los mandados, e que ovo ell autoridad e el nombre dend porque las mandó escrivir, mas que las escrivió Moisén, assí como dixiemos nós muchas vezes el rey faze un libro non por quel él escriva con sus manos, mas porque compone las razones d’él e las emienda e yegua e endereça e muestra la manera de cómo se deven fazer, e desí escrívelas qui él manda, peró dezimos por esta razón que el rey faze el libro. (We understand and we say that Our Lord created the content of the commandments and that they have his authority and authorship because he ordered them to be written, even though Moses wrote them, just as we often 8  Even though the participation of others during the writing of the book is to be expected, since the king had to be helped by scribes and secretaries, I agree with Aurell on how this collective act of material production is perfectly compatible with a single authorship. Aurell, Authoring the Past, 160. 9  The last complete Spanish edition of the Siete partidas was published in 1807 by the Real Academia de la Historia, although there exists a reprint from 1972; there is a much more recent English version from 2001, translated by Samuel Parsons Scott and edited by Robert Burns. The first edition of the General estoria was published in 2009, under the general direction of Pedro Sánchez-Prieto Borja; specific volumes or segments were additionally edited by Belén Almeida, Bautista Horcajada Diezma, Carmen Fernández López, Verónica Gómez Ortiz, Inés Fernández-Ordóñez, Raúl Orellana, and Elena Trujillo.

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say that the king makes a book not because he writes it with his own hand, but because he creates the content and amends it and rectifies it and shows the way in which it should be done, and so he commands somebody else to write the book, but we say for these reasons that the king made it.)10

Therefore, the so-called Alfonsine works can be mostly considered as texts sponsored by the Castilian king, with maybe some participation of Alfonso as an editor and less likely as an author for some of them. Among all these works, however, the Cantigas de Santa Maria is precisely the one in which Alfonso seems to have been more intensely and personally involved. According to Joseph Snow, the critical consensus on the king’s contributions to the work is that “Alfonso ideó, diseñó el plan general de construcción, y embelleció con algunas trovas personales, las Cantigas de Santa Maria. Concibió el proyecto, le dio vida arquitectónica, forma y sentido, y un fondo narrativo muy original” (“Alfonso thought up the Cantigas de Santa Maria and their general plan of the book, which he embellished with some personal songs. He conceived the project, while giving it life, architectural form and meaning, and a very original narrative background”).11 Although Snow himself admits that this consensus is not unanimous, there are several good reasons that support it. First, Alfonso’s full approval and sponsorship of the Cantigas seem undeniable: nobody else could have spent the extraordinary amount of artistic and financial resources invested in the four preserved manuscripts, some of which also include musical notation and splendid miniatures.12 Second, the text and the illustrations of the Cantigas suggest a strong interest in emphasizing the monarch’s own image, ideas, and values: the Cantigas exalt the power of God and the Virgin as much as the qualities of Alfonso as a great king and potential Holy Roman Emperor. Third, Alfonso himself is the  Alfonso X, General estoria, 1.2: 393.  Snow, “Alfonso X y/en sus Cantigas,” 74. 12  All four preserved manuscripts of the Cantigas were apparently produced in the Alfonsine court. The Códice toledano includes only 129 cantigas. The Códice rico contains 195 cantigas and 1257 miniatures, which illustrate each cantiga in groups of 6 or 12 panels. The Códice florentino includes 104 cantigas and about 300 complete miniatures, along with many others that are more or less unfinished. Finally, in the Códice escurialense there are 406 cantigas and 41 miniatures of musicians, which is why this manuscript is also known as the Códice de los músicos. See Mettmann, “Introducción,” 25–34; Fernández Fernández, “Los manuscritos de las Cantigas de Santa María.” 10 11

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protagonist of several poems, and the miniatures often depict him accompanied by the Virgin, while he prays to her or serves as an intermediary between his subjects and Mary.13 Some poems even mention Alfonso’s labor as “trobador” of the Cantigas, “trobador” being an ambiguous term that may equally mean “composer” or “singer”: Enton el Rei Don Affonso, fillo del Rei Don Fernando, reinava, que da Reynna dos ceos tı ̃ia bando contra mouros e crischãos maos, e demais trobando andava dos seus miragres grandes que sabe fazer. (At that time, King don Alfonso, son of King don Fernando, reigned. He fought the Queen of Heaven’s cause against Moors and bad Christians and, in addition, composed songs about Her great miracles, as he is skilled in doing.)14

These lines are representative of Alfonso’s dual role as devout poet and colonial ruler, both equally central to the purposes of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, even when the centrality of Marian piety can sometimes conceal that they are just as political and militaristic as the Llibre dels fets. In a similar way, Jaume’s campaigns are intertwined with his Christian beliefs, which include his deep devotion to Mary: the Virgin’s support on the battlefield is mentioned often in the book and, in one striking case, her invocation transforms the reluctant Christian troops into a bellicose army that marches against Majorcan Muslims while shouting “¡Sancta Maria, sancta Maria!”15

13  See, for example, the illuminations for cantigas 1, 50, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 160, 170, and 190 in the Códice rico of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, of which there is a facsimile edition published by Testimonio Compañía. 14  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 345, vv. 11–14. The numbering of the cantigas differs in some modern editions; I follow the numbering proposed by Walter Mettmann, which is also the one used by The Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database. The English translations of quotes from the Cantigas have been taken from Alfonso X, Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa María, trans. Kathleen Kulp-­ Hill (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000). 15  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 97; chap. 84.

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Christian Expansionism and Ambivalence Toward Muslims Given Jaume’s close involvement in the Llibre dels fets and Alfonso’s in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, along with the importance of both religious and political interests in these two works, it is not surprising that the alliances and conflicts between Christians and Muslims occupy as central a role in them as before in the Cantar de mio Cid. And, just like for the exiled Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, fighting against Muslims and conquering their territories were essential for Jaume and Alfonso to increase their power, wealth, and prestige. In the case of Jaume, he governed a composite monarchy, the Crown of Aragon, which had battled Muslim enemies and resisted Castilian influence since its very beginning, less than a century before Jaume’s reign began in 1213. In the case of Alfonso, his vast territories were inherited from his father, Fernando III, who first reunited Castile and León and then took most of the south of the Peninsula from Muslim rulers. Indeed, according to Joaquín Vallvé’s calculations, at least a third of Alfonso’s kingdom had been only recently occupied by Christians: his father Fernando had inherited the kingdom of Castile with some 153,000 square kilometers, he got 100,000 more square kilometers when he inherited León in 1230, and he added more than 130,000 square kilometers from his conquests of Muslim territories.16 The religious and political importance of such colonial expansion by Christians is emphasized in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which present Alfonso’s father as a direct opponent of Muhammad: Seville is a city “que Mafomete perdeu/per este Rey Don Ffernando” (“which Mahomet lost because of this King don Fernando”) and a statue erected by Alfonso of his father portrays him armed with “ssa espada […]/con que deu colbe a Mafomete mortal” (“his sword, with which he had dealt a fatal blow to Mahomet”).17 At the same time, Fernando’s conquests could only exacerbate the ambitions of other Christian rulers, including those of his own son, at least according to a fourteenth-century version of the Estoria de España in which the dying Fernando III says to his heir Alfonso: Sennor te dexo de toda la tierra dela mar aca que los moros del Rey Rodrigo de espanna ganado ouieron Et en tu sennorio finca toda la conquerida ¶ la  Vallvé, “La emigración andalusí al Magreb,” 104.  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 292, vv. 33–34, 58–59.

16 17

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otra tributada sy la en este estado en que tela yo dexo la sopieres guardar eres tan buen Rey commo yo Et sy ganares por ti mas eres meior que yo et si desto menguas non eres tan bueno commo yo. (I leave you as lord of all the lands from the sea until here, which the Muslims had taken from the king of Hispania, Rodrigo. All these lands remain under your lordship, some of them conquered and some of them paying tribute. If you know how to preserve them as they are, you are as good a king as I. And if you win more territory on your own, you are better than I. And if you lose some lands, you are not as good as I am.)18

Although surely apocryphal, Fernando’s final words to Alfonso serve to illustrate the pressing obligations of an Iberian king, in a Peninsula always divided and disputed with both Christian and Muslim adversaries. For Alfonso and Jaume, defending and expanding their territories were essential duties in order to show their strength against competitors and enemies. Conquest and colonization, however, were only part of the equation, in which other equally important factors were the religious and historical justifications for them, contained in the literary and historiographical texts created and disseminated by their courts. Contradictory depictions of both Muslims and Christian-Muslim relationships are central to those justifications that advocate for fighting against Muslims because of their savagery and wickedness and simultaneously protecting them because of their decency and kindness. A good example of such ambivalence toward Muslims is found in the poem 169 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. As already mentioned, many cantigas present King Alfonso himself as a speaker and/or a character, revealing the personal significance of this literary project for him and his almost certain involvement in it. In the case of cantiga 169, the entire poem is narrated from the perspective of Alfonso and its first stanza positions him as the protagonist and his Muslim subjects or mudéjares as the antagonists: E daquest’ un miragre direi grande, que vi des que mi Deus deu Murça, e oý outrossi dizer a muitos mouros que moravan ant’ y 18  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E2, fol. 358v. Because this website contains transcriptions of several manuscripts and versions of the Estoria de España, I indicate also the specific manuscript (E2, in this case) and the folio number.

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e tı ̃ian a terra por nossa pecadilla. (Concerning this, I shall tell a great miracle, which I saw when God granted me Murcia. I also heard it told by many Moors who formerly lived there and held the territory, to our dismay, and who often remembered this.)19

Even though the author sets up an antithetical relationship between the king and the mudéjares from recently conquered Murcia, they all share the roles of witnesses and retellers of a miracle. This commonality prefigures the paradoxical relationship developed by the king and his Muslim subjects in the rest of the poem, which narrates how the Virgin protected a church from the mudéjares who wanted to have it demolished. In the words of the fictitious Alfonso: E pero muitas vezes me rogavan poren que o fazer mandasse, mostrando-mi que ben era que o fezesse, depois per nulla ren, macar llo acordaron, no valeu hũa billa. (Although many times they begged me to have the church removed, showing me that it would be a good thing if I did so, and their request was granted, it availed them nothing.)20

The phrasing, which highlights the fruitlessness of the mudéjares’ misguided petition, downplays the surprising role of Alfonso, who indulgently authorizes the destruction of a Christian church because Muslims do not like its presence in the Murcian district of La Arrixaca. Two stanzas later, Alfonso once again consents to the Muslims’ request and this time he mentions his reservations, although for reasons more material than religious: “Mui greu/me foi, ca era toda de novo pintadilla./[…] Poren muit’ a envidos enton llo outorguei” (“I was loathe to do so, for it had been freshly painted. … However, very reluctantly, I granted their request”).21 Cantiga 169 does not explicitly state why Alfonso is acting against his religious beliefs and his devotion to the Virgin Mary, to whom the church  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, vv. 8–11.  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, vv. 28–31. 21  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, vv. 45–46, 48. 19 20

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is dedicated, but it suggests that the reason is merely political: Alfonso sides with his Muslim subjects because, especially in a recently conquered territory, he does not want to alienate them in any way and much less when the church is mainly frequented by Christian foreigners such as “genoeses, pisãos e outros de Cezilla” (“the Genoese, Pisans, and others from Sicily”).22 What could be read as an endorsement of political convenience over religious convictions is however presented as the king’s generosity and tolerance thanks to the simultaneous depiction of his Muslim subjects as unreasonable and intolerant. This makes it especially unexpected that the one who finally determines the preservation of the church is the local leader of the Muslim community: after Alfonso authorizes the church’s destruction one last time, “toda a Aljama foi ao mouro rei/que o fazer mandasse; mas diss’ el: ‘Non farei,/ca os que Mariame desama, mal os trilla’” (“all the Moorish community went to the Moorish king to ask him to have it done, but he said: ‘I will not, for Mariame deals severely with those who displease Her’”).23 This is one of several instances in the Cantigas in which a Muslim character shows his fear or reverence toward Mary, since, as the sultan of Egypt points out in cantiga 165, “eno Alcoran achey/que Santa Maria virgen foi sempr’; e pois esto sey,/guerra per nulla maneira con ela non fillarey” (“in the Koran I found that Holy Mary was forever a virgin. Knowing this, I will wage no war on Her”).24 The veneration of Mary and Jesus by most Muslims is certainly one of the reasons why their relationship with Christians is ambivalent and not entirely antagonistic, as is almost always the case with the Jews of the Cantigas: besides the obvious respect toward biblical patriarchs, prophets, and kings, the only Jews in the book who deserve not to be lynched or burned alive are those who finally become Christians, while unconverted Muslims are presented several times in either positive or neutral terms.25  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, v. 16.  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, vv. 49–51. 24  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 165, vv. 65–68. 25  The extremely unfavorable depictions of Jews in the Cantigas de Santa Maria evidence the divide between actual intercultural exchanges and their literary representations: Jewish collaborators were fundamental in the Alfonsine court and its cultural projects, but this is not reflected at all in the Cantigas, which consistently portray Jews as hateful and wicked even when acknowledging their skills: “The possibility of a Jew being able to teach something of value to a Christian is broached in Cantiga 108. However, here the Jew is criticized for using his knowledge for evil purposes (the criticism of Mary and Christianity) instead of for good. Thus, although the wisdom and knowledge of non-Christians is acknowledged, its value is negated.” Walmisley Santiago, “Alfonso el Sabio’s Attitude,” 39. 22 23

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Therefore, cantiga 169 offers two opposite depictions of Muslims, both equally stereotypical: the intolerant Muslims, whose rejection of all things Christian makes them want to destroy a local church, and the courteous Muslim leader who is a model of good manners and interreligious acceptance. The main function of these stereotypes, however, is simply allowing Alfonso to be represented as an incredibly tolerant and patient ruler who, despite repeatedly granting his Muslim subjects what they wish, ends up achieving what he really wants: to protect the colonial power of Christians and their symbols. The intent behind this story becomes even clearer when compared with a very similar narrative in cantiga 328, in which some of Alfonso’s troops informally rename the town of Alcanate (al-Qanāt ̣ir) as “Santa Maria do Porto.” Although the Christian soldiers just meant to honor the Virgin this way, Alfonso orders them to be whipped, because their action has offended his Muslim allies. Exactly as in cantiga 169, the problem in cantiga 328 is finally solved by a providential Muslim authority, now the “alguazil” or constable of Jerez, who gives Alcanate and a series of other villages to Alfonso in order to avoid a conflict with Castile. In both cases, the helpful intervention of the Muslim leaders is not even appreciated by the author, who denies their agency by attributing their actions entirely to the influence of the Virgin. As cantiga 328 concludes: “Esto fez a Virgen santa, a Sennor dereitoreira,/de cujo nome o mundo será chẽo per meu grado” (“The Holy Virgin, Lady of Justice, did this. Her name will fill the world and I rejoice”).26 Both cantigas 169 and 328 ultimately link the miraculous power of the Virgin to the expansion of Christianity, a somehow unfounded connection given the already mentioned reverence of many Muslims for her. But if cantiga 328 just suggests such colonial overtones by mentioning the propagation of Mary’s name, cantiga 169 more obviously celebrates the victories of Christians over Muslims and establishes a particularly gratuitous and belligerent opposition between the Virgin and Muhammad: E porend’ a eigreja sua quita é ja, que nunca Mafomete poder y averá; ca a conquereu ela e demais conquerrá Espanna e Marrocos, e Ceta e Arcilla.

 Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 328, vv. 87–88.

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(Therefore, Her church is now free, for never can Mohammed hold power there because She conquered it, and furthermore, She will conquer Spain and Morocco and Ceuta and Asilah.)27

The mention of Morocco, Ceuta, and Asilah evokes an embarrassing episode during Alfonso’s attempts to continue his father’s territorial expansionism: the disastrous conquest of the North African city of Salé, which Castilian troops infamously looted while massacring its inhabitants, only to lose control over it after a few weeks.28 The conclusion of cantiga 169 shows that, despite that setback, Alfonso did not stop dreaming of the possibility of expanding Castilian power to Africa, not that differently from when the protagonist of the Cantar de mio Cid fantasized about receiving parias from across the Strait of Gibraltar. But what is most striking about those final lines is their assertion of a pugnacious opposition of Alfonso and Mary to all Muslims in Iberia and overseas, especially during the same cantiga in which the king previously displayed an almost subservient attitude toward the mudéjares who wanted to demolish a church in Murcia, a dispute that was only solved thanks to the stereotypical figure of a judicious Muslim leader. The blatant contradictions of Muslim representations even inside a single poem have attracted a lot of critical attention to non-Christian characters in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, more than to those in any other work included in this book. What most scholars have done, however, is either to diminish the importance of one of the sides of that ambivalence or to establish a correlation between different groups of Muslims and certain characterizations. Among those who chose to emphasize only one kind of depictions is Albert Bagby, who blamed “reasons politico-patriotic” and “reasons religious” for Alfonso’s tendency to focus on Muslims mostly as enemies instead of also showcasing his positive interactions with them.29 Similarly, Rhonda Zaid thought that even “superficial positive characterizations often belie an opposite intent,” because these portrayals almost  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, vv. 63–65.  About the Castilian conquest and loss of Salé, see Ballesteros Beretta, “La toma de Salé”; Huici Miranda, “La toma de Salé”; Marín Buenadicha, “Una contradicción historiográfica”; O’Callaghan, The Gibraltar Crusade, 25–29. 29  Bagby, “The Moor and the Jew,” 42, 44, 44–45. Two other articles by Bagby address the same central idea (“Alfonso X El Sabio” and “Some Characterizations of the Moor”), while a third article studies only the positive representations of Muslims in the Cantigas (“Alfonso and the Virgin”). 27 28

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always demean Muslims: they either pursue their conversion to Christianity or express their spiritual inferiority, and, even when they sometimes admit their political or military advantage, they attribute it to a momentary decision by God to punish Christians for their sins.30 Among those scholars who try to relate specific groups of Muslims with their disparate characterizations, Mercedes García-Arenal distinguishes between Alfonso’s good Muslim subjects, the rebellious mudéjares from the territories more recently conquered by Castile, and the Muslim invaders from North Africa. Unfortunately, this division only works partially: some of the African troops also display their reverence toward the Virgin, recognize her miraculous powers, and even convert to Christianity (for example, in cantigas 28 and 46). García-Arenal mentions these cases to prove that “good Muslims” are respectful of the Virgin and are therefore in a state of “preconversion,” but she does not acknowledge how they problematize her previous classification and the alleged demonizing of foreign Muslims.31 Likewise, regarding the mudéjares from recently annexed territories like Murcia, Alicante, and Seville, the Cantigas show Alfonso as sometimes hostile but also cordial and even ingratiating, as in the already mentioned cantigas 169 and 328. Studies by Olga Walmisley Santiago and Connie Scarborough shift the focus of the discussion by examining simultaneously the Cantigas’ treatment of both Muslims and Jews, two groups engaged in very different relations with Christians. Walmisley Santiago’s conclusion exemplifies the problem with this broader approach: when she affirms that “the Jew is considered more dangerous, because he threatens Christianity, the very basis of Spanish existence as envisioned by Alfonso X, while the Moor, with his relative tolerance and respect of Christianity, is seen primarily as a warrior,” this generalization entirely ignores the many contradictory depictions of Muslims.32 Scarborough dedicates the majority of a chapter to analyze the less ambiguous case of the Jews, but she includes both non-­ Christian groups in her conclusion about how “microsocieties” such as the Muslim and Jewish communities “were not what Alfonso envisaged 30  Zaid, “The Muslim/Mudéjar in the Cantigas.” Zaid’s ideas could be compatible with my own (the usefulness of contradictory representations for colonial purposes may be considered as an example of how “positive characterizations often belie an opposite intent”), but her article is based on just five cantigas and this lack of comprehensiveness leaves her analysis open to both many interpretations and criticisms. 31  García-Arenal, “Los moros en las cantigas,” 147. 32  Walmisley Santiago, “Alfonso el Sabio’s Attitude,” 39.

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for the ideal Spanish society in which Christian hegemony and Spanish identity would supplant any other affiliations or allegiances, but they were part of the political landscape he paints in the Cantigas.”33 This may be an accurate description of the situation of non-Christians in the Cantigas, but it does not offer an explanation for the contradictions in the portrayals of Muslims and their ambivalent interactions with Christians. From my perspective, there is no need to emphasize the negative representations of Muslims to the detriment of the positive ones (or vice versa) and much less to draw boundaries between the depictions of different groups of Muslims. I also think that the inclusion of Jews in this matter only diverts attention from the ambivalences that characterize the representations of Muslims by Christians. Instead, the juxtaposition of contradictory depictions and relationships can make more sense when understanding their common goal: both tolerant and intolerant Muslims, as well as both the benevolence and belligerence of Alfonso and the Virgin toward them, are complementary ways of promoting the same colonial ideal, in which non-Christians may either participate as allies and subjects or be completely excluded and rejected. In one way or another, through depictions and interactions both sympathetic and inimical, Muslims are expected to end up submitting to the unstoppable power of their Christians colonizers.

Killing, Befriending, and Protecting Muslims The ambivalent depictions of Muslims in texts such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria or the Llibre dels fets are especially remarkable when contrasted with a previous and contemporary historiographical tradition that consistently reduced Muslims to be barbaric invaders of the Iberian Peninsula and natural enemies of Christians. These views were pervasive in many Iberian chronicles written in Latin between the twelfth and the thirteenth century, such as the Historia Silense, the Chronica Naierensis, the Chronicon mundi by Lucas de Tuy, and the Historia de rebus Hispanie by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Most of these chronicles also linked the Leonese or Castilian royal lineages to the legendary Visigothic warrior Pelayo of Asturias, who had supposedly fought against Muslims with the help of God and Saint James during the eighth century. In this way, such chronicles attempted to produce an intrinsic connection between the entire  Scarborough, A Holy Alliance, 116, 117.

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history of some Christian Iberian kingdoms and a centuries-old enmity against Muslims. A similar historiographical situation developed in the Crown of Aragon before Jaume I and his Llibre dels fets. For instance, the twelfth-century Gesta comitum Barchinonensium begins with the exploits of Guifredus Pilosus (Guifré “the Hairy”), a hero whose victories over Muslims in the ninth century put the county of Barcelona “in eius dominium et totius generis sui in perpetuum” (“under his power, and the power of all his descendants, forever”).34 The Gesta comitum Barchinonensium continues emphasizing the fight against Muslims until recent events starring Ramon Berenguer IV, who implausibly took Almeria “cum L duobus tantum militibus armatis, XX fere milia sarracenorum mira strenuitate et audacia” (“with only fifty-two armed soldiers and extraordinary vigor and audacity, against almost twenty thousand Saracens”).35 For the author of this chronicle, as for those of other Iberian chronicles in Latin, Muslims exist only in order to be killed and deprived of their territories, and Christians are either so superior to them or so strongly favored by God that 1000 Muslim troops can be defeated by two or three Christian soldiers. The first mention of “Saracens” in the Llibre dels fets makes the reader suppose that Jaume will follow a similar path of stark opposition to Islam or will actually exacerbate it, by merging the centuries-old struggles against Muslims with a more personal animosity toward them: according to Jaume, his father was so generous (“profligate” may have been a more accurate adjective) that he did not leave him a great fortune, because “tota la renda que nostre pare hauia en Arago e en Catalunya era empenyorada tro als juheus, e als sarrayns” (“all the rents that our father held in Aragon and Catalonia had been pledged to Jews and to Saracens”).36 But such hostility is not really apparent during most of Jaume’s account, not even when he starts planning to conquer the Balearic Islands, by then under the control of the Almohad Caliphate. The merchant Pere Martell first suggests to Jaume the idea of invading the kingdom of Majorca for strictly practical purposes: he stresses the value of the kingdom, a very important trading center with a unique strategic location in the Mediterranean, and the reputation that its conquest will earn for Jaume and the Crown of Aragon, but the fact that its ruler and most of its inhabitants are Muslims  Gesta comitum Barchinonensium, 122.  Gesta comitum Barchinonensium, 134. 36  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 27; chap.11. 34 35

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seems to be irrelevant.37 Soon after, during a “cort” or assembly of the king with bishops and noblemen in Barcelona, Muslims are mentioned only occasionally despite the discussion being saturated with religious references. Jaume inaugurates the “cort” of Barcelona with an exceedingly devotional speech, which gives an almost liturgical tone to the assembly: “Illumina cor meum, Domine, et verba mea de Spiritu Sancto: On, nós pregam a nostre Senyor Déus e a la Verge sancta Maria, mare sua, que nós puxam dir algunes paraules que sían a honor de nós e de vós, qui les escoltarets, e que sien a plaer de Déu e de la sua mare, nostra Dona sancta Maria” (“Illumina cor meum, Domine, et verba mea de Spiritu Sancto. We ask the Lord God and the holy virgin Mary His mother, that we may say words that will be to our honour, and to the honour of those who hear them, and that they will be pleasing to God and his mother, Our Lady Saint Mary”).38 Strategically, Jaume’s speech then focuses on an unrelated topic: the tumultuous situation of the Crown of Aragon at the beginning of his reign, when he was six, which allows him to propose the conquest of Majorca as a virtuous remedy to the past rebellions of his noblemen and the discord among them.39 In Jaume’s speech, the island’s inhabitants are only implied as a convenient tool to discipline, ennoble, and unite his Aragonese and Catalan subjects, a usefulness that becomes explicit when, in a more private council between Jaume and his noblemen, the count of Empúries expands on the King’s proposal by underscoring the importance of conquering a kingdom of “sarraïns” or Saracens located in the sea.40 The next day, back in the general “cort,” the bishop of Barcelona is the single voice that characterizes the conquest of Majorca as a crusade against Muslims, when he tells Jaume: “Vós, qui sots fiyl de nostre Seyor, quan volets perseguir los enemics de la fe e de la creu” (“You are a son of Our Lord, at such a time as you wish to pursue the enemies of the Faith and of the cross”).41 In contrast with the surprisingly few allusions to Islam during the “cort” of Barcelona, Jaume seems imbued with a desire to Christianize or exterminate Muslims as soon as he and his troops sail to the island of  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 57; chap. 47.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 58; chap. 48. 39  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 58–59; chap. 48. 40  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 60; chap. 49. 41  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 64; chap. 53. 37 38

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Majorca: “E nós anam en est viatge en fe de Déu e per aquels que no⋅l creen; e anam sobr⋅éls per .II. coses: o per convertir-los ho per destruhir-­ los e que tornen aquel regne a la fe de nostre Seyor” (“And we set out on this voyage in the faith of God and for those who do not believe in Him, going against them for two reasons: to convert them or to destroy them, and to return that kingdom to the Faith of Our Lord”).42 This sudden reinscription of a military and commercial endeavor as a pious mission to Christianize a foreign kingdom, as well as its ambivalence between conversion and destruction, is only partly congruent with Jaume’s brutal declaration of how “val més .I. caval que .XX. sarraïns” (“a horse is worth more than twenty Saracens”).43 But the juxtaposition of all these ideas reveals the pure instrumentality of Muslims, whose only importance is being either converted or massacred for the material and religious benefit of Christians. As the bishop of Barcelona reminds the Aragonese troops, their struggle is “obra de Déu, que no és pas nostre” (“the work of God and not our work”), a genuine crusade in which every Christian soldier will end up obtaining spiritual salvation: “Aquels qui en aquest feyt pendran mort, que la pendran per nostre Seyor, e que hauran paradís hon auran glòria perdurabla per tots tems; e aquels qui viuran hauran honor e preu en sa vida e bona fi a la mort” (“Those who die in this deed will do so in the name of Our Lord and they will receive paradise, where they will have everlasting glory for all time, and those who live will have honour and renown for all their lives and a good end in their deaths”).44 Such crusading ideas oddly surround the first encounter among the Aragonese troops and a Majorcan Muslim and their extremely cordial interaction. When Jaume’s men are still exploring the coast looking for a good place to land, suddenly “lo digmenge a hora de mig dia vench .I. sarrahí qui havia nom Alí, de la Palomera, nadan a nós, e comtà’ns noves de la yla e del rey e de la ciutat” (“on Sunday, at Midday, a Saracen who was called Alí, from La Palomera, came swimming towards us, and brought us news of the island, the king and the city”).45 Bernat Desclot, who a few years later wrote his own Crònica in which he adapted many events from the Llibre dels fets, added a far-fetched story to clarify why an unknown Muslim from Majorca felt impelled to supply the Aragonese invaders with  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 67; chap. 56.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 72; chap. 60. 44  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 74; chap. 62. 45  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 71; chap. 59. 42

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information.46 According to Desclot, Alí was an important servant of the king of Majorca that decided to collaborate with the Aragonese because, as he explained to Jaume: “Sènyer, sàpies per cert que aquesta terra és tua e a ton manament; que ma mare me dix e em pregà que jo que vengués a tu e t’ho dixés. Que ella és molt sàvia femna e ha conegut en la sua art d’astronomia que aquesta terra deus tu conquerir” (“My lord: know for certain that this land is yours and is under your power. My mother told me to come and tell you that, because she is a very wise woman and has learned through her abilities in stargazing that you will conquer this land”).47 But such an outrageously implausible legend is not really needed in the Llibre dels fets, which affirms many times during and after the “cort” of Barcelona that the conquest of Majorca has the full support of God: from this perspective, Alí becomes simply another Muslim miraculously inspired to do the right thing, a stereotypical figure that we have already seen in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and will reappear in later Iberian texts such as the fifteenth-century novel Tirant lo Blanch or the sixteenth-­ century epic Os Lusíadas. The positive depictions of Majorcan Muslims in the Llibre dels fets are not limited to Alí. Another Muslim, Ben Aabet, spontaneously carries supplies to the Aragonese troops and then convinces some of his fellow Majorcans to peacefully submit to Jaume. The king praises Ben Aabet in remarkable terms: “E açò féu aquel àngel que Déus nos envià; e, quan dich àngel, él era sarraý, mas tant nos tench bon loch, que per àngel lo prenguem […]. E fiàvem-nos a él, car en él trobàvem tota veritat” (“So acted that angel that God had sent us; and when I say angel I mean the Saracen, who was so good to us that we took him for an angel. … We trusted him because we found nothing but truth in him”).48 Although it is not uncommon for Jaume to employ religious vocabulary and to allude to divine Providence when overwhelmed by wonder or emotion, he usually does it to praise his own actions, not to exalt the good qualities of others and 46  Bernat Desclot’s Crònica, or the Llibre del rey en Pere de Aragó e dels seus antecessors passats, was written between 1283 and 1288, not long after Jaume’s death in 1276. Aurell, Authoring the Past, 55. According to Aurell, the section of Desclot’s Crònica dedicated to Jaume uses a variety of historiographical sources, including oral epic poems and popular tales, most of which have been lost; therefore, the provenance of many details used by Desclot to embellish Jaume’s narrative, such as the backstory of Alí, is unknown. Aurell, Authoring the Past, 57. 47  Desclot, Crònica, 86. 48  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 84; chap. 71.

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much less of non-Christians. The king’s gratitude to Ben Aabet illustrates well why colonization requires more than belligerent discourses and actions: no matter how many times Jaume, his bishops, and his noblemen emphasize their supposed purpose of fighting against Muslims and Christianizing their lands, their conquests at the end are only possible through alliances and agreements with those same non-Christians. Iberian Christian colonialism depended on both war and negotiation, and sometimes conquest was not even necessary: it was enough that Muslims recognized the superiority of their Christian neighbors and accepted to pay annual tributes through the effective system of parias that, as explained in the previous chapter, played a fundamental role in Iberian politics since the eleventh century. But even in open wars like the one promoted by Jaume against Majorcans, when cities were forcefully taken after long sieges and the devastation of surrounding lands, the most common course was to finally arrive at a negotiated surrender. As summarized by David Nirenberg, despite the geographical and chronological differences between surrender pacts across the Peninsula, the main concessions to Muslim populations were “fairly standard”: In exchange for their labor and their taxes, Mudejars were to receive: 1) safety and confirmation of property rights; 2) guarantee of the free practice of religion, including the right to pray in their mosques, to teach Islam to their children, and to go on pilgrimage; 3) the right to rule themselves according to Muslim law (Sharı ̄ʿa), to be judged under it in any case involving only Muslims, and to name their own religious and judicial officials; 4) the confirmation of existing pious endowments in perpetuity; 5) a limitation of taxes, which were to be roughly similar to those paid under Muslim rule.49

49  Nirenberg, “Muslims in Christian Iberia,” 61. There are undeniable similarities between the conditions of these surrender pacts and those of Islamic dhimma, the contract that protected non-Muslim subjects in Islamic polities. Dhimma’s conditions included “paying a poll-tax (jizya), […] accepting inequality in the legal relations between dhimmis and Muslims, as well as regulations concerning the wearing of distinctive clothing (with various degrees of application through time and area).” Fierro, “Conversion, Ancestry and Universal Religion,” 156. Mark Meyerson points out, however, that “there was a crucial difference between the Christian and Islamic systems. Whereas the dhimmah contract was sanctioned by revelation and was therefore universally applicable and essentially stable, the Christian system was based primarily on a series of surrender treaties and compacts concluded between Christian monarchs and individual minority communities, and was consequently more subject to change.” Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia, 3.

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The respect for the religious and legal practices of mudéjares is mentioned by Jaume when he narrates his conquests of different cities in terms so similar that they obviously follow a common model: in Uixó, “faem-los cartes de la lur ley, que la tinguessen, e de totes lurs costumes, així con les solien haver en temps de sarraïns” (“we had charters made for them respecting their law and their customs, such as they were accustomed to have in the time of the Saracens”), while in Paterna “nós dixem-los […] que⋅ls observaríem lur ley e totes les costumes que havien en temps de sarraïns e que⋅ls faríem gran bé” (“we said to them … that we would respect their law and all the customs which they had in the time of the Saracens, and that we would treat them very well”).50 In both cases, the Muslims react with the same grateful joy of the inhabitants of the cities occupied by the Cid, once again demonstrating the close relationship between the representation of Muslims, the characterization of Christian rulers, and the description of Muslim-Christian interactions: in Uixó, “exiren-nos reebre al peu del Pug ben .CC. sarraïns e les sarraÿnes e ab gran alegria” (“some two hundred Saracen men and women came out to receive us, with great rejoicing, at the foot of the hill”); in Paterna, “exiren a nós tots los sarraïns e les sarraïnes ab gran alegria, e dixem-los que⋅ls faríem bé e que⋅ls affranquiríem per .II. ayns per el mal que havien pres. E éls faeren a Déu gràcies de les bones paraules que los havíem dites, e hobriren-nos les portes” (“all the Saracen men and women came out to receive us with great rejoicing, and we said that we would treat them well, and that we would give them franchises for two years because of the trouble they had taken. Then they gave thanks to God for the fine words we had spoken, and they opened their gates to us”).51 Undoubtedly, Jaume wanted to present himself as a great conqueror but also as a merciful and empathetic ruler, in the same way in which the Cantar de mio Cid portrayed Rodrigo Díaz or in which the Cantigas de Santa Maria represented Alfonso. And each one of these contradictory portrayals of Christian leaders was wholly dependent on the equally contradictory characterization of Muslims, loathed foes one moment and courteous allies or grateful subjects the next. Robert Burns points out that, during a decade and a half of campaign against the kingdom of Valencia, there were only “two major sieges, at Burriana and Valencia, [that] ended with the mass expulsion of Moslems at those cities. Almost everywhere else the Moors managed to surrender  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 213, 215; chaps. 250, 254.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 213–214, 215; chaps. 251, 254.

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on excellent terms, keeping intact their society, political structure, and way of life.”52 Such tolerant policies were nothing exceptional: analogous surrender agreements were pursued when Alfonso VI of León took Toledo in 1085, when Alfonso I of Aragon captured Zaragoza in 1118, and when Afonso I of Portugal conquered Lisbon in 1147.53 As exemplified by the final sack and massacre of Lisbon, however, those promises were not always kept by the Christian armies, whose own interests and feelings did not necessarily align with those of their kings and bishops. Additionally, from the perspective of Muslims, even “peaceful” surrenders were far from producing that gratitude of the defeated that Christian texts such as the Cantar de mio Cid, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and the Llibre dels fets publicized. For example, in a poem that laments the loss of several Andalusi cities, including Valencia, Córdoba, and Seville, the thirteenth-century Andalusi poet Ar-Rundı ̄ records the suffering of their inhabitants and the abuses by Christian troops: And were you to behold their weeping when they are sold, the matter would strike fear into your heart, and sorrow would seize you. Alas, many a mother and child have been parted as souls and bodies are separated! And many a maiden fair as the sun when it rises, as though she were rubies and pearls, is led off to abomination by a barbarian against her will, while her eye is in tears and her heart is stunned.54

The political complications of negotiating with Muslim enemies and potential allies or subjects were accompanied by an equally complex handling of the expectations of Christian soldiers and clergymen, as described in many passages of the Llibre dels fets. For instance, when the king of Majorca offers to surrender in exchange for a few ships so he and his court  Burns, The Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 4.  O’Callaghan, “The Mudejars of Castile and Portugal,” 14–15; O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, 139–140; Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla, 171. The political and military convenience of such “merciful” agreements is especially patent when considering the vast differences between these kings’ personal relationships with Muslims. While Alfonso VI allied frequently with Muslim rulers and even had a son with the convert Zaida from Seville, both Afonso I of Portugal and Alfonso I of Aragon presented themselves as staunch enemies of Muslims. 54  Ar-Rundı ̄. “Everything Declines,” 336. 52 53

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can self-exile to North Africa, Jaume and his ambassador want to accept the proposal at once, but the bishop of Barcelona argues that so many Christians have died in the island that they need to continue fighting to avenge their fallen comrades.55 The baron Ramon Alemany and several other noblemen agree with the bishop and, against his better judgment, Jaume follows their opinion. Unfortunately, Jaume’s refusal to accept his surrender infuriates the previously hopeless Muslim king, who stirs up his men by telling them that the Christians intend to capture them and rape their women.56 The Muslims react with such a violent counteroffensive that the bishop of Barcelona and Ramon Alemany themselves ask Jaume to reconsider his decision, provoking his anger and frustration: “¿No valguera més que laora ho atorgàssets, que ara con me deïts que jo u faça? E dich-vos que no⋅m semblaria ben feyt, que, si nós los movíem ara, seria gran flaquea” (“Would it not have been better that you had agreed to it then rather than now telling me what to do? And I say to you that it would not seem to me a good deed, because if we now introduce [the treaties] again, it would be a sign of weakness”).57 The entire incident is a lesson on how religious or personal feelings should not interfere with political goals: the desire for revenge and any animosity against Muslims are useless when a surrender pact is at hand. Much more politically skilled than his advisers, at least according to his own account, Jaume could quickly transition from seeing Muslims as enemies to considering them as valuable allies or subjects, while others in his court could not. Jaume, who inherited the Crown of Aragon when he was still a child and spent his teenage years putting down the continuous rebellions of his noblemen, was only 21 when he conquered Majorca. More than a decade later, when he campaigned against Valencia, Jaume knew much better how to circumvent the detrimental interventions of his own court. This time, when he received an offer of surrender from the king of Valencia, Jaume consulted only with his wife, who did nothing more than confirm what he wanted to hear: “E ela dix que, si a nós semblava, que preséssem aquel pleyt, que bé⋅l tenia ela per bo” (“And she said that if it seemed good to us, we should accept the agreement, because it seemed a good idea to her”).58 Jaume then sent a message to the Muslims of Valencia,  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 91; chap. 78.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 92–93; chap. 79. 57  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 93; chap. 80. 58  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 229; chap. 278. 55 56

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communicating his decision and the usual promises of protection to the ones who wanted to leave the city; he took time to eat, drink, and sleep in his tent; and only later he called his bishops and noblemen to announce the news, presenting it as a happy surprise that all of them should celebrate.59 Despite finally achieving the end of a long campaign and owning now the kingdom of Valencia, the reaction of Jaume’s companions was less than festive, thus confirming the ingenuity of his strategy: Don Nuno e Don Examèn d’Orrea e Don Pero Ferràndez d’Açagra e Don Pero Corneyl perderen les colors, així con si hom los hagués ferits endret del cor. E de l’arquebisbe enfora e dels bisbes alguns, qui dixeren que graÿen a nostre Senyor aquest bé e aquesta mercè que⋅ns havia donada, anch negun dels altres no u loaren ni u graÿren a Déu ni u tengren per bo. (Don Nunó, Don Jimeno de Urrea, Don Pedro Fernández de Azagra, and Don Pedro Cornel went pale, as if somebody had wounded them straight to the heart. And except for the archbishop and some bishops, who said that they thanked the Lord for this good and this mercy he had done us, none of them began to praise it or thank God for it, nor held it for something good).60

In a masterstroke, at the same time Jaume won a new kingdom for the Crown of Aragon and curbed the ambitions of his companions. And now that his political objective had been achieved by both military and diplomatic means, the king could allow himself to cry and to attribute his victory to God: “Quan vim nostra senyera sus en la torre, descavalgam del caval e endreçam-nos ves horient e ploram de nostres uyls e besam la terra per la gran mercè que Déus nos havia feyta” (“When we saw our standard upon the tower, we dismounted and we turned towards the East, tears falling from our eyes, and kissed the ground for the great mercy God had done us”).61 Jaume’s remarkable pragmatism only gives way to his personal emotions and religious piety after the victory, when they cannot interfere anymore with the contradictory needs of war. The relatively tolerant and compassionate treatment of the defeated Muslims served several functions for Iberian Christian kings. As proven by Alfonso X’s disastrous conquest of Salé, to allow the Christian troops to  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 230; chap. 281.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 230; chap. 281. 61  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 231; chap. 282. 59 60

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plunder a Muslim city could not only stain a monarch’s reputation but also invite a fast and vehement counterattack from other Muslim leaders. For Jaume, all his levelheaded decisions during war were at the same time a point of personal pride, a way to protect his power from the interference of others, and a strategic weapon to use in negotiations. Indeed, an important factor in the surrender of Valencia, as well as a reason for the secretiveness around it, is the contrast between what Jaume offers to Valencian Muslims and what his troops could do if they took the city by force: he tells Muslims that their collaboration can prevent “aquest mal tan gran que poria ésser en la presó de la vila, de tant sarraý e fembres e infants que y porien morir, e perdre tot ço que haurien” (“the very great harm that could be produced in the capture of the town, when so many Saracen men, women, and children, could die and lose all that they had”), while mentioning twice how much “dolor” (pain or pity) this would cause him.62 Jaume’s alleged “dolor” for his enemies, however, vanishes as soon as it does not support his interests. In more than one occasion he comments casually on the many innocent villagers, including women and children, who become collateral damage during the attacks to castles with fenèvols or trebuchets.63 Other times, Muslims’ lives are preserved only because of their value as captives: “Nós volguem-ho, per ço can més los volíem vius que mors. […] E, enans que passàssem Alventosa, donaren-­ nos per los moros .C. que nós levàvem .XVII. mília besans” (“We thought they were worth more alive than dead. … And before we had passed Albentosa, they gave us seventeen thousand bezants for the hundred Moors that we brought”).64 Once Muslims are under his protection, instead, Jaume staunchly defends their rights, at least according to his own version of the events: those Muslims become “his Sarracens,” as he calls them precisely when he wants to establish a contrast between his care for them and their abuse by other Christians. Similarly to how Alfonso disciplines his soldiers when they offend his Muslim allies in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Jaume kills some of his own men because they “volien tolre als sarraïns robes e emblar algunes sarraïnes e tosets” (“wished to rob the belongings of the Saracens and seize some Saracen women and children”).65 Later, when Valencian  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 228; chap. 277.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 173–174, 179; chaps. 194, 202. 64  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 180, 181; chaps. 203, 205. 65  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 231; chap. 283. 62 63

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Muslims go to the king to accuse Guillem d’Aguiló and other soldiers of mistreating them and robbing them, Jaume calls the Christian offenders to reprimand them. Most of them flee from the king’s wrath, but Guillem stays because he fails to see anything wrong with his actions: “E él dix que havia feit mal als sarraïns e no⋅s cuydava que en açò⋅ns faés desservici” (“He said that he had done harm to the Saracens, and that he had not thought in doing so he had done us a disservice”).66 For a soldier without much political guile, it was probably incomprehensible why he could not treat former Muslim opponents as animals or worse, when Jaume in person had said that they were worth much less than horses. Jaume clears things up for Guillem: “Sí havets desservici feyt, per .II. raons: la una, perquè havets feyt mal als sarraïns; l’altra, perquè havets trencat, que⋅ls sarraïns vivien en nostra fe, e havets trencat ço que nós los havíem promès” (“Yes, you have done me disservice, for two reasons: one, because you have done harm to the Saracens; the other, because you have violated our order, since the Saracens were living in our trust, and you have broken the promise we had made to them”).67 The immeasurable value and inviolability of his royal protection are illustrated by Jaume with the odd anecdote of a swallow who made its nest on the pole of his tent: “E manam que no⋅n levassen la tenda tro que ella se’n fos anada ab sos fiyls, pus en nostra fe era venguda” (“And we ordered our men not to take down the tent until she and her little ones had gone, since she had trusted us”).68 This improbable anecdote, which sounds more like a fable than a real event, is not original: Samuel Armistead found a parallel story narrated in Arabic about a dove and the seventh-century general ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs in the encyclopedic Muʿjam al-buldān by Yāqūt al-Hamawı ̄. As Armistead points out, the phrasing and vocabulary are crucial in the Arabic version of the story: The Arabic text reads: ‘taḥarramat bi-jiwārinā’, ‘she is ḥarām (inviolable, forbidden, sacred) in our proximity (or neighbourhood)’; implying that the bird has become a jār, here not merely a ‘neighbour’, but a ‘client’ and, hence, she is fully protected by tribal law. ʿAmr, by strictest custom, is thus honour bound to afford the dove his complete protection. In giving sanctuary to the dove, ʿAmr, as a leader of Muslims fighting and in peril in a  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 244; chap. 306.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 244; chap. 306. 68  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 187; chap. 215. 66 67

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f­oreign land, is making an important cultural statement: he is reaffirming the Arab tradition.69

By including this legend in the Llibre dels fets, Jaume makes a similar point about the customs of war and politics in Iberia, where old enmities and differences are supposed to be canceled as soon as two parties come to an agreement of mutual convenience. The most important factor when Jaume I or Alfonso X interacts with Muslims is not if “mouros” or “saraïns” are local or foreign, prone or reluctant to conversion, and reverential or indifferent toward Jesus and Mary. What matters the most and even invalidates the other variables is if they are “their” Muslims or not: that is, if they are under their sovereignty as protected subjects or clients and if they are therefore useful to their acquisition or maintenance of power, even as simply symbolic figures, much like Jaume’s swallow. The intrinsic complexity of colonial relationships in the Iberian Peninsula determined both the ambivalences and the instability of Muslim-­ Christian interactions: today’s enemy could be tomorrow’s ally and next week’s traitor. Moreover, the fact that different polities were clashing over the possibilities to colonize the same lands and populations created additional volatility among fellow Christian leaders. Jaume and Alfonso’s very complicated relationship is a fascinating example of this simultaneously competitive and collaborative interaction between Iberian Christian rulers, with Muslims playing a crucial role as common enemies, unreliable allies, and coveted subjects.

A Competition of Power and Reputations There is no doubt of the great political ambitions of both monarchs. Alfonso famously aspired to rule the Holy Roman Empire, an endeavor that occupied him for almost twenty years, from 1257 to 1275, when he finally renounced his claim to be crowned by the Pope as Rex Romanorum.70 But, according to Carlos Ayala Martínez, the recognition as Holy Roman Emperor was crucial to Alfonso mainly because it validated his hegemony among the Christian rulers of the Iberian Peninsula, the same primacy that  Armistead, “An Anecdote of King Jaume I,” 2.  Salvador Martínez’s biography of Alfonso includes three chapters on this topic: “La búsqueda de la corona imperial,” “Alfonso, Rey de Romanos,” and “Gregorio X y el final de las ambiciones imperiales.” Martínez, Alfonso X, chaps. 4, 5, 6. 69 70

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Jaume pursued through all the “deeds” or “feats” that give its title to the Llibre dels fets.71 Alfonso’s imperial claim derived from his maternal family: his mother was a Hohenstaufen princess and a cousin to the emperor Frederick II, in addition to being a granddaughter of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelos. Notwithstanding this impressive genealogy and Alfonso’s sovereignty over the largest amalgamation of kingdoms in Iberia, his victories on the battlefield paled in comparison with those of Jaume, whose military achievements are frequently, and sometimes exaggeratedly, celebrated in the Llibre dels fets.72 When Jaume boasts of conquering Majorca, this is not only something that “anch rey d’Espanya no poch acabar” (“no king of Spain has ever achieved before”), but “la meylor cosa que féu hom .C. ayns ha” (“the best thing that has been done, for one hundred years”).73 Regarding Valencia, Jaume feels blessed for regaining the kingdom that so many Christians had coveted since the Cid ruled there; other kings could have been “tam bons o meylors que nós” (“as good or better than us”), but God had chosen him for this historic feat.74 His pride was clearly justified, as evidenced by the impact of the news on all Christendom, including a “long, ecstatic message of triumph” from Pope Gregory IX, reactions in verse by Occitan troubadours, and the thrilled account by English chronicler Matthew Paris of how “the splendid and indefatigable warrior the lord king of Aragon had so ravaged the great city of Valencia by bloody war, and so closely invested it, as to force its surrender.”75 The words of Matthew Paris emphasize the ravages of war while paying less attention to Valencia’s quiet surrender in the middle of the night so Jaume could protect the city and “his” Muslims from the abuse of Christian soldiers: this is an interesting gap between what a foreign monk like Paris expected from a “splendid and indefatigable warrior” and what successful leaders really did in the colonial context of the Iberian Peninsula. The entire process of political prodding and maneuvering can be appreciated in the king’s appeal to the “alcaid” (the qāʾid, that is, commander or local

 Ayala Martínez, Directrices fundamentales, 339.  Additionally, Jaume had little to envy Alfonso in terms on lineage, a topic that occupies several pages at the beginning of the Llibre dels fets. In fact, he was also related on his mother’s side to a Byzantine emperor, Manuel I Komnenos, among other distinguished ancestors. 73  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 113, 115; chaps. 105, 108. 74  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 235. chap. 292. 75  Burns, The Crusader Kingdom, 1: 1–2. 71 72

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governor) of Bairén, a chain of arguments that Jaume reuses with more than one Muslim leader, before or after a military confrontation: Dixem li que ben podia coneyxer que nostre Senyor volia que nos haguessem la terra: e pus el ho volia, que nons hi faes pus laguiar ni traure mal a nos ni a ell: que per talar lo pa nels arbres no era bo, pus a nos romanien los moros e quels hauiem en cor de fer be: e pus romanien per tots temps que per rao del nons destorbas, que a el e a sos parents fariem tant de be que tots temps porien esser honrats e richs. (We told him that he should now recognize that Our Lord wished for us to have that land. Moreover, as He wished it, he should not delay us any longer there nor bring evil on us or himself; because it was not fitting to cut down the wheat and the trees, since the Moors would be our responsibility, and we had it in our heart to do them good. Thus, so that they would remain there always, he should do nothing to prevent it; and we said that we would do so much good to him and his family that they would forever more be honoured and rich.)76

In the first place, it was God’s will to grant these lands to Jaume; in the second, no other king would be as benevolent and generous as him. Such a strategic approach could only work if the Christian ruler was preceded by his reputation as a man who kept his promises and had already protected Muslims in similar circumstances. The efficacy of this method can be exemplified by the surrender of the inhabitants of Menorca, who swear their fidelity to Jaume upon a Qur’ān because “havien hoït dir que nós érem bon seyor a les gents nostres, e així havien esperança que seríem a éls” (“they had heard it said that we were a good lord to our people, and they hoped we would also be so with them”).77 Some of the Cantigas de Santa Maria seem intended on creating a similarly benevolent reputation for Alfonso X. I have already mentioned cantigas 169 and 328, in which Alfonso looks for the best interest of his Muslim allies or vassals, even against his own preferences or those of the Virgin. Several other poems emphasize that Alfonso and Mary are willing to overlook the Muslims’ religious beliefs as long as they recognize the Christians’ authority or at least do not challenge it. In cantiga 167, for instance, the Virgin resurrects the son of a Muslim woman that held a vigil  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 245; chap. 308.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 125; chap. 121.

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for her. In cantiga 181, the king of Marrakesh defeats another army by simply asking for the Christians’ support and using a banner with Mary’s image. In cantiga 205, Christian besiegers take pity of a Muslim woman and her baby because they remind them of Mary and Jesus; for this reason, the Christians pray for the mother and her child, and the two survive the siege without any harm. In cantiga 344, Muslim and Christian troops camp side by side close to a church; the next morning, they all recognize as a miracle that nobody noticed the presence of the enemy until dawn, and everybody departs in peace. In all these cases, the depictions of Muslims as pious, respectful, friendly, or just innocent serve to support the parallel representation of the good nature of Christians, including the Virgin herself and her devotees. The common acceptance that blurs the religious boundaries between Muslims and Christians is often simply the result of the convergence of their political and commercial interests, which can also bring even co-­ religionists into conflict. A good example of this is cantiga 379, in which pirates from Catalonia rob Muslim traders who were sailing toward Santa Maria do Porto, the same place whose name change merited Christian soldiers a whipping in cantiga 328. From the perspective of the poem, this incident is not really a problem between Christians and Muslims but between merchants protected by Alfonso and their aggressors from the competing Crown of Aragon. Therefore, the Virgin causes a storm that returns the Catalan pirates to Seville, where they give back to Alfonso everything they had stolen from the Muslim merchants. The cantiga concludes by stating that “empero que os mouros a vezes lle fazen guerra,/ aos que vee coitados nunca lle-la porta serra/d’acorrer con sa merçee, que é mayor das mayores” (“although the Moors at times cause Her distress, She never closes to them the door of salvation through Her mercy, which is great beyond compare”).78 This message is congruent with the refrain of cantiga 181, the one about the king of Marrakesh and his banner with the image of Mary: “Pero que seja a gente d’ outra lei [e] descreuda,/os que a Virgem mais aman, a esses ela ajuda” (“The Virgin will aid those who most love Her, although they may be of another faith and disbelievers”).79 As long as Muslims submitted to the authority of Alfonso or Jaume and collaborated with their plans, they were not an obstacle to their colonial ambitions; quite the opposite, they were indispensable, since recently  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 379, vv. 56–58.  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 181, vv. 3–4.

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conquered territories needed all kinds of workers in order to prosper and it was unfeasible to quickly repopulate entire regions with Christian newcomers.80 Competing Christians, instead, could result extremely damaging to the political and economic goals of a kingdom like Castile, as exemplified by the Catalan pirates of cantiga 379. The same indifference regarding religious allegiances applied to Aragon and its own commercial affairs: in an episode omitted from the Llibre dels fets, during the same month of April 1260 in which Jaume authorized his subjects to go fight “cum illustris rex Castelle contra sarracenos ad exaltandam fidem catholicam” (“along the illustrious king of Castile against Saracens to exalt the Catholic faith”), he wrote to Alfonso to excuse himself from helping him against the king of Tunis, “por la amor que el nos faz, e por las treuas que avemos con el, e la terza por que tanta de gent de nuestra tierra a en la sua, e tanto de aver, que serian a aventura de perder” (“for the favors he makes to us, and for the truces we have with him, and also because there are so many of our people and properties in his land, that it would be a great danger to risk to lose them”).81 No matter his family and political connections to Castile and his alleged desire to “exalt the Catholic faith,” Jaume could simply not endanger the prosperous commercial network between the Crown of Aragon, North Africa, and the kingdoms of Italy.82 Despite their conflicting interests and the obvious competition between Castile and Aragon, the authors of the Cantigas de Santa Maria decided to focus on the collaboration between Alfonso and Jaume when including the latter as an incidental figure in cantiga 169, the one about the Murcian Muslims who wanted to demolish a church. In this cantiga, the mudéjares go with their request not only to Alfonso but also to Jaume. While in the historical record Alfonso regained control of rebellious Murcia only thanks to his father-in-law’s help, Jaume’s role in cantiga 169 is mostly superfluous: he just agrees with Alfonso in authorizing the destruction of the 80  When looking over the archives of the Crown of Aragon, it is striking how many of the documents related to the administration of new territories contain tax exemptions and other measures to retain or attract non-Christians. Regarding the kingdom of Valencia, for instance, Robert Burns remarks: “The conquerors made little effort to displace Muslims, despite a contrary rhetoric and despite a measure of exiling and of drift toward North Africa; the Christians mounted a sustained program of importing Muslims, in fact, so as to maximize profits.” Burns, Society and Documentation, 186. 81  Jaime I, Documentos de Jaime I, 4: 255, 264. 82  See Batlle i Gallart, “Mercaders de Barcelona”; Ferrer i Mallol, “Panorama general”; Vela Aulesa, “Jaume I i el Magrib.”

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church. More interesting is the relation between both kings in the illuminations of the Códice rico, the most luxuriously illustrated manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Maria. In the third and fourth illuminations of cantiga 169, Alfonso and Jaume have the same face and identical gestures, in front of a similar audience of pleading Muslims. The main difference between them is that Jaume has gray hair and beard, while Alfonso lacks a beard and his hair is still dark. The illustrator probably wanted to emphasize the multiple family and political connections between the two Iberian monarchs and the resulting images make them clearly look like a father and his son or even as a younger and an older version of the same king. While Jaume is an almost forgettable figure in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and his countrymen barely register as impious pirates, Alfonso and Castilians appear often and prominently in the Llibre dels fets. Most of the first mentions of Castile are overwhelmingly negative, a categorical refutation of any natural sympathy among fellow Christians. Thirteen chapters are dedicated to a failed treaty between Jaume and Sancho VII of Navarre, an agreement that would have given the king of Aragon both the right to inherit Sancho’s kingdom and an excuse to fight together against Fernando III, Alfonso’s father.83 Trying to pass on his bellicose enthusiasm to the elderly and ailing Sancho, Jaume imagines in detail how the two of them will crush the Castilian troops “car nos tenim dret e els tort” (“because we have right on our side and they do not”) and they will then loot Fernando’s lands: “Les aldees de Castela son totes menys de uall e de mur, e entrara hom per elles, aixi con hom faria per .I. camp, e barrejar les em: e goanyaran tant los nostres, que aquels qui no son nostres uenran a nos per lo goany que nos farem” (“Everybody will be able to enter through the villages of Castile as they would through a field, because none of them have moats or walls. And we shall sack them, and our men will win so much that those who are not our men shall come to us for the profit that they can gain”).84 The same Jaume that showed so much restraint toward his Muslim enemies when conquering Valencia or Majorca had instead no qualms about devastating the lands of Christian Castilians, at least in his fantasies. But, since the king of Navarre did not second him in invading Castile, Jaume had to redirect his expansionist ambitions toward Muslim territories. Indeed, the rivalry between Jaume and Fernando III around the mid-thirteenth century exemplifies how Iberian Christian rulers used  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 138; chap. 142.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 142–143; chap. 147.

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their conquest and colonization of Muslims and their lands to compete with each other for Peninsular hegemony. By the same years in which Fernando conquered the Muslim south of Iberia, from Córdoba in 1236 to Seville in 1248, and transformed Murcia into a protectorate in 1243, Jaume did the same with the east of the Peninsula, by taking control of the entire kingdom of Valencia between 1233 and 1245. The extraordinary expansion of both Christian kingdoms made them finally clash and forced them to negotiate their differences. Since the twelfth century, Castile and Aragon had treaties of mutual protection of their territories, which Jaume violated when he conquered Villena in 1240; four years later, Alfonso (in his early twenties and still a prince) did the same when he claimed Xàtiva, which for centuries had been a prominent Muslim city because of its impressive fortifications and its paper production. Alfonso’s action outraged Jaume: not only Xàtiva had “la pus bela orta que anch havíem vista en vila ni en castell” (“the most beautiful huerta that we had ever seen of a town or a castle”), but also “era de nostra conquesta, e [Alfonso] havia nostra fiyla per moyler” (“it was of our conquest and [Alfonso] had our daughter as his wife”).85 Actually, princess Violante was by then only eight years old, but the marriage between her and Alfonso had been agreed years earlier. In the Llibre dels fets, Jaume normally conceals his outbursts of anger: for instance, there is no mention of the notorious incident in which he cut out the tongue of the bishop Berenguer of Girona, just because he suspected that the clergyman had gossiped to the Pope about the king’s sexual peccadilloes.86 Only in a couple of occasions we are allowed to witness his anger, and the first of them is when the young Alfonso attempts to take Xàtiva from him. The king of Aragon forbids his men from talking to the Muslims from Xàtiva, and when one of the soldiers contravenes the order, no matter how much he swears that he was not committing treason, Jaume orders him to be hung from a tree.87 When Jaume finds out that the Muslims from Énguera surrendered to Alfonso, he captures seventeen of them and hangs them or beheads them.88 The following negotiations between Castile and Aragon include many recriminations, threats, and  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 251, 264; chaps. 318, 341.  Smith, “Jaime I y el Papado,” 533. Two letters from August of 1246, in which Jaume apologizes to the Pope Innocent IV for this sin and promises to do penance, appear in Jaime I, Documentos de Jaime I, 2: 228–230. 87  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 263–264; chap. 340. 88  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 264; chap. 342 85 86

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even a crying fit of Jaume’s wife, but, once Alfonso agrees to abandon his demands over Xàtiva and signs the treaty of Almizra that redefines the border between Murcia and Valencia, old enmities are soon forgotten.89 Similarly to the quick transitions between mortal hatred and deep affection whenever Jaume reaches an agreement with his Muslim opponents, the dramatic dispute between him and Alfonso is instantly replaced by peaceful camaraderie: according to Jaume, “partim bons amichs, e reté la .I. a l’altre ço que tenia que no era seu” (“we departed as good friends, and each turned over to the other what he held that was not his own”).90 Although the competition between the two powerful kings is never entirely over, as signs of rivalry continue appearing in the Llibre dels fets and other royal documents, Jaume and Alfonso mostly collaborate with each other in the following decades. Muslims, whose lands and political adhesion had been central to the frictions between the two Christian kings, become now their common enemies and therefore a bonding factor. And if the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Llibre dels fets had previously emphasized the importance of tolerance toward Muslims who could easily convert to Christianity or at least come under Christian power, the same works suddenly take a more aggressive stance against them, now characterized by their rebelliousness and unpredictability.

The Rebellious Muslims and the Christian Kings During their discussions over Xàtiva, Jaume had argued that he could offer his son-in-law something even more valuable than the coveted city: “Si mester li fossen .M. o .MM. cavallers, que poria haver en sa ajuda, ab nós ensemps, e açò no tan solament .I. vegada, mas .II. o .III. e .X., si mester hi fos; e valia més açò ab nostra amor, que no l’àls ab desamor de nós” (“If he needed one or two thousand knights, he could have them to help him, and us as well, and not only once, but two, three, or ten times if it were necessary. And that was worth more with our love than the other thing would be without our love”).91 Jaume’s words proved prophetic twenty years later, in 1264, when the Murcian mudéjares revolted and Castile desperately required the assistance of Aragon. 89  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 267–268; chaps. 348–349. The original treaty in Latin, signed in March of 1244, can be found in Jaime I, Documentos de Jaime I, 2: 176–177. 90  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 268; chap. 349. 91  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 266–267; chap. 346.

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In an obviously intentional juxtaposition that omits several years of history, Jaume describes the uprising in Murcia in chapter 378 of the Llibre dels fets, immediately after dedicating chapters 371–377 to narrating the traitorous collaboration between the Valencian Muslims who had revolted against him and the Castilian royal family. The disloyalty of Alfonso and his brother is addressed explicitly but tactfully by Jaume, who downplays the agency of his son-in-law. For example, he writes that the leader of the rebellion, al-Azraq, “parlava pleyt ab Don Manuel, frare del rey de Castella, primer, e puys ab lo rey de Castella” (“negotiated first with Don Manuel, brother of the king of Castile, and then with the king of Castile”).92 Furthermore, when al-Azraq openly declares his rebellious intentions to Alfonso, the king’s response is omitted: “E⋅l rey de Castella demanà-li si sabia caçar, e Alaçrach dix-li que, si ell se volia, caçaria castels del rey d’Aragó; e dix .I. galego que era ab lo rey de Castella que mal moro era aquel qui no sabia caçar sinó castells” (“And the king of Castile asked him if he knew how to hunt, and al-Azraq said to him that if he wanted, he would hunt castles of the king of Aragon. And a Galician who was with the king of Castile said it was a poor Moor who could hunt nothing but castles”).93 The narrative proximity between the two rebellions in Valencia and Murcia underscores the treachery of both Muslims and Alfonso, who promptly receives a fitting comeuppance. But, while the rebelliousness of Muslims unleashes the anger of both Christian kings, Alfonso’s disloyalty is soon forgiven. After Alfonso does not even dare to directly ask for Jaume’s support, instead sending his petition through his wife and Jaume’s daughter, Violante, the king of Aragon decides to assist him anyway for several reasons: because he has to also protect the interests of his daughter and grandchildren; because Alfonso is “.I. dels pus poderoses hòmens del món” (“one of the most powerful men in the world”), whose unremitting ill will he does not want to earn; and, most importantly, because “si⋅l rey de Castella havia perduda sa terra, mal estaríem nós ça, en aquesta terra nostra; per què val més que n’hajam sobre la sua deffenén, que si n’havíem sobre la nostra” (“if the king of Castile were to lose his land, we would be in a weak position in this our land; for it is better to defend on his land than on our own”).94 When these sound personal and political arguments  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 282; chap. 371.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 285; chap. 377. 94  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 289; chap. 382. 92 93

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fail to convince the assembly of his noblemen, citizens, and clergymen, Jaume appeals to their religious duties against Islam and their own economic situation: “¿Què y goanyarets, vosaltres, si en les esglésies on és ahorat nostre Seyor e la sua Mare que, si per mala ventura se perdia, seria­hi ahorat Mahomet? E si⋅l nostre, de nosaltres reys, se pert, ben podets saber que⋅l vostre no⋅n restaurarà” (“What will you gain if the churches where Our Lord and His mother are worshipped are lost through ill fortune, and Mahomet is worshipped there? And if what belongs to we kings is lost, you can well understand that what is yours will not be restored”).95 Having failed again to change his subjects’ minds, Jaume abandons the assembly in a fit of anger, stops listening to his court, and even refuses to eat, in a remarkable parallelism with his previous wrath over Xàtiva: then he was enraged by Alfonso’s coveting of the city and now he is incensed by his court’s refusal to help Alfonso; in the first case, both kings wanted to possess the same Muslim land and its inhabitants and, in the second, both want Christians to not lose control of a territory to its Muslim population. As usual, religion is almost an afterthought in comparison to political interests, which makes one wonder if Jaume’s call to defend Christianity fails precisely because his men are well aware of his hypocrisy. But Jaume does not back down and instead multiplies his efforts to convince them that the campaign in Murcia is much more than an attempt to protect his family’s possessions: in a few chapters, his down-to-earth reasons for helping Alfonso morph into a crusade to save the entire Iberian Peninsula from Islam: “Nós ho fem, la primera cosa, per Déu; la segona, per salvar Espanya; la terça, que nós e vós hajam tan bon preu e tan gran nom, que per nós e per vós és salvada Espanya” (“We do it in the first place for God, in the second place to save Spain, and in the third place so that we and you might win great fame and renown for together having saved Spain, through you and us”).96 It is possible that toward the end of his life Jaume became more focused on fighting Islam not only in Iberia but across the Mediterranean, as demonstrated by his ill-fated attempt to sail to the Holy Places in a new

 Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 290–291; chap. 384.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 296; chap. 392.

95 96

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crusade.97 But both his campaign in Murcia and his aborted trip to Palestine are also consistent with the same pragmatic king of previous decades, the conqueror of the Balearic Islands and Valencia who obtained enormous wealth and prestige while occasionally invoking religion. And Jaume’s own court seems increasingly skeptical or even fed up with the shallow religious justifications hastily affixed to his military projects. When, still discussing the rebellion in Murcia, a Franciscan friar tells of another monk’s dream in which an angel announced that only Jaume could save the entire Peninsula from the evil of Islam, this spectacular revelation is automatically dismissed by the rest of the court: “Levà’s don Exemèn d’Orrea e dix que les visions bones eren, mas que ells venrien denant nós, e d’açò que⋅ls dixéssem, que s’acordarien” (“Don Jimeno de Urrea got up and said that visions were all very well, but that they would come to our presence and deliberate upon whatever we said”).98 Exactly like previous campaigns, the pacification of Murcia includes belligerent, sometimes Islamophobic discourses during the process of preparation and planning, but it becomes remarkably tolerant once the king comes into contact with his Muslim adversaries. Villena is won through treaties, a pardon, and a bribe of one hundred bezants to a helpful Muslim who spoke Latin; similar talks of surrender and promises of protection follow in Elda, Petrel, and Elche.99 In Elche, Jaume invokes once again his well-known generosity and rectitude toward his enemies, now with an important addendum: “Creem que vosaltres sabets d’aquels […] que volgren haver pau ab nós e⋅s venien metre en nostra mercè, com los havíem nós bona mercè e⋅ls ateníem ço que promès los havíem, si per éls no u perdien” (“We believe you know how generous we prove with those who wish to have peace with us, if they place themselves at our mercy; and how we always fulfil what we have promised them, if they do not lose it 97  According to the Llibre dels fets, when Jaume was contacted by the king of the Tartars to fight the sultan of Egypt, he interpreted this as a divine sign of his duty to conquer the Holy Land. However, after starting his trip with several days of bad weather, Jaume decided to return home because “semblanos que nostre Seyor no vol que nós passem en Oltramar” (“it seems to us that Our Lord does not will us to cross to Outremer”). Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 344; chap. 487. Jaume’s contemporaries attributed the failure of the crusade to the king’s many shortcomings, from his poor planning to his attachment to his lover Berenguera, and Jaume’s own account may have been written to precisely refute those criticisms and rumors. Marcos Hierro, “La croada a Terra Santa,” 509. 98  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 294; chap. 390. 99  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 306, 307, 307–308, 309; chaps. 410–411, 413, 414, 416.

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through their own conduct”).100 During the conquest of Valencia, Jaume could still affirm that “anch sarraý no⋅ns trencà fe que⋅ns hagués promesa per raó de castell que⋅ns hagués promès de retre, de Lançrat enfora” (“no Saracen had ever before broken a promise to us having promised to ­surrender a castle, except al-Azraq”), but the stereotypical depictions of Muslims as traitorous and rebellious become increasingly common in the last third of the book and the king’s attitude toward them changes accordingly.101 In this way, although a revolt would logically seem an ideal opportunity for mudéjares to increase their agency and escape from the colonizing strategies of Christians, Jaume ensures that this is not the case by redoubling his efforts to subjugate them both politically and textually: in addition to defeating the rebels, it is necessary to insist on their treason and disloyalty as justifications to further deprive them of their rights and possessions. Because of this, the mudéjares’ uprisings are at the same time bad and good news to Jaume, as he openly admits: “E d’una part nos pesava per la honta que feyta nos havia, e d’altra part nos plaÿa, car nos daven raó e manera que⋅ns en poguéssem venjar” (“On the one hand we were upset by the affront they had done us, and on the other hand it pleased us, since they gave us the motive and the opportunity to avenge ourselves”).102 Progressively and predictably, the untrustworthiness of some Muslims becomes the main excuse for Jaume to disregard previous surrender pacts or take more of their lands while at the same time trying to preserve his reputation as a generous ruler. Through many conquests and hundreds of chapters, Jaume has provided ample proof of his willingness to respect the religion, laws, and customs of non-Christians. When cities and castles surrender, Jaume not only allows the Muslims to stay, but he lets them continue living according to “les cartes de lurs çunes”: according to their Sunnah or legal traditions.103 He uses Muslim and Jewish interpreters and translators to explain his conditions of surrender or government, to which then he adheres even against the desires of his own Christian troops.104 In this way, most of the Llibre dels fets attempts to demonstrate that Jaume is as considerate and merciful as a conqueror and colonizer can be:

 Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 309; chap. 416, my emphasis.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 272; chap. 356. 102  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 276; chap. 363. 103  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 273; chap. 359. 104  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 87, 122–123, 231; chaps. 74, 118–119, 283, etc. 100 101

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therefore, if his Muslim subjects eventually fail him and he has to punish them or take away their rights, they have no one to blame but themselves. During the pacification of Murcia, Jaume shows once more his political acumen while using the continuous ambivalence of Christian-Muslim relationships to his advantage. In an initially puzzling episode, he assures the mudéjares that they can keep their mosques, but he then asks for the largest one to be transformed into a Christian church because, according to him: “¿Què farien los christians, si no havien església en què entrassen? E que la església sia a la porta de l’alcàcer, e c⋅hom crit lo sabaçala cant jo dormiré, prop de la testa, açò, si bé ho entenets, no és cosa covinent. E vosaltres havets bé .X. mesquites en la vila: fets vostra oratió en aqueles e lexats-nos aquesta” (“What would the Christians do without a church that they could go into? And that church shall be at the gate of the fortress. And that from there ‘Alàlosabba’ should be cried near to my head when I am sleeping … that, as you can well understand, is not fitting. Now, you have some ten mosques in the town. Make your prayers in those and leave this one to us”).105 Not only Muslims are hesitant about accepting his offer, but also Jaume’s sons, the bishop of Barcelona, and many noblemen oppose to it because they think Christians deserve more than one church. Jaume seems amused by the confusion of both Muslims and Christians until he finally reveals his real intentions while boasting about his greater experience and cunning: “Nós havíem estat en plus de lochs que ells no havien e conexíem mils l’usatge dels sarraïns que ells no faÿen; que, quan hom podia haver de son enemich (no us diré de sarraïns) una braçada de terra, totavia devia hom esperar que n’hauria hom .X. o .C.” (“We had been in more places than they had been and we knew the customs of the Saracens better than they did. Furthermore, when a man is able to gain from his enemy—and not just the Saracens—two arms’ breadth of land, he might well hope to have ten or a hundred”).106 Jaume then explains that his plan from the beginning has been to obtain one concession after another from the mudéjares, until he can confine them in the district of La Arrixaca and offer the rest of the city to God and Christians.107 At this point, the Llibre dels fets intersects with the Cantigas de Santa Maria, specifically with the already mentioned cantiga 169, about the same Murcian district of La Arrixaca in which some mudéjares wanted to  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 324–325; chap. 445.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 446; chap. 446. 107  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 325–326; chap. 447. 105 106

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get rid of a Christian church. The conflict about converting one of many mosques into a church in the Llibre dels fets transforms in the Cantigas into a dispute about a single church but located in the specific district in which most Muslims lived. The correlation between the mudéjares’ disloyalty and their loss of lands and property escalates in the Cantigas de Santa Maria until only a few of them remain in La Arrixaca: Depois, quand’ Aboyuçaf, o sennor de Çalé, passou con mui gran gente, aquesto verdad’ é que cuidaron os mouros, por eixalçar ssa fe, gãar Murça per arte. Mais sa falss’ armadilla […] desfez a Virgen santa, que os ende sacou, que ena Arraixaca poucos deles leixou; e a sua eigreja assi deles livrou, ca os que mal quer ela, ben assi os eixilla. (Later, when Aboyuçaf, lord of Salé, passed by with a great army, it is true that the Moors thought to take Murcia by trickery, in order to exalt their faith. However, the Holy Virgin undid their treacherous plot, for She drove them out of there and left very few of them in La Arrijaca. Thus She freed Her church from them, for in that way She banishes those She despises.)108

According to the cantiga 169, the treachery of Murcian Muslims and their alliance with North African armies allowed the Virgin to show her power and the Christians to take over Murcia, despite all the goodwill previously shown by Alfonso and Jaume to their mudéjares. As Connie Scarborough has noticed, cantigas like this one transfer Alfonso’s political responsibility to the Virgin and other characters, therefore presenting him as a sympathetic ruler that manages to satisfy his political and territorial ambitions almost in spite of his own generosity.109 The usefulness of this apparent benevolence for the colonial interests of Christian monarchs is however clearly revealed at the end of cantiga 169, as well as when Jaume openly declares in the Llibre dels fets his intention to confine mudéjares to just one neighborhood. The contradictory gestures of Alfonso and Jaume toward their mudéjares are allegedly motivated by the unpredictability of Muslims, but they actually follow a clear plan from the beginning and  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 169, vv. 53–61.  Scarborough, A Holy Alliance, 44–45, 61.

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pursue the single goal of dispossessing them from their lands and rights while using as little violence as necessary. And this strategy worked, according to the historical record that shows that Jaume’s and Alfonso’s policies had devastating effects over the Muslim population of Murcia, just like the king of Aragon had foreseen: During the remaining eighteen years of Alfonso X’s reign, the number of Christian settlers steadily increased, while the more well-to-do Mudejars emigrated to Granada or North Africa. Fernando IV in 1305 emphasized the paucity of Mudejars in the kingdom of Murcia when he reported that ‘the greater part of the Moors are dead and the others flown.’ As Juan Torres Fontes points out, the political and economic situation of those who remained was depressed, as they were mostly peasants, cultivating the soil and lacking prestige and authority.110

After their victory in Murcia, Alfonso and Jaume continued collaborating with each other when planning their respective campaigns against Muslims in the Middle East and Africa: between 1259 and 1260, first Alfonso promised to support Jaume’s crusade to Palestine and then he asked for his help against Ceuta. The Llibre dels fets explicitly relates their cooperation in these overambitious military campaigns with the trust developed between them during the fight against the mudéjares from Murcia: “Non quero que vos hi vaades menos de mi aiuda, car assí lo feystes vós a mi quant menester m’era, que m’aiudades” (“I would not wish you to go without my help, as you did the same for me when I needed you to help me”), says Alfonso to Jaume regarding his expedition to the Holy Land.111 In the historical record, however, they still clashed one more time over the king of Castile’s dreams of becoming Holy Roman Emperor. When Jaume allied with Manfredi, king of Sicily and competitor of Alfonso for the imperial crown, and even married his own son to Manfredi’s daughter, Alfonso was outraged, to the point of writing to Jaume that “ningun omne del mundo tan grande tuerto nunqua recibió de otro como nos recibriemos de vos” (“no man in the world has been wronged by another more than we were wronged by you”).112 A few years later, the common threat of rebellious mudéjares brought them together  O’Callaghan, “The Mudejars of Castile and Portugal,” 24.  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 341; chap. 480. 112  Memorial histórico español, 166. See also González Jiménez, “Jaime I el Conquistador y Alfonso X el Sabio,” 445. 110 111

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again, in a new example of how the subjugation of Muslims and the conquest of their lands could be the reason for much competition and discord among Christian kings but also a common purpose around which to unite.

Muslims as Symbols and Examples The representations of Muslims and their interactions with Christians in the Llibre dels fets and the Cantigas de Santa Maria are at the same time varied and stereotypical: despite the diversity of roles and features assigned to Muslims, most of them tend to cluster around a few repetitive motives, such as the good Muslim that ends up converting to Christianity, the courteous Muslim leader that defers to Christians, the rebellious and traitorous mudéjar, etc. The accumulation of these types over dozens of poems and chapters, as well as the frequent transitions from opposition to collaboration or from loyalty to disloyalty, creates the impression that Muslims are ultimately unpredictable, which is just another way to dehumanize the colonized according to Albert Memmi: “The humanity of the colonized, rejected by the colonizer, becomes opaque. It is useless, he asserts, to try to forecast the colonized’s actions (‘They are unpredictable!’ ‘With them, you never know!’) It seems to him that strange and disturbing impulsiveness controls the colonized. The colonized must indeed be very strange, if he remains so mysterious after years of living with the colonizer.”113 Additionally, as shown by Jaume’s plans and actions during the mudéjar rebellion in Murcia, such unpredictability is an extremely useful justification for taking away the colonized’s property and rights. In consequence, the positive depictions of Muslims and their relationships with Christians in these books depend on their usefulness for the colonial purposes of the kings of Castile and Aragon. These rulers value Muslims as long as they can surrender, serve, build, farm, or manufacture for them, but the final goal, not always attainable, is to replace them by Christians. Almost at the end of the Llibre dels fets, Jaume includes among his final instructions to his son “que gitàs tots los moros del dit regne de València, per ço con eren tots traÿdors e havien-nos-ho donat a conèxer moltes vegades, que, nós faén bé a ells, punyaren tots temps de fer a nós greuge e a nós decebre, si poguessen” (“that he should expel all the Moors from the kingdom of Valencia, as they were all traitors, and they had proved it to us many times, for, though we had done good to them, they  Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 129.

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always looked to do us harm and to trick us if they could”).114 In a similar way, in one of the last poems of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, Alfonso appears again as a speaker and he asks the Virgin for some wishes, in addition to the forgiveness of his sins and his admittance to Heaven: E que en este mundo queira que os encreus mouros destruyr possa, que son dos Filisteus, com’ a seus ẽemigos destruyu Machabeus Judas, que foi gran tenpo cabdelo dos judeus. […] E que contra os mouros, que terra d’Ultramar tẽen e en Espanna gran part’ a meu pesar, me dé poder e força pera os en deitar. (May He grant that in this world I may be able to destroy the infidel Moors, who are Philistines, just as Judas Maccabaeus, who long ago was leader of the Jews, destroyed his enemies. … And may He grant me power and strength against the Moors who hold the Holy Land and great portions of Spain, to my great regret, so that I may drive them out.)115

There is no lack of wicked Muslims in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, such as the governor of the castle of Bélmez, who captures a Christian friend and delivers him to the king of Granada, or the Muslim who is tutored by Saint John of Damascus and then uses his perfect imitation of the saint’s handwriting to discredit him before the emperor of Constantinople.116 Several Muslims torture Christians or threaten them with torture, and others desecrate their churches and holy images.117 The Virgin in person calls Muhammad “o falsso, vão,/mui louco, vilão/ Mafomete cão” (“the false, vain, mad, villainous dog Mohammed”).118 Still, Alfonso’s final wishes to destroy or expel all Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula result shocking because they ignore not only the numerous instances of goodwill between Christians and Muslims in the Cantigas but also those other cases in which their relationships are neither positive nor negative and that probably better depict most intercultural experiences for  Jaume I, Llibre dels fets, 385; chap. 564.  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 401, vv. 18–21, 29–31. 116  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cants. 185, 265. 117  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cants. 83, 227, 325; and 99, 183, 215, 229, 345. 118  Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 192, vv. 102–104. 114 115

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thirteenth-century Iberians. This is the situation of characters such as Ali, a Muslim master builder in charge of the construction of a church in cantiga 358. After an anonymous worker discovers a providential stash of middle-sized square rocks, ideal for building the church as fast as possible, Ali’s name and religion are only mentioned because they prove his impartiality as a witness of the miracle: Pois maestr’ Ali viu esto, empero que x’era mouro, entendeu que ben guardadas tevera com’ en tesouro a Virgen aquelas pedras que tan preçadas com’ ouro foran pera lavrar toste e mais ca pedra mẽuda. (When master Ali saw this, although he was a Moor, he realized that the Virgin had kept those stones like a treasure, for they were as valuable as gold for building quickly, much more than small stones.)119

Despite witnessing this miracle and recognizing it as such, Ali does not convert to Christianity nor accomplish anything particularly valuable for the king or the Virgin, besides just performing his job as a master builder. From this perspective, he is similar to those already mentioned Muslim merchants robbed by Catalan pirates in cantiga 379: they are innocent victims caught in the middle of a strife between Christian rival parties and the poem is wholly indifferent to their feelings toward the Virgin, the king, or even Christians in general. In these rare cases, Muslims appear in the Cantigas as common people, who do their jobs and live along Christians and Jews, without any special agency or interest in religious disputes or political issues. Most commonly, however, Muslims were too useful for the colonial purposes of monarchs like Jaume I or Alfonso X to not become symbols or examples of something else. In this way, and in addition to their actual utility for maintaining and increasing the wealth of Christian kingdoms, Muslims were transformed into literary signs with many meanings and purposes: vehicles of the divine Providence, religious enemies to be defeated, grateful subjects who promoted their rulers’ benevolence, and traitors whose sins justified their expulsion or dispossession. The impact of these multifaceted roles of Muslims on the political reputations of Christian monarchs can be fully appreciated in their (not always accurate) integration to the kings’ images for posterity. For example, the Catalan chronicler 119

 Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, cant. 358, vv. 25–28.

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Bernat Desclot finishes a highly favorable description of Jaume I by saying that he was “agradable a tota gent e molt misericordiós; e hac tot son cor e tota sa volentat de guerrejar ab sarraïns” (“gentle with everybody and very merciful, and his entire heart and will were set on warring against Saracens”).120 Likewise, the final chapters of the Estoria de España praise both Alfonso X’s initial victories and his father’s glorious conquests as the culmination of a struggle of centuries against Muslim enemies while characterizing Fernando III as an “abaxador de paganismo” (“vanquisher of paganism”) that finally “saco de espanna el poder el apremiamiento delos contrarias dela fe de cristo e les tollio el sennorio” (“delivered Spain from the power and oppression of the enemies of Christ’s faith”).121 In these later accounts, the contradictions and complexities of the interactions between Christians and Muslims are replaced by a clear-cut, black-and-­ white narrative of permanent opposition between both groups. In the next chapter, I will precisely analyze the step-by-step transformation of the heroic Muslims in a popular Christian legend into conveniently subservient figures, in a process of translations and adaptations that exposes even more clearly the ideological manipulation of Muslim difference by Iberian Christian authors.

 Desclot, Crònica, 72.  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E2, fol. 357v.

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CHAPTER 4

From Great Muslim Heroes to Good Christian Subjects: Converting the Legend of the Seven Infantes of Lara

Despite their usefulness for Christian authors and leaders, the ambivalences of colonial representations and relationships may also become problematic for them, because the same contradictions that allow them to fluctuate between amicable and hostile interactions with Muslims can offer an opportunity to question their colonial authority. After all, if (at least some) Muslims can be as wise, brave, and noble as Christians, why should they not also be entitled to rule their own polities in the Iberian Peninsula, without being subjugated to Christian leaders? Why could they not revolt against an imposed power they consider illegitimate or unjust? For many medieval Christians, the answer to these questions was straightforward and categorical: because “paien unt tort e crestïens unt dreit” (“non-Christians are wrong and Christians are right”), as the French Chanson de Roland states with brutal concision.1 But at the other side of An early, much modified version of this chapter appeared as “From Great Muslim Warriors to Good Christian Subjects: Translating and Converting the Iberian Legend of the Infantes of Lara” in Iberian Babel: Translation and Multilingualism in the Medieval and the Early Modern Mediterranean, ed. Michelle M. Hamilton and Núria Silleras-Fernández (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 58–78. 1

 La chanson de Roland, v. 1015.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_4

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the Pyrenees such a stark division between religious and cultural groups could never be an entirely satisfactory answer and Iberians had to grapple with the dilemma between a total opposition to Muslims and a more ambivalent attitude, both carrying their own complications in a colonial setting in which Muslim difference was both feared and needed. Similarly to the colonial mimicry described by Homi Bhabha as “the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite,” the contradictory depictions of Muslims offer a “double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority.”2 The disrupting and discomforting power of such representations may be noticed in the alternation between conflicting attitudes toward Muslim difference even for the same authors and in the same texts, as previously seen in the contrast between the ambivalent depictions of Muslims in most of the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Llibre dels fets and the much more aggressive condemnation of them in some of their final poems or chapters. The disturbance of Christian authority produced by the contradictory depictions of Muslims and the subsequent attempts to solve their problematic ambivalence can be clearly appreciated in the discrepant versions of the legend of the seven infantes of Lara, a gruesome revenge story that was probably included in more than one Iberian epic.3 Although no such epic survived the Middle Ages, several retellings of the legend were preserved in Castilian and Portuguese historiographical works, starting in the late thirteenth century with the Estoria de España, another monumental project sponsored by Alfonso X of Castile.4 In this chronicle, all Muslim  Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 122, 126; his emphases.  As previously indicated regarding the infantes of Carrión in the Cantar de Mio Cid, “infantes” was loosely used in the Iberian Peninsula to designate the children of many noblemen and not only those of kings. Already in the sixteenth century, historiographer Ambrosio de Morales was unaware of this medieval use of the term and as puzzled as many contemporary readers by the infantes of Lara being called this way, considering that their father was at the service of a count: “Porque los llamaron Infantes, no lo hallo en ningun autor, ni yo tampoco puedo conjeturarlo” (“I cannot find any author that explains why they were called infantes and I cannot figure it out either”). Morales, Los cinco libros postreros, 260v. 4  Ramón Menéndez Pidal argued that there existed at least two versions of the lost epic of the infantes of Lara and subsequent scholars have generally confirmed his opinion. Menéndez Pidal, La leyenda de los infantes de Lara, 3–47; Catalán, La épica española, 320–322; Deyermond, La literatura perdida, 80. Taking into consideration Parry’s and Lord’s studies on oral epics, Thomas Lathrop even speculated about a “continuous evolution and revision as [the epic] passed from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation.” Lathrop, “The Singer of Tales,” 153. 2 3

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characters involved in the story of the infantes are surprisingly depicted as much more powerful, sensible, and compassionate than their Christian counterparts. This positive characterization of Muslims not only undermines the attempts by other chapters of the Estoria de España to present them as barbaric invaders and illegitimate occupiers of the Iberian Peninsula, but it also produces an inextricable conflict between the book’s two main purposes: to offer historical models of right behavior and to justify the Peninsular hegemony of the Christian rulers of León and Castile. Such an ideological inconsistency is not really unusual in a work produced by the collaboration of countless writers: in the case of the Estoria de España, some of the contradictory representations of Muslims may well be the accidental result of narratives with very different origins and purposes coming together in one chronicle. The same cannot be said about later versions of the legend, in either new Castilian reworkings of the Estoria de España or its Portuguese translations and adaptations, in which other writers felt the need to introduce multiple modifications to rectify any possible questioning of Christian authority. In consequence, the comparison of these diverse texts reveals how, in just a few decades between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a story full of heroic Muslim characters was purged of its potentially subversive contradictions and transformed into a narrative that better fit the colonial purposes of Christian rulers by glorifying their power over Iberian Muslims.

The Estoria de España and Its Contradictory Muslims According to the Estoria de España, the seven infantes were the children of the Castilian nobleman Gonzalo Gustios and his wife, doña Sancha. Sancha’s brother was Ruy Velázquez, another nobleman whose seeming good fortune was to marry doña Lambra, the cousin of the count of Castile. During the wedding celebration, however, the infantes quarreled with Lambra, her relatives, and Velázquez, triggering a family feud that reached its climax when Velázquez led his seven nephews into an ambush and abandoned them to die amid thousands of troops from the Caliphate of Córdoba. As part of the same plot, Velázquez sent the father of the infantes, Gonzalo Gustios, to deliver a letter to Almanzor, the ruler of Córdoba. The letter asked Almanzor to kill Gustios, but Almanzor decided

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instead to keep him in prison, under the care of an Andalusi noblewoman. When the infantes’ heads arrived to Córdoba, Gustios identified them as belonging to his seven sons and Almanzor took such pity on him that set him free. While Gustios was preparing to return home, his Andalusi caretaker revealed that she was pregnant with his child; Gustios told her that, if the child was a boy, she should send him to Castile to take revenge on Velázquez. At the age of ten, Mudarra, the son of Gustios and the Andalusi woman, was knighted by Almanzor and traveled to Castile, where he challenged Velázquez and then killed him when the traitor attempted to escape under the cover of night. Although Lambra could not be immediately punished because she was the cousin of the count of Castile, Mudarra waited for years until the count died and then had Lambra captured and burned. There is no record of this extravagant narrative before its appearance in the Estoria de España, an ambitious historiographical project initiated by Alfonso X of Castile during the last decades of the thirteenth century. The never-finished Estoria de España sparked a jumbled manuscript tradition, with dozens of versions, adaptations, rewritings, and assemblies of its different parts. At least two of those versions were produced during Alfonso’s reign: the Versión primitiva, dated between 1270 and 1274 (and traditionally divided into the Versión regia and the Versión vulgar or concisa) and the Versión crítica, written between 1282 and 1284.5 The Versión concisa, or second part of the Versión primitiva from 1270 to 1274, includes the oldest written account of the story of the infantes. In the Versión concisa of the Estoria de España, the merciful and courteous Muslims of the legend of the infantes seem particularly incongruent in the context of the entire work. The Alfonsine writers had consciously adopted Isidore of Seville’s idea of a translatio imperii, or transfer of supreme power, from the Romans to the Goths, as well as the development of that concept by the clerical historiographer Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, according to whom “the history of Spain begins with the rise of 5  Fernández-Ordóñez, “El taller historiográfico alfonsí,” 121; see also Campa Gutiérrez, Estoria de España, 29–30; Fernández-Ordóñez, “La transmisión textual,” 219, y Versión crítica, 11–12; Ward et al., “About this edition.” In the following pages, I will mainly quote from Campa Gutiérrez’s editions of the Versión concisa and the Versión crítica, the first one partially included in his dissertation and the last one published as a book. When discussing other chapters and versions of the Estoria de España not edited by Campa Gutiérrez, I will use the transcriptions of the Estoria de Espanna Digital project by Aengus Ward et al., indicating the name of the project followed by the specific manuscript and folio number.

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Gothic power in Europe and continues as the Goths establish themselves in Spain and rule the peninsula for centuries. The Moorish invasion is of course presented as a genuine disaster but is in no way an interruption of the Gothic succession and its unfailing right to rule Spain.”6 In support of this perspective, which impugned the legitimacy of Muslim dominion over any Iberian territory, the Estoria de España faithfully translated passages in which Jiménez de Rada presented the Muslim conquerors as terrifying barbarians, with monstruous and demonic features: “Eorum facies ut nigredo; uultus gloria quasi olle et eorum oculi uelut ignis” became in Castilian “Las sus caras dellos; negras como la pez. El mas fremoso dellos; era negro como la olla. Assi luzien sus oios como candelas” (“Their faces were black as pitch and the most handsome among them was black like a pot. Their eyes blazed like candles”).7 The arrival of Muslims to Iberia is described by Jiménez de Rada and the Alfonsine chroniclers as the “destruición de España” (“destruction of Hispania”), a shocking succession of cruelties that goes from the rape of women to the smashing of babies against walls. In previous chapters of the Estoria de España, the authors had compiled some of the most infamous legends about the Prophet Muhammad in order to present the founder of Islam as a blasphemous trickster, who ended up being poisoned by a disciple and eaten by dogs.8 According to these defamatory tales, Muhammad’s “sect” was a challenge not only to Christian religion but also to Christian political authorities: after being tutored by a Jew and a heretic monk, Muhammad started thinking of “como podrie seer contrallo all Emperador de los Romanos. e sacar las yentes de so el su sennorio” (“how he could oppose the emperor of the Romans, and take the people away from his dominion”).9 As Geraldine Heng explains, such characterizations of Muhammad as “a cunning, deceitful, ambitious, rapacious, ruthless, and licentious liar” have a  Fraker, The Scope of History, 9–10.  Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, 106; Estoria de Espanna Digital: E1, fol. 193r. 8  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E1, fols. 162v–171r. This unfavorable portrayal comes from a number of twelfth-century “polemical lives of Muhammad in which the prophet of Islam is painted not only as a heresiarch but also as a trickster and magician: Embrico of Mainz’s Vita Mahumeti, Gautier de Compiègne’s De otia Machometi, Adelphus’ Vita Machometi, and the brief biography that Guibert of Nogent inserts into his Gesta.” Tolan, Saracens, 137. See also Daniel, Islam and the West, 100–130. 9  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E1, fol. 168r. 6 7

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particular historical and cultural importance because they were later transformed by Christian authors “into a general description of all Muslims, and thereafter assigned as the collective personality traits of those who share a common religion.”10 This is exactly what Alfonsine writers did when reproducing the Islamophobic accounts of previous chroniclers such as Jiménez de Rada: they did not stop at just slandering Muhammad and demonizing the conquerors of al-Andalus, but they used these deeply hostile depictions as stereotypical characterizations of most Muslims. And, in the rare case of a Muslim figure that did not deserve condemnation, the authors were sparing with their words, as in this one-line praise of the caliph ʿAbd ar-Rahmān III: “Et este Rey fue muy poderoso. e muy onrrado. e mantouo sus yentes en Justicia e en derecho” (“And this king had much power and honor, and he ruled his people with justice and righteousness”).11 Few Muslim figures could channel the Islamophobia of Christian chroniclers as well as Almanzor, the ḥa ̄jib (“chamberlain” or “prime minister”) that, while pretending to serve the ineffectual caliph Hishām II, increased his own power until becoming the de facto ruler of Córdoba and the most powerful man in tenth-century Iberia. His more than fifty raids against the northern Christian kingdoms were the key factor that transformed Muḥammad ibn Abı ̄ ʿĀ mir al-Maʿāfirı ̄, an administrative employee without noble origins, into “al-Manṣūr” or “the Victorious.” The emir of Granada ʿAbd Allāh ibn Buluggı ̄n admiringly wrote in the late eleventh century that, thanks to Almanzor, “Islam enjoyed a glory which al-­Andalus had never witnessed before, while the Christians suffered their greatest humiliation.”12 Hundreds of years later, the fourteenth- or fifteenth-­ century Ḍ ikr bila ̄d al-Andalus still remembered with the same Schadenfreude how Almanzor never stopped attacking and defeating Iberian Christians, who feared him like death.13 While Arabic sources affirm that nobody ever overcame Almanzor on the battlefield and he died of natural causes in his sixties, Christian chroniclers invented a humiliating comeuppance for him: in the twelfth-century Historia Silense, Almanzor is carried to hell by the devil who possessed him; in another twelfth-century chronicle, the Galician Historia Compostellana, Almanzor unexpectedly  Heng, The Invention of Race, 116.  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E2, fol. 45r. 12  Abd Allāh ibn Buluggı ̄n, The Tibyān, 43. 13  Una descripción anónima, 2: 196. 10 11

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dies while escaping from Christians and “animam suam sinui Mafometh infeliciter commendauit” (“he wretchedly commended his soul to the bosom of Muhammad”).14 The tone is similar in the two thirteenth-­ century chronicles most admired and utilized as sources by the Alfonsine writers, the Chronicon mundi by Lucas de Tuy and the Historia de rebus Hispanie by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. According to these two bishops, Almanzor was finally defeated by Christians and he died of shame and sadness by refusing to eat or drink.15 As usual, the Alfonsine chroniclers took most of their information about Almanzor from Jiménez de Rada, whose Historia de rebus Hispanie served as the foundation of the Estoria de España: according to Diego Catalán, the writers in Alfonso’s court began their work by translating and updating Jiménez de Rada’s book, before fusing it with the Chronicon mundi and other narratives, including popular legends such as the story of the infantes.16 Although the manuscripts of the Estoria de España present many divergences in their organization of events and the dates they assign to them, the legend of the infantes is invariably circumscribed by the raids of Almanzor against the Iberian Christian kingdoms, and one or more of those raids also fill the chronological gap between Gustios’ return to Castile and Mudarra’s revenge. Such appearances of Almanzor before, during, and after the story of the infantes highlight even more the anomalous depiction of the legend’s Muslims as honorable and compassionate, since the Andalusi leader is as ruthless as a Muslim enemy can be except in his interactions with Gonzalo Gustios. In the Versión concisa of the Estoria de España, Almanzor is first shown as the archenemy of the heroic Castilian count Fernán González and later chapters transform him into a symbol of al-Andalus’ power and hostility toward Christian kingdoms.17 Lucas de Tuy and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada had already interpreted Almanzor in a similar way: he is mentioned in the final chapters of both the Chronicon mundi and the Historia de rebus Hispanie, when king Fernando III takes the bells that Almanzor stole three centuries earlier back to Santiago de

 Historia Silense, 176; Historia Compostellana, 14.  Lucae Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, 271; Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, 165–166. 16  Catalán, La Estoria de España de Alfonso X, 48–49; see also Fernández-Ordóñez, “El taller historiográfico alfonsí,” 116–118. 17  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 231ff. 14 15

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Compostela.18 In this way, both these chroniclers use Almanzor as a reminder of the Muslim threat of the past, finally overcome by Fernando’s conquest of most of southern Iberia. A much different facet of Almanzor is unexpectedly presented by all the manuscripts of the Estoria de España during the story of the infantes of Lara, in which the Andalusi leader spares Gustios’ life twice. The first time, Gustios arrives with the letter that orders his execution and Almanzor opts instead for putting him in jail, motivated by an inexplicable “love” for him: “Rruy Blasques me enbia en esta carta dezir que te descabesçe,” says Almanzor to Gustios, “mas por que te quiero bien, e te amo, non lo fare, mas mandar te he por ende echar en la carçel” (“Ruy Velázquez asks me in this letter to cut your head off, but, because I respect you and I love you, I will not and I will keep you instead as a prisoner”).19 The second time in which Almanzor pardons Gustios is after the Castilian captive identifies the heads of his seven children and kills seven “alguaziles” or court servants in a fit of fury.20 Almanzor not only protects Gustios from his own guards, but he also gives him a caretaker, grants him his freedom, protects his son Mudarra, and sponsors Mudarra’s trip to Castile to avenge his seven half-brothers, all this out of compassion for a Christian outsider without known political ties to him. While the portrayal of a benevolent Almanzor seems extraordinarily odd in relation to the surrounding chapters about his campaigns and the rest of the Estoria de España, such strangeness is mitigated inside the legend of the infantes because most Muslim characters in it are depicted not only as equally virtuous but arguably superior to the Christian heroes. Although the authors show evident admiration for the infantes’ bravery in the face of death and Gustios’ patience in extreme suffering, not least because their struggles are quite reminiscent of the biblical stories of the seven Maccabee brothers and Job, neither the infantes nor Gustios are faultless, God-fearing role models. The seven infantes are characterized by their hotheaded immaturity, which causes both their confrontation with Lambra and their falling into Velázquez’s ambush in spite of several warnings by their ayo or tutor. Gustios’ infidelity to Sancha, while indispensable for the narrative’s denouement, undoubtedly tarnishes his stature as a 18  Lucae Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, 341–342; Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, 355. 19  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 354. 20  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 371.

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Christian hero. Instead, even the less central Muslim characters are truly exemplary: for instance, the Andalusi generals Viara and Galve are just as generous and compassionate as Almanzor and they actually reproduce his double pardon of Gustios by twice interrupting the battle against the infantes and letting them live, until Velázquez threatens to accuse them before Almanzor for failing to do their duty.21 The contrast among the Christian knight and the Muslim generals is evident: Velázquez should protect his nephews, but instead he betrays them; Viara’s and Galve’s obligation is to kill the infantes, but they are too honorable not to respect a truce or not to offer them food and wine during their long and unequal battle. Another exemplary Andalusi is the “mora fiia dalgo” (“Muslim noblewoman”) whose service to Gustios soon becomes a love relationship, described by the Versión concisa as inescapable, mutual, and fruitful: “Et auino assi a cabo de pocos dias que yaçiendo en la carçel, e aquella mora seruiendol, que se ouieron de amar vno a otro, de maña que ouo en ella don Gonçalo un fiio, a quien dixeron despues Mudarra Gonçales” (“And it happened that, after a few days in which he was in prison and the Muslim woman was serving him, they came to love each other, so that Gonzalo had with her a son, who was later known as Mudarra González”).22 This succinct presentation, which utilizes the French and Iberian literary motif of the sexual relationship between a Muslim woman and a Christian knight, does not foretell the unexpectedly high degree of agency and dignity of her next appearance.23 When Gustios goes back to prison, weeping after identifying the severed heads of his sons, the Muslim woman speaks for the first time to offer him her support and empathy: she encourages him to be brave by telling him that she also lost all her twelve sons in one battle. Therefore, she concludes: “Et pues yo que so muger me esforçe e non di por ende nada, ¿quanto mas tu que eres cauallero?, ca por llorar tu mucho por tus fijos non los podras por ello nunca cobrar; nin te tiene pro en matarte assi” (“If I, being a woman, had courage and I was not brought down, how much more you, being a man, should do the same? Because, no matter how much you cry over your children, you will never recover  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 367–368.  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 355. 23  The motif of the Muslim woman seduced or raped by a Christian is especially common in French chansons de geste and romances; its presence in medieval Iberian texts, including the legend of the seven infantes, has been analyzed by Louise Mirrer and Michelle Hamilton, among other authors. Mirrer, “Of Muslim Princesses”; Hamilton, “Moorish Women.” 21 22

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them; and there is no benefit in killing yourself this way”).24 The account of her extraordinary suffering and stoicism, intended as an inspiring example for Gustios, transforms this Andalusi woman into the most remarkable and complex female character of the legend. Precisely for being neither Christian nor Castilian, she is not confined to just one extreme of female behavior, unlike the wicked Lambra or the impeccable Sancha. On the one hand, she is a Muslim and the lover of a Christian adulterer; on the other hand, she is as strong and compassionate as Almanzor and, just like him, she helps Gustios and allows justice to be restored in Castile. In the context of the entire legend and its providentialist lens, she is the unlikely proof of how “Dios escribe derecho sobre renglones torcidos” (“God writes straight with crooked lines”), as an Iberian proverb affirms. God’s straight writing on crooked lines becomes personified in the figure of Mudarra, who brings together all the good qualities of the previous Muslims in the legend: he is as brave, powerful, and compassionate as his mother, Almanzor, Viara, or Galve, but Mudarra additionally proves superior to his Christian relatives by behaving in a more cautious and self-­ controlled way than Gustios or the infantes. Mudarra is essentially characterized by his liminality or elusion of clear categories and boundaries: he is the son of a Castilian Christian and an Andalusi Muslim, and, although born and educated in the Caliphate of Córdoba, he achieves his heroic status only when he travels to the Christian north and restores the honor of his Castilian relatives.25 However, Mudarra’s liminal character does not deny or obliterate his Muslim and Andalusi identity, at least according to the Versión concisa, which makes explicit that he is neither politically nor religiously different from Almanzor: “Este Mudarra Gonçales sallio despues tan buen cauallero e tan esforçado que, si Almançor non era, non aurie meior que el entre todos los moros” (“Later, Mudarra González became such a good and indefatigable knight that there was no one better than him among all Muslims, except for Almanzor”).26 As soon as the legend of the infantes ends, once Mudarra kills Velázquez and Lambra is put to death by fire, the Versión concisa goes back to portraying Almanzor and the rest of Andalusi Muslims as barbaric raiders,  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 371.  For an analysis of the liminal features in several characters and other aspects of the legend of the infantes, but especially in the figure of Mudarra, see Fuentes, “Memories, Dreams, and Fictions.” 26  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 386. 24 25

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who besiege the Leonese city of Coyanza and raze it to the ground.27 Alliances and camaraderie between Muslims and Christians exist in other episodes of the Estoria de España, mostly involving historical figures: Alfonso VI of León builds a strong and lasting alliance with Al-Mā’mūn of Toledo and his son; the Cid does the same with Yūsuf ibn Hūd of Zaragoza.28 Still, the continuous ennoblement of all Muslim characters makes the story of the infantes a singular case in the Estoria de España. Particularly remarkable is that, while the associations between well-known Christian and Muslim leaders are based on the historical record and therefore were harder to alter, the Alfonsine writers could have easily modified an oral, popular legend to better serve their own ideological goals. In fact, this is exactly what later adapters and translators did. As narrated by the Versión concisa, the story of the infantes accomplishes only one of the purposes of the Estoria de España: its exemplary function. In the prologue to the chronicle, the authors express their admiration for the ancient sages who “escriuieron los fechos tan bien de los locos cuemo de los sabios […] por que los que despues uiniessen por los fechos de los buenos punnassen en fazer bien. e por los de los malos que se castigassen. de fazer mal” (“wrote the deeds of both the fools and the wise … so the deeds of the just would encourage future generations to do well and the deeds of the evil would dissuade them from doing bad”).29 The several role models and antimodels in the story of the infantes fully achieve this moralizing goal that, according to Fernando Gómez Redondo, may have been even more specifically intended as an admonishment to Alfonso’s many rebellious noblemen.30 In a similar way, the positive depictions of Muslims could have didactically served to demonstrate the lack of correlation between social or cultural origin and moral qualities. At the same time, however, those admirable Muslims undermine the most important objective of the Estoria de España according to its prologue, “mostrar la nobleza de los godos” (“to show the nobility of the Goths”), who conquered and became the rightful lords of Iberia, until they were ­treacherously dispossessed by “los daffrica” (“those from Africa”); because of this, and with God’s help, later Christian kings had to recover their lands, “unos

 “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 388.  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E2, fols. 156v–163r, 194r–200r. 29  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E1, fol. 2r. 30  Gómez Redondo, “Los Infantes de Lara,” 179. 27 28

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empos otros fastal nuestro tiempo” (“one after another until our time”).31 In Geraldine Hazbun’s words, this passage evidences how “Alfonso regarded himself as part of an unbroken Gothic line, heir to the qualities and deeds of that race which included loyalty, courage, nobility, and conversion to Christianity. The king chose to represent the [Muslim] invasion as a temporary nadir in a Gothic history whose continuity was never truly broken.”32 The story of the infantes, though, fails to adhere to this essential justification of the ambitions of Iberian Christian kings such as Alfonso X. On the contrary, every Muslim in the legend tacitly questions the exclusive rights of Christians to dominate the Iberian Peninsula by showing that non-Christians can be far more noble, brave, and loyal. Around 1282, almost a decade after abandoning work on the unfinished Versión concisa, some Alfonsine writers returned to the Estoria de España and created what is known today as the Versión crítica. Because in that same year Alfonso X faced a rebellion of the Castilian nobility led by his son Sancho, the authors of the new version not only carefully polished the phrasing of most of the Versión concisa but also made deeper changes to emphasize the authority of kings over their noblemen. In regard to the story of the infantes, most of the modifications are stylistic, mainly simplifying the overtly detailed sentences of the previous version.33 Still, a few amendments are highly consequential for the representation of Muslims and their relationships with Christians. For example, the Versión crítica eliminates the episode in which the generals Viara and Galve welcomed the infantes into their tent and gave them bread and wine.34 Another significant amendment corrects Gustios’ grateful words when Almanzor frees him: instead of “Almançor, Dios uos lo gradesça el bien que me dezides, e aun tienpo uenga que uos yo faga algun seruiçio por ello” (“Almanzor, God pay you for what you are telling me, and I hope someday to serve you in return”), Gustios says in the Versión crítica: “Almanzor, Dios vos lo gradesça el byen que me dizides e la merçed que me fazedes” (“Almanzor, God pay you for what you are telling me and the favor that you are doing to me”).35 In this case, the writers did not erase Almanzor’s benevolent  Estoria de Espanna Digital: E1, fol. 2v.  Hazbun, Narratives of the Islamic Conquest, 17–18. 33  Campa Gutiérrez, Estoria de España, 182–196; Fernández-Ordóñez, Versión crítica, 82–87. 34  Campa Gutiérrez, Estoria de España, 190. 35  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 371–372; “Edición de la Versión crítica de la Estoria de España,” 346. 31 32

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actions, as they did with Viara and Galve, but they apparently felt it was inappropriate for a Christian hero to consider an eventual collaboration with the Andalusi ruler. By far the most important alteration to the story of the infantes in the Versión crítica is the surprising Christianization of Mudarra. After both Velázquez and Lambra receive their punishment, the Versión crítica states that “quando este Mudarra Gonçales llego de Cordoua a Salas, que lo fizo su padre batear, e torno lo cristiano, ca antes moro era; e fue muy buen cauallero e mucho onrrado en quanto viuio” (“when Mudarra González came from Córdoba to Salas, his father had him baptized, and he became a Christian, since he was a Muslim before that; and he was a very good knight and received great honor while he lived”).36 Mudarra’s baptism, along with the elimination of Viara’s and Galve’s generosity and the suppression of Gustios’ desire to serve Almanzor, reveals a blatant attempt by the Alfonsine writers to downplay the stature of the legend’s Muslims without modifying the general shape of the plot. The authors of the Versión crítica did not correct the moral exemplarity of Almanzor, Mudarra, or his mother, but they started pushing the legend of the infantes away from its potential questioning of Christian authority and closer to a more conventional defense of the legitimacy of Christian power over Muslims.

The Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro and a Hero’s Conversion One unsolvable problem when analyzing the two Alfonsine accounts of the story of the infantes is the lack of any reference to it before the Estoria de España. Because of this, it is impossible to know with any certainty to what extent the Alfonsine writers modified the original legend and the hypothetical epics based on it. In contrast, much has been said about the changes to the story in its subsequent Portuguese translations and adaptations. Ramón Menéndez Pidal and later critics were particularly intrigued by how post-Alfonsine versions of the legend greatly expanded on the character and the story of Mudarra. Menéndez Pidal’s original theory was that there were at least two epic poems based on the legend of the infantes and that later Portuguese accounts used a different epic source than the one known by the Alfonsine writers: although much debated, the gist of  “Edición de la Versión crítica de la Estoria de España,” 350.

36

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that opinion has been repeatedly confirmed by other scholars.37 Most of these studies, however, have focused on comparing the Estoria de España with the Crónica geral de 1344, while not enough attention has been paid to an intermediate and much abridged version of the legend that appears in a genealogical book attributed to Pedro Afonso, count of Barcelos. The Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro does not merely enumerate genealogies as two previous Portuguese examples of the same genre, the Livro velho and the Livro do Deão, did.38 Probably inspired by the great historiographical projects undertaken by his great-grandfather Alfonso X of Castile, Pedro Afonso of Barcelos either created or sponsored an ambitious text that combined the strategies and purposes of several genealogical traditions. Just like biblical genealogies, his Livro de linhagens conceives a history of humanity presided by a divine plan since the creation of Adam, the common ancestor for all peoples. Similarly to Islamic genealogies, the legitimacy of noblemen and rulers is based on their connections to previous generations of political and religious leaders, which become especially important when such legitimacy is questioned by their opponents or competitors.39 Finally, these Mediterranean traditions are fused with the Gothic myth promoted by authors like Isidore of Seville, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, and the Alfonsine writers: as previously quoted from the prologue of the Estoria de España, this myth argues that Iberian Christian rulers had a common Visigothic origin, which justified their right to rule the Peninsula and dominate or expel non-Christians. With all these materials, Pedro Afonso’s collaborators created an original narrative that at the same time honored and challenged all its sources and particularly the Alfonsine chronicles. The tenth chapter of the Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro is devoted to the history of the Laras, one of the most powerful Castilian families. The authors faithfully summarize the Alfonsine account of the legend of the infantes until the episode in which Gonzalo Gustios recognizes the heads of his seven sons; then, the Andalusi caretaker of Gustios becomes Almanzor’s “prima mui fermosa e muito entendida” (“very beautiful and 37  Menéndez Pidal, Leyenda, 22. For a summary of the discussion about the hypothetical epics derived from the legend of the infantes, see Deyermond, La literatura perdida, 74–82. 38  The Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro was written either between 1325 and 1344, according to Luís Lindley Cintra, or between 1328 and 1344, according to José Mattoso. Cintra, Introdução, clxxxvi; Mattoso, “Introdução,” 47. 39  On the use of Islamic genealogies to legitimate power, see Fierro, “The Genealogies of ʿAbd al-Mu’min.”

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very wise cousin”).40 This transformation of an anonymous woman into Almanzor’s own cousin adds a hint of Muslim humbleness and even humiliation to the compassion of the gesture. That hint becomes a manifest bias when, after narrating the deaths of Velázquez and Lambra, the authors point out that “dom Mudarra Gonçalvez foi muito boo cavaleiro d’armas, e foi homem muito honrado e foi mui boo cristão” (“Mudarra González was a very good knight, a very honorable man, and a very good Christian”), because he was a faithful servant of his godfather, the count García Fernández, and “fazia muito mal aos Mouros” (“he did much harm to Muslims”).41 Such a development of events does not make much narrative sense: if Mudarra was not only Almanzor’s protégé but the son of his cousin, why would he betray the mighty ruler of the caliphate of Córdoba to go serve a less powerful lord in a poorer kingdom? One possible explanation is that, in the eyes of the Portuguese writers, the superiority of Christianity trumped all kinds of family, economic, and political ties and advantages: if Mudarra was really as virtuous as the legend described him, he simply could not continue being a Muslim. Another possibility is that the Livro needed to somehow explain the origins of the Lara family: since all versions of the legend affirm that the infantes died while they were still very young and without descendants, the only alternative was connecting the lineage of the Laras to Mudarra, who therefore had to be Christianized at some point. Both alternatives are well supported by the continuation of the story in the Livro de linhagens: Este Mudarra Gonçalvez foi casado com ũa dona que foi molher mui filha d’algo e de mui alto sangue, e viinha do linhagem dos Godos, e fez em ela ũu filho que houve nome dom Nuno Gonçalvez d’Avalos. E teve Deus por bem que foi bom cristão, como seu padre era, e porque havia mui gram sabor de fazer mal aos Mouros, como quer que deles veesse.42 (Mudarra González married a very noble woman of Gothic lineage and fathered with her a son named Nuno González de Ávalos. And it was God’s will that Nuno became a very good Christian, like his father was, and he was very fond of doing harm to Muslims, even though he came from them.)

In addition to forcibly connecting Mudarra to a Gothic family, the authors of the Livro de linhagens transform his Christian piety and  Livro de linhagens, II/1: 148.  Livro de linhagens, II/1: 148. 42  Livro de linhagens, II/1: 148. 40 41

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belligerence against Muslims into genetic traits that are transmitted to his descendants. Mudarra’s son Nuno is such a saintly Christian that an angel promises to grant him two wishes: the salvation of his soul and the endlessness of his lineage.43 A couple of generations later, Mudarra’s great-­ grandson is nicknamed “o Corvo d’Andaluz, e porque o chamarom o Corvo foi porque era mui cruel contra os Mouros, e matava-os ante que os prender” (“the Crow of al-Andalus, and he was called this way because he was very cruel against Muslims and preferred to kill them instead of capturing them”).44 In sum, the Livro de linhagens not only makes acceptable the presence of a Muslim in the origins of a prominent Christian family but also turns him and his descendants into a proud example of the Christian kingdoms’ capacity to absorb and transform Muslim difference against Muslims themselves. And, although it would be impossible to erase all ambivalences in a character as liminal as Mudarra, the authors of the Livro de linhagens do their best to reconfigure his contradictions in a way that supports their own religious and political interests: the Andalusi Muslim who surprisingly became the main hero of a legend about a Castilian family is transformed into a Christian convert who eagerly annihilates his former co-religionists and bequeaths his Islamophobia to his descendants.

The Crónica geral de Espanha de 1344 and the Triumph of Christian Colonialism The Livro de linhagens’ efforts to tone down the admiration of the Estoria de España for its Muslim characters continue in another Portuguese text attributed to Pedro Afonso, the Crónica geral de Espanha de 1344, which at the same time translates long passages from the Alfonsine chronicles and completely recontextualizes and changes them by combining them with other sources.45 Although the writers of the Crónica geral de 1344  Livro de linhagens, II/1: 149.  Livro de linhagens, II/1: 149. 45  Most scholars accept Cintra’s conclusion that, although the original Portuguese version of the Crónica geral de 1344 was lost, it is possible to know its content because of an incomplete Castilian translation (ms. M, at the Biblioteca General Universitaria de Salamanca). Around 1400, the Crónica geral de 1344 was rewritten and this new version was also lost, but several manuscripts in Portuguese and Castilian originated from it, including the two oldest ones in Portuguese, from the early fifteenth century. See Catalán and De Andrés, “La Crónica de 1344,” xv–xxi, lxxiii–lxxxii; Cintra, Introdução, cdlxxxix–dxl; Moreira and Askins, “A Crónica de 1344.” 43 44

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took much information from a Galician translation of the Estoria de España, this important link between both works does not introduce significant innovations to the legend of the infantes: in the Galician text, Mudarra’s return to Castile occupies only a couple of folios and culminates abruptly with Mudarra killing Velázquez with one blow of his sword, just like in the ms. E2 of the Estoria de España.46 In comparison to all previous accounts of the legend, instead, the Crónica geral de 1344 stands out because of a paradoxical pair of narrative options: on the one hand, it pays meticulous attention to the figure of Mudarra and his commitment to avenge his half-brothers; on the other hand, it greatly increases the power and influence of Christian characters over Muslims. Therefore, the legend of the infantes as told by the Crónica geral de 1344 may be read in two distinct ways: either as a text that exalts the figure of an Andalusi hero or as a narrative that undermines Muslims’ cultural, political, and religious independence from Christians. From a political perspective, however, both readings can complement each other: for those who fervently supported the colonial ambitions of Christians over the entire Iberian Peninsula, it was inevitable that such a praiseworthy hero like Mudarra sided with the legitimate, God-chosen inheritors of Roman and Gothic power. The story of the conception of Mudarra is a good example of how the Crónica geral de 1344 manipulates the previous accounts to demonstrate the superiority of Christians. The mother of Mudarra (an anonymous Andalusi woman in the Estoria de España and Almanzor’s cousin in the Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro) is now Almanzor’s sister, which reinforces the possibility of an authorial intention to tarnish the memory of the famous Andalusi leader. To accomplish this, the Portuguese authors reverse the historical record and several legends in which Almanzor married or seduced relatives of the Iberian Christian leaders: while the real Almanzor married the daughter of Sancho II of Navarre and had a son with her, Christian works like the twelfth-century Chronica Naierensis also reproduced rumors of him seducing the wife of the count García Fernández or receiving his daughter in marriage.47 Shocking as these events were to Christian writers, Almanzor was just following a long tradition of Andalusi leaders choosing Christian women as wives and concubines: the mothers of most Iberian Umayyad rulers had been born in the northern Christian  La traducción gallega, 1: 213–215; Estoria de Espanna Digital: E2, fols. 96r–96v.  Chronica Naierensis, 144–145.

46 47

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kingdoms and taken to al-Andalus as slaves.48 According to Simon Barton, the frequent relations between Iberian Muslim rulers or ministers and Christian women “might serve not merely as a tool of diplomacy, but as a potent propaganda weapon and even as an instrument of psychological warfare.”49 However, as Barton explains, Iberian Christians started viewing interfaith marriage with much more hostility after the eleventh century, because of “a range of political, social, and cultural forces,” among them “a marked shift in the Peninsular balance of power in favor of the Christian states of the North” and “the dissemination of a more militant brand of anti-Islamic ideology in the Latin West.”50 Because of this shift of power and sensibilities, a sexual relationship between Gonzalo Gustios and Almanzor’s sister was something between an irony and a case of poetic justice for the much later writers of the Crónica geral de 1344: a fourteenth-­ century rewriting and inversion of the tenth-century imbalance of sexual and military power between Iberian Christians and Muslims. The degradation of Muslim characters in the Crónica geral de 1344 continues when the narrator clarifies that the entire story of the caretaker’s killed sons is a lie, right before Gustios rapes her in a passage that unsettlingly uses the providential conception of a hero to justify sexual violence: E dõ Gonçallo Gustiuz disse que a nõ leixaria por quantos mouros avia em Spanha. […] E lançou por ella mãao e jouve com ella. E assy teve Deus por bem que daquelle ajuntamẽto ficasse ella prenhe dhũu filho que depois chamarõ Mudarra Gonçalvez, que foy despois muy bõo cristãao e a serviço de Deus e foy ho mais honrrado homẽ que ouve ẽ Castella, affora o conde dom Garcia Fernandez (And Gonzalo Gustios said he would not leave her for all Muslims in Spain. … And he grabbed her and lay with her. And it pleased God that she got pregnant with a son who was later called Mudarra González and who became a very good Christian in the service of God and the most honorable man in Castile, except for the count García Fernández.)51

The end of this passage clearly shows how the Portuguese writers distorted their translation of the Castilian texts to pervert their meaning: in the Versión concisa of the Estoria de España, Mudarra was such a good  Ruggles, “Mothers of a Hybrid Dynasty,” 69, 72–74.  Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 6. 50  Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, 145. 51  Crónica geral de Espanha, 3: 150. 48 49

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knight that “si Almançor non era, non aurie meior que el entre todos los moros” (“there was no one better than him among all Muslims, except for Almanzor”).52 The Crónica geral de 1344 rephrases the sentence to express something completely different: by stating that there was no one better than Mudarra among all Castilians, except for García Fernández, the authors are replacing Mudarra’s original Andalusi identity by his devoted service to his new, adoptive homeland. Additionally, the Crónica geral de 1344 tries to explain the absurdity of Mudarra serving García Fernández, Lambra’s cousin and protector, by inventing a rebellion of Velázquez against the count. Because of this treason, the meaning of Mudarra’s revenge changes radically: instead of a foreign vigilante, interested only in avenging his relatives, he is now a useful collaborator of García Fernández and the savior of all Castile. The Crónica geral de 1344 complements its political reinterpretation of Mudarra’s actions with his natural desire to become a Christian. As soon as he arrives to Castile, Mudarra enters a church and imitates the Christians who are praying there; later he specifies that the two purposes of his journey are “vingar os iffantes” (“to avenge the infantes”) and “receber cristiindade por salvar mynha alma” (“to accept Christianity to save my soul”).53 There is no explanation for this apparently instinctive inclination to conversion: the authors seem to have assumed that a virtuous Muslim would sooner or later become a Christian, as was the case with many stereotypical “good Muslims” in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. In this way, García Fernández’s need of a powerful ally against Velázquez and Mudarra’s desire to become a Christian end up perfectly complementing each other. In the cathedral of Saint Mary of Burgos, and all in one morning, Mudarra is baptized, adopted by the mother of the infantes, knighted by García Fernández, and appointed as “alcayde mayor” or main military leader in Castile, the same position that Velázquez held before his treason.54 Almost simultaneously, Mudarra acquires a new faith, a place in a Castilian family, and a political position at the service of a Christian lord. This total assimilation of an Andalusi Muslim to an Iberian Christian society evidently fulfills a colonial fantasy that would not have appealed to many Muslims in real life: as usual, the representations of the colonized do not intend to portray them in any meaningful way but instead to satisfy  “Edición de la Versión concisa de la Estoria de España,” 386.  Crónica geral de Espanha, 3: 158, 159. 54  Crónica geral de Espanha, 3: 162. 52 53

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the needs of the colonizers. In addition to all other personal and cultural disadvantages brought by conversion, Muslims did not have a clear path to become a part of Christian society, as explained by Brian Catlos: “Unlike Islam, which adapted walā’, the Arabo-Islamic institution of clientage as a vector for assimilating converts, Christian society lacked mechanisms for the social and economic integration of new Christians into established networks of familial patronage.”55 The Crónica geral de 1344 imagines such integration in a radical way, by simply obliterating the entirety of Mudarra’s Muslim and Andalusi past. The main modifications made by the Crónica geral de 1344 to the Alfonsine accounts of the legend attempt to explain Mudarra’s willing religious, social, and political subjugation through his triple conversion into a Christian, a member of the Lara family, and a Castilian knight. Other additions contribute to the same goal by emphasizing the providential power that surrounds the main characters: Mudarra’s story is now peppered with miraculous details, including a prophetic dream that announces his arrival to Sancha, Gustios’ recovery of his sight when he meets his Andalusi son, and the exact likeness of Mudarra and the youngest of the killed infantes.56 All these supernatural events prove the authenticity of the Christian God and lead Mudarra to accept the true faith and serve a Christian ruler: somebody who, unlike Almanzor, can exert legitimate dominion over Iberian territories. The legend of the infantes as retold by the Crónica geral de 1344, in sum, condenses a number of fantasies used by Christian leaders to justify their invasion of Iberian Muslim kingdoms and their right to govern Muslim subjects. From this perspective, the dissemination and importance of the manuscripts that contain this chronicle are especially significant. The Crónica geral de 1344 was quickly translated to Castilian, and the chronicle’s recast of around 1400 is also contained in several Castilian and Portuguese manuscripts, including a luxuriously decorated manuscript at the Biblioteca da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa and another one at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Both these manuscripts are closely connected to Iberian royalty: while the first one was probably written for King Duarte of Portugal, the second one belonged to the library of Pedro de Coimbra, a grandson of King João I of Portugal who aspired to the throne

 Catlos, Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, 340.  Crónica geral de Espanha, 3: 156–157, 160, 161.

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of Aragon.57 All this suggests that some of the most powerful Christian rulers of Iberia supported, or at least did not oppose, the ideological content and intentions of the Crónica geral de 1344. Through its diffusion in two languages and several prestigious manuscripts, the Crónica geral de 1344 influenced all the following accounts of the legend of the infantes. Centuries later, Florián de Ocampo and Ambrosio de Morales used a variety of Alfonsine and post-Alfonsine sources in their never-finished Crónica general de España.58 Although Morales was writing during the heyday of Felipe II’s empire and after decades of Islam being outlawed in Spain, when he retold the story of the infantes he did not notice anything potentially subversive about the heroism of Mudarra, whom he described as “el tronco y principio de los caualleros Manrriques” (“the trunk and the origin of the Manriquez knights”) and of their “inclyto linaje” (“eminent lineage”).59 After centuries of adaptations of the legend of the infantes, and especially after its Portuguese translations, the great Muslim warrior of the Estoria de España had been definitively converted into something much more pedestrian: “vn tan insigne Cordoues, que se puede contar por vno de los muchos excelentes varones, que de aquella ciudad han salido” (“a Cordoban so distinguished that he can be counted among the many excellent men born in that city”).60 For the Alfonsine writers in the thirteenth century, Mudarra was one among several Andalusi Muslims who selflessly helped an unfortunate Castilian family. For Pedro Afonso and his collaborators in the fourteenth century, Mudarra’s Muslim and Andalusi origin was deliberately obscured by his service to Castile and Christianity. For Ambrosio de Morales in the sixteenth century, Mudarra was simply a great Spaniard, a fellow countryman, and collaborator to the magnificence of a global empire. Behind this process, we can observe how some authors chose to modify or eliminate the ambivalences of literary Muslims in order to more clearly support their colonial purposes, since, despite their usefulness to affirm the superiority 57  Catalán and De Andrés, “La Crónica de 1344,” lxxv; Cintra, Introdução, cdxcviii, dix; Moreira and Askins, “A Crónica de 1344,” 68. 58  Florián de Ocampo published five books of his Crónica general de España, but the last events narrated in the fifth book are still situated centuries before Christ. In his continuation of the work, Ambrosio de Morales managed to reach the eleventh century, therefore including the story of the infantes and Mudarra. 59  Morales, Los cinco libros postreros, 293v. 60  Morales, Los cinco libros postreros, 294r.

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of Christians, contradictory Muslims could also subtly question their authority or contradict the ideological foundations of a work like the Estoria de España. This does not mean, however, that all Christian writers abandoned the strategy of using contradictory representations of Muslims to bolster those of their own leaders as both fearsome conquerors and tolerant rulers: such kinds of portrayals continued appearing in Iberian literature for centuries, even after Muslims had lost all their territories in the Peninsula and their confrontations with Christians moved across the Mediterranean and even to farther lands. In fact, the next two chapters will examine how the contradictory depictions of Muslims and their relations with Christians accompanied the expansion of some Iberian polities beyond the Peninsula and during their transformation into global colonial powers.

CHAPTER 5

Across the Mediterranean and Beyond: Fighting Islam by Embracing Muslims in Tirant lo Blanch

One of the key ideas of Edward Said’s Orientalism, as mentioned in the introduction of this book, is that representations of religious or ethnic difference operate according to specific purposes derived from their own historical, cultural, and social context.1 Therefore, such depictions tend to reveal much more about their authors, their own cultures, and their personal or political goals than about the groups they are allegedly portraying. The role of representations of difference in reaffirming ideological principles can be especially pronounced in a colonial setting, since, as pointed out by Abdul JanMohamed, “the colonizer’s invariable assumption about his moral superiority means that he will rarely question the validity of either his own or his society’s formation and that he will not be inclined to expend any energy in understanding the worthless alterity of the colonized.”2 The encounters of Iberian Christians with non-Christians in other continents during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries offer remarkable examples of how the self-perceived moral superiority of European colonizers impacted their depictions of the colonized, as I will examine in this chapter and the next one. In North Africa, the Middle 1 2

 Said, Orientalism, 273.  JanMohamed, “The Economy of Manichean Allegory,” 65.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_5

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East, and even farther lands, Iberian Christians continued focusing on Muslims as their main enemies and allies while representing them through the same stereotypes and ambivalences they had utilized in a more limited geographical setting in previous centuries. When the Valencian novel Tirant lo Blanch was published in 1490, the last Muslim kingdom of the Peninsula, Granada, was less than two years away from capitulating to the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon; meanwhile, Iberian explorers had already reached the southern tip of Africa and soon they would arrive to the Americas and India. In this brand new world for the colonial ambitions of Christian Iberians, however, many ideological tendencies and textual strategies remained unchanged. Muslims, for example, continued being often generalized as “moros” or “mouros,” no matter if they were from the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, Eastern Europe, or the Middle East. Stereotypical depictions of them, such as the barbaric Muslim invader or the courteous Muslim leader, reappear in Tirant lo Blanch as if directly taken from medieval texts several centuries older, such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria or the Estoria de España. And once again contradictory representations of Muslims make possible for the Christian hero to display his military prowess when defeating them and his tolerance when establishing alliances with them or ruling them. The many similarities between the previous texts that I have analyzed and Tirant lo Blanch make me disagree with other scholars that consider this book’s inconsistent depictions of Muslims as an accidental consequence of its multiple authorship. Instead, the resemblance between the portrayals of Muslims in this novel and those in Iberian works from previous centuries indicates that the authors of Tirant lo Blanch are following similar methods at the service of the same justification of Christian colonialism. At a time when Christian rulers finally controlled the entire Iberian Peninsula and were invested in expanding their dominion to other continents, Tirant lo Blanch shows how some of the ideological and literary strategies that helped support the subjugation of medieval Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula could be successfully adapted and applied to a variety of other Muslim groups during a later period and in a vaster Mediterranean context, which extended from the Western ends of Africa and Europe all the way to Constantinople.

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The Authorship Debate and the Representations of Muslims Because the production of medieval texts involves so many uncertainties and enigmas, their authorship is a constant focus of scholarly attention. Most of the works that I have studied in previous chapters are anonymous, although several had famous sponsors such as Alfonso X of Castile or Pedro Afonso of Barcelos, traditionally labeled as their authors; in any case, all of them are surrounded by debates about the identity, number, and origin of their creators. The case of the fifteenth-century novel Tirant lo Blanch is more peculiar because the book itself reveals its author in several statements that, unfortunately, do not fully agree with each other. The dedication of the book not only identifies the author twice as “Joanot Martorell” and his profession or social status as “cavaller” (“knight”) but also emphasizes his exclusive responsibility for the text: “E perquè en la present obra altri no puxa ésser increpat si defalliment algú trobat hi serà, yo, Johanot Martorell, cavaller, sols vull portar lo càrrech, e no altri ab mi” (“So that no one else can be blamed if any faults are found in this work, I, Joanot Martorell, knight, take sole responsibility for it, as I have carried out the task single-handedly”).3 The colophon, however, tells a different story: [Aquest libre] fon traduït de anglés en lengua portoguesa e, aprés, en vulgar lengua valenciana, per lo magnífich e virtuós cavaller mossén Johanot Martorell, lo qual, per mort sua, no·n pogué acabar de traduir sinó les tres parts. La quarta part, que és la fi del libre, és stada traduïda, a pregàries de la noble senyora dona Ysabel de Loriç, per lo magnífich cavaller mossén Martí Johan de Galba. (This book was translated from English into the Portuguese tongue and then into Valencian vernacular by the magnificent and virtuous knight, Sir Joanot Martorell, who, because of his death, could only finish translating three parts of it. The fourth part, which is the end of the book, was translated at the request of the noble lady Dona Isabel de Lloris by the illustrious knight Sir Martí Joan de Galba.)4

3  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 61, 63; “Dedicatòria.” The English translations of all quotes from Tirant lo Blanch come from Joanot Martorell and Martí Joan de Galba, Tirant lo Blanc: The Complete Translation, trans. Ray La Fontaine (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). 4  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1539; chap. 487.

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Claiming that an original work was a translation from a mysterious foreign book constituted a familiar literary trick already in the fifteenth century and especially with chivalric romances, which is why critics have not paid much attention to the alleged English origin of Tirant lo Blanch.5 The intervention of Galba, instead, is almost certain: he was actually the one who published the book in 1490, 22 years after Martorell’s death, and his involvement satisfactorily explains many noticeable gaps in the coherence of the plot and the tone of different chapters. Among the few scholars who defend the individual authorship of the Tirant is Martí de Riquer, according to whom “si no fuera por este incongruente colofón, nadie, absolutamente nadie, jamás hubiera puesto en duda que Joanot Martorell es el autor único de todo el Tirante el Blanco” (“If it weren’t for this incongruous colophon, absolutely no one would have ever doubted that Joanot Martorell was the sole author of the entire Tirant lo Blanch”).6 María Jesús Rubiera sensibly replies: “Pero el colofón existe y no es la única incoherencia e incongruencia de la última parte de la novela, por lo que ha hecho correr más ríos de tinta que la abundante sangre derramada por Tirant en sus batallas” (“But the colophon exists, and this is not the only incoherence and incongruity in the last part of the novel, which has caused more rivers of ink to flow than the abundant blood spilled by Tirant in his battles”).7 To complicate things even more, there are also some critics like Albert Hauf who argue for the intervention of a third author, Joan Roíc de Corella, although Corella may more plausibly be one of the many sources used by Martorell and Galba, including also Ovid, Seneca, and Boccaccio.8 For the majority of scholars who have accepted the double authorship declared by the novel itself, the next challenge has been how to distinguish between the segments written by Martorell and those added or modified by Galba. The attempts to delimit Martorell’s and Galba’s authorships generally follow one of two methodological options, according to Rafael 5  D’Olwer, “Tirant lo Blanc,” 133. This fictional English origin is related to the prominence given by the first twenty-seven chapters of the novel to the knight “Guillem de Varoych,” who is actually “William (or Guy) of Warwick, a legendary Anglo-Norman hero […] whose exploits were celebrated in a thirteenth-century epic poem and a subsequent fifteenth-­century French prose version.” Aylward, Martorell’s Tirant lo Blanch, 24. 6  Riquer, “Introducción,” xlvi; the same passage appears in Catalan in Riquer, Aproximació al Tirant lo Blanc, 291. See also Villalmanzo and Chiner, La pluma y la espada, 82–89. 7  Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam, 11. 8  Guia and Wittlin, “Nine Problem Areas,” 117, 125–126.

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Alemany Ferrer: either they analyze the linguistic and stylistic divergences in the text or they look for inconsistencies in the novel’s plot, themes, ideology, and characterizations.9 None of these methods have proved fully successful since, as Alemany Ferrer admits, their conclusions rarely agree with each other.10 However, those scholars who base their views on linguistic evidence have come at least close to a consensus: although there are still discrepancies among them, one can see the common ground between Antoni Ferrando, who thinks that Galba’s intervention begins in chapter 299, and Joan Corominas, for whom such involvement starts in chapter 320.11 In a novel with 487 chapters and almost 1500 pages in the critical edition by Hauf, such a difference is almost negligible. Instead, the scholars who have tried to clarify the authorship of the Tirant on the basis of its content, themes, and ideology have reached wildly discrepant conclusions. According to Rafael Bosch, who analyzes the clash of knightly and bourgeois views in the Tirant, Galba wrote most of the book, excepting chapters 1–41 and parts of chapters 42–97, while María Jesús Rubiera, who examines the inconsistencies in the representation of Muslims, thinks that Galba wrote only chapters 300–349.12 There are a variety of other criteria, some of them founded on pure intuition, to determine the contributions of the two authors to the novel: For instance: that Martorell was the imaginative, creative mind, Galba just a proof reader; that Martorell was totally realistic, while Galba would add supernatural elements (e.g. Espercius and the dragon, chapter 410 et seq., taken from Mandeville); that Martorell was interested in fights and battles, while Galba liked sermons and speeches; that Martorell quoted proverbs, Galba not; that Martorell used the traditional prose style, while Galba was infatuated with the new Valencian rhetoric, and so on.13

 Alemany Ferrer, “En torno al desenlace del Tirant lo Blanc,” 21.  Alemany Ferrer, “En torno al desenlace del Tirant lo Blanc,” 21. 11  Alemany Ferrer, “En torno al desenlace del Tirant lo Blanc,” 21–22. Although many have tried to solve the problem as precisely as Ferrando or Corominas, it is more probable that Galba’s intervention was gradual and spread across multiple sections, as argued by Riquer years before he started defending instead the hypothesis of the individual authorship. Riquer, “Joanot Martorell i el ‘Tirant lo Blanc,’” 83. 12  Alemany Ferrer, “En torno al desenlace del Tirant lo Blanc,” 21–22; Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam, 58–60, 71; Rubiera, “Tirant et l’Islam,” 432–434; Rubiera, “Tirant lo Blanc and the Muslim World,” 62–64. 13  Guia and Wittlin, “Nine Problem Areas,” 115. 9

10

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Because of the novel’s length and complexity, such subjective judgments are as easy to formulate as to refute by simply focusing on different passages. But, even among so many and varied approaches, Rubiera’s study of Muslims in the Tirant lo Blanch has received special attention for offering particularly convincing support to the predominant hypothesis of the two authors.14 Additionally, her analysis helps open up the cultural and political dimensions of the text while presenting an alternative explanation for the contradictory depictions of Muslim characters and Christian-­ Muslim relationships in the novel. For Rubiera, the conflicting representations of Muslims in Tirant lo Blanch are inextricably tied to its double authorship: while Martorell was Valencian and owned territories in Vall de Xaló, a region predominantly populated by mudéjares, Galba was Catalan and probably knew less about Islam and Muslims.15 These biographical differences can be correlated with an apparent change of attitude toward Muslims and sudden lack of familiarity with their religion when more than half of the novel had already been written: “After chapter 300 we find statements which that first writer would not have made. There are drunken Muslims, a reference to a Muslim king of Christian Ethiopia, the suggestion that Mohammed was a divinity, misunderstandings concerning the Friday prayers, and so on.”16 On the basis of this biographical and textual information, Rubiera concludes: La interpolación de Joan Martí de Galba se extiende desde los capítulos 300 a 349, porque al elemento diferenciador que hemos visto entre los dos autores, es decir, en el texto de Galba, el carácter divino de Mahoma, hay que añadir otros datos significativos: la desaparición de los pequeños detalles que han caracterizado a los personajes musulmanes de Martorell, trajes, oraciones, etc. (Galba’s interpolation extends from chapters 300 to 349 because, in addition to the previously mentioned differentiating factor between the two authors, that is, the divine character of Muhammad in Galba’s text, there are

 Guia and Wittlin, “Nine Problem Areas,” 124.  Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam 45, 60. After publishing Tirant contra el islam, Rubiera returned to the same argument in two articles, “Tirant et l’Islam” and “Tirant lo Blanc and the Muslim World in the Fifteenth Century.” 16  Guia and Wittlin, “Nine Problem Areas,” 125. 14 15

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other significant data: the disappearance of the small details with which Martorell characterizes Muslims, their clothes, their prayers, etc.)17

The shared authorship of the novel is almost certainly to blame when the narrator’s fair degree of knowledge about Islamic beliefs and customs is abruptly replaced by gross misrepresentations of them. The proximity between those cultural slips makes them even more suspicious: in less than ten contiguous chapters, a Muslim character swears “per Mafomet, lo meu Déu” (“by Mohammed, my God”) and others attribute a God-like or Christ-like character to Muhammad, with phrases such as “que axí és stat plasent a Mafomet” (“it has pleased Mohammed”) or “sí Mafomet reba la tua ànima” (“Mohammed will receive your soul”).18 The authors’ varying levels of knowledge about Islam, however, do not correlate to differing attitudes toward Muslims throughout the novel. In one of the chapters that Rubiera identifies as written by Galba, it is said that “la secta de Mafomet és molt falsa e reprovada, e tots los qui en ell crehen van a total destrucció e damnació” (“the sect of Mohammed is utterly false and depraved, and that all who follow this path will end in complete destruction and damnation”).19 According to Rubiera’s hypothesis, a statement like this one should not appear in the first 300 chapters supposedly written by Martorell, but that quote fully agrees with the description of Tripoli in chapter 113 as a “terra de maledictió, hon se canta nit e dia la reprovada secta de aquell enguanador sens fe, amor e caritat de Mafomet, qui tanta gent ha deçebuda en lo món” (“land of damnation, where they sing, night and day, the praises of the condemned sect of that deceiver without faith, love, or charity, Mohammed, who has hoodwinked so many people in the world”).20 “Perros de moros” (“Moorish dogs”), “fill de perro” (“son of a dog”), and “perro fill de ca” or “perro, fill de gos” (“dog and son of a dog”) are Islamophobic insults that appear both before and during the segment allegedly written by Galba.21 At the same time, many of the chapters that Rubiera attributes to Galba, especially those focused on Tirant’s military and missionary actions in North Africa, include some of the novel’s most sympathetic portrayals of Muslims.  Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam, 71.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1103, 1116, 1119; chaps. 301, 305, 307. 19  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1180; chap. 329. 20  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 450; chap. 113. 21  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 412, 730, 762, 1193; chaps. 106, 166, 179, and 333. 17 18

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In sum, both hostile and favorable depictions of Muslims appear throughout the entire novel and are not satisfactorily explained either by its multiple authorship or by Martorell’s and Galba’s differing degrees of familiarity with Islam. Those same ambivalences can instead be better understood as complementary textual strategies that simultaneously reject and integrate religious difference as part of the same defense of Christian supremacy, just like in the main works that I have analyzed in previous chapters. Indeed, when seen in the context of a centuries-old tradition of contradictory representations of Muslims and their relationships with Christians, Tirant lo Blanch seems to be simply transferring those same kinds of depictions from the Iberian Peninsula to a vaster Mediterranean setting, therefore mimicking the simultaneous expansion of the colonial ambitions of Christian rulers. The colonial interests of Iberian Christians beyond the Peninsula were nothing new, as seen in previous chapters: already between the twelfth and the thirteenth century, the hero of the Cantar de mio Cid had fantasized about extending his influence to Morocco, and later both Alfonso X of Castile and his father-in-law Jaume I of Aragon sent troops across the Mediterranean to try to conquer either African territories or the Holy Land. In all these cases, however, other conflicts at home had ended up bringing the attention of Christian leaders back to the Iberian context. In the late fifteenth century, instead, Iberian Muslims had been almost entirely defeated and the confrontation between Christendom and Islam had therefore moved to farther lands where Muslims were much more of a threat to Christian interests, for instance, to the ex capital of the Byzantine empire and now Ottoman territory, Constantinople.

The Fall of Constantinople and Tirant’s Rewriting of History Tirant lo Blanch’s prologue begins by lamenting “la debilitat de la nostra memòria” (“the inadequacy of our memory”), which “sotsmetent fàcilment a oblivió no solament los actes per longitut de temps envellits, mas encara los actes freschs de nostres dies” (“readily fails us, not only in recalling matters of long ago, but those of our own day”).22 This suggests that the feats of the hero, Tirant lo Blanch, which the book intends to celebrate and memorialize, are supposed to have happened not long before Martorell  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 69; “Pròlech.”

22

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started writing about them, around 1460, and in fact the novel contains numerous references to the sociopolitical context of the mid-fifteenth-­ century Mediterranean.23 The most fundamental element of that recent context, and a crucial one for the authors’ views on Muslims, was the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II and his armies in 1453. As explained by Norman Housley, the fall of Constantinople was an event as deeply significant for the Byzantines and Ottomans as for Western Europeans: For the Greeks, the loss of their city signified the demise of an empire which had lasted for more than a millennium. For the Latins, it meant that Ottoman power rested on their possession of the greatest city in the northeastern Mediterranean, enabling them to move armies at will from their Asian to their European lands, and facilitating the creation of a war-making capacity at sea. And for the Ottomans, Constantinople stimulated ambitions to add “Old” Rome to “New” Rome in a programme of messianic expansion.24

Michael Angold, however, clarifies that the Ottoman capture of Constantinople did not generate a uniform reaction or even the same attention across the Mediterranean, which explains the passionate persistence of some European writers to present it as a “blow to civilisation,” as Enea Silvio Piccolomini (who would later become Pope Pius II) did in his popular Cosmographia and his letters to Pope Nicholas V.25 Nicholas V himself wrote the bull “Etsi ecclesia Christi,” in which “a hostile view of the Ottomans which had been taking shape for almost a century was given expression in language which combined military threat, eschatological anxieties and theological formulations.”26 By presenting the fall of Constantinople as one more episode in a centuries-old war between

23  The author states in the dedication that he started writing the novel on January 2, 1460. Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 63; “Dedicatòria.” Most scholars accept as plausible that Martorell began the definitive version of Tirant in 1460, probably after a long period of preparation and partial drafts. D’Olwer, “Tirant lo Blanc,” 133; Riquer, Aproximació al Tirant lo Blanc, 179; Riquer, “Introducción,” xxxvi, xliii; Riquer, “Joanot Martorell i el ‘Tirant lo Blanc,’” 79–80; Wittlin, “Dels manuscrits a l’edicio,” 623, 632. 24  Housley, Introduction, 1. 25  Angold, The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, 16. 26  Housley, Introduction, 1; Angold, The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, 92.

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Christendom and Islam, “Etsi ecclesia Christi” encouraged Christians to unite in defending Europe from a possible Ottoman invasion. Not all European Christians leaders were equally concerned or stirred by the exhortation of Pope Nicholas V; in fact, “Western Europe’s most powerful monarchies, England and France, virtually withdrew from active interest in the crusade, preoccupied by war, recovery from war, and dynastic disputes.”27 In the Italian Peninsula itself, despite being the next target of the Ottomans’ expansion according to the Pope, economic interests prevailed over any religious animosity or political fears. In less than a year, Anconitans, Florentines, and Venetians established new commercial relations with Sultan Mehmed II and started trading with the Ottomans in slightly less favorable conditions than before, for example, by paying “a 2% customs duty, rather than being exempted from payment, as had been the case under the Byzantines.”28 In the case of Iberian kingdoms, Castilian rulers repeatedly expressed their interest in participating in a crusade against the Ottomans, but their intentions never materialized and by the end of the century their efforts were instead focused on conquering the last Iberian Muslim kingdom, Granada.29 Aragonese monarchs had a similarly passive reaction to the Ottoman threat, despite their stakes on the matter being far higher: “The taking of Constantinople ruptured, or at least drastically reconfigured, important commercial sea lanes through the eastern Mediterranean, and it rendered the promise of a seaborne empire—an Aragonese dream since at least the reign of Jaume I (1208–1276)—a chimera.”30 In spite of this, Alfons V of Aragon refused to help the Byzantines before 1453 unless they gave him the island of Lemnos; after Constantinople had already been conquered, Alfons sent four ships to support the Christians: a late, insufficient, and useless act.31 Between 1455 and 1456, Pope Callixtus III, who had been born in Valencia, granted indulgences and conceded Aragon’s ecclesiastical taxes to Alfons with the purpose of financing an armada against the Ottomans; the armada was created, but Alfons used it instead

 Housley, Introduction, 5.  Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 164; Angold, The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, 87. 29  Piera, “Tirant lo Blanc,” 50. 30  Barletta, Death in Babylon, 4. 31  Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada, 407. 27 28

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against the Genoese.32 In sum, despite being “king of Naples and therefore a vassal of the Pope,” “ruler of perhaps the strongest Christian kingdom in the Mediterranean,” and “singled out as a potential leading participant in a grand crusade,” Alfons simply had too many closer enemies to get into a direct confrontation with the distant Ottomans.33 In consequence, and despite the Ottomans directly imperiling the Mediterranean network of colonies and trade routes that the Aragonese had been building since at least the conquest of Majorca by Jaume I in 1231, Alfons V did little to oppose them and, on the contrary, several of his actions hindered the efforts of the Papacy to defend the interests of European Christians. Such a combination of concern, passivity, and selfishness, along with the shame that some Aragonese probably felt for the inglorious role of their kingdom during this conflict, are indispensable factors for the colonial worldview of Tirant lo Blanch, in which Christians triumph over Muslims and conquer their lands all around the Mediterranean. Dependent on their historical context, yet simultaneously obsessed with transforming it, the authors of the novel rewrite history at their convenience, as pointed out by Montserrat Piera: “The fiction not only reverses the historical events about the fall of Constantinople but also erases within the textual stage the threat of the demise of two proud Empires: the Byzantine and the Catalan-Aragonese, which act in the text as a reflection of each other.”34 In Tirant lo Blanch, the authors portray with some accuracy the situation of the Byzantine empire around 1450, when, according to the novel, most of its territories were already occupied by the sultan of Egypt or the Ottoman sultan, excepting Constantinople.35 In addition to this, Mediterranean geography in the novel is mostly grounded in reality and the character of Tirant is seemingly based on two historical figures: Joan Hunyadi, a Hungarian general who protected his kingdom against the Ottomans, and Roger de Flor, a Sicilian mercenary who, because of his services against the Turks, ended up marrying a niece of the Byzantine emperor.36 All these historical elements, however, are framed in Tirant lo 32  Goñi Gaztambide, Historia de la bula de la cruzada, 410–411; Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 68. 33  Aloisio, “Alfonso V and the Anti-Turkish Crusade,” 67, 68, 71. 34  Piera, “Tirant lo Blanc,” 53. 35  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 126. 36  D’Olwer, “Tirant lo Blanc,” 140–142; Riquer, “Joanot Martorell i el ‘Tirant lo Blanc,’” 72–74.

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Blanch by some outlandish knightly feats, which include fending off a Muslim invasion of England, Christianizing North Africa, and impeding the fall of Constantinople. While the first of these events is entirely unmoored from reality, the other two relate to the historical record only through their intense desire to modify it and therefore can be better understood as “wish-fulfilment,” as William Entwistle writes.37 Riquer agrees with Entwistle: everything in Tirant lo Blanch is more or less taken from its contemporary context or transfigured from real events, but at the same time the novel “se cierra con una colosal ficción: gracias al genio militar del protagonista de Martorell, Constantinopla seguirá siendo cristiana para siempre y el norte de África quedará completamente cristianizado” (“concludes with a colossal fiction: thanks to the military genius of Martorell’s protagonist, Constantinople will remain forever Christian and North Africa will be wholly Christianized”).38 Iberian Christians from previous centuries had already aspired to extending their dominion or influence beyond the Peninsula in books such as the Cantar de mio Cid, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and the Llibre dels fets; Tirant lo Blanch goes one step further and presents most of Mediterranean territories as already conquered or dominated by Christians. And, just like in those works of past centuries, the supremacy of Christian leaders and their polities is asserted through their simultaneous rejection and tolerance of Muslim difference.

The Muslim Siege of Christendom Although Tirant lo Blanch can be considered as a literary fantasy in which the hero resists and finally eradicates the increasing power of the Ottoman empire in the Mediterranean, the antagonists in the novel are not precisely the Ottomans, but all Muslims, in a similar way to how Tirant acts as a metonymic figure for all Christian knights. This conflict between broad  Entwistle, “Tirant lo Blanch and the Social Order,” 150.  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 208. Marina Brownlee considers this blend of history and fiction characteristic of medieval romances, but, as demonstrated by most works analyzed in this book, such a combination is omnipresent in medieval works of many genres, including historiographical texts. Brownlee, “Iconicity, Romance and History,” 119. Because of this, I agree with James Fogelquist on the arbitrariness of the distinction between historiographical chronicles and fictional chivalric romances in Iberian literature, a blurry divide that has worried scholars since the fourteenth century. Fogelquist, El Amadís y el género de la historia fingida, 205. 37 38

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religious groups, instead of between particular polities, is evident since the first twenty-seven chapters of the novel, which precede the appearance of Tirant. In these chapters, the English count Guillem de Veroych fights against the king of Canary and his “moros,” who “anaven conquistant per la illa, fent morir molts cristians e desonint dones e donzelles e posant-les totes en captivitat” (“were plundering the island, killing Christians and dishonoring wives and daughters, and casting them all into captivity”).39 Despite the nonsensical circumstances, the Muslim invasion of a European kingdom undoubtedly evokes the conquest of Iberia in the eighth century, as described by Christian chroniclers such as Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada: “Principes eius in obprobrium abierunt et uir bellator in exterminium. Qui erant liberi, mancipiti sunt seruituti […]. Mulieres seruantur ad ignominiam et earum speciositas ad contumeliam” (“Their leaders fell in ignominy and their warriors were exterminated. Those who were free, were enslaved. … Women were destined to disgrace and their beauty to being abused”).40 Through this parallelism between an episode of Iberian history and a fantastic similar event in another part of Europe, the authors are extending their generalizations about Muslims across both space and time: not only “moros” are alike in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and the Middle East, but they behave similarly in the eighth century, when they first crossed to Europe, as they do seven centuries later. In another form of wish-fulfillment, the novel’s Muslim invasion does not lead to the creation of a British al-Andalus; instead, Canarians are quickly defeated and their ruler is gruesomely killed by the “hermit king,” who is Guillem under disguise: “En tant que·l rey hermità li tirà un gran colp que li taillà lo braç e mès-li l’espasa tota dins lo costat, e fon forçat al rey moro que caygués en terra; e tan prestament com pogué, lo rey hermità li taillà la testa, pres la lança e mès la testa en la punta” (“At last, with a great stroke, the hermit king cut off the Moor’s arm, and he plunged his whole sword into his side, dropping the infidel monarch. As quickly as he could, the hermit king cut off the Moor’s head, and he took his lance and placed the head on the point”).41 Guillem’s ferocity against Muslims is highlighted more than once: he becomes famous, according to Tirant, because “ab la sua victoriosa mà, féu morir infinida morisma, no volent-ne pendre negú a merçé” (“with his own victorious hand he brought death  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 87; chap. 5.  Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, 106–107. 41  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 124; chap. 19. 39 40

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to countless Moors, not wanting to have mercy on any”).42 In these first chapters of the novel, Muslims are reduced to the role of enemies to be annihilated, which makes their later ambivalent representations even more surprising. While Guillem’s defeat of Canarian Muslims is completely unnecessary to understand or enjoy the adventures of Tirant, it serves to set the main conflict of the novel as a struggle to death between Muslims and Christians. Additionally, by starting with the invasion of England by Canarian Muslims and finishing with the defense of Constantinople against Turks, the novel establishes a vast scenario that includes the entire Mediterranean, but is not limited to it, for the heinous attacks of Muslims and the heroic resistance of Christians. To consider those separate and very different events as part of the same religious struggle is a fundamental literary and ideological strategy in Tirant lo Blanch. Thanks to the opposition of good Christians against all Muslims, as Francisco Franco-Sánchez argues, the unrelated battles in the novel stop being “una sèrie de perills aïllats i independents, de situacions militars sense connexió a les quals Tirant i els seus aliats s’enfronten i vencen, sinó que tots ells són un mateix enemic comú: l’islam” (“a series of isolated and independent dangers, of unconnected military situations that Tirant and his allies must face and defeat, presenting instead one and the same common enemy: Islam”).43 While the novel identifies Muslims from many close and distant places, from Granada to Persia, that geographical variety is not accompanied by a diversity of characterizations or purposes. In Tirant lo Blanch, “there is a general assumption that Mamluks, Turks, and north African sultans all have common objectives,” writes David Abulafia: “Among them are the King of Bougie, the King of Fez, the King of Persia, the King of Lesser Armenia, the King of Damascus, the King of Granada, and the King of Africa. The links between Saracen lords span the east: we are told that the King of Egypt is married to the daughter of the Great Khan, who commands six kings, and is even so less mighty than the Egyptian sultan.”44 The novel’s authors seem to delight in these kinds of enumerations, which depict the great power of the Muslim enemies, their political and family connections, and their numerous troops, as when they describe the allies of the African king Scariano:  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 190; chap. 38.  Franco-Sánchez, “Tirant i l’Islam,” 648 44  Abulafia, “Aragon versus Turkey,” 295. 42 43

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Primerament, lo rey de Bogia, son germà, e lo rey de Feç e lo rey Menador, lo rey de Pèrsia, lo rey de la Tana, lo rey de la menor Índia, lo rey de Domàs, lo rey Geber, lo rey de Granada, lo rey d’Àfrica. Tots aquests reys, los de més, eren en deute de parentesch ab aquest rey Scariano. E lo menys que cascun de aquests portava eren XXXXV mília combatents. E lo rey de Belamerín se ajustà ab lo rey de Túniç ab LXXX mília combatents, e ab aquella gent vengueren a socórrer los altres, e tots justats tenien lo siti. (First, the King of Bogia, Scariano’s brother, and the King of Fez, King Menador, The King of Persia, the King of Tana, the King of Lower India, the King of Damascus, King Geber, the King of Granada, and the King of Africa. Most of these kings were related to King Scariano, and the least that any of them brought with them was forty-five thousand men. The King of Belamerin joined with the King of Tunis and they had a combined force of eighty thousand soldiers. These forces came to the aid of King Scariano, and, together, they laid siege to the town.)45

Muslims in Tirant lo Blanch are not only united by their religion, political alliances, and family ties: they also speak the same language, which is a noteworthy detail in a novel that emphasizes the cultural and linguistic variety of other groups and characters. As Riquer points outs, “Joanot Martorell se dio cuenta de un problema que no vieron, o soslayaron, la mayoría de los escritores medievales e incluso algunos modernos: la intercomunicación lingüística de personajes de diferentes procedencias” (“Joanot Martorell noticed a problem that most of medieval and even modern writers did not see, or ignored: the linguistic intercommunication of characters from different origins”).46 For example, the author specifies that the Byzantine princess Carmesina and the queen of Ethiopia could hold a long dialogue only because Carmesina “havia aprés de molts lenguatges per la pràtica dels strangers qui per la causa de la guerra eren venguts en la cort de la magestat de l’emperador, pare seu” (“had learned many languages by talking to the foreigners who had come to her father’s court on account of the war”), while the Ethiopian queen “aprés de gramàtica e parlava ab molta gràcia la lengua latina” (“had studied Latin and spoke it very graciously”).47 The Berber Melchisedech becomes an ambassador to Constantinople because he was “home de gran eloqüència, molt savi, e sabia parlar de tots los lenguatges” (“a notably wise man of  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1163; chap. 321.  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 180–181. 47  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1471–1472; chap. 463. 45 46

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great eloquence and knew how to speak many languages”).48 In contrast, Ottomans simply speak the same “lengua morisca” (“Moorish language”) of North Africans, in contradiction to the experience of real travelers like fourteenth-century Ibn Baṭūt ̣a: “Tot lector del viatge d’Ibn Battuta recorda les dificultats d’aquest magribí per trobar a Turquía algú que parlés àrab, ja que amb ell no viatjava ningú que parlés turc, mentre al Tirant tothom parla la ‘lengua morisca’” (“Any reader of Ibn Battuta’s journey will remember the difficulties of this Maghrebi man in finding someone who spoke Arabic in Turkey, as no one who spoke Turkish traveled with him, while in Tirant everyone speaks the ‘Moorish language’”).49 In the novel, only Christians need to learn Arabic to speak to foreign Muslims: this is the case of the Catalan friar Johan Ferrer, a legate of the Pope that “sabia molt bé parlar la lengua morisca” (“knew how to speak the Moorish tongue very well”).50 All Muslims, instead, share a common language, an absurdity that nonetheless reinforces their cultural, religious, and political unity against Christians. Such a cohesive Muslim front does not have an exact equivalent in Christendom. On the one hand, the authors of the Tirant do not differentiate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Christian Churches of the East, in the same way that they do not distinguish among the branches of Islam. Indeed, the eastern Mediterranean of the novel is strikingly devoid of its real-life diversity pointed out by Catherine Holmes, according to whom “although some parts of the region exhibited a greater level of religious complexity than others, one did not have to travel far to encounter Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Monophysites, Maronites, Nestorians, Copts, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Shii Muslims, and Druze.”51 On the other hand, there are some Christians who collaborate with the Mamluks or the Ottomans, and the authors of the novel pay much attention to their nationalities and even their lineages to better shame them and contrast their behavior with the heroism of Tirant: “When Tirant defends the Greek Empire against the combined armies of the Turkish sultan and the king of Egypt, the allies of the Saracens include the son of the Duke of Calabria, the Duke of Andria, and the Duke of Amalfi, figures clearly modelled on the pro-Angevin opponents of Alfonso [Alfons V] at the time of  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1321; chap. 389.  Espadaler, “Notes sobre els dos Orients,” 682. 50  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1339; chap. 402. 51  Holmes, “Shared Worlds,” 31. 48 49

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his conquest of Naples.”52 Even more intense than their animosity against the political enemies of Alfons V is the authors’ hate of the Genoese, who were commercial adversaries of the Crown of Aragon in the Mediterranean. The Genoese are repeatedly depicted as treacherous collaborators with Muslims: they are the “cruels genovesos, qui solament los plau la glòria dels vençuts e no dels vençedors, no tenint clemència ne pietat ha llur proïsme crestià, ans fan part manifesta ab los infels” (“cruel Genoese, who take only a plunderer’s delight and have no mercy or pity on their Christian fellow creatures; first they would rather side with the infidels”), as Tirant explains to the king of Sicily.53 “The narrative of the Turkish siege of Rhodes as told in Tirant is a story of Genoese perfidy,” writes Abulafia, who also points out that the novel does not present “ordinary and uncontroversial Genoese,” unlike another famous Catalan novel of the fifteenth century, Curial e Güelfa.54 Riquer concurs: “Martorell, en estas páginas, no tan sólo exagera la actitud de los genoveses a favor de los infieles sino que no ahorra nota ignominiosa para desacreditarlos” (“In these pages, Martorell not only exaggerates the attitude of the Genoese in favor of the infidels, but also does not spare any ignominious detail to discredit them”).55 An extreme example of this smear campaign is the shocking revelation that the sultan of Egypt is actually one of those “fictes crestians, los genovesos, qui pietat ne amor no han a negú—com no sien moros ni crestians” (“false Christians, the Genoese, who have no pity or love for anyone, as they are neither Moors nor Christians”), according to the Muslim “alcadi” (the qāḍı ̄ or Islamic judge) who sentences him to be devoured by lions.56 Despite the apparently extreme divide between Islam and Christendom presented by Tirant lo Blanch, the Genoese and other bad Christians are not the only ones to unsettle such separation. There are other intercultural crossings and partnerships that the novel describes in positive terms, as long as they contribute to maintain and increase the political ascendancy of Christians. The intersection of the condemnation of Muslims as a collective and the acceptance of some of them when it is convenient for Christian ambitions originates their contradictory representations, very  Abulafia, “Aragon versus Turkey,” 301.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 391; chap. 101. 54  Abulafia, “Aragon versus Turkey,” 302. 55  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 110. 56  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 415; chap. 107. 52 53

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similar to those in previous Iberian works, but now at a larger geographical scale and therefore more drastically reducing their cultural and political diversity to a few already familiar stereotypes.

Chivalrous, Wise, and Helpful Muslims The double attitude of the Tirant’s authors toward Muslims and their relationships with Christians are perfectly exemplified by their splitting of the Egyptian Mamluk sultan into two characters: the loathsome sultan of Babylon and the admirable king of Egypt. These two contrasting figures, in Rubiera’s words, act “como las imágenes de un espejo, pues mientras el Soldà de Babilonia es un moro renegado y fanfarrón, el rey de Egipto es un valiente campeón enamorado que desafía a Tirant con paragón de sus damas respectivas, y aún herido sigue combatiendo” (“as images in a mirror, because, while the sultan of Babylon is a renegade and boastful Moor, the king of Egypt is a brave champion in love who challenges Tirant by comparing their respective ladies and continues fighting even when wounded”).57 Indeed, the contrast could not be starker between the sultan of Babylon, a cartoonish braggart that promises to pull the Byzantine emperor’s beard, to turn his wife into a cook, and to erect a golden statue of himself, and the king of Egypt, who is one of several “caballeros musulmanes […] descritos con rasgos muy semejantes a los de los cristianos, como ‘cavallers valentissims e de gran ànim,’ dignos antagonistas de Tirant” (“Muslim knights … described with features very similar to those of Christians, as ‘very brave and courageous knights,’ worthy antagonists of Tirant”).58 The stereotypical characterization of some Muslims as loyal and brave warriors is part of their contradictory depictions already analyzed in previous medieval works, most notably in the legend of the infantes of Lara as presented by the Versión concisa of the Estoria de España. Still, the idealization of Muslim enemies as perfect knights is particularly remarkable in Tirant lo Blanch because of the authors’ unrestricted admiration for the institution of knighthood, as stated in the prologue: “La dignitat militar deu ésser molt decorada, perquè sens aquella los regnes e ciutats no·s porien sostenir en pau, segons que diu lo gloriós sanct Luch en lo seu Evangeli. Merexedor és, donchs, lo virtuós e valent cavaller de honor e  Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam, 40.  Rubiera, Tirant contra el islam, 18.

57 58

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glòria, e la fama de aquell no deu preterir per longitut de molts dies” (“The military order should be valued highly, for without it kingdoms and cities would not be able to have peace; so says glorious St. Luke in his Gospel. Thus the virtuous knight is deserving of honor and glory, and his fame should be long remembered”).59 Because of this encomiastic view of knights as moral role models and protectors of society, the novel’s appreciation of some Muslims as impeccable knights constitutes the highest, and most unexpected, compliment it could give them. Equally significant is the emphasis on the parallelisms between the circumstances, attitudes, and feelings of Muslim and Christian knights. For example, after Tirant and the king of Egypt challenge each other with very similar words, Tirant affirms the superiority of his lady over the king’s beloved while inadvertently highlighting how much his enemy’s situation resembles his own: “Sabut és com tu ames la filla del Gran Turch e yo la de l’emperador. La tua, mora; la mia, crestiana. La tua té sisma e la mia crisma. Per tot, seria aquesta jutgada per millor e de major dignitat, que la tua no seria digna de descalçar-li la sabata del seu peu a la sua gran excel·lència” (“Now it is known that you love the daughter of the Grand Turk, and I the daughter of the Emperor. Yours is Moorish, mine Christian; yours brings schism, mine chrism. In all this my lady would be judged superior and of greater worth, so much so that your lady would not be deemed worthy to remove the shoe from my lady’s foot”).60 Despite the conventional rivalry between knights about the worth of their respective ladies, Tirant is actually acknowledging that the only essential difference between Muslims and Christians is that the former bring “schism” by straying from the right path while the latter have received the “chrism” of baptism. In terms of bravery and courtesy, however, a Muslim knight can be as admirable as a Christian one and their love interests are similarly comparable. This situation evokes and anticipates the “maurophilia” that Barbara Fuchs has studied in sixteenth-century Castilian texts like El Abencerraje and Ginés Pérez de Hita’s Guerras civiles de Granada, works whose “emphasis on the nobility of the individual knight, whatever his faith […] complicates the essentialism and othering in which the exclusionary versions of Spain depend.”61 By simply recognizing that a Muslim knight can be a worthy rival and as good a warrior and a lover as him,  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 69–70; “Pròlech.”  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 650; chap. 152. 61  Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 33. 59 60

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Tirant refutes the “othering” of Muslims endorsed by the same novel in other passages, as when the friar Johan Ferrer affirms that “la secta mafomètica” (“the Mohammedan sect”) promotes acts of gluttony and lust that “als animals bruts e no rahonables són propis” (“are proper to brute beasts and not to reasonable creatures”).62 The acknowledgment of some Muslims as righteous and praiseworthy is even more pronounced in the case of the Ottoman ambassador Abdallà Salomó, “home molt docte en totes sciències e de singular consell, que lo Gran Turch lo tenia en stima de pare e no fehia neguna cosa sens consell de aquest, que en tota la pagania no s’i trobava home de tanta sapiència ni eloqüència” (“a man very learned in all sciences and a singularly good counselor. The Grand Turk prized him like a father and did not do a thing without his advice; in short, there was not a wiser or more eloquent man in all heathendom”).63 Abdallà’s wisdom and eloquence are appreciated not only by other Muslims and the authors of the novel but also by the Christian characters: Tirant, in particular, “no deixava partir prop de si al moro Abdal·là per les bones e discretes rahons que li dehia” (“would not let Abdalla stray far from his side because of the many wise things which this Moor would say”).64 Although Christians take Abdallà captive, they treat him with utmost respect and, when he gives a moralizing speech for the edification of Tirant and other Christian lords, all of them are so impressed that they decide to let him free: “Per amor de tants grans senyors qui lo y demanaven, e per contemplació de ells, [Tirant] li dava libertat e XX d’altres per amor de ell” (“The Capità, out of deference to those who asked, released the Moor; and out of love for him, granted the release of twenty other men”).65 Abdallà’s speech is actually taken from a letter by none other than Petrarch, to which the authors simply affixed a couple of common Islamic phrases at its beginning: “Déu és gran. Déu és sobre totes coses” (“God is great. God is above all things”).66 There could not be a clearer rebuttal of the characterization of all Muslims as irrational and barbaric than to present one of them speaking with the same wisdom and elegance of such an admired Christian author as Petrarch.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1340; chap. 403.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 565; chap. 134. 64  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 598; chap. 142. 65  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 619; chap. 144. 66  Abulafia, “Aragon versus Turkey,” 301; Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 600; chap. 143. 62 63

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The positive representations of some Ottoman Muslims in Tirant lo Blanch are especially striking in contrast to their frequent depictions as less-than-human brutes by other Christian authors. According to the Byzantine cardinal Basilios Bessarion, the conquerors of Constantinople were “the most savage enemies of the Christian faith, the most ferocious wild beasts,” while Milanese humanist Francesco Filelfo questioned “if, indeed, the Turks should be called men at all, and not some kind of completely unrestrained and savage beasts, since they have nothing of humanity in themselves beyond a human form.”67 As Michael Angold has explained, the depictions of Ottomans as bestial enemies of civilization were mainly promoted by the Church and the Italian humanists after the fall of Constantinople; before that, European Christians had seen Ottomans as distinguished by their courage and honesty.68 But once the connection between “barbarian” and “Turk” became commonplace, writes Nancy Bisaha, “humanists soon began to stretch their use of the word. They started to apply the term indiscriminately to the larger Muslim world.”69 Against both the specific characterization of the conquerors of Constantinople as vicious savages and the general application of the same stereotype to all Muslims, Tirant lo Blanch follows the path already traced by a number of previous Iberian works: it allows both hateful and admiring portrayals of Muslims to coexist in a contradictory mix but with a common colonial purpose. The usefulness of positive representations of non-Christians to support Christian expansionism can be observed in how the recognition of some Muslims’ virtues and rationality facilitates the missionary labor of Tirant in North Africa: from the perspective of the novel’s authors, precisely because so many Muslim Africans are decent and reasonable people, it should not be hard for Christians to convert thousands of them at once. Paradoxically, Tirant’s adventures in Africa are the accidental result of his most unjustified act of violence against a non-Christian, an “episode of racial violence [that] radically alters the trajectory and assumptions of the narrative,” in Elizabeth Spiller’s words.70 While in Constantinople, Tirant is tricked by the evil Viuda Reposada into believing that his beloved Carmesina is having an affair with “hun moro catiu negre, comprat e venut” (“a black  Meserve, “Italian Humanists,” 26–27.  Angold, The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, 100. 69  Bisaha, Creating East and West, 78. 70  Spiller, Reading and the History of Race, 61. 67 68

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Moor, a slave bought and sold”).71 After slitting the slave’s throat, Tirant prepares to leave Constantinople still believing that Carmesina was unfaithful to him. Although Carmesina’s servant Plaerdemavida finally clarifies the situation before Tirant sets sail, a sudden storm takes both the hero and the servant to North Africa or, as the authors call it, “Barberia,” where African Muslims generously welcome the two Christian castaways. Plaerdemavida is rescued by an old Muslim who was once a captive in Cádiz and who is still grateful to Christians because of his freedom, which he won after defending his masters from an attack. For this reason, he tells her: “Tu hauràs loch en mi. E com yo tinga una filla viuda, la qual, per contemplació mia, ella·t tendrà en stima de una germana” (“I will take your plight to heart. I have a widowed daughter who, out of consideration for me, will regard you as a sister”).72 Similarly, Tirant is found by the Muslim knight Capdillo-sobre-los-capdillos and also adopted into his family while being praised for his bodily and spiritual beauty: “Yo·t jur per lo nostre sant profeta Mafomet, qui t’à liberat de tan gran perill e t’à feta gràcia que sies vengut en mon poder, com yo veja que natura no ha fallit en formar lo teu cors de tanta singularitat, no crech menys aquell no haja dotat de moltes virtuts. Yo tinch tres fills, tu seràs lo quart” (“I swear to you by our holy prophet Mohammed, who saved you from such peril and allowed you to fall into my hands, that, as I see that nature has not failed in granting you such physical splendor, so I believe that you are not less possessed of numerous virtues. I have three sons, and you shall be the fourth”).73 The old man’s past in the Iberian Peninsula and Capdillo’s admiration for Tirant are just different ways to rationalize the unexpected kindness of these African Muslims toward two Christian strangers. Such depictions of righteous and compassionate Muslims sharply contrast not only with the many treacherous Christians in the novel but also with the brutal killing of an innocent Black slave by Tirant a few pages before. In these circumstances, the hero’s praise of his Muslim host highlights once again how knightly virtues are not limited to Christians: “De gran humanitat proceheix haver pietat e compassió dels miserables, e a mi és molta glòria ésser vengut en poder de ta senyoria per catiu o presoner, per tu ésser cavaller tan magnànim e virtuós” (“Pity and compassion for the wretched proceed  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1055; chap. 286.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1096; chap. 299. 73  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1101; chap. 300. 71 72

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from a kind nature, and it is a glory for me to have been delivered into the power of one such as your lordship, as captive or prisoner, for you are a magnanimous and virtuous knight”).74 The authors of Tirant lo Blanch may recognize that some Muslims are morally superior to Christians but cannot accept them to be independent, free from the religious and political dominance of Christianity, because this would subvert the colonial principles and purposes underlying the entire book. Instead, the positive characterization of North African Muslims in the novel becomes the prelude for their massive conversions in the following chapters. During the rest of Tirant’s adventures in Africa, writes Edward Aylward, “we are constantly apprised of Tirant’s mercifulness toward those who surrender to him without resistance: neither their person nor their property is damaged or violated in any way, and many liberties are granted to them—particularly the freedom of worship.”75 The Muslims’ predisposition to virtue and Tirant’s tolerant policies combine to produce spontaneous conversions among the conquered Africans: “E per la gran liberalitat que veÿen en Tirant, molts se feÿen crestians. Los altres restaven en lur secta sens que no·ls era feta violència alguna ni empediment. E deÿen los pobles que aquest era lo més magnànim senyor que en tot l’univers món trobar-se pogués” (“And a good portion of them, seeing the generosity of Tirant, became Christians. Others were allowed to retain their faith without suffering any violence or retribution; and thus the people said that this Capità was the most magnanimous Lord that could be found in the world”).76 As Riquer points out, Tirant’s methods for Christianizing North Africa are inspired by an author who is recurrently “seguido y plagiado” (“followed and plagiarized”) in the novel: the philosopher and theologian Ramon Llull, who “was born on the island of Majorca short years after it had been captured from the Muslims by the Crown of Aragon, and spent part of his prolific career urging the conquest of more Muslims lands to assist his project of converting them to Christianity.”77 Llull thought that the superiority of his faith was rationally demonstrable and Christians could convert Muslims by using their own books to argue with them and  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1103; chap. 301.  Aylward, Martorell’s Tirant lo Blanch, 72–73. 76  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1311; chap. 384. 77  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 220; Pick, “Edward Said,” 269. The longest and most evident of these literary borrowings are chapters 32–34 of Tirant lo Blanch, which are taken from Llull’s Llibre de l’ordre de cavalleria. 74 75

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show them the truth.78 In his Libre de doctrina pueril, Llull shockingly affirms that “aquells sarrayns qui saben molt e han soptil engin e qui han elevat enteniment, no creen que Mafumet sia propheta” (“those Saracens who have much knowledge, subtle wit, and elevated understanding, do not really believe that Muhammad is a prophet”); because of this, wise Muslims “serien leygers a convertir a la fe catholica, si era qui la fe los mostrás els preycás” (“would be easy to convert to the Catholic faith, if this faith were shown and preached to them”) and, as a consequence, “los altres sarrayns convertir s íen, si veyen que los mayors savis lurs se faessen crestians” (“the other Sarracens would convert too if they saw that their greatest sages became Christians”).79 Despite his faith in Christianity’s irresistible logic, which would first convince Muslim sages and then expand to the masses, Llull’s several actual attempts to convert North Africans only led him to be imprisoned and expelled by the local authorities. He persisted until the very end: because his last works were written in Tunis, an octogenarian Llull probably died there or on his way back from Tunis to Majorca.80 The authors of Tirant lo Blanch make Llull’s frustrated dreams a reality by combining the labor of Christian knights with that of preachers in one single hero: in Riquer’s words, “el procedimiento misional siempre es el mismo: Tirant vence a un rey enemigo, le hace ver la verdad del Cristianismo, lo bautiza y luego siguen su ejemplo la mayoría de sus súbditos” (“the missionary procedure is always the same: Tirant defeats an enemy king, makes him see the truth of Christianity, baptizes him, and then most of his subjects follow his example”).81 The success of this method across several points of “Barberia” results in the final figure of 400,000 converted Africans, a number as exorbitant as meaningful since, as indicated by Riquer, it equals the entire population of the kingdom of Valencia in Martorell’s times.82 Through both fighting and catechizing, Tirant creates enough Christians to completely repopulate the homeland of the novel’s first author or, alternatively, to recreate his Iberian homeland in a newly colonized land across the Mediterranean.

 Hames, “Ramon Llull,” 714.  Llull, Libre de doctrina pueril, 178–179. 80  Bonner, “Historical Background and Life,” 43. 81  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 220. 82  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 221. 78 79

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Crusade and Conversion at the Service of Christian Colonialism By using both weapons and sermons to spread Christianity in Africa, Tirant unites the two sides of a fifteenth-century Christian discussion on the value of conversionary methods versus crusading against Muslims. According to prominent theologians such as Juan of Segovia and Nicholas of Cusa, “Christian powers should seek to make peace with Islamic rulers and then undermine their faith through public disputations, in which the Christian cause would emerge triumphant.”83 Anne Marie Wolf has written about how Juan of Segovia’s “inclination to convert Muslims, offensive as that might sound to medieval or even modern Muslims, nevertheless aimed at the establishment of meaningful connections between Muslims and Christians and ultimately at the Muslims’ inclusion in the Christian community.”84 Muslims, however, cannot really be integrated in a community if the price to pay for such “inclusion” is that they stop being Muslims. What Juan of Segovia and other fifteenth-century Christians sought was therefore very different to the common Iberian situation of previous centuries in which Muslims could continue practicing their religion under Christian dominion, a form of tolerance that rulers such as Alfonso X justified by appealing to the “voluntad divina” (“God’s will”) that allowed Muslims to live among Christians.85 Now, instead, the purpose was no longer to just take the Muslims’ lands and rule them but to eradicate Islam, which is exactly what Tirant does in North Africa through both military and peaceful methods, as part of a colonial plan in which religious conversion is as fundamental as territorial occupation.86 Indeed, Tirant’s two-pronged strategy proves so effective that he finally conquers the entire “Barberia,” including “los regnes de Túniç, de Tremicén, de Feç e de Bogia” (“the Kingdoms of Tunis, Tremicen, Fez, and Bogia”).87 His biggest success is the conversion of the Ethiopian king Scariano, “home fortíssim, tot negre e de molt desmesurada figura segons los altres hòmens, qui era rey molt poderós de si, de molta gent e de gran riquea” (“a very fierce and black man of gigantic proportions, and a  Housley, Religious Warfare, 181  Wolf, Juan de Segovia, 217. 85  Carrasco Manchado, De la convivencia a la exclusión, 30. 86  See Bisaha, Creating East and West, 143–147. 87  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1342–1343; chap. 403. 83 84

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powerful sovereign with many men and great riches”).88 First a ferocious enemy of the king of Tremicén, and therefore of his subject Capdillo-­ sobre-­los-capdillos and his ally Tirant, Scariano decides to convert after the queen whom he loves is baptized by the Christian hero. Despite his nonreligious motivation to convert, Scariano wisely asks Tirant to explain Christian doctrine to him so he can deserve baptism. The narrator attributes Scariano’s humility, desire to learn, and easy understanding of Christian beliefs to the action of God: “per què, ab la devoció que ell venia al sanct babtisme, per obra del sanct Sperit ell comprengué tant nostra fe com si tota sa vida fos estat crestià” (“because of the piety which the king showed, the Holy Ghost granted him as much comprehension of our faith as if he had been a Christian all his life”).89 As seen in Iberian works from previous centuries, this God-determined inclination in a Muslim to become Christian is a useful narrative device to explain the unlikely circumstances of his conversion: just like Mudarra in the versión crítica of the Estoria de España or the Crónica geral de 1344 had no logical reason to abandon his Muslim beliefs and Andalusi identity, but his conversion was indispensable to affirm the superiority of Christians, Scariano’s conversion makes little narrative sense but it is a potent symbol of the overwhelming power of Christianity even over such a wealthy and powerful king. Divine influence also inspires Scariano to be baptized during a public ceremony: he chooses “en presència de tota la mia gent fer-me crestià e rebre lo sanct babtisme, a fi que, vehent batejar a mi, tinguen occasió de batejar-se” (“to become a Christian and receive baptism in front of all of my men, so that, seeing me receive this sacrament, they have the chance to be baptized themselves”) and Tirant agrees on “lo gran benefici que·s sperava de aquesta cosa en aument de la santa ley crestiana” (“the benefit that this opportunity afforded in increasing the holy Christian faith”).90 Scariano does not force his subjects to convert, but almost all of them decide to become Christians anyway, as both he and Tirant had foreseen: the Christian hero himself baptizes more than 6000 people in one day and continues doing the same until very few Muslims, “e, dels més roÿns” (“and of the meanest sort”), remain.91

 Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1104; chap. 301.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1175; chap. 327. 90  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1178; chap. 328. 91  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1180; chap. 329. 88 89

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In addition to his exemplary role as converted Muslim, Scariano is presented as “the African alter ego to the very white, northern Tirant. As white and black, as northerner and southerner, as a foreign knight with his ‘barbarian Breton rabble’ at the court of Constantinople, on the one hand, and as the powerful opponent to the King of Tunis, on the other, Tirant and Escariano are mirror images of each other.”92 Tirant’s whiteness is highlighted during his arrival to Africa and his first meeting with Capdillo-­ sobre-­ los-capdillos. Asked about his name, Tirant answers that it is “Blanch” or “white” and Capdillo replies: “Beneyta sia la tua mare, qui de tan bell nom te dotà, car lo teu nom se concorda ab la tua singular perfecció” (“Blessed be your mother … for having given you so beautiful a name. It conforms perfectly with your singular appearance”).93 It is during this same chapter, a few paragraphs later, when Scariano is described as “a very fierce and black man of gigantic proportions,” clearly establishing the contrast of skin color between the Christian and the Muslim knights. When Scariano converts and he swears to become Tirant’s “bo e leal germà d’armes, tant e tan longament com los nostres dies duraran, […] amich de l’amich e enemich de l’enemich” (“good and loyal brother-in-­ arms for as long as we live … friend of your friend and enemy of your enemy”), the union of the Black African and the white European leader makes Christendom finally strong enough to defeat the Ottomans.94 In this sense, Scariano replaces the much sought-after Prester John, the mythic Christian ruler of some unknown Asian or African kingdom who could help Christian Europeans to vanquish Muslims.95 By transforming a former Muslim like Scariano into a Prester John figure, the authors of Tirant lo Blanch reaffirm what multiple Iberian works had already argued for centuries: Christian colonial projects can only succeed against Muslim enemies with the collaboration of Muslim subjects and allies. After conquering and converting most of North Africa’s population, Tirant returns to Constantinople, defeats the Ottomans, marries Princess Carmesina, and becomes “Cèsar” of the Byzantine empire, that is, the emperor’s second-in-command and son-in-law. In this way, Tirant turns into the leader of an unstoppable and heterogeneous Christian army, in which cultural and ethnic differences are overridden by the allegiance to a  Spiller, Reading and the History of Race, 61–62.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1103; chap. 301. 94  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1182; chap. 330. 95  Spiller, Reading and the History of Race, 63. 92 93

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Christian lord: “Tant era lo poder que lo cèsar portava que posava spant a tota la morisma del món, car passats quatre-cents mília combatents eren útils, hon havia de moltes nacions de gents, que no era ciutat ni fortalea alguna que tingués atreviment d’esperar combat” (“The Caesar had such a great army of men—more than four hundred thousand in all—that any Moorish foes in the world would panic at the sight. This army was composed of men from many nations, and no city or stronghold dared oppose it”).96 On Tirant’s army, Spiller comments that “diversity of birth becomes unity of faith and is all the more powerful because of that. The power of this army of four hundred thousand thus arises from a unity of identity that is founded on religious belief.”97 Despite his opposition to Islam and his ultimate victory over all “Moorish foes in the world,” however, Tirant shows as much mercy to his Muslim opponents as Muslims showed to him in Africa. Instead of killing their archenemies, Tirant and the Byzantine Emperor offer generous terms of surrender to the sultan of Babylon and the Ottoman sultan: Lo soldà e lo Turch, ab tots los reys e grans senyors qui són en lo vostre camp, se posaran en poder de l’emperador com a presoners e staran aquí tant e tan longament fins que li hagen tornat e restituït totes les terres que li tenen de l’imperi, segons haveu ofert. E axí mateix, li faran portar tots los presoners e catius crestians que seran trobats axí en les terres del soldà com del Turch. E la magestat del senyor emperador és contenta de lexar anar salva e segura tota la morisma qui és en lo vostre camp, emperò tots a peu e sens armes. E més, és content de fer pau e treva a cent e hun any, e liga e germandat ab lo soldà e ab lo Turch, e valer-los sempre contra moros, mas no contra crestians. (The sultan and Turk, along with all of the kings and noble lords in your camp, are to place themselves in the power of the Emperor until all of the lands of the empire have been returned to him, as you have offered to do. Similarly, these hostages are to remain in his power until he has been given all of the prisoners and Christian captives presently held in the lands of the sultan and Turk. His majesty is willing to let all of the Moors in your camp leave safely and surely, but on foot and without arms. Moreover, he is willing to establish peace and truce for one hundred and one years, and to make alliance and brotherhood with the sultan and Turk, helping them, whenever necessary, against other Moors but not against Christians.)98  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1464–1465; chap. 459.  Spiller, Reading and the History of Race, 65. 98  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1435; chap. 446. 96 97

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In response, both sultans rejoice and respectfully surrender to the Emperor, who imprisons them “en una bella cambra, molt ben emparamentada de draps de seda e de raç, ab hun lit molt bell e molt bé en orde” (“in a handsome and elegantly arrayed chamber which had a splendid bed and beautiful hangings of silk and satin”).99 When both the emperor and Tirant die not much later, the next emperor frees the sultans and all Muslim hostages while keeping the terms of the previous peace agreement: “Feren pau e treva a cent e hun any, e festejà’ls molt, que ells ne foren tan contents que li feren moltes submissions e de grans ofertes, tota hora que·ls hagués mester de valer-li contra tot lo món” (“He made peace and truce for one hundred and one years with these Moors, treating them always kindly and graciously; and they were so satisfied that they granted many concessions and offered their aid, whenever he needed it, against any and all enemies”).100 This century-long period of peace is an extreme idealization of the precarious truces between Iberian Christians and Muslims, which could last just a few months and had to be renegotiated every time one of the involved rulers died or lost his power, which meant in practice that “the Crown of Aragon was almost constantly sending out and receiving ambassadors to negotiate or renew truces with its many Muslim neighbors, including Granada, Morocco, Tunis, Bougie, Tlemcen, and even Egypt.”101 Such a context helps explain the satisfactory fantasy of the book’s ending, in which an even mightier Byzantine Empire endures while supported by both the Muslims who converted to Christianity and strengthened its troops and those who did not but remain at peace outside its borders. In this way, the authors of the novel solve the tension between the contradictory representations of Muslims and their potential questioning of Christian authority without wholly erasing their ambivalence. In the world of Tirant lo Blanch, some Muslims will remain unconverted and will never become subjugated to a Christian lord, but they will still respect the colonial power of Christians and live at peace with it. As just mentioned, Tirant and the Emperor die soon after defeating the Ottomans; because Tirant’s only heir is his young friend Ypòlit, who has also been the Empress’ lover for years, Ypòlit marries her and they lead the empire together until she dies three years later. Ypòlit then marries an English princess, with whom he founds a new Byzantine dynasty. Scholars  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1442; chap. 449.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1539; chap. 487. 101  Rodriguez, “Captivity and Diplomacy,” 112. 99

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have generally considered this bizarre conclusion as an example of the authors’ irreverent humor, and there are two main reasons to consider the novel’s ending as a “guiño al lector” (“wink to the reader”) or “an ironic denouement,” in Riquer’s and Aylward’s words.102 First, there is the absurdly unheroic death of Tirant, killed by a sudden “mal de costat” (“pain in the side”); second, the no less shocking enthronization of Ypòlit, whose main previous achievement had been seducing the Empress.103 Monserrat Piera thinks that the ending subverts the rest of the novel as much as the novel subverts the historical record: “Earlier Martorell undid history, now he undoes fiction.”104 While all this is true, such conclusion also emphasizes how individual heroes and rulers are less important than the defense and expansion of “la fe cathòlica, de la qual lo capità és Jhesuchrist, rey sobre tots los reys e senyor sobre tots los senyors” (“the Catholic faith—whose captain is Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords”).105 That a handsome social climber and an English princess end up ruling the Byzantine empire may seem outlandish and even humorous, but it actually further supports the novel’s passionate defense of Christian colonialism and supremacy as a common cause that can unite all Christians, no matter their lineages or geographical origins. Similarly to the novel itself, produced by at least two authors and claiming to be a Catalan version of a Portuguese translation of an English book, its hero is characterized by his unclear background: Tirant is not of royal blood and “both in England and later in Constantinople, Tirant is repeatedly attacked as a foreigner and usurper: a ‘base foreigner of ill fame and unknown origin.’”106 But, no matter where he is fighting, which king or emperor he is serving, or what language they are speaking, personal backgrounds become irrelevant as long as they are all Christian: “Això és el que tots tenen en comú. La cristiandat és la gran nacionalitat comuna que comparteix amb ells” (“This is what they all have in common. Christendom is the great common nationality he shares with them”).107 From that perspective, it becomes even clearer how important stereotypical “good Muslims” and their conversions are for the political purposes of the novel: despite all the battles against Muslims and contempt for their beliefs,  Riquer, Tirant lo Blanch, 171; Aylward, Martorell’s Tirant lo Blanch, 195.  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1480, chap. 467. 104  Piera, “Tirant lo Blanc,” 54. 105  Martorell and Galba, Tirant lo Blanch, 1340; chap. 403. 106  Spiller, Reading and the History of Race, 55. 107  Franco-Sánchez, “Tirant i l’Islam,” 653. 102 103

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Christian colonial power is presented as a welcoming new home for those who are too virtuous and wise to continue denying the truth of Christianity. Tirant lo Blanch and Tirant lo Blanch, both the hero and the novel, fight Islam by embracing Muslims and offering them to join a God-supported, and therefore inevitably triumphant, Christian empire. During the previous centuries, many Iberian rulers and authors had understood well the irreplaceable role of non-Christians as commercial, cultural, and even military contributors to the preservation or expansion of their polities. Tirant lo Blanch utilizes that same concept in a much bigger and cosmopolitan setting, which now includes all Christians from England to Constantinople and their ambivalent interactions with Muslim enemies, allies, and subjects from numerous geographical and ethnic origins. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, this chivalric novel depicts a world in which Christian and Muslim tensions continue escalating in multiple scenarios in the Mediterranean and beyond, but it uses the unbridled imaginative freedom of its literary genre to fantasize about a happy ending to all those struggles: a resounding and long-lasting Christian victory. The next chapter, on the sixteenth-century Portuguese epic Os Lusíadas, will show how similar ideas are replicated or contested one hundred years later in an even vaster context that now involves peoples from all around the world but in which the contradictory representations of Muslim difference still serve to justify the colonial ambitions of Christians during their search for new lands, greater wealth, and more power.

CHAPTER 6

An Empire of Faith and Its Infidels: Portuguese Colonialism and Muslims, According to Os Lusíadas and Its Sources

The contradictory depictions of Muslims by Iberian Christians were mainly an attempt to exert authority over them, even (or especially) when they seemed more challenging to defeat or to rule. Particularly when military or economic strength does not seem enough to assert colonial dominion, there is an additional power differential in the way the colonized are examined, depicted, and finally known, because, in Edward Said’s words, “to have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for ‘us’ to deny autonomy to ‘it’ […] since we know it and it exists, in a sense, as we know it.”1 At the same time, such attempts are almost always doomed to fail, because colonial power is inherently imperfect, unsatisfactory, and porous, as argued by Homi Bhabha and often shown in previous chapters: efforts to control cultural difference never fully achieve their purpose and often backfire, as we can see in so many Christian authors trying to promote their religious and political supremacy while exposing their insecurities or reluctantly accepting that they can only accomplish their goals with the help of their Muslim competitors, allies, and subjects. In my introduction, I quoted Mary Louise Pratt’s idea of how a colonial center of power “becomes dependent on its others to know itself” and 1

 Said, Orientalism, 32.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_6

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I related it to the situation of sixteenth-century Portugal “living on and for the Orient,” as indicated by Rebecca Catz.2 Indeed, their representations of Muslims and their interactions with them not only defined Iberian Christians for hundreds of years but continued being essential for their colonial projects long after Christian rulers dominated the entire Iberian Peninsula. With their colonial ambitions now focused on other continents mainly populated by a diversity of peoples equally alien to Christianity and Islam, Christian rulers and authors persisted however in emphasizing their relationships of enmity and collaboration with Muslims while using the same stereotypical and contradictory representations from previous centuries. In doing this, Christians inadvertently revealed both the compulsion and the futility of their attempts to erase the autonomy of non-Christians. On the one hand, the Christians’ relentless attention to Muslims shows an incapacity to adapt to an entirely new geographical and cultural landscape; on the other hand, the same obsession exposes the unsatisfactory reality of their victory in the Iberian Peninsula, where military and political dominion was far from ensuring religious and cultural homogeneity, even after Muslims were forcibly converted or expelled from each Christian kingdom between the late fifteenth century and the three first decades of the sixteenth century.3 Both the predominant focus on Muslims and the reutilization of medieval depictions of them are prominently featured in Luís Vaz de Camões’s sixteenth-century epic Os Lusíadas, an unapologetic idealization of the establishment and global expansion of the Portuguese empire. Camões not only creates similar portrayals of vicious and admirable Muslims along with their inimical or cordial interactions with Christians, but, more importantly, he does so while trying to present Iberian Christians as both fearsome and tolerant rulers of non-Christians, therefore advancing their colonial interests no matter what they do or how their enemies react to them. Interestingly, Camões himself reveals the medieval influences behind his depictions of intercultural relationships through continuous references to previous Portuguese texts such as the official chronicles of the kingdom, other less prominent historiographical works, and even documents by members of the ruling Avis dynasty. This variety of sources helps Camões build a narrative that intentionally connects the ambivalent 2  Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4; Catz, “Consequences and Repercussions of the Portuguese Expansion,” 331. 3  Carrasco Manchado, De la convivencia a la exclusión, 64.

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contacts between Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia with their contradictory relationships during the early modern exploration and colonization of African and Asian territories while further supporting the right of Christians to deprive any non-Christians from their lands, resources, and autonomy.

The Role of Muslims in the History of Portugal The fact that Muslims still appear in Os Lusíadas as simultaneously the quintessential enemies and the indispensable allies of Christian Iberians can be puzzling for many reasons: not only because of all the changes that Christian-Muslim relationships had experienced since the late Middle Ages or because Islam was a minority religion in most places in Africa and India, where the action of the epic is set, but also because of Camões’s direct knowledge of those locations and several other Portuguese colonies.4 After fighting against North African Muslims in Ceuta, Camões spent several years in India, traveled to the Red Sea and the Moluccas, shipwrecked in Cambodia, and got stranded for a couple of years in Mozambique.5 Therefore, Camões perfectly knew that most Africans and Asians were not Muslims, but he consciously chose to give less importance to non-Abrahamic religions, as when he described Hindus in just five stanzas that quickly summarized their belief in “fábulas” (“fables” or “myths”), their polygamy, and the caste system.6 Similarly, although he was better informed about the scope of Islam and its huge geographical and cultural diversity than most previous Christian authors, Camões still decided to generalize about Muslims as simply “mouros.”7 For Landeg White, Camões’s use of “the label ‘Moors’ insists on two things. It declares that Islam is a single and united enemy; and it identifies the Swahili traders of East Africa and the Muslim rulers of the Persian Gulf, Turkey, and parts of India, with the Muslim Berbers driven out of Portugal during the twelfth

4  Probably conceived around 1554, Os Lusíadas was finally published in 1572. There are two editions with the same year on their covers, which has created some confusion about which one is the first edition; according to Álvaro Júlio da Costa Pimpão, one of them is simply a counterfeit that appeared twelve or thirteen years later with a false date. Pimpão, “Prefácio,” iv–v, xvi–xxv. 5  Pimpão, “Prefácio,” ii–v; White, Introduction, ix–x, xx. 6  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 37–41. 7  White, Introduction, xix.

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to fourteen centuries.”8 This stereotypical and anachronistic view of Muslims, in other words, has many similarities with that of medieval works such as the thirteenth-century Estoria de España or the fifteenth-century Tirant lo Blanch, which also conflated Muslims from different periods and very distant places in order to establish a continuity between the Christians’ past and present conflicts with any of them. At the same time, Camões’ fixation on Islam gives it a unique prominence, comparable only to Christianity, among the many religions that abound in other continents. Unlike the “gente sem Lei, quási infinita” (“almost infinite people without a law”) that inhabit most of Africa “inculta e toda cheia de bruteza” (“uncultured and full of brutality”), Muslims possess, according to one of them in Mozambique, “a Lei certa que ensinou/o claro descendente de Abraão,/que agora tem do mundo o senhorio” (“the true law taught by the clear descendant of Abraham and that now rules the world”).9 Camões’ hero, Vasco da Gama, responds to the Mozambican Muslims by describing his own faith in parallel terms: “A Lei tenho d’ Aquele a cujo império/obedece o visíbil e invisíbil,/Aquele que criou todo o Hemisfério” (“I have the law of the One whose power is obeyed by the visible and the invisible, He who created the whole hemisphere”).10 As António José Saraiva points out, this episode underscores how Christians and Muslims identify, introduce, and define themselves according to their respective “laws,” in a matter-of-fact acceptance that each of these major religions has its own particular but equally coherent system of beliefs.11 Unfortunately, that same recognition entails a conflict: while most African peoples are seen as “lawless” barbarians, destined to be easily conquered and colonized, the status of Islam as an established faith with its own historical background, doctrinal complexities, and political power turns Muslims into challenging competitors whose defeat becomes an essential cultural and religious duty for Portuguese Christians. Camões exploits that crucial hostility toward Muslims by combining historical accounts and legends to frame Vasco da Gama’s expedition as part of a religious conflict that goes all the way back to the foundational myths surrounding the birth of Portugal as a kingdom. In canto 3 of Os Lusíadas, Camões nods to the Western epic tradition by putting Vasco da  White, Introduction, xix.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 10, st. 92; canto 1, st. 53. 10  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 1, st. 65. 11  Saraiva, Estudos sobre a arte, 71. 8 9

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Gama in the same position of the heroes of Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid when they narrate their past adventures in gratitude to a powerful host that helped them. However, while the accounts by Odysseus and Aeneas focus on their own personal misfortunes, Vasco da Gama’s journey to India is presented as only the most recent episode in a much longer political and religious struggle. Consequently, his narrative begins four centuries earlier, when Portugal was still just a county, which thanks to its victories against Muslims obtained first its independence and then its recognition as a kingdom by other European polities and the Papacy. This apparent digression actually offers a political and moral program for the consolidation of the Portuguese empire, because, as Jorge Borges de Macedo explains, by demonstrating the historical efficacy of the mindset and methods that created the kingdom of Portugal, the poem advocates for their continuation in its current colonial expansion.12 The narrative of Portugal’s independence becomes a model that Gama’s expedition aspires to recreate and, in this process of imitation of one historical event by another, a belligerent opposition to Islam is central among the political ideals and moral principles that drive both endeavors. The story of Portugal’s birth and ascent during the Middle Ages had been written long before Camões included it in Os Lusíadas. When King Duarte appointed Fernão Lopes as first “cronista-mor” or royal chronicler in 1434, with the mission of “poer em caronica as estorias dos reis que antigamente em Portugal forom” (“to put the stories of the ancient kings of Portugal into chronicles”), he inaugurated a long tradition of historiographers striving to complete a coherent narrative of all their monarchs’ achievements, starting with those of Afonso Henriques or Afonso I of Portugal.13 Because of the institution of the cronista-mor, the work of Portuguese chroniclers was both personal and collaborative: in spite of their changing political situations and writing styles, “in the background to this consecutive labor of recompilation is a project persistently seen during the whole [fifteenth] century and even beyond: establishing a complete collection of narratives or chronicles for each king of Portugal that

 Macedo, “Os Lusíadas,” 113–114.  Dias, A Idade Média, 409.

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could serve as a comprehensive Chronicle of the kingdom.”14 As a result, Camões had an extensive set of narratives at his disposal and he used them profusely to recount the epic history of his homeland in cantos 3 and 4 of Os Lusíadas. One of those sources, the Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis de Portugal, presents the battles of Afonso Henriques as motivated by a combination of religious and political reasons: the Portuguese king fights against “Mourros d Alem Mar e d Aquem Mar, e outrras gentes barbarras” (“Muslims from both sides of the sea, and other barbaric peoples”) not only to expand his territories but also “com grande vomtade de serujr a Deos” (“with great willingness to serve God”).15 When Afonso’s troops hesitate before a big battle against Muslim enemies, the king reminds them of the legendary victories of the Castilian count Fernán González against Almanzor and affirms that “os que aquy morerem serem çertos que loguo yrão ao Parayso” (“those who die here will certainly go soon to Paradise”).16 This crusading view is shared by a chronicle not authored by a cronista-mor, the Crónica da tomada de Lisboa, according to which Henriques was a “verdadeiro cristão” (“true Christian”) and “destruidor dos emmigos da fé de Jesu Cristo e da santa igreja” (“destroyer of the enemies of the faith of Jesus Christ and the Holy Church”), who led an international army against the Muslims of Lisbon and flooded the city with their blood: “E matáron 14  Gomes, “Zurara and the Empire,” 60. The cronista-mor had the additional responsibility of being the “keeper of the royal archives (guarda-mor dos arquivos), which were also centralized in an autonomous way in the 1370s.” Gomes, “Zurara and the Empire,” 63. Therefore, these two posts conceded the power not only to articulate history but also to eliminate any evidence that contradicted the official narrative. For instance, Gomes Eanes de Zurara infamously destroyed large amounts of documents to save space in the archive, which has made it impossible for later scholars to corroborate much of the information in his chronicles. Freire, Um aventureiro na empresa, 23–27; Prestage, “The Life and Writings,” xxvii–xxix. 15  Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis, 1: 39. The Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis have been partially attributed to Rui de Pina and Duarte Galvão, both active between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, but Carlos da Silva Tarouca believes that Pina and Galvão were just correcting a previous text of unknown origin. Tarouca, “Introdução,” 24. Authorship problems like this one are frequent with Portuguese chronicles, due to the loss of many works, the incompleteness of others because of their authors’ death, and the reworking of old fragments into new texts. Already in Camões’ times there was widespread confusion about the authorship of previous chronicles, as demonstrated by the efforts of his contemporary Damião de Góis to distinguish between the works and passages written by Fernão Lopes, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Rui de Pina, and Duarte Galvão. Góis, Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, 4: 100–107. 16  Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis, 1: 41.

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na entrada tantas companhas de mouros, que os rios do sangue corriam pelas praças da dita cidade” (“And they killed so many Muslim troops at the entrance, that rivers of blood ran through the squares of the city”).17 The unmistakable crusading tone of texts such as the Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis and the Crónica da tomada de Lisboa could be explained by later interpretations of the events they narrate. For Carl Erdmann, crusading ideas were not common in Portugal until 1340, when a coalition of Iberian Christian forces defeated troops of Granada and the Marinid empire in the battle of Salado; according to him, the importance of this event changed the perception of past battles against Muslims, transforming all of them into part of a holy war in retrospect.18 There is evidence, however, that Afonso Henriques’ campaigns were also interpreted in that way by his own contemporaries. For instance, Pope Alexander III, in his bull “Manifestis probatum est” from 1179, acknowledged Afonso Henriques’ opposition to Muslims as a central reason to accept him as the first king of Portugal: “Manifestis probatum est argumentis quod, per sudores bellicos et certamina militaria, inimicorum christiani nominis intrepidus extirpator et propagator diligens fidej christiane, sicut bonus filius et princeps catholicus, multimoda obsequia matri tue sacrosancte ecclesie impendistj dignum memoria nomen et exemplum imitabile posteris derelinquens” (“It has been clearly demonstrated that, through war efforts and military actions, you have exterminated the enemies of the Christian name and propagated the Christian faith with courage and diligence; likewise, as a good son and Catholic ruler, you have rendered many services to your mother, the Holy Church, and left a praiseworthy example for future generations”).19 Besides recognizing Portugal as an independent kingdom, the Pope offered Afonso and his successors the possession of “omnia loca que, cum auxilio celestis gratie, de sarracenorum manibus eripueris” (“all the places that, with the help of God, you take from the Saracens”) and granted them his support against any Christian rulers who did not respect those rights, additionally confirmed 17  Crónica da tomada de Lisboa, 78, 79. This chronicle survives in two very similar manuscripts from the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Although it is an adapted translation of a twelfth-century Latin text, some of the crucial differences between the original Indiculum fundationis monasterii beati Vitentii Ulixbon and the Crónica da tomada de Lisboa are precisely the later work’s emphasis on Afonso Henriques’ crusading spirit and the increased violence of its language against Muslims. Barros, “Mouros e Guerra Santa,” 402–407. 18  Erdmann, A idea de cruzada, 53, 54. 19  Monumenta Henricina, 1: 19.

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by Popes Clement III in 1190, Inocent III in 1212, and Honorius III in 1218.20 In this way, as Pedro Calmon says, “nasceu Portugal enfeudado ao Sumo Pontífice” (“Portugal was born under the feudal power of the Supreme Pontiff”): unlike other European polities that resisted the Papacy’s interventions in order to preserve their independence, Portugal used Rome’s protection to obtain and keep theirs while basing this collaboration on their common opposition to Muslims.21 The political convenience of presenting any conflict with Muslims as part of a holy war is reflected in both the historical record and its treatment by later chroniclers, whose aggressive stance against Islam is imitated by Camões when narrating the independence of Portugal. Although Camões also mentions the conflicts between Afonso Henriques and the Christian kingdoms of Castile and León, he focuses with much more intensity and dramatism on his struggles against Muslims and especially on the battle of Ourique, in which Portuguese troops allegedly defeated enemy forces a hundred times larger: “tão pouco era o povo bautizado,/ que, pera um só, cem Mouros haveria” (“those baptized were so few that for each one of them there were a hundred Muslims”).22 As if their triumph despite the odds was not enough to demonstrate God’s support for the Portuguese, Christ in person appears to Afonso before the battle to encourage him and his men: A matutina luz, serena e fria, as Estrelas do Pólo já apartava, quando na Cruz o Filho de Maria, amostrando-se a Afonso, o animava. Ele, adorando Quem lhe aparecia, na Fé todo inflamado assi gritava: —“Aos Infiéis, Senhor, aos Infiéis, E não a mi, que creio o que podeis!” (The morning light, calm and cold, was already turning the stars away from the Pole when the crucified Son of Mary appeared to Alfonso and encouraged him. He, adoring the One who appeared to him, exclaimed, inflamed

 Monumenta Henricina, 1: 19, 26–28, 36–38, 50–51.  Calmon, O estado e o direito, 133, 134. 22  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, st. 43. 20 21

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with faith: “Show yourself to the infidels, Lord, to the infidels and not to me, who already believe in what you can do!”)23

These lines depict Afonso not only as saintly enough to deserve contemplating Christ but also as such a firm and humble believer that this miracle seems unnecessary to him. The suggestion that Jesus should instead appear to the “infidels” hints at the possibility of Muslim conversion, soon discarded by Afonso’s ferocious extermination of his enemies, turned by his sword into body parts and rivers of blood: Cabeças pelo campo vão saltando, braços, pernas, sem dono e sem sentido, e doutros as entranhas palpitando, pálida a cor, o gesto amortecido. Já perde o campo o exército nefando; correm rios do sangue desparzido, com que também do campo a cor se perde, tornado carmesi, de branco e verde. (Heads, arms, and legs roll across the battlefield, without owner and without feeling anymore, while the entrails of others throb, and paleness and death show in their faces. The nefarious army already loses the field. Rivers of blood flow and change the color of the field from white and green to crimson).24

The apparent incongruity between Afonso’s humble sanctity and his annihilation of Muslims evokes what Jonathan Riley-Smith has memorably called “crusading as an act of love”: the destruction of nonbelievers on the basis of twisted interpretations of Christian charity. Riley-Smith quotes apologists of the crusades such as eleventh-century Anselm of Lucca, who argued that “punishment could be imposed not out of hatred but out of  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, st. 45. The same episode is narrated much more succinctly in the Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis, according to which Afonso “vyo Noso Senhor Jesu Christo em a Cruz, pela guysa que lho jrmjtom disera. E adorou o com grande ledise e com lagrjmas de prazer de seu coração” (“saw Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, just as the hermit told him. And he worshiped Him with great joy and tears of pleasure from his heart”). Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis, 1: 43. 24  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, st. 52. I correct the fourth line of the stanza, which presents an obvious typo in Pimpão’s edition: “o cesto amortecido.” “Gesto” can be clearly read in the first edition of 1572 (f. 46v). 23

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love; and that wars could be benevolent in intention,” or twelfth-century Ivo of Chartres, for whom “Christians could, in fact, sin if they did not persecute those engaged in evil works” and “wars fought by true Christians were in fact acts of pacification, since their aim was peace.”25 As in the accounts of the crusades or the previous Portuguese chronicles that Camões closely follows in these passages, military and religious aspects are merged in victories over Muslims that are interpreted at the same time as martial feats and Christian miracles. At the end of the battle of Ourique, such diverse elements combine and become memorialized in Portugal’s coat of arms, composed of the shields of the five defeated Muslim kings, the cross of Christ’s apparition to Afonso, and the thirty coins of Judas’ betrayal.26 The connection between the Portuguese coat of arms and the battle of Ourique transforms this specific victory into a foundational event for the entire kingdom: even though it was “in fact a small battle” whose exact location “no one has ever been able to determine for certain,” this embellished triumph over Muslim enemies acquired a symbolic importance that even surpassed Portugal’s actual independence from León.27 A series of other victories against Muslims, rapidly enumerated in a dozen of stanzas of Os Lusíadas, reinforces the idea of Portugal as a polity singularly protected by God and destined to greatness: between the stanzas 55 and 68 of canto 3, Afonso Henriques’ troops conquer Leiria, Arronches, Santarém (“Scabelicastro”), Mafra, Sintra, Lisbon, Óbidos, Alenquer, Torres Vedras, Elvas, Moura, Serpa, Alcácer do Sal, Évora, Beja, Palmela, Sesimbra, and Badajoz. Afonso’s apparent invincibility over more numerous and powerful adversaries repeatedly proves “quanto mais pode a Fé que a força humana” (“how much more powerful is faith than human strength”) because “co braço dos seus Cristo peleja” (“Christ fights using the arms of his followers”).28 According to Camões, such supernatural strength additionally exposes the stubborn folly of “o Mouro pérfido” (“the perfidious Muslim”) for fighting against those assisted “da alta Fortaleza/a quem o Inferno horrífico se rende” (“by the superior force of the One to whom even horrific Hell surrenders”).29

 Riley-Smith, “Crusading,” 188.  Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis, 1:47; Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, sts. 53–54. 27  Diffie, Prelude to Empire, 15. 28  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, sts. 111, 109. 29  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, st. 112. 25 26

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Camões’ narration and interpretation of his kingdom’s origins make clear that Portugal owes its independence and prestige mainly to its conflicts with Muslims, a centuries-old idea previously found in papal bulls and Portuguese chronicles. But, while those medieval texts needed their crusading discourses to justify Portugal’s independence, Os Lusíadas replicates them in a very different period of overseas exploration and expansion. In this new colonial context, the depiction of Muslims as wicked enemies whose elimination constitutes a political and religious duty may seem anachronistic, but it is still useful for the Portuguese during their encounters with Muslims and other non-Christians in Africa and Asia. In all these cases, Camões assures his readers that Portugal will defeat any adversary and come out victorious simply because of its defense of Christianity and the favor of God.

Using History, War, and Religion to Support the Avis Dynasty The utilization of Muslim enemies to justify the independence of Portugal and its close relationship with Rome was indispensable for Afonso Henriques and his successors during the thirteenth and most of the fourteenth century and acquired a new relevance when a different dynasty began governing in 1385. Starting with João I, a natural son of King Pedro I, the rulers of the House of Avis needed to legitimize their power by proving that they were the rightful descendants of Afonso Henriques, at least at a spiritual and symbolic level. As previously mentioned, it was João I’s son, Duarte, who created the position of the cronistas-mores, and the main purpose of these official chroniclers was to establish a unified narrative that connected the origins of Portugal and its struggles against other Iberian polities during previous centuries with its new colonial endeavors in other continents. Therefore, the cronista-mor Fernão Lopes wrote about all the Portuguese kings previous to the House of Avis; his successor Gomes Eanes de Zurara focused on João I and his sons, who promoted the first campaigns of conquest and exploration in North and West Africa; and later chroniclers Rui de Pina, Damião de Gois, João de Barros, and Diogo do Couto continued narrating Portugal’s colonial expansion in Africa and Asia.30 Despite the number of writers involved and the vastness of their historical subjects, ideological motives such as the role  Parkinson, “Fernão Lopes,” 46.

30

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of Portugal as a defender of Christendom against non-Christians remain consistent through these works and are later reflected in Os Lusíadas. Indeed, because many stanzas are directly summarizing or expanding passages from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century chronicles, there is no doubt that Camões studied them, along with other historiographical works not sponsored by Portuguese royalty, such as those by Fernão Lopes de Castanheda and Gaspar Correia.31 The presentation of Portuguese monarchs as political and religious models for other leaders in the Iberian Peninsula and the entire Christian world is clearly related to the problems of royal legitimacy in Portugal, first because of its transformation from county into kingdom during the twelfth century and then because of the change of dynasties in 1385. In an effort to exalt their own kings, Portuguese chroniclers often question the religious orthodoxy, political skills, and personal qualities of other Iberian rulers. Fernão Lopes, for instance, dedicates much of his Crónica de D. Pedro to portray the righteousness of King Pedro of Portugal in contrast to the cruelty of King Pedro of Castile, as exemplified by their interactions with non-Christian characters: Pedro of Castile kills a Muslim leader who had already surrendered, an action that his own subjects condemn as ruthless; Pedro of Portugal, instead, executes two of his own servants charged with theft and murder, even though the victim was a Jew.32 A different strategy is attacking other Christian Iberians with the same crusading rhetoric and biblical references traditionally used against Muslims.33 For example, because Castilians supported the Avignon Papacy after the Western Schism of 1378, Lopes’ Crónica de D. João I calls them “moormente çismaticos e rrevees aa Santa Egreja” (“mostly schismatics and rebels to the Holy Church”) and praises João I for crushing Castile’s troops in Aljubarrota while establishing evident parallelisms with the triumph of Afonso Henriques over Muslims in Ourique.34 Just like in that occasion, Portuguese combatants are in disadvantage because of their small numbers, their poor supplies, and even their advanced age, but they defeat the stronger Castilian army thanks only to their faith and God’s support: “Vẽcer tamanhos arraiãis de gemtes naõ diguamos que foy por 31  Pimpão, “Prefácio,” xi. See also Rodrigues, Fontes dos Lusíadas, which dedicates several chapters to Camões’ utilization of the chronicles by Duarte Galvão, Rui de Pina, and Fernão Lopes. 32  Lopes, Crónica de D. Pedro, 153–154, 28–30. 33  Amado, O passado e o presente, 131–132. 34  Lopes, Crónica de D. João I, 1: 422.

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humanal força mas por divinal juizo, a que prougue de ser asy, e hee graõ maravilha amte os nosos olhos” (“Let us not say that defeating such large armies is due to human strength, but to the judgment of God, who wanted it that way, and it is a great wonder in our eyes”).35 Fernão Lopes’ interest in presenting the Portuguese as favored by God and superior to all other Iberians makes him blur the cultural and religious differences of Portugal’s enemies: Christian Castilians are not depicted or considered any better than Muslim adversaries. The next cronista-mor, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, makes instead a clear distinction between fighting against other Christians, which may be necessary and fair but it is not ideal, and warring against Muslims. At the beginning of his Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, Zurara depicts King João I while overwhelmed with the guilt of having killed Christians to defend his lands; the ruler soon decides that the right way to atone for this sin involves “lauando suas maãos no sangue dos jnfiees” (“washing his hands in the blood of the infidels”).36 According to Zurara, “a guerra dos mouros” (“war against Muslims”) is nothing less than “o mayor seruiço que a Deos pode seer feito per os seus fiees christaãos” (“the greatest service that faithful Christians can do to God”).37 However, because the last Muslim Iberian kingdom, Granada, has a truce with Castile and João I wants to avoid any more conflicts with his Christian neighbors, his only alternative to kill Muslims is invading their territories in North Africa. This is a key moment for both the colonial interests of Portugal and the depiction of Muslim difference in Portuguese texts. The conquest of the African city of Ceuta in 1415 has been interpreted by scholars either “as the first identifiable action in the historical trajectory of early modern European imperialism or as a culminating manifestation of a medieval crusading mentality that promoted Christian– Moorish interaction in conflictive terms.”38 But, from the perspective of medieval and early modern authors, those two options are complementary: Zurara and Camões fully agree on considering the conquest of Ceuta not as a beginning or an end but as one more step in the God-ordained ascent of their kingdom’s power. In the case of the Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, the continuity between Portugal’s expansionist past and its colonialist future becomes crucial  Lopes, Crónica de D. João I, 2: 127.  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 8–9. 37  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 15. 38  Blackmore, Moorings, xv. 35 36

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during a meeting of theologians convoked by João I to discuss if the conquest of an African city qualifies as a just war. According to Zurara, the council agrees on the needlessness of appealing to biblical sources to settle the question: it is instead enough to remember the many feats of Iberian Christian heroes against Muslims, including Afonso Henriques, Alfonso VI of León, and the Cid. Just on the basis of Peninsular history, the theologians conclude that the king “pode mouer guerra comtra quaaesquer jmfiees assy mouros como gemtios, ou quaaesquer outros que per alguũ modo negarem alguũ dos artijgos da samta ffe catholica” (“can wage war on all infidels, either Muslims or Gentiles, or any others who deny any article of the holy Catholic faith”).39 Similar arguments appear repeatedly in documents related to the sons of João I, famously called by Camões the “ínclita geração” (“illustrious generation”) because of their military and intellectual achievements.40 In his treatise Leal conselheiro, King Duarte, João I’s successor, affirms the obligation of all Christians to fight non-­ Christians in order to extend the Church’s power and facilitate conversions: “Muy justamente Nos e todos senhores catholicos lhe devemos fazer guerra pera tornar suas terras a obediencia da santa madre igreja, e poer em liberdade todos aquelles que a nossa ffe quiserem vı ̃r, que livremente o possam fazer” (“In all fairness we and all Catholic lords must fight against them to put their lands at the service of the Holy Mother Church and to free all those who would like to come to our faith, so that they can willingly do so”).41 In a letter addressed to Duarte in 1436, his brother Henrique further merges Portugal’s political interests with the religious war against non-Christians by praising their father João I among other illustrious ancestors, whose military campaigns have made them comparable to none other than Christ, Moses, David, the apostles, the martyrs, and other saints.42 The belligerent Christianity in the texts sponsored or produced by members of the Avis dynasty had a deep impact on Camões’ views and depictions of Muslims. As previously mentioned, political and cultural conflicts in Os Lusíadas are predominantly between Muslims and Christians, which can be only partially explained by the historical circumstances. When Portugal broke into the Indian Ocean trade network, this  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 37.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 4, st. 50. 41  Duarte, Leal conselheiro, 270. 42  Monumenta Henricina, 5: 203–204. 39 40

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area was indeed dominated by Muslim political and commercial forces, which triggered the escalating tensions between Portuguese explorers and the Muslim traders of the city of Calicut (or Kozhikode, on the Malabar Coast).43 The hostility of Muslim locals toward the European newcomers appears in all previous accounts of Gama’s expedition: first, the roteiro or logbook apparently written by Álvaro Velho, a companion to Gama; later, the chronicles by Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, João de Barros, and Damião de Góis.44 However, Camões dramatically emphasizes the religious dimensions of that conflict by narrating a dream in which Bacchus appears disguised as Muhammad to a “sacerdote da lei de Mafamede” (“priest of Muhammad’s law”), an episode that gives rise to “as insídias que ordenava/o Mahomético ódio” (“the snares set by the Mahometic hatred”).45 From Camões’ perspective, the rivalry between Muslims and Christians in India just proves once more the traditional opposition between both groups, similarly to when Heaven determined that twelfth-­ century Portugal “floreça/nas armas contra o torpe Mauritano,/deitando-­ o de si fora” (“flourished in arms against the vile Mauritanian, throwing him away”) or when João I conquered Ceuta “por fazer que o Africano/conheça, pelas armas, quanto excede/a lei de Cristo à lei de Mafamede” (“to teach the African through war how superior the law of Christ is to that of Muhammad”).46 In all these events, no matter the distance between them across continents and centuries, Muslims are represented as intrinsically wrong in their beliefs, customs, and actions and therefore destined to be justly defeated by Portuguese Christians.

 Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3: 19–22; Sérgio, Breve interpretação, 62.  The Roteiro da primera viagem de Vasco da Gama has been attributed to Álvaro Velho since its first edition by Diogo Köpke in 1838. Costa, “Preâmbulo,” xiii. Castanheda’s first volume of his História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia pelos portugueses, in which he included Gama’s trip, appeared in 1551; one year later, Barros published the first volume of his Ásia. Góis’ Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel was published in its entirety between 1566 and 1567. Among these sources and others, Castanheda and Barros are by far the authors most frequently used by Camões: José Maria Rodrigues estimates that their influence can be found in about a third of the stanzas of Os Lusíadas. Rodrigues, Fontes dos Lusíadas, 72–73. 45  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 8, sts. 64, 47. 46  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, st. 20; canto 4, st. 48. 43 44

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The Providential Role of Portugal and the Papal Endorsement of Colonialism The contrived generalization of Muslims from all times and places as “mouros” also serves Camões for a surprising purpose: to compare the supposed union of Muslims around a common religious purpose with the selfish divisions among Christians. Although Camões includes some historical events, like the siege of Lisbon or the battle of Salado, in which Portuguese troops allied with other Christians to fight against Muslims, his depiction of foreign Christians is predominantly unflattering.47 In canto 7 of Os Lusíadas, several stanzas disparage Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Italians for their many vices but especially for their inaction while Muslims dominate in the Mediterranean, including the Holy Places.48 Instead of fighting against Islam, Christian nations are worn down by fratricide wars: because of this, Camões compares them with “os dentes, de Cadmo desparzidos,/que uns aos outros se dão à morte dura” (“the scattered teeth of Cadmus, which viciously kill each other”), despite being “todos de um ventre produzidos” (“all produced from the same womb”).49 Since foreign Christians are indifferent to nobler causes, Camões goes so far as to disdainfully offer them riches to encourage them to fight in Asia and Africa: “Mova-vos já, sequer, riqueza tanta,/pois mover-vos não pode a Casa Santa” (“At least, may the great wealth compel you, since the Holy Places cannot”).50 In contrast, Muslims are “sempre unidos” (“always united”) by their religious duty and common opposition “contra os povos que são de Cristo amantes” (“against those peoples who love Christ”).51 In this way, Camões presents Muslims as an example of unity that European Christians should imitate while also

 Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 3, sts. 57ss, 109ss.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 4–14. 49  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, st. 9. 50  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, st. 11. Among his criticisms of other European nations, Camões is especially harsh against those where Protestantism had replaced Catholicism, such as Germany and England. Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 4, 5. Despite Camões’ evident anti-Protestantism, his proposed union among all Christians to conquer the Holy Places is quite open-minded for his time: as Macedo points out, in the same year in which Os Lusíadas was published, French Catholics killed thousands of Protestants in Paris and the Portuguese celebrated the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre with a procession in Lisbon. Macedo, “Os Lusíadas,” 107. 51  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 9–10. 47 48

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exploiting the medieval stereotype of their inherent enmity against all Christians. Camões’ simultaneous bashing of Muslims for hating Christians and of Christians for not hating Muslims enough allows just one nation to stand out as a glorious exception, a role model, and a hope in the desolate landscape of contemporary Christendom: his own homeland. Throughout Os Lusíadas, Camões repeatedly insists on a few key ideas that define Portugal as a nation: although it is a small kingdom, its inhabitants are devout Christians and peerless fighters, which is why they have God’s support and are destined to build a vast and everlasting empire. As Macedo explains, the contrast between the reduced size of Portugal and the glory of its achievements “prova, simultaneamente, dois factos: a ajuda da Providência a quem tão bem sabe executar-lhe os desígnios e, portanto, a excelência dos escolhidos” (“proves, simultaneously, two facts: Providence’s support of those who know so well how to carry out its plans and, therefore, the excellence of such chosen ones”).52 At the same time, the emphasis on the Portuguese’ courage against all odds establishes a vivid connection between their past struggles for independence and their current colonial endeavors: “Os Portugueses criaram na Península uma comunidade diferente e mantiveram-na, apesar de poucos e pobres, contra tudo e contra todos. No Índico, continuam a ser uma minoria que se dispôs, apesar disso, a procurar e a manter o seu domínio, contra tudo e contra todos” (“The Portuguese created a unique community in the Peninsula and preserved it, despite being few and poor, against everything and everyone. In the Indian Ocean, they continue to be a minority who is willing, despite this, to seek and maintain its dominance, against everything and everyone”).53 Camões even declares that, thanks to the religious and military virtues of its inhabitants, Portugal has proven superior to the Holy Roman Empire and France.54 Such ideas about the singular Christian qualities and providential mission of the Portuguese are related to their fight against Muslims since the first canto of Os Lusíadas, which affirms that Camões’ king Sebastião I represents a “certíssima esperança/de aumento da pequena Cristandade” (“very certain hope of increase for this small part of Christendom”) precisely because he is the “novo temor da Maura lança,/maravilha fatal da  Macedo, “Os Lusíadas,” 128  Macedo, “Os Lusíadas,” 118. 54  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 1, st. 7. 52 53

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nossa idade” (“new terror of the Mauritanian spear, fatal wonder of our age”).55 The same canto acknowledges that Portugal could only grow and prosper thanks to the lands they took from Muslims: Já lhe foi (bem o vistes) concedido, cum poder tão singelo e tão pequeno, tomar ao Mouro forte e guarnecido toda a terra que rega o Tejo ameno. (As you have seen, in spite of its simple and small power, it was however granted the possession of all those lands watered by the pleasant river Tagus, taken away from the strong and well-equipped Muslim).56

Transferring the divine calling of Portugal to fight Muslims and extend Christendom from the Iberian Peninsula to overseas territories, however, required more than just the impressive self-confidence or self-delusion of Portuguese rulers and authors: the support of Rome was as indispensable for Portugal’s colonial endeavors as it had been before to obtain and maintain its independence. The sustained alliance between the Papacy and Portuguese colonialism is evident in dozens of papal bulls and briefs, whose political validity rested on theological foundations that were deeply hostile to non-Christians in general and Muslims in particular.57 Early modern apologists for European colonialism found ideological support in thirteenth-century canonist Enrico da Susa, according to whom not only papal authority extended over both Christians and non-Christians, but also “con la venida de Cristo todo cargo y todo principado y todo dominio y jurisdicción, conforme a Derecho y por justa causa, les fué quitado a todos los infieles por Aquel que tiene la potestad suprema y no puede errar, y se transfirió a los fieles” (“with the coming of Christ, any office, principality, dominion, and jurisdiction was taken lawfully and rightfully from all infidels by the One who has the supreme power and cannot err, and was transferred to the faithful”).58 While not explicitly endorsing Enrico’s ideas, different Popes repeatedly authorized Portuguese rulers to consider their conquests as “Christian offensives designed to reduce

 Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 1, st. 6.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 1, st. 25. 57  For an overview of these papal documents, see Witte, “Les bulles pontificales.” 58  García-Gallo, Manual de historia, 2: 624. See also Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels, 27–28; Saunders, A Social History, 37; Russell-Wood, “Iberian expansion,” 27. 55 56

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territory held by non-Christians” and, therefore, part of a “just war” that was not only legally sound but exemplary for other European nations.59 Already in the fourteenth century, through bulls such as “Apostolicae sedis” in 1320 or “Gaudemus et exaltamus” in 1341, the papacy had conceded part of Portugal’s ecclesiastical taxes to the Portuguese kings in support of their resistance to Muslims from Granada and North Africa.60 After the conquest of Ceuta in 1415, several popes affirmed the territorial rights of Portugal over the newly captured African lands and emphasized the need for all Christian rulers to help the Portuguese in their fight against African Muslims. For example, the bull “Rex regum,” emitted in 1418 and renewed in 1436 and 1443, promised the same indulgences to the combatants in Africa as those granted to the crusaders in the Holy Land.61 Russell-Wood highlights two other bulls because of their consequences for the political expansion of Portugal and its relationships with the colonized: “Dum diversas,” which gave Afonso V “authorization (facultas) to attack, conquer, and subdue Saracens and other enemies of Christianity” in 1452; and “Romanus pontifex,” which “granted the Portuguese a virtual monopoly over all conquest, navigation, and commerce from the Maghrib to ‘the Indies’” in 1454.62 This last bull, called by Boxer “the formal charter of Portuguese expansion,” specifies that Portuguese kings may “quoscunque sarracenos et paganos aliosque Christi inimicos ubicunque constitutos ac regna, ducatus, principatus, dominia, possessiones et mobilia ac immobilia bona quecunque per eos detenta ac possessa inuadendi, conquirendi, expugnandi debellandi et subiugandi illorumque personas in perpetuam seruitutem redigendi” (“invade, conquer, vanquish, and subjugate all Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ wherever they live, along with their kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all their movable and immovable goods, and reduce their persons to perpetual slavery”).63 The language of such bulls, including deliberate ambivalences and generalizations, allowed

 Russell-Wood, “Iberian expansion,” 27.  Monumenta Henricina, 1: 133–135, 194–199. 61  Monumenta Henricina, 2: 282–286. Similar indulgences and privileges for the participants in the Portuguese wars in Africa and Asia were periodically confirmed by bulls such as “Intenta salutis” in 1459, “Orthodoxae fidei” in 1486, and “In sacra Petri sede” in 1514. Alguns documentos, 25–26, 57, 363. 62  Russell-Wood, “Iberian Expansion,” 27–28. 63  Boxer, “Faith and Empire,” 73; Monumenta Henricina, 12: 75, 76. 59 60

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their justifications of conquest and slavery to be readily applied to all newly found or subdued lands, whatever their particular circumstances.64 The ideological effect of these papal statements is noticeable in the frequent references to them by the members of the Avis House, who invoke them using a circular logic: one can be sure that God protects Portuguese campaigns against non-Christians because the Pope has declared it, while at the same time the Pope’s decrees are to be observed because God endorses them. In this way, Duarte I identifies the main reason to battle Muslims as the “seruiço de Noso Senhor Deus […] pois o santo padre asy o manda” (“service to Our Lord God … for the Holy Father so commands”) and his brother Henrique can affirm that “da guerra dos mouros ser serujço de Deus nom ha que duujdar; pois a jgreja o detrimyna” (“there is no doubt that the war against Muslims is a service to God, because the Church so determines”).65 The material effects of the papal support of Portuguese colonialism are even easier to perceive: explorers just needed to erect a “padrão,” an inscribed stone cross or column, to claim ownership of an unknown territory, as Vasco da Gama did in several places of Africa and Asia during his voyage to India. With these pillars, Gama “tomou liçitamente posse pera coroa destes Regnos de tudo o que descobrira atte o Regno de Calecut” (“lawfully took possession of all that he discovered until the kingdom of Calicut for the crown of our kingdoms”) by virtue of the papal bulls issued by Nicholas V and Sixtus IV, as narrated by the chronicler Damião de Góis.66 As Gama’s actions and Góis’ explanation make clear, by the end of the fifteenth century the Portuguese were no longer discussing the theological or historical reasons to fight non-Christians and take their lands, as they had done in Zurara’s times. As long as they had the Pope’s authorization, Iberian explorers were entirely comfortable with arriving to a new land and instantly claiming it as theirs, as they did in countless places around the world, including in the just discovered Americas.

 Russel-Wood, “Iberian Expansion,” 28.  Monumenta Henricina, 6: 94; 5: 203. 66  Góis, Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, 1: 107. Later European imperial powers followed the Portuguese example by using, instead of padrões, a variety of objects to take symbolic possession of new territories: during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Dutch, English, and French explorers “claimed lands by hanging and burying plates and coins, and painting signs and planting their crosses and flags.” Miller, “The Doctrine of Discovery,” 21. 64 65

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The conviction of counting with the support of both God and his earthly vicar leads Camões to write this famously hyperbolic formulation of the unequaled expansionism of his homeland: Não faltarão Cristãos atrevimentos nesta pequena casa Lusitana: de África tem marítimos assentos; é na Ásia mais que todas soberana; na quarta parte nova os campos ara; e, se mais mundo houvera, lá chegara. (There will be no shortage of daring Christians in this small house of Portugal, which has maritime bases in Africa, surpasses everybody in ­sovereignty in Asia, and plows the fields of the New World. And if there were still more continents, it would have already found them).67

Camões was here paraphrasing João de Barros, who had written that Portugal was “ũa nação a que Deus deu tanto ânimo, que se tevera criado outros mundos já lá tevera metido outros padrões de vitórias” (“a nation to which God gave so much courage that, if He had created more worlds, they would have already conquered them”).68 The same absolute faith in the all-encompassing reach of Portugal’s power because of its people’s bravery appears in the conclusion of Os Lusíadas, in which Camões addresses his king Sebastião I and praises the incomparable valor of his subjects, who confront all kinds of perils and adversities around the world, Muslims obviously among them: Olhai que ledos vão, por várias vias, quais rompentes liões e bravos touros, dando os corpos a fomes e vigias, a ferro, a fogo, a setas e pelouros, a quentes regiões, a plagas frias, a golpes de Idolátras e de Mouros, a perigos incógnitos do mundo, a naufrágios, a pexes, ao profundo. (See how joyful they go, along so many routes, like rampant lions and fierce bulls, surrendering their bodies to hunger and vigils, iron, fire, arrows and  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, st. 14.  Barros, Ásia, 1: 170.

67 68

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cannonballs, hot regions, cold plagues, attacks by idolaters and Muslims, the unknown dangers of the world, the shipwrecks, the fish, the abysses).69

The description of these intrepid explorers and their commitment to extend both Christianity and colonial power with the ferocity of a bull or a lion evokes the beginning of the epic, in which Camões announced his intention to sing of “aqueles Reis que foram dilatando/a Fé, o Império, e as terras viciosas/de África e de Ásia andaram devastando” (“those kings who expanded the faith and the empire, while devastating the depraved lands of Africa and Asia”).70 In these two passages, the Portuguese appear as fierce conquerors of Muslims and other non-Christians in distant lands, once again connecting the previous history of Portugal summarized in cantos 3 and 4 with its colonial present and future. Thanks to the centuries-­ long accumulation of religious reasons put forward by rulers, authors, and Popes to justify attacking non-Christians, the violence of colonialism does not even need to be excused or concealed: the destruction of other peoples and the devastation of their lands are all part of God’s will, for the benefit of the Catholic Church and European Christians.

Friendly Muslims and Portuguese Expansionism Camões’ allusions to different conflicts against Muslims as the basis of Portugal’s independence and colonial expansion, as well as his passionate defense of the rights of Portuguese Christians to conquer the lands of non-Christians, fully agree with the abundance of extremely hateful terms he uses to refer to Muslims: “a infiel e falsa gente” (“unfaithful and false people”), “o Mouro pérfido” (“the perfidious Muslim”), “o povo imundo” (“the filthy people”), “inimigos do antigo nome santo” (“enemies of the ancient holy name”), “cães” (“dogs”), and “o povo bruto” (“the brutish people”).71 But to focus only on these Islamophobic aspects of Camões’ poem would give an erroneous impression of it, because, although Os Lusíadas does include bloody skirmishes with non-Christians and stereotypically vicious and treacherous Muslims, those moments are scarce and brief, while entire cantos are occupied by peaceful exchanges with African and Indian natives, most of them Muslims. Indeed, two of  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 10, st. 147.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 1, st. 2. 71  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 2, st. 6; canto 3, st. 112; canto 7, sts. 2, 7, 9, 13. 69 70

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the most important characters in the epic are friendly, righteous Muslims, something especially noteworthy since Camões individualizes few of his characters, Christians or not. His attention to these two Muslims also contrasts with the anonymity that prevails among non-Christians in most of the Portuguese chronicles, as noticed by Alice Cruz in Zurara’s Crónica da tomada de Ceuta: “The Moors are shown to us as a homogenous and undifferentiated whole, so patently perfidious that there is no need to describe them. One exception appears solely to confirm the vile character of the Moors.”72 That exception in Zurara’s chronicle is a gigantic, naked Black “mouro,” a fearsome savage armed only with stones.73 Camões’ exceptions, instead, are civilized and amiable Muslims that, just like similar characters in medieval Iberian works such as the Llibre dels fets or Tirant lo Blanch, become crucial contributors to the colonial endeavors of Christians. The first Muslim ally of Gama is the king of Melinde, who welcomes the Portuguese after they faced the hostility of other Muslims in Mozambique and Mombasa. Camões here employs his usual literary technique of attributing Gama’s good and bad fortune to mythological figures: according to the poem, the opposition of African Muslims to the Portuguese is due to the influence of Bacchus, who resents Portugal’s future dominion in India; likewise, the hospitality of Melinde’s inhabitants results from Venus seducing Jupiter and gaining his favor for Gama and his men. As António Salgado Júnior points out, the interventions of the Olympians in Os Lusíadas frequently occur during events that Portuguese chroniclers already considered miraculous.74 For example, when the lack of wind impeded Gama and his crew to land on Mombasa, where Muslims were preparing to attack them, Barros and Castanheda considered it a sign of God’s protection; Camões, instead, depicted Venus and the Nereids pushing the ships away.75 Something similar happens with Gama’s favorable reception in Melinde, which Álvaro Velho records without any special amazement but later chroniclers interpret as proof of divine intervention.76 Barros contraposes the king’s religious prejudices, common to “all Muslims,” with his good personal qualities: “Pôsto que ao nome cristão  Cruz, “Between the Moor and the African,” 14.  Zurara, Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 204. 74  Salgado, Os Lusíadas e a viagem do Gama, 28–31. 75  Barros, Ásia, 1: 148–149; Castanheda, História do descobrimento, 1: 29; Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 2, sts. 18–30. 76  Velho, Roteiro, 35–38. 72 73

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tivesse aquêle natural ódio que lhe tẽem tôdolos mouros, […] era homem bem inclinado e sesudo” (“Although he had the same natural hatred of Christianity as all Muslims, he was a man of good inclinations and good sense”).77 For Barros, however, the king’s righteousness and wisdom are not enough to explain his abnormal trust in the Portuguese when he confidently visits their ships, “a qual facilidade os nossos atribuíram mais a obra de Deus que a outra cousa” (“an ease that our men attributed more to the work of God than to anything else”).78 Castanheda agrees with Barros and affirms that the king of Melinde was hospitable to the Portuguese simply because “nosso senhor queria que a India se descobrisse” (“Our Lord wanted India to be discovered”).79 Camões’ more convoluted account of the event involves several deities favorable to the Portuguese (Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, and Fame) but supports in a mythological key the same religious idea of Barros and Castanheda: supernatural causes are the best explanation for the friendly attitude of an African Muslim king toward Christian foreigners. Despite the mythological machinations behind the hospitality of the king of Melinde, his depiction in Os Lusíadas is deeply humane and sympathetic. He is first commended by other Muslims because of his “bondade,/condição liberal, sincero peito,/magnificência grande e humanidade” (“goodness, liberal condition, sincerity, great magnificence, and humanity”), and all his subsequent actions confirm such praises.80 It may seem paradoxical that this Muslim king is the addressee of Gama’s lengthy discourse on Portugal’s history, loaded with belligerence against Islam, but his reaction serves Camões as evidence of how admirable the feats of the Portuguese are, even to foreign non-Christians: the king of Melinde praises “o sublime coração” (“the sublime heart”) of the rulers of Portugal and “a antiga fortaleza,/a lealdade d’ ânimo e nobreza” (“the ancient strength, loyalty of spirit, and nobility”) of their subjects.81 Before that flattering response, mostly “the king listens in attentive, if symbolically subjugated silence,” in Blackmore’s words.82 Like similar Muslim characters in Iberian works from the Middle Ages, the king of Melinde’s main role is to serve as a literary witness of the power of Christians, by  Barros, Ásia, 1: 149.  Barros, Ásia, 1: 150. 79  Castanheda, História do descobrimento, 1: 32. 80  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 2, st. 71. 81  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 5, st. 90. 82  Blackmore, Moorings, 83. 77 78

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acknowledging their astounding military feats and noticing God’s support behind them. The second major Muslim ally of Gama, Monçaide, takes that recognition of Christians’ superiority to its logical conclusion by converting to their religion, following the steps of many “good Muslims” in medieval Iberian works such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria or Tirant lo Blanch. In all these cases, a Muslim’s baptism represents his final submission not only to a different religion but also to a Christian political and cultural system. Such medieval “dreams of conversion,” as John Tolan calls them, appear in multiple European literary traditions with a similar purpose: Muslims’ baptisms “become events in the perennial struggle between Christians and pagans, a struggle that is destined to end in Christian victory.”83 In the second half of the sixteenth century, after Muslims had proven much more resistant to conversion than what medieval authors had anticipated, Camões’ pious dreams were accordingly more modest. Monçaide is the only Christianized Muslim in the entire epic, in contrast with the ambitions of Portuguese chroniclers that had envisioned massive conversions as one of the results of their colonial expansion: according to Barros, God allowed Portugal’s overseas conquests because “por sua misericórdia queria abrir as portas de tanta infidelidade e idolatria pera salvação de tantas mil almas, que o demónio no centro daquelas regiões e províncias bárbaras tinha cativas” (“by his mercy, He wanted to open the doors of so much infidelity and idolatry to save many thousand souls that were captives of the devil in those barbaric regions and provinces”).84 Instead, in an episode of Os Lusíadas in which the personified rivers Ganges and Indus appear in dreams to Manuel I, they prophesy that the king will subjugate and receive tribute from all the peoples that the Portuguese encounter in India, but nothing is said about religious conversion as a result of those future victories.85 The historical record on Monçaide is varied and contradictory; because of this, it is especially useful to examine how Camões accepts or modifies the accounts of previous writers in order to accomplish his own ideological purposes. According to Álvaro Velho, the Portuguese were received in Calicut by “dois mouros de Tunes, que sabiam falar castelhano e genovês” (“two Muslims from Tunis, who knew how to speak Castilian and  Tolan, Sons of Ishmael, 67.  Barros, Ásia, 1: 17. 85  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 4, sts. 73–74. 83 84

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Genoese”).86 Velho later tells of a Muslim that warns the Portuguese against disembarking, because, according to him, the local king cuts off the head of any visitor who arrives without gold; this anonymous Muslim can be reasonably identified as one of the “two Muslims from Tunis” that were able to communicate with the Portuguese.87 Finally, one of the Tunisian Muslims asks to go to Portugal, because in Calicut there are rumors of him being a Christian collaborator, which makes him fear for his life; Gama seemingly accepts his petition, because, during the return journey, Velho mentions some letters “escritas en mourisco por mão de um mouro que connosco vinha” (“written in Arabic by a Muslim that came with us”).88 Fernão Lopes de Castanheda individualizes one of the two Muslims from Tunis as a Berber named Bõtaibo or Mõçaide, who “sabia falar castelhano, & conhecia muyto bem os Portugueses” (“could speak Castilian and knew the Portuguese very well”); this Muslim advises Gama “como amigo” (“as a friend”) and saves his life by warning him that the king of Calicut wants to behead him “por induzimẽnto dos mouros, q̃ tinhão feito crer a el rey q̃ erão ladrões, & andauão a furtar” (“at the instigation of the Muslims, who had led the king to believe that they were thieves with the intention of robbing him”).89 Castanheda also mentions the letter written by him but not that he accompanies the Portuguese on their way home; instead, Castanheda includes another Muslim character whose conversion seems to be the basis for Monçaide’s baptism in Os Lusíadas.90 On the island of Anjediva, the Portuguese capture a Muslim who is soon baptized as Gaspar and godfathered by Gama, although he ends up crushing the Christians’ evangelizing dreams by converting to Judaism: “E este se tornou despois Christão, & Vasco da gama q̃ foy seu padrinho lhe pos nome Gaspar á hõrra dũ dos tres Reys magos, & deulhe ho seu apelido da gama, & despois se disse que este Gaspar da gama era judeu por se achar q̃ fora casado com hũa judia que moraua em Cochim” (“And he later became Christian and Vasco da Gama, who was his godfather, named him Gaspar in honor of one of the Magi and gave him his own surname Da Gama. And it is said that this Gaspar da Gama later  Velho, Roteiro, 40.  Velho, Roteiro, 61. 88  Velho, Roteiro, 64, 69. 89  Castanheda, História do descobrimento, 1: 41, 53, 61. 90  Castanheda, História do descobrimento, 1: 65. 86 87

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became a Jew, because it was found out that he was married to a Jewess who lived in Kochi”).91 Because the first volume of João de Barros’ Ásia appeared in 1552, only one year after Castanheda published the first volume of his História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia, both authors probably worked with similar sources but could not imitate each other’s narrative of Gama’s journey. According to Barros, “Monsaide” or “Monçaide” was from Tunis and had previously had contacts with the Portuguese in Oran; immediately after introducing him, Barros adds that “da hora que entrou em os navios assi se fêz familiar a Vasco da Gama, que se veo com êle pera êste reino onde morreu cristão” (“from the moment he arrived to the ships, he became so close to Vasco da Gama that he came with him to this kingdom, where he died as a Christian”).92 Monçaide’s natural inclination to befriend the Portuguese and accept Christianity is a mystery that intrigues Barros: the author considers the possibility of Monçaide just longing for his homeland and enjoying the company of other Mediterranean people, but he prefers a more supernatural, and selfish, explanation: “Parece que Deus o trouxe àquelas partes pera proveito nosso” (“It seems that God brought him to those places for our benefit”).93 Some pages later, Barros includes Monçaide’s salvation and his service to the Portuguese as part of the same divine plan: “Parece que o chamava Deus por algũa boa disposição que nêle havia para se salvar, segundo logo mostrou na verdade que tratava e fiéis conselhos que deu” (“It seems that God called him to his salvation because of a good disposition in him, as was soon demonstrated by his honest treatment and loyal advice”).94 Barros also mentions Gaspar da Gama, but in his account Gaspar is a Polish Jew that, under the threat of torture, decides to embrace Christianity while attributing the Portuguese’ arrival to God’s mercy for him and other non-Christians:

91  Castanheda, História do descobrimento, 1: 68–69. Álvaro Velho narrates this same event in an entirely different way: according to him, a man who “falava muito bem veneziano” (“spoke Venetian very well”) tried to make the Portuguese believe that he was a Christian captive; after confessing under torture that he was a spy, he became imprisoned by Gama. Velho, Roteiro, 74–77. Velho never mentions this spy’s real religion or his conversion to Christianity. 92  Barros, Ásia, 1: 157. 93  Barros, Ásia, 1: 157. 94  Barros, Ásia, 1: 159.

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A vinda dêles naquelas partes, lhe parecia que não era sòmente por salvação dêle, mas ainda pola de tantas mil almas como havia no gentio daquelas partes. Porque não estava em razão homens tam ocidentais como era a gente português, os quais viviam nos fins da terra, virem às partes do Oriente per tanta distância de mares e caminhos não sabidos, senão pera algum grande mistério que Deus queria obrar per êles. (He thought that their arrival to those regions was not only for his salvation, but also for the good of the thousands of Gentile souls that were there. Because it did not seem reasonable that men from a land so far in the West as the Portuguese, who lived at the other end of earth, crossed such an expansion of unknown seas and routes until these Eastern regions, except for some great mystery that God wanted to work through them).95

The importance of providentialism for Barros obviously excludes the possibility of Gaspar later recanting his forced conversion to Christianity, as in Castanheda’s account. In Barros, the conversions of both Monçaide and Gaspar are precious evidence of how God has undoubtedly chosen the Portuguese to conquer and evangelize the rest of the world. Damião de Góis, finally, does not add much to Barros’ account, except exaggerating Monçaide’s good disposition to the point that during his first encounter with the newcomers he immediately promises to do anything he can to serve the king of Portugal.96 As in Barros, his conversion is emphasized by Góis as definitive: Monçaide accompanied Gama to Portugal and left “ha seita de Mafamede, em que nasçera pola lei de nosso Senhor Iesu Christo, em q̃ viueo, & acabou quomo bom, & catholico Christão” (“the sect of Muhammad, in which he was born, for the law of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in which he lived and died as a good and Catholic Christian”).97 Góis also follows Barros when presenting Gaspar da Gama as a Polish Jew and stressing the sincerity of his conversion: “Se fez Christão, & lhe chamarão Gaspar da gama, do qual se elRei dom Emanuel depois seruio em muitos negoçios na India, & ho fez caualleiro de sua casa, dandolhe tenças, ordenados, & offiçios de que se menteue toda sua vida abastadamente” (“He became a Christian and he was named Gaspar da Gama. And later he served in many affairs in India to King Manuel, who made him knight of his house and granted him positions and salaries

 Barros, Ásia, 1: 172.  Góis, Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, 1: 89. 97  Góis, Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, 1: 95. 95 96

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with which he lived in abundance for the rest of his life”).98 In this way, Góis refutes Castanheda’s more problematic account and highlights that conversion is both a religious and political process, by which Muslims become subjects of the king of Portugal and collaborators in his colonial projects. Camões’ literary decisions regarding the character of Monçaide are much different from those taken with the king of Melinde. In previous chronicles, the king was a marginal figure, which simply demonstrated how Providence protected the Portuguese even in distant lands and through the unlikely help of a Muslim. His presence in one or two pages of the chronicles was expanded by Camões to five of the ten cantos of Os Lusíadas, even if the king’s only function in most of them is to listen in astonished silence while Vasco da Gama tells him the history of Portugal and his voyage to India. In the case of Monçaide, Camões not only had many more narrative elements to gather from the chronicles, but some of them contradicted each other or intermingled with the story of Gaspar’s conversion. Therefore, instead of expanding the figure of Monçaide, Camões simplified and clarified it, basing his depiction on a few key elements: Monçaide’s origin, his sympathy for the Portuguese, his service to them, and his final conversion. Anything that did not support one of those aspects was eliminated, such as the other Muslim from Tunis or any reference to Gaspar da Gama, whose conversion story simply became Monçaide’s. As in most of Os Lusíadas, Camões adds or subtracts details from the chronicles but does not modify what he keeps. Therefore, his portrayal of Monçaide remains very faithful to the previous narratives. He is “um Mahometa, que nascido/fora na região da Berberia” (“a Muslim who had been born in North Africa”) and who speaks “a língua Hispana” (“the Iberian language”), that is, Castilian, as in the accounts by Velho and Castanheda.99 Monçaide’s attraction to the Portuguese is due in part to his amazement at their unprecedented journey and in part to camaraderie toward his “neighbors” from the Mediterranean: he is initially “espantado […] da grão viagem” (“amazed … at their great voyage”) and later joyous, because “alegria não pode ser tamanha/que achar gente vizinha em terra estranha” (“there is no greater joy than meeting neighboring people

 Góis, Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, 1: 105.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 24, 25.

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in a strange land”).100 The feeling is mutual: the first Portuguese that Monçaide invites to his home “como se longa fora já a amizade,/co ele come e bebe e lhe obedece” (“eats and drinks with him, and serves him, as if they already had a long friendship”); when the Muslim arrives to Vasco da Gama’s ship, “o Capitão o abraça, em cabo ledo,/ouvindo clara a língua de Castela” (“the captain embraces him, extremely joyful, at hearing the language of Castile”).101 Like Gaspar da Gama in Barros’ account, Monçaide becomes convinced that the nearly miraculous arrival of the Portuguese to India proves that they are carrying a divine mission, which is why God “vos guia e vos defende/dos imigos, do mar, do vento irado” (“guides you and defends you from enemies, from the sea, and from the wrathful wind”).102 Camões ingeniously avoids some chronicles’ long and tedious descriptions of the physical and human geography of India by instead using Monçaide to introduce the Portuguese explorers and the reader to the history, society, politics, and customs of Malabar, the Indian region dominated by Calicut. At the same time, Monçaide presents the Portuguese to the Samorim or king of Calicut and his main minister, the Catual. Although the Samorim and his courtiers are Hindus, the stay of Gama in India is determined by his relationships with Muslims: Monçaide’s efforts to build trust between the Portuguese and the Indians are frustrated by Muslim advisors and traders that sow discord among them. When the other Muslims of Calicut plot to delay Gama’s mission until ships arrive from Mecca to destroy the Portuguese, Monçaide saves the Christian explorers precisely thanks to his adhesion to Islam: Camões says that the others did not mistrust him “por ser Mouro como eles (antes era/participante em quanto maquinavam)” (“because he was a Muslim like them, and instead they let him participate in their plotting”).103 Although religiously and culturally one of them, Monçaide is unique in one crucial aspect: while the other Muslims are influenced by the devil and Bacchus, he is inspired by “o Governador dos Céus e gentes” (“the ruler of heavens and peoples”), who “influiu piadosos acidentes/de afeição” (“instilled benign feelings of affection”) in him.104 The role of divine Providence behind Monçaide’s  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 26, 27.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, sts. 28, 29. 102  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, st. 31. 103  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 9, st. 6. 104  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 9, st. 5. 100 101

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inclinations and actions agrees with Barros’ chronicle, and Camões follows him and Góis when he states not only the Muslim’s conversion but also his eventual salvation, which he celebrates with delight: Ditoso Africano, que a clemência divina assi tirou de escura treva, e tão longe da pátria achou maneira pera subir à pátria verdadeira! (Blessed African, whom divine mercy thus rescued from deep darkness and, so far from his homeland, found a way to raise him to the true homeland!)105

In sum, while all the details of Monçaide’s story come from previous accounts, Camões carefully selects some of them and puts them together in a streamlined narrative that ends up explicitly affirming the role of Providence in protecting the Portuguese and converting non-Christians. In this way, Monçaide becomes one more element in Os Lusíadas’ interpretation of Portuguese history as part of God’s design for a world dominated by Christians, a colonial plan in which the collaboration of some friendly Muslims is as useful as the opposition of others that allow the Portuguese to exhibit their heroic courage and superiority.

The Ambivalent Pragmatism of Portuguese Colonizers Camões’ ambivalence when representing Muslims and their relationships with Christians derives from similar factors to those that generated the contradictory depictions of Muslims in Iberian medieval works, in spite of the change of setting and circumstances. While medieval Christians needed to both fight and collaborate with Muslims to ensure the survival of their polities or to expand their territories in the Iberian Peninsula, early modern Christians soon realized the usefulness of the same double strategy when trying to conquer overseas lands or to dominate commercial routes. In the specific case of the Portuguese in Africa and Asia, collaborative relationships with locals were especially important because their empire was more of a vastly spread commercial network than a traditional aggregation of territories and subjects. For this reason, and despite all the 105

 Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 9, st. 15.

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crusading and Islamophobic discourses previously mentioned, Portuguese chronicles and other documents are also sprinkled with appeals to mercy and cooperation with Muslims and other non-Christians, because of moral motives, pragmatic purposes, or a combination of both. For instance, in the same pages of the Leal conselheiro in which King Duarte advocates for fighting against Muslims in Africa and invading their territories, he moderates these actions according to the rules of any just war: Christian participants in such conflicts “podem matar, ferir e roubar, segundo per seu rey e senhor for ordenado” (“can kill, wound, and steal, according to the orders of their king and lord”), but they must do this while “husando porem de piedade quanto mais poderem (“using, however, as much mercy as possible”).106 Duarte gives similar advice to his brother Henrique in a letter of 1437, when the prince was preparing to attack Tangier: the king recommends him “que ajais piedade e misericordia, em toda coussa que rrazoadamente a poderdes auer, mandando gardar de morte as molheres, moços e desposados e os presos, quando sem periguo bem saluar se poderem” (“to have pity and mercy, insofar as it can be reasonably had, by sparing the lives of women, boys, husbands, and prisoners, every time they can be saved without any danger for us”).107 In the same way in which colonial needs could often be found behind any “compassion” or “tolerance” toward Muslim enemies during the Middle Ages, practical reasons may have been much more consequential than Christian principles or the rules of a just war to moderate the Islamophobia of Portuguese campaigns overseas. During the fifteenth century, the more aggressive Portuguese discourses against African Muslims are tempered simply by the incapacity of Christians to defeat them and their essential role in Mediterranean commerce. After the Portuguese conquered Ceuta in 1415, the African trade route moved to Tangier and the attempt by the Avis House to take this city in 1437 ended up in a debacle for Portugal. By the mid-fifteenth century, a combination of military defeats and economic convenience also softened the methods and purposes of the Portuguese in West Africa, where crusading plans were replaced by commercial alliances.108 Even the popes gradually relaxed the prohibitions for Christians to do business with their supposedly mortal enemies: by request of the Portuguese monarchs, first Martin V and then  Duarte, Leal conselheiro, 270.  Monumenta Henricina, 6: 106. 108  Russell, “White Kings,” 154–155. 106 107

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Eugene IV allowed them to negotiate with Muslims, excepting some specific goods such as tools and weapons.109 Decades later, other popes absolved those Portuguese who had been excommunicated for breaking their rules to trade with Muslims and pagans, arguing that these illicit relations had however facilitated the conversion of some slaves and commercial partners to Christianity.110 These may have just been pious excuses, because missionary efforts in Africa were seemingly very poor or nonexistent until the reign of João II, in the last decades of the fifteenth century, and even then the king himself “owned unbaptized slaves who retained their African names of Tanba, Tonba and Baybry,” demonstrating how the Christianization of Africans was not a priority anywhere, not even in the Portuguese court.111 Once the Portuguese colonial campaigns acquired a definitive penchant for gold, slaves, and spices, writers had to deal somehow with the contradiction between the religious war against Muslims and the quotidian commercial relations with them. Zurara’s crusading rhetoric, which filled many pages in the Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, became increasingly inconsistent in his later Crónica do descobrimento e conquista da Guiné: in Blackmore’s words, “whatever crusading mentality Zurara invokes in Guiné is a kind of performance, a remnant of a previous discursive tradition that seeks to justify the raw capitalist underpinnings of the Guinean expeditions with the hallowed veneer of militant Christianity.”112 Barros, who at the beginning of his Ásia wrote that Afonso Henriques had bequeathed a “contínua guerra com esta pérfida gente dos arábios” (“continuous war with this perfidious Arab people”) to all Portuguese kings, later defended merciful collaboration with non-Christians as the soundest political strategy by contrasting the experiences of different imperial administrators: for instance, the cruelty of Jorge de Meneses toward the inhabitants of the Moluccas only isolated and impoverished the Portuguese colonizers; Nuno da Cunha’s alliance with the “mouros honrados” (“honest Muslims”) of Melinde, instead, helped him protect the recently conquered city of Mombasa.113

 Monumenta Henricina, 6: 58–61.  Alguns documentos, 46, 141. 111  Russell, “White Kings,” 155; Saunders, A Social History, 40. 112  Blackmore, Moorings, 44. 113  Barros, Ásia, 1: 11; 4: 122; 4: 144. 109 110

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How to reconcile the religious justifications for Portugal’s colonialism with its commercial purposes and how to accordingly redefine the relationships between Christians and non-Christians are issues that become particularly problematic in Os Lusíadas because the materialistic purposes of Vasco da Gama’s expedition were so evident. The first Portuguese explorer who navigated until the southern end of Africa and crossed to the east was Bartolomeu Dias in 1488; after that, “o problema do caminho da Índia—o problema náutico e geográfico—, era um problema resolvido” (“the issue of the route to India, as a nautical and geographical problem, was solved”), as António Sérgio explains; therefore, Gama’s expedition was no longer about explorations or discoveries but about “organizar na Índia a compra e expedição das mercadorias, e negociar diplomàticamente, para esse efeito, com os soberanos orientais” (“organizing the purchase and dispatch of goods in India, and to negotiate diplomatically, for this purpose, with the Eastern rulers”).114 Such pedestrian objectives, however, did not fit well with the religious propaganda that surrounded Portuguese colonial projects and granted them the support of Rome. Vasco da Gama himself, according to Velho, denied the commercial goals of his mission during his first encounter with the king of Calicut: Gama declared that the Portuguese kings were sending expeditions to India “porquanto sabiam que, em aquelas partes, havia reis cristãos como eles. E que, por este respeito, mandavam a descobrir esta terra; e não porque lhes fosse necessário ouro nem prata, porque tinham tanto em abumdância que lhes não era necessãrio havê-los desta terra” (“because they knew that there were Christian kings like them in those regions. And that, for this reason, they sent to discover this land and not because they needed gold or silver, which they had in abundance and did not need to look for here”).115 In Camões’ epic, which describes Gama’s trip as the triumphant culmination of centuries of Portuguese feats at the service of God, a similar repudiation of any material interest would have been expected and logical, so much so that some critics are convinced it is there. Lawrence Lipking affirms that “Os Lusíadas managed imperiously to suppress the base commercial motives or lust for profit that fueled da Gama’s voyage,” while agreeing with Richard Helgerson on how Camões precisely used the epic genre to accentuate the military and aristocratic aspects of the narrative, since “an ‘epic of commerce’ would  Sérgio, Breve interpretação, 59.  Velho, Roteiro, 47.

114 115

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have seemed a ridiculous paradox.”116 Both Lipking and Helgerson, however, are refuted by the epic itself: during the first encounter between Vasco da Gama and the Samorim, Camões replaces Velho’s denial of commercial motives by an explicit defense of them: Gama offers the Indian ruler “pactos e lianças/de paz e de amizade” (“pacts and alliances of peace and friendship”) in order to allow their two nations to exchange products “por que creçam as rendas e abastanças/(por quem a gente mais trabalha e sua)/de vossos Reinos” (“so the profits and wealth, for which most people work and sweat, can grow in your kingdoms”).117 Camões utilizes this episode to clarify the connections between colonial expansion and trading relationships with non-Christians: military actions may be occasionally necessary, but commerce is the real basis for peaceful exchanges across distant lands and cultures. It is true, as Lipking insists, that purely material reasons do not satisfactorily explain the risks and sacrifices of Portuguese explorers: “Self-interest alone would hardly have spurred da Gama and his men; fewer than 1/3 of those who set out returned, and they did not come back rich. […] For those who gave their lives to the nation, trade was not the point.”118 But, at least in Camões’s epic, “é o empreendimiento do comércio (do comércio externo, dir-se-ia hoje) que constitui a base material e histórica da aventura em Os Lusíadas” (“it is the enterprise of commerce—of foreign commerce, we would say today—what constitutes the material and historical basis of the adventure in Os Lusíadas”), in the words of Fernando Luso Soares.119 For Camões, colonial purposes and the search for glory do not exclude commercial interests. As Balachandra Rajan succinctly puts it, “commerce is the ally of imperialism, not its replacement.”120 This is a crucial point for understanding the durability of the contradictory depictions of Muslims and Christian-­ Muslim relationships in Portuguese chronicles and Os Lusíadas, despite the Islamophobic and crusading discourses that fill many of their pages. Just like in medieval Iberia, the Portuguese campaigns abroad needed Muslims as enemies to justify any hostilities against them but also as allies and collaborators to effectively transform those transient confrontations into lasting political and economic power. From this perspective, it is  Lipking, “The View from Almada Hill,” 166; Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood, 190.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 7, st. 62. 118  Lipking, “The View from Almada Hill,” 167. 119  Soares, As concepções jurídico-políticas, 57. 120  Rajan, “Milton and Camões,” 184–185. 116 117

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perfectly reasonable for Camões to dedicate entire cantos to narrate the historical animosity between Portuguese Christians and all Muslims while at the same time making his Christian heroes entirely dependent on the help of Muslims from Africa and India. As mentioned in previous chapters, some medieval Christians certainly advocated for eliminating all Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, but practical reasons made that prospect impossible until early modernity. In a similar way, even if the Portuguese had preferred to dispense with any Muslim participation in the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, they “were able to hold only certain crucial ports; in many ports and in some of the hinterland, the Muslims continued to be the most powerful single element wherever a non-Islamicate culture had not been sufficiently deeply entrenched.”121 The demand of Muslim collaborators was part of a more general need for the assistance of any locals, because of Portugal’s “‘imperfect’ domination of Asian commerce.”122 As Russell-Wood argues, the Portuguese empire was built using not only the bodies and strength of non-Europeans but also their minds and wills, as in the case of Monçaide: “Indigenous peoples of Africa, India, and Asia, met not only the physical demands—sexual, military, transportation, and labour—of Portuguese overseas, but provided them with skills, information, and intelligence, which contributed substantially to what used to be referred to as ‘the expansion of Europe.’”123 Because of this, Camões could not just demonize all non-Christians when narrating the building of the Portuguese empire, despite his many prejudices against them and especially against Muslims, who are actually mentioned with much more hatred in his lyrical poems than in Os Lusíadas. In one of his eclogues, for instance, he presents a hero eager to stain his lance “naquele infido sangue Mauritano” (“in that infidel Mauritanian blood”).124 And in a sonnet, Camões wishes that “o roxo mar, daqui em diante,/o seja só co sangue de Turquia!” (“the Red Sea henceforth may be red with blood from Turkey!”)125 In contrast with such bloodthirsty fantasies in his lyric poetry, Camões depicts most of the non-collaborating Muslims of Os Lusíadas as misguided, but not intrinsically evil, and certainly not as enemies to just be  Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 2: 573–574.  Madureira, Imaginary Geographies, 27–28. 123  Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 18. 124  Camões, Rimas, 313. 125  Camões, Rimas, 197. 121 122

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exterminated. An important mitigating factor is the role of Bacchus: thanks to the god’s malicious schemes, the hostility of Muslim characters is at least partly unrelated to their religious, ethnic, and cultural difference. Unlike Barros and his belief in Muslims’ “natural ódio” (“natural hate”) of Christianity, Camões implies that the conflict between Christians and Muslims is traditional and expectable but not innate.126 Most African and Indian Muslims do not clash with the Portuguese until Bacchus intervenes and deceives them; in India, Bacchus even receives help from the devil, as if one supernatural power were not enough to turn Muslims against Christians.127 Bacchus’ involvement not only partly exculpates Muslims from their opposition to Gama and his men but also underscores their surprising proclivity to become their allies or subjects: what Bacchus and the devil fear most is the likely submission of non-Christians to the true God and his earthly empire. Although Os Lusíadas does not present massive conversions of Muslims to Christianity as Tirant lo Blanch did one century earlier, it shares the same faith in their inherent good nature, in spite of their misguided beliefs and demonically inspired actions. That faith also implies that Muslims, along with all peoples in every continent, are called to become part of the Portuguese empire, which is why Camões’ ultimately optimistic view of relationships between Christians and non-­ Christians is inseparable from his confidence in the perpetual colonial glory of his homeland. According to Os Lusíadas, the Portuguese are destined to dominate this world and make it better through the imposition of their Christian principles and regulations, as prophesied by none other than Jupiter: “Por eles, de tudo enfim senhores,/serão dadas na terra leis milhores” (“The world will receive better laws from them, when they finally rule over everything”).128 Camões’ triumphalism was doomed to be short-lived. King Sebastião I, to whom the last stanza of Os Lusíadas wishes good fortune, died only six years after the publication of Camões’ epic, in battle against the sultan of Morocco and his Ottoman allies in Alcácer Quibir. The circumstances and the setting could not have been more meaningful: the Avis dynasty, which had built the ideological and political foundations of the Portuguese empire while fighting against North African Muslims, was finally defeated and destroyed by their descendants. Because the 24-year-old king did not  Barros, Ásia, 1: 149.  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 8, st. 46. 128  Camões, Os Lusíadas, canto 2, st. 46. 126 127

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have immediate heirs, a dynastic crisis ensued and Portugal ended up becoming annexed to Spain by Felipe II.  It took six decades for the Portuguese to regain their independence and, although they continued being a colonial power until the twentieth century, they never came close to recovering their former ascendancy. Nonetheless, the Portuguese empire was destined to be everlasting in a very different way than that dreamed by Camões. Portugal, “the first consciously imperial European state” in C.  R. Boxer’s words, deeply influenced the legal and political ideas of other Christian powers, including those that regulated their relations to the communities they colonized.129 What is now known as the “Doctrine of Discovery,” or the right of European nations to conquer lands inhabited by non-Christians, evolved from the rights granted by medieval and early modern popes to the kings of Portugal and Spain and was later adapted by other countries, including the United States, to justify their own colonial campaigns.130 In this way, although the depictions of religious and cultural difference by Camões and other Portuguese authors were mainly focused on their Muslim archenemies, they contributed to determine the fates of many other non-Christians, including the natives of the Americas. At the end, while the Portuguese failed to fulfill the glorious fate that Camões and others had envisioned, their colonial projects were outlived by the influential myths that surrounded them, including their religious justification of territorial expansion and the providential exceptionalism that convinced them of their superiority over all other nations and cultures.

 Boxer, “Faith and Empire,” 73.  Miller, “The Doctrine of Discovery,” 9–22. Although “scholars have traced the Doctrine as far back as the fifth century AD when, they argue, the Roman Catholic Church and various popes began establishing the idea of a worldwide papal jurisdiction,” the fifteenth-­century exchanges between Portuguese kings and Roman popes “helped refine the European definition of the Doctrine of Discovery” by appealing to “the perceived need to protect natives from the oppression of others and to lead them to civilization and religious conversion under papal guidance.” Miller, “The Doctrine of Discovery,” 9, 11. 129 130

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion: Christian Supremacy and Contradictory Non-Christians Beyond Muslims and Iberia

For centuries, the Iberian Peninsula has simultaneously contested and exploited its differences from the rest of Europe, among which the cultural legacy of medieval Muslims and Jews prominently stands out. In the particular case of Spain, its intercultural medieval past has had significant and varied repercussions, from its touristic and artistic exoticization to its sidelining in academic settings, as summarized by Barbara Fuchs: Spain, as a space marked by Moorishness, has long been considered somehow beyond Europe. Efforts to render Spain African, I argue, reinforced and were reinforced by the Black Legend, with profound consequences for the marginalization of Spain within Europe. The early modern construction of Spain in this vein underlies the much later vision of an exotic nation in a high imperialist mode, as a colorful Andalucía of Moors and gypsies comes synecdochically to represent the nation for Europe. It also ensured the disciplinary marginalization of Spanish, as somehow less European, in historical and literary studies, particularly in the Anglo-American academy.1

It is telling that Edward Said’s Orientalism contains eight isolated mentions of Spain and four of Portugal in its more than 300 pages—in comparison, Germany is mentioned more than 20 times, and France and 1

 Fuchs, Exotic Nation, 4.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5_7

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England appear constantly throughout the text. Because Said’s book is about “Orientalism” as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident,’” his approach works better when dealing with the attitudes of “an Englishman in India or Egypt in the later nineteenth century” than in a place and age with blurrier “ontological and epistemological distinctions” such as the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages.2 Indeed, a major challenge for those of us who work with intercultural relations in medieval Iberia is making our work understandable and relatable to other scholars and readers with very different views on what the West, the Middle Ages, or Muslim-Christian relationships are. As Michelle Hamilton and Núria Silleras-Fernández point out, “many Hispanists have called attention to Spain’s marginalization or exclusion from the traditional master narratives of European history elaborated by northern European scholars who, consciously or not, presumed, as in the famous quip attributed to Dumas, that ‘Africa begins at the Pyrenees.’”3 In the case of medieval studies, a striking example of Iberian exclusion is Norman Cantor’s 450-­ page book on “the founding era of medieval studies from 1895 to about 1965, through the lives, works, and ideas of the great medievalists,” without a single mention of Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Américo Castro, or any other Hispanist.4 Cantor does not address the reason for such an omission, but it is easy to deduce from his opinion on what he calls “the other Middle Ages—primarily Arab, Byzantine, and Jewish”: It is my personal prejudice that while these other medieval civilizations are of enormous importance not only intrinsically but in respect to their impact on the West, for a variety of reasons, including sheer chance, the magisterial intellectual structures that were created to privilege the European Middle Ages in the twentieth century were largely lacking with respect to the conceptualization of these other medieval societies. […] I believe that while 2  Said, Orientalism, 2, 11. In the prologue to a Spanish version of his book, Said apologizes for this oversight by writing that “España es una notable excepción en el contexto del modelo general europeo cuyas líneas generales se describen en Orientalismo” (“Spain is a remarkable exception in the context of the main European model whose general lines are described in Orientalism”); this exception, according to him, consists of how “el islam y la cultura española se habitan mutuamente en lugar de confrontarse con beligerancia” (“Islam and Spanish culture inhabit each other instead of belligerently confronting each other”). Said, “Prólogo a la nueva edición española,” 9, 10. 3  Hamilton and Silleras-Fernández, “Iberia and the Mediterranean,” xii. 4  Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 7.

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there has been a vast accumulation of information about these three ­non-­Western medieval cultures, no one has yet written a great book on any of them.5

Among the “variety of reasons” that have marginalized “non-Western medieval cultures,” there is an obvious one: racial and ethnic prejudices. The cultural traditions studied by Cantor and almost all the scholars whom he admires have one crucial difference with those that they so nonchalantly ignore: the first ones belong to Western European nations with a predominantly white population and a history of colonialism over non-­ whites. In the crossroads of racism and colonialism, Spain and Portugal occupy a complex and uncomfortable position: while these two nations had a central role in the early modern history of European expansionism, the medieval legacy of non-Christian and non-white Iberians has caused their frequent relegation to the academic kitchen table of “the other Middle Ages,” along with “Arabs,” “Byzantines,” and “Jews.” Unintentionally, Hispanists have sometimes contributed to their own marginalization by emphasizing an exceptionalism according to which Iberian issues, especially when related to ethnic and cultural interactions, are unparalleled in the rest of Europe and maybe the world. As Maya Soifer indicates, Américo Castro’s view of a multicultural “convivencia” (“coexistence”) was as nationalist as the views of his opponents who defended a purely Visigothic Spain, “uncontaminated” by Jews and Muslims: in both cases, the ultimate purpose was to present Spain as a one-of-a-kind nation. Because of this, “not surprisingly, some of Castro’s intellectual heirs, whose gaze was steadily directed south, toward Islam and its military frontier with the Christian kingdoms, inadvertently perpetuated the nationalist myth of Spain’s unique status in medieval Europe.”6 I have no intention of perpetuating the stereotype of an Iberia isolated from the rest of the world because of its exceptional multicultural legacy. The increasing dialogue between experts on different linguistic and cultural traditions has shown the abundant similarities among the medieval interactions of Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other groups across the Mediterranean, which have at the same time expanded and transformed the methods of specific fields. In the case of Iberian studies, for instance, 5 6

 Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 375.  Soifer, “Beyond Convivencia,” 27.

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this wider theoretical frame has offered “a method to examine the ways in which those living in and moving through the Iberian Peninsula—past and present—produced and responded to the richness of linguistic, cultural, and historical threads that extend far beyond the peninsula’s geographical borders,” in the words of Hamilton and Silleras-Fernández.7 From that broader perspective, medieval Iberia is only one among many crucial nodes of especially intense exchanges between peoples: one of those privileged points of connectivity between Mediterranean microecologies, to borrow some terminology employed by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell.8 In consequence, many cultural phenomena that Hispanists have traditionally considered as distinctive of the Iberian Peninsula are not, as explained by Brian Catlos: Scientific, linguistic, and literary acculturation can be observed in what is now Italy, not only in the well-known context of the Norman court of Sicily, but on the mainland also. Analogues of mudéjar architecture can be observed in Sicily and Byzantium and in Syria-Palestine. Formal translation initiatives were not only undertaken in Spain, but in Pisa, Byzantium, Armenia, Antioch, and Egypt, to name only a few locales. In terms of linguistic integration, the influence of Arabic on Castilian pales with that on Maltese, whereas it simply displaced earlier vernaculars in Egypt and Syria-­ Palestine. And the adaption of cultural affectations, daily habits, and tastes in fashion between Christians, Muslims, and Jews was a fundamental characteristic of the region—if only for the simple reason that Mediterranean societies were so thoroughly heterogeneous, not only vis-à-vis the grand ecumenical divisions, but in terms of subgroups, and in terms of ethnic identities and other affiliations that cut across confessional lines.9

Because those kinds of exchanges were happening for centuries in multiple places from the Iberian Peninsula to the Middle East, on the coasts of Africa and Asia as well as Europe, contradictory representations of Muslims at the service of Christian colonialism could not have existed only in Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan texts. An obvious consequence of  Hamilton and Silleras-Fernández, “Iberia and the Mediterranean,” xiii.  For these authors, the multicultural exchanges of Mediterranean peoples are a direct consequence of such connectivity: “The distinctiveness of Mediterranean history results (we propose) from the paradoxical coexistence of a milieu of relatively easy seaborne communications with a quite unusually fragmented topography of microregions in the sea’s coastlands and islands.” Horden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 5. 9  Catlos, “Christian-Muslim-Jewish Relations,” 9. 7 8

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the many medieval conquests described by Robert Bartlett as part of “Europe’s internal expansion” was that “everywhere from Ireland to Prussia to Andalusia to Hungary to Palestine, foreign conquerors and indigenous populations faced the difficult task of reconciling their differing cultural and social worlds.”10 This single fact explains how Norman Housley can notice a similar “mixture of what seems to be irreconcilable ways of viewing and dealing with the enemy” in medieval Iberia and in places as distant from it as Hungary and Croatia.11 For this reason, the focus of my work on the Iberian Peninsula is not exclusionary in any way and I hope that it can also contribute to the research of others on non-­ Iberian spaces, cultures, and languages. The expansionism of colonial projects makes them especially suitable to generate connections between not only distant places but also different times. I have chosen five moments during the development of colonialism in Iberian literature that progressively move from the more local context to the rest of the Mediterranean and then to Africa and India. But the story, of course, does not end there. As argued in my last chapter, the ambivalent dynamics of rejecting and incorporating Muslim difference in Iberian texts persisted long after the Middle Ages. Even when first Muslims and then their Christianized descendants were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, Christian authors continued exploiting contradictory stereotypes of them, as scholars such as Israel Burshatin have noticed in early modern Spanish literature: “On the ‘villifying’ side, Moors are hateful dogs, miserly, treacherous, lazy and overreaching. On the ‘idealizing’ side, the men are noble, loyal, heroic, courtly—they even mirror the virtues that Christian knights aspire to—while the women are endowed with singular beauty and discretion.”12 Similar ambivalences were also transferred to the interactions of Christian Iberians with other non-Christian cultures, including the natives of the Americas. The transmission and adaptation of Muslim-Christian relations to the colonial context of the New World may be puzzling, but it is far from hidden: for centuries, Latin Americans have celebrated “fiestas de moros y cristianos” (“festivals of Muslims and Christians”) that recreate medieval fights between both faiths, in the same way in which the iconography of St. James as a warrior barely changed from him being a “Matamoros” or  Soifer, “Beyond Convivencia,” 28–29.  Housley, Religious Warfare, 16. 12  Burshatin, “The Moor in the Text,” 98. 10 11

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“Matamouros” (“Moor-slayer”) in Spain and Portugal to a “Mataindios” (“Indian-slayer”) in the Americas.13 The symbolic identification of indigenous peoples with Muslims was purposely established by authors such as the sixteenth-century friar Jerónimo de Mendieta, for whom the brief eight-month interval between the conquest of Granada by the Catholic Monarchs and the arrival of Columbus to the Americas was a providential sign of his nation’s colonial destiny: Apenas fué concluida la guerra de los moros, cuando les puso Dios en sus manos [de los Reyes Católicos] la conquista y conversión de infinidad de gentes idólatras, y de tan remotas y incógnitas regiones, que más parece haber sido divinalmente otorgada, que casualmente ofrecida. Y no dudo, mas antes, confiado en la misericordia del muy alto Señor, tengo por averiguado, que […] asi como ellos alimpiaron á España de estas malas sectas, asi tambien la universal destruccion de ellas en el orbe y conversion final de todas las gentes al gremio de la Iglesia se haga por mano de los reyes sus descendientes. (As soon as the war against Muslims concluded, God entrusted the Catholic Monarchs with the conquest and conversion of an infinity of idolatrous peoples from such remote and unknown regions that it does not seem to have been coincidentally offered, but divinely granted. And, trusting in the mercy of the very high Lord, I do not doubt but have for certain that, just like they cleansed Spain of evil sects, these monarchs’ descendants will destroy all of them in the world and definitely convert all peoples to our Church.)14

Regarding a very similar quote by another sixteenth-century author, Barbara Fuchs explains that “when the historian and colonial official Francisco López de Gómara writes in his early Historia general de las Indias that ‘The conquest of the Indians began after that of the Moors was completed, so that Spaniards would ever fight the infidels,’ he justifies the current conquest as a logical continuation of the previous one.”15 Through such justification, new relationships with an endless variety of completely different and unknown cultures get to be written, interpreted, and shaped according to a well-established narrative in which Christians must and will destroy or subjugate non-Christians. As it is evident from the previous 13  See Cáceres Valderrama, La fiesta de moros y cristianos en el Perú; Warman Gryj, La danza de moros y cristianos; Domínguez García, De Apóstol matamoros a Yllapa mataindios. 14  Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana, 18. 15  Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire, 7.

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quote by Mendieta and its grandiose overconfidence, “ideologically the struggle against Islam offered a descriptive language which allowed the generally shabby ventures in America to be vested with a seemingly eschatological significance,” in Anthony Pagden’s words.16 And, just like Iberian authors had done during the Middle Ages, early modern explorers, chroniclers, and warriors utilized writing to surround their actions with historical parallelisms and religious justifications that stirred them to wage war against non-Christians, occupy their lands, and impose their own political and cultural dominion: In their own eyes, and in those of their readers, men like Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro were simultaneously the heirs of Caesar and El Cid, the great eleventh-century hero of the Reconquista, for whose soul it was customary to dedicate a mass on first reaching the coast of America. And contiguity with the Reconquista implied, if not divine sanction, at least divine favour. Few of the conquistadores could claim to be executing God’s will; but most assumed that God openly favoured their cause. How else could the extraordinary conquests first of Mexico and then of Peru be explained? Little wonder, too, that a disingenuous old soldier like Bernal Díaz could claim to have seen St James of Compostela, the “Moor-slayer” and patron saint of Castile, fighting alongside him.17

Because Spain and Portugal “became the ‘empires’ that other kingdoms would emulate, criticize and seek to displace,” their colonial discourses and procedures were both challenged and imitated by later European powers.18 The English and French, for example, had to carefully circumvent the privileges conceded by the Pope to the Portuguese and Spaniards in order to establish their own colonies: they did this by questioning the validity of previous documents and practices, for example, arguing that the discovery of new territories was not enough to claim them, but “a European country had to actually occupy and possess non-­ Christian lands to perfect their Discovery title.”19 In contrast, those same European nations did not have any problem with reproducing previous Iberian and papal discourses that proclaimed the intrinsic superiority of Christians over non-Christians, because this religious justification was  Pagden, Lords of All the World, 74.  Pagden, Lords of All the World, 74. 18  Hart, Comparing Empires, 4. 19  Miller, “The Doctrine of Discovery,” 18. 16 17

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equally useful for their own colonial endeavors. Indeed, the link between Christian supremacy and colonialism proved so effective that it still regulates the relationships between European descendants and indigenous communities through its presence in the legislation of multiple countries, including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States, where the Supreme Court unequivocally established in the nineteenth century that “when a European, Christian nation discovered new lands it automatically gained sovereign and property rights over the non-Christian, non-European peoples.”20 No such laws would stand for a minute, no matter what any government or institution affirmed, if Christian supremacy were not already deeply ingrained in Western societies through the repetition of discourses and images propagated by rulers, politicians, historians, writers, and artists for centuries. No less than in medieval Iberia, contradictory representations of difference have been extremely effective in the process of colonization of the Americas. Since the first moment Spaniards arrived to the Caribbean or the Portuguese to South America, the letters by Christopher Columbus and Pero Vaz de Caminha presented natives as both friendly innocents and savage barbarians. According to Columbus, inhabitants of the Caribbean were “gente de muy lindo acatamiento” (“people of very beautiful appearance”) and “de muy sotil ingenio” (“of very subtle intelligence”); however, at the same time “tomavan y davan lo que tenían como bestias” (“they took and gave away everything they had like beasts”) and not far from there lived other natives “que tienen en todas las islas por muy feroces, los cualles comen carne umana” (“reputed on all the islands as very fierce, who eat human flesh”).21 Caminha also described South American natives as beautiful and welcoming, although he considered them “jente bestial e depouco saber” (“bestial people of scarce knowledge”), comparable to “aves ou alimareas monteses” (“birds or wild animals”).22 In later decades and centuries, the same characterizations were applied to indigenous peoples in North American territories: “The colonizer Arthur Barlowe landed in 1584, claimed it for ‘her highness,’ and penned this about indigenous people: ‘We found the people most gentle loving and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the Golden Age.’ Soon thereafter, however, English  Miller, “The Doctrine of Discovery,” 3.  Colón, “Carta a Luis de Santángel,” 222, 224, 225. 22  Caminha, “A carta de Pêro Vaz de Caminha,” fol. 8r. 20 21

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colonizers attacked these gentle people because they were, as Robert Gray dehumanized them, ‘wild beasts, and unreasonable creatures’ or ‘brutish savages.’”23 In all these cases, the crucial point was to represent inhabitants of the Americas as similar to non-Christians in the Old World, because in this way indigenous peoples were “denied God’s grace, and as a consequence could have no standing under the law. Their properties, and even their persons, were forfeit to the first ‘godly’ person with the capacity to subdue them.”24 No wonder, therefore, that these natives were repeatedly labeled as “new heretics,” “infidels,” “heathens,” or “barbarians,” in a clear attempt to identify them with those religious enemies whose stereotypical depictions had been disseminated for centuries to justify their subjugation.25 During modern and contemporary times, the representations of medieval Muslims not only were transferred and adapted to new peoples: they have also continued being used to attack and dominate Muslims themselves. The history of war and colonization between Christians and Muslims is still part of the present and not only because some of the most violent moments of that history, such as the Crusades in the Middle East or their clashes in the Iberian Peninsula, have become worldwide symbols of religious fanaticism and discord. Equally enduring have proved to be many of the oldest and most detrimental depictions of Muslims in the West. As John Tolan writes, “anyone familiar with Western news media can see that Western attitudes toward Muslims and toward Arabs (terms that are often poorly distinguished) are still problematic, still tinged with condescension and mistrust, still rife with contradictions.”26 Edward Said wrote something similar more than twenty years ago and his words sound just as pertinent today: “Malicious generalizations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be said in mainstream discussion about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians.”27 Such vilification is deeply ingrained among Western media, politicians, and even scholars that view the entire Islamic world as both innately excluded from, and inimical to,  Feagin, The White Racial Frame, 55.  Pagden, Lords of All the World, 75. 25  Pagden, Lords of All the World, 75; Feagin, The White Racial Frame, 55. 26  Tolan, Saracens, xvii. 27  Said, Introduction, xii. 23 24

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our own societies, as reflected in the popular concept of the “clash of ­civilizations” by Samuel Huntington, who declared that “conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years” and it is “unlikely to decline.”28 This never-ending antagonism between Muslims and Westerners may only exist in the imagination of a few extremists in both sides but its consequences are tragically real, as proven in the early twenty-first century by the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan, two armed conflicts founded on a “logic of crusade” pitched as “a liberation doctrine,” according to which Middle Eastern Muslims are medieval, backward people whose governments, cultures, and lives can only be modernized and improved by American and European interventions.29 A related topic is how those same condescending discourses on Islam and depictions of Muslims still have social and political influence only because of the sustained relationship between politics and religion in contemporary democracies, although in a more covert way than in medieval and early modern societies. While most Western governments would flatly deny the impact of religious beliefs in their political decisions, this is clearly contradicted by actions like the different treatment of Christian and Muslim immigrants, the criminalization and discrimination against the citizens of Muslim-majority countries, and the increasingly explicit use of Islamophobic discourses by American and European politicians and media, including their exploitation of “the medieval past as an instrument of political propaganda” by presenting the confrontations between Christians and Muslims in the Middle Ages as either an ongoing situation or a model to follow.30 These are crucially urgent issues with grave consequences for the lives of millions of people, as exemplified in Europe by a number of recurrent controversies around Muslim residents that go from “legislation concerning the wearing of the veil in France” to “debates regarding the construction of mosques in countries such as England, Germany and Switzerland.”31 Meanwhile, after fighting two wars against Islamic nations in the first couple of decades of this century, the American government most recently tried to ban the entrance of citizens from several Muslim-­ majority countries to the United States between 2017 and 2020. The  Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” 31, 32.  Elliott, Medievalism, Politics and Mass Media, 105. 30  García-Sanjuán, “Weaponizing Historical Knowledge,” 158. 31  Lampert-Weissig, Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies, 109. 28 29

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denials of any religious bias in such measures were repeatedly dismissed by different courts that based their opinions on the shameless displays of Islamophobia by American officials, including President Donald Trump’s “disparaging comments and tweets regarding Muslims,” as expressed by Roger Gregory, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.32 In situations like this one, which combined political interests with ethnic and religious animosity against Islamic nations and Muslims, it can be especially enlightening to study the strategies used by premodern and early modern Christians to attack, reject, or subjugate Muslims and other minority groups. Finally, a deeper understanding of the ways in which Iberian Christian rulers often presented themselves as sympathetic to religious and ethnic minorities, while at the same time exploiting them for their own benefit, should serve as a lesson and a warning for current discourses on tolerance and diversity. These kinds of discourses can promote social equality and understanding, but they can also mask and perpetuate unresolved problems of discrimination. The utilization of conciliatory attitudes to actually undermine the rights of cultural minorities in the Iberian Christian kingdoms should at least give us pause when similar strategies are used by contemporary governments and institutions. Many Iberian Muslims who trusted in the humanity of their Christian conquerors and allies would wholeheartedly agree with Sayeeda Warsi’s opinion that overt bigotry constitutes a less dangerous form of hatred than a “more covert form of Islamophobia, couched in intellectual arguments and espoused by thinktanks, commentators and even politicians.”33 A disturbing example of how Islamophobia can be surreptitiously institutionalized among noble-­ sounding words is the case of “Countering Violent Extremism,” an apparently well-meaning program created during the administration of President Barack Obama that, by focusing on Muslim Americans and ignoring Christian and right-wing extremists, “stigmatizes Muslims communities as inherently suspect” and “creates serious risks of flagging innocuous activity as pre-terrorism and suppressing religious observance and speech.”34 When Western democracies pride themselves on their protection of human rights while invading Muslim-majority countries, rejecting Muslim refugees, and restricting the liberties of their Muslim citizens, to examine the  Hurley, “U.S. Court.”  Warsi, Foreword, v. 34  Patel and Koushik, Countering Violent Extremism, 1. 32 33

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contradictory attitudes of Christians toward non-Christians in previous periods becomes less of an intellectual exercise and more of an ethical duty. Hopefully, to deconstruct and expose the destructive prejudices and hypocrisy of our past can help us reveal, understand, and overcome the ones in our present.

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Index1

A Abengalvón, 50–52 Portugal), 75, 75n53, 158–162, 164, 166, 185 Africa, 18–21, 23, 23n60, 25n67, 26, 26n71, 27, 44, 53, 54, 66, 67, 94, 109, 122, 128, 132, 134, 135, 141–143, 145, 147, 148, 154–156, 163, 165–168, 171–175, 171n61, 183–186, 188, 189, 191, 192, 194, 195 Alfons V of Aragon, 130, 131, 136 Alfonso VI of León and Castile, 14, 24, 25, 33–35, 41n36, 43, 75, 75n53, 109, 166 Alfonso X of Castile Cantigas de Santa Maria, 2, 9, 10, 20, 29, 56, 58–68, 72, 74, 75, 78, 82–85, 87, 92, 95–97, 100, 117, 122, 132, 177

Estoria de España, 2, 10, 20, 22, 26, 29, 41n34, 52, 61, 98, 100–112, 114–116, 119, 120, 122, 138, 146, 156 General estoria, 58, 58n9 Las siete partidas, 1, 28, 58, 58n9 Almanzor (al-Manṣūr or Muḥammad ibn Abı ̄ ʿĀ mir al-Maʿāfirı ̄), 101, 104–113, 115, 117, 118, 158 Almohads, 69 Almoravids, 38, 40, 44, 45, 47, 50, 53, 54 Americas, 18, 21, 22, 122, 172, 190, 195, 196, 198 Andalusis, 21, 41, 44, 75, 102, 105–109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 117–119, 146 Arredondo, Gonzalo de Vida rimada de Fernán González, 12

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 M. E. Fuentes, Contradictory Muslims in the Literature of Medieval Iberian Christians, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45065-5

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224 

INDEX

Asia, 18, 19, 22, 129, 147, 155, 163, 168, 171n61, 172–174, 183, 188, 194 Avis House or dynasty, 154, 163, 166, 172, 184, 189 B Barberia, 142, 144, 145 Barros, João de Ásia, 163, 167, 167n44, 173, 175, 177, 179–183, 185, 189 Bhabha, Homi, 17, 18, 55, 100, 153 Bible, 26, 27, 58, 64, 106, 112, 164, 166 Burgos, 35, 117 C Camões, Luís Vaz de lyrical poems, 188 Os Lusíadas, 2, 10, 20, 21, 72, 151, 154–158, 160–164, 166–170, 173–178, 181–183, 186–189 Cantar de mio Cid, 2, 9, 10, 20, 32, 33, 35–42, 56, 61, 66, 74, 75, 128, 132 Castanheda, Fernão Lopes de História do descobrimento e conquista da Índia pelos portugueses, 164, 167, 167n44, 175, 178–181 Castro, Américo, 4, 5, 53, 192, 193 Catholic Monarchs (Fernando II of Aragon and Isabel I of Castile), 9, 9n29, 21, 122, 196 Ceuta, 66, 94, 155, 165, 167, 171, 184 Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, 13 Chronica Naierensis, 68, 115 Chronicles, 12, 22, 41, 44, 50, 52, 68, 69, 81, 97, 100, 101, 104, 109,

112, 114, 118, 132n38, 154, 157, 158, 158n14, 158n15, 159n17, 162–164, 164n31, 167, 172, 175, 181, 182, 184, 187 Cid (Rodrigo or Ruy Díaz de Vivar), 32–54, 56, 61, 74, 81, 109, 166 Constantinople, 21, 96, 122, 128–131, 134, 135, 141, 147, 150, 151 Conversion, 1, 9, 11, 14, 15, 29, 67, 71, 80, 87, 97, 110, 114, 117–119, 141–145, 149, 150, 161, 164, 166, 177–183, 185, 189, 196 Convivencia, 4, 5, 5n12, 44, 193 Córdoba, 4, 13, 24, 26, 33, 75, 86, 101, 104, 108, 111, 113 Crónica da tomada de Lisboa, 12, 13n37, 37, 158, 159, 159n17 Crónicas dos sete primeiros reis de Portugal, 158, 158n15, 159, 161n23 Cronistas-mores (Portuguese royal chroniclers), 157, 158n14, 163, 165 Crusades, 11, 12n34, 15, 47, 70, 71, 89, 90, 90n97, 94, 130, 161 Crusading ideas and discourses, 11, 12, 14, 37–39, 47, 48, 71, 145, 158, 159, 159n17, 161, 163–165, 184, 185, 187 D Desclot, Bernat Crònica, 71, 98 Dozy, Reinhard, 40, 41, 43 Duarte I of Portugal, 118, 157, 163, 166, 172, 184

 INDEX 

E England, 130, 132, 134, 150, 151, 168n50, 172n66, 192 Epics, 2, 20, 21, 32, 33, 42, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 72, 72n46, 100, 100n4, 107n23, 111, 112n37, 124n5, 151, 154–156, 158, 174, 175, 177, 186, 187, 189 F Fernando III of Castile, 24, 54, 61, 85, 98, 105 France, 38, 118, 130, 141, 169, 172n66, 191 G Gama, Vasco da, 156–157, 172, 178, 179, 181, 182, 186, 187 Gesta comitum Barchinonensium, 69 Góis, Damião de Crónica do felicíssimo Rei D. Manuel, 158n15, 167, 167n44, 172, 180, 183 Granada, 14, 21, 24, 33, 94, 96, 104, 122, 130, 134, 135, 139, 149, 159, 165, 171, 196 H Hegel, G. W. F., 31 Henrique of Portugal, Prince, 166, 172, 184 Historia Compostellana, 104 Historia Roderici, 40, 40n31, 49n60 Historia Silense, 68, 104 Historiography, 2, 7, 8, 8n24, 10, 15, 19, 57, 58, 62, 68, 69, 72n46, 100, 100n3, 102, 112, 132n38, 154, 164 Holy Land, 12, 90n97, 94, 96, 128, 171

225

I India, 20, 122, 135, 155, 157, 166, 169, 172, 175, 177, 180–182, 186, 188, 189, 192, 195, 196 Infantes of Lara, 4, 20, 35n11, 100, 100n4, 106, 138 Islamophobia, 7, 13, 37, 38, 90, 104, 114, 127, 174, 184, 187, 200, 201 J JanMohamed, Abdul, 17, 18, 55, 121 Jaume I of Aragon Llibre dels fets, 10, 20, 26, 27, 56, 57, 60, 61, 68–82, 84–95, 100, 132, 175 Jews, 5, 9, 10, 15, 16, 28, 64, 64n25, 67–69, 91, 96, 97, 103, 136, 164, 179, 180, 191–194, 199 Jiménez de Rada, Rodrigo Historia de rebus Hispanie, 15, 42n37, 68, 102, 104, 105, 112, 133 João I of Portugal, 118, 163–167, 185 L Lisbon, 14, 25, 75, 118, 158, 162, 168 Llull, Ramon, 143, 143n77, 144 Lopes, Fernão Crónica de D. João I, 164 Crónica de D. Pedro, 164 Lucas de Tuy Chronicon mundi, 68, 105 M Majorca, 69–72, 75, 76, 81, 85, 131, 143, 144 Manuel I of Portugal, 9, 177, 180

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INDEX

Martorell, Joanot, and Martí Joan de Galba Tirant lo Blanch, 2, 10, 20, 21, 27, 29, 72, 122–129, 131–151, 156, 175, 177, 189 Memmi, Albert, 55, 95 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 41, 42n40, 44 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 4, 41–44, 52, 100n4, 111, 192 Menorca, 82 Monçaide, 177–183 Morocco, 23n60, 54, 66, 128, 149, 189 Mudarra, 26, 102, 105–119, 146 Mudéjares, 56, 62, 63, 66, 67, 73, 74, 84, 87, 91–95, 126, 194 Muhammad, 28, 48, 61, 96, 103, 103n8, 105, 126, 127, 144, 167, 180 Murcia, 24, 63, 67, 84–95 N North Africa, 21, 24, 25, 44, 54, 57, 66, 66n28, 67, 76, 84, 84n80, 93, 94, 121, 122, 127, 132, 133, 136, 141–145, 147, 155, 165, 171, 181, 189 O Ocampo, Florián de, and Ambrosio de Morales Crónica general de España, 100n3, 119, 119n58 Ottomans, 128–132, 136, 140, 141, 147, 149, 189

P Palestine, 11, 90, 94, 194, 195 Papal bulls, 163, 170, 171n61, 172 Parias, 33, 34, 52–54, 66, 73 Pedro Afonso of Barcelos Crónica geral de Espanha de 1344, 10, 20, 21, 112, 114–119, 114n45, 146 Livro de linhagens do conde D. Pedro, 35n11, 111–115 Poema de Fernán González, 12, 37, 38 Popes, 11, 12n34, 13, 34, 39, 80, 86, 86n86, 129–131, 136, 157, 159, 164, 170–172, 174, 184, 190, 190n130, 197 Postcolonial theory, 2, 17, 18, 32, 55, 100, 121, 153, 191, 199 Providence and providentialism, 65, 72, 97, 116, 118, 169, 190, 196 S Said, Edward, 2, 32, 121, 153, 191, 199 Sebastião I of Portugal, 169, 173, 189 Seville, 13, 23, 24, 27, 33, 44, 61, 67, 75, 83, 86, 102, 112 Surrender pacts, 10, 32, 73, 73n49, 91 T Toledo, 5, 14, 24, 33, 34, 39, 41n36, 75, 109 U United States, 16, 190, 198

 INDEX 

V Valencia, 13, 33, 35–41, 44, 46, 47, 49n60, 50, 51, 53, 54, 57, 74, 76, 78, 81, 84n80, 85–91, 95, 130, 144 Velho, Álvaro Roteiro da primera viagem de Vasco da Gama, 167, 167n44, 175, 177, 179n91, 181, 186

Z Zurara, Gomes Eanes de Crónica da tomada de Ceuta, 12, 24, 165, 175, 185 Crónica dos feitos da Guiné (or Crónica do descobrimento e conquista de Guiné), 26n71, 185

227