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UNDER THE INFLUENCE

THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD


EDITORS

Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University)

Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas)


Donna M. Rogers (Middlebury College) Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam) Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen) VOLUME 22

UNDER THE INFLUENCE


Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile
EDITED BY

CYNTHIA ROBINSON AND LEYLA ROUHI

BRILL
LEIDEN BOSTON 2005

Cover illustration: The Patio del Yeso, an Almohad period patio in the Sevillan Alcazares Reales, dating to the early 13th century. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1569-1934 ISBN 90 04 13999 0 Copyright 2005 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

List of Contributors .................................................................... List of Illustrations ......................................................................

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Editors Introduction .................................................................. Within A Fifteenth-Century Salamancans Pursuit of Islamic Studies ...................................................................................... Leyla Rouhi Mandate From the Top: The Emperors New Clothes How to Administer a Conquered City in al-Andalus: Mosques, Parish Churches and Parishes .............................. Heather Ecker The Gothic Anamorphic Gaze: Regarding the Worth of Others ................................................................................ Francisco Prado-Vilar

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45

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Muslim Shrouds for Christian Kings? A Reassessment of Andalusi Textiles in Thirteenth-Century Castilian Life and Ritual ...................................................................... 101 Mara Judith Feliciano Eschatology or Biography? Alfonso X, Muhammads Ladder and a Jewish Go-Between ........................................ 133 Ana Echevarra Friend of Foe: The Divided Loyalty of lvar Fez in the Poema de mio Cid .......................................................... 153 Gregory B. Kaplan

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contents Voices From the Bottom: Undressing for Good Love

Non Ha Mala Palabra Si Non Es A Mal Tenida: The Perverted Proverb in the Libro de buen amor ................ 173 Louise O. Vasvri Going Between: The adth Bay wa Riy and the Contested Identity of the 'Ajouz in 13th-Century Iberia ...................................................................................... 199 Cynthia Robinson How the Go-Between cut Her Nose: Two Ibero-Medieval Translations of a Kalilah wa Dimnah Story ............................................................................ 231 Luis M. Girn-Negrn Garozas Gaze: Female Sexual Agency in the Libro de buen amor .................................................................................. 261 Gregory S. Hutcheson Without The Mongol in the Text .......................................................... 291 Benjamin Liu General Index ............................................................................ 327

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Ana Echevarra is Assistant Professor at Universidad Nacional de Educacin a Distancia in Madrid, Spain. She specializes in relations between Islam and Christendom and Muslim Minorities in Medieval Spain. Her recent publications include The Fortress of Faith. The Attitude Towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999) and Catalina de Lancaster, reina regente de Castilla (13721418) (Hondarribia: Nerea, 2002) and a collaboration in Jews, Muslims and Christians in and around the Crown of Aragon, Harvey Hames (ed.) (Leiden, Brill, 2003). Heather Ecker is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (Qatar). She is is a former post-doctoral fellow of the Smithsonian Institution and of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University. She received her doctorate in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the University of Oxford in 2000, with a thesis entitled From Masjid to Casa-Mezquita. Neighbourhood Mosques in Seville after the Castilian Conquest 12481634. Her recent publications include: Caliphs and Kings: The Art and Inuence of Islamic Spain (Washington, 2004), The Great Mosque of Crdoba in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Muqarnas 20 (2003), pp. 113141, and Arab Stones. Rodrigo Caros translations of Arabic inscriptions in Seville (1634), revisited, Al-Qantara 23 (2002), 347401. Mara Judith Feliciano is a Jane and Morgan Whitney Art History Fellow at the Department of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). She specializes in the study of Mudjar aesthetic expressions in Iberian art, from the medieval period in Castile to the early colonial period in the Spanish Americas. Luis M. Girn-Negrn is Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is a medievalist specializing in Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew literatures and author of Alfonso de la Torres Visin Deleytable (2001).

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list of contributors

Gregory S. Hutcheson is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Louisville, specialising in the study of gender, sexuality, and cultural identity in the Iberian context. He served as co-editor of Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (1999). Gregory B. Kaplan is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Tennessee. He specializes in medieval Spanish literature and his recent publications include The Evolution of Converso Literature: The Writings of the Converted Jews of Medieval Spain (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002). Benjamin Liu is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He specializes in the literature of medieval Spain, and is the author of Medieval Joke Poetry (2004). Francisco Prado-Vilar is Cotsen Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He specializes in Medieval art and Spanish Painting. He has published several articles on Islamic art and is currently completing a book on the Cantigas de Santa Mara titled In the Shadow of the Gothic Idol. Cynthia Robinson is Assistant Professor of Medieval and Islamic Art History at Cornell University. She specialises in the visual and literary cultures of the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean World, 10001500 A.D. Her recent publications include Islamic Art and Literature, special issue of Princeton Papers, Fall 2001, edited together with Oleg Grabar, and In Praise of Song: the Making of Courtly Culture in al-Andalus and Provence, 10651135 A.D. (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002). A monograph entitled Three Ladies and A Lover: Mediterranean Courtly Culture through the Text and Images of the Hadth Bayd wa Riyd, an Andalus Manuscript is forthcoming with Routledge Curzon. Leyla Rouhi is Professor of Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at Williams College, USA. She specializes in the literature and culture of early modern Iberia. Her recent publications include Mediation and Love (Brill, 1999) as well as articles on Cervantes and La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas.

list of contributors

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Louise O. Vasvri teaches Hispanic languages and comparative literature at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her interests include Hispanic literatures, folklore, medieval literature, translation theory, and applied linguistics and she has published widely in these areas. She is particularly interested in the Libro de buen amor and she published over a dozen articles on various aspects of this text. Her most recent book is The Heterotextual Body of the Mora Morilla (London, 1999).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures to be found between pages 18 and 19: Figures 123 belong to the article The Gothic Anamorphic Gaze: Regarding the Worth of Others by Francisco Prado-Vilar. 1. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 68v, detail (photo: Ornoz). 2. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 68v (photo: Ornoz). 3. Gautier de Coincy, Les miracles de Notre Dame. St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS. Fr.F.v.XIV.9, fol. 103v. 4. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. B.R. 20, fol. 6r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 5. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 222r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 6. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 240r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 7. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. b.I.2, fol. 125v (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 8. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS T.I.1, fol. 170v (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 9. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 145r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 10. Al-Hariri, Maqamat, London, British Library, MS. Or 1200, fol. 68r (photo: Courtesy of the British Museum). 11. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 195r (photo: Ornoz). 12. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 195r (photo: Ornoz). 13. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 59v (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 14. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 237r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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list of illustrations

15. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 113r (photo: Ornoz). 16. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 227v (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 17. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 196r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 18. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 224r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 19. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 228v (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 20. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 251r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 21. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 154r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 22. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 131r (photo: courtesy of Ediln). 23. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. B.R. 20, fol. 100r (photo: Ornoz). Figures 16 belong to the article Muslim Shrouds for Christian Kings? A Reassessment of Andalusi Textiles in Thirteenth-Century Castilian Life and Ritual by Mara Judith Feliciano. 1. Cope of the Infante Don Felipe, ca. 12701274. Silk and gold threads. Archivo Fotogrco, Museo Arqueolgico Nacional, Madrid. 2. Detail, Cope of the Infante Don Felipe. Archivo Fotogrco, Museo Arqueolgico Nacional, Madrid. 3. Detail, Pluvial Cope of Sancho IV, Archbishop of Toledo, ca. 12661275. Silk and gold threads. Cathedral of Toledo. Photo: Miguel Zapico. 4. Tunic of Don Rodrigo Ximnez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, ca. 1247. Monasterio de Santa Mara la Real de Huerta, Soria. Photography by Sheldon Collins. Photograph Copyright 1991 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 5. Pluvial Cope of Sancho IV, Archbishop of Toledo, ca. 12661275. Silk and gold threads. Cathedral of Toledo. Photo: Miguel Zapico. 6. Fragments from the funerary vestments of the Infante Don Alfonso de Castilla, ca. 1291. Museo de Valladolid.

list of illustrations

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Figures 16 belong to the article Going Between: The adth Bay wa Riy and the Contested Identity of the 'Ajouz in 13th-Century Iberia by Cynthia Robinson. 1. adth Bay wa Riy, The Sayyidas Majlis, I, f. 7. (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). 2. adth Bay wa Riy, The Sayyidas Majlis, II, f. 9. (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). 3. adth Bay wa Riy, Riy Exiled From Her Ladys Company, f. 13 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). 4. adth Bay wa Riy, The Old Woman Counsels Bay, f. 15 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). 5. Libros del Ajedrez, f. 22r, Slaves Chess Game (photo: Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial; Princeton University Library Rare Books Room). 6. Libros del Ajedrez, f. 48r, Alfonso Plays Chess with Slave Girls (photo: Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial; Princeton University Library Rare Books Room). Figures to be found between pages 50 and 51: Figures 13 belong to the article How to Administer a Conquered City in al-Andalus: Mosques, Parish Churches and Parishes by Heather Ecker. 1. Parish churches, synagogues and parishes in Seville established after 1248 (after a plan by Toms Lpez de Vargas y Machuca, 1788). 2. Parish churches and parishes in Crdoba established after 1236 (after the plan by the Baron de Karvinski and Joaqun Rillo known as the Plano de los Franceses, 1811). 3. Partitioning and parish churches in cija, Repartimiento of 1263 (after a plan by J. Hernndez, A. Sancho, and F. Collantes, Catlogo arqueolgico y artstico de la provincia de Sevilla, Seville, 1939, dib. 27).

EDITORS INTRODUCTION TO UNDER THE INFLUENCE Cynthia Robinson and Leyla Rouhi

This collection of essays originated with a group of papers presented at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Chicago in March, 2001, at a session which bore the same title as the present volume: Under the Inuence. Shortly thereafter, a serendipitous email from Cynthia Robinson to Leyla Rouhi on the topic of the gobetween in medieval Iberia inspired a series of dialogues which rapidly led to the idea of an interdisciplinary volume that would question comparative methodologies currently used in studies of Medieval Spain. A neologism that came out of those initial discussions was the coinage of the term prooftruths, in response to the insistence, often presented by scholars of European history and literature, on the necessity for proof of lasting interaction (and the deep-reaching cultural consequences thereof ) between Latinate and Semitic components in the context of medieval Spain.1 Prooftruths, we decided, meant, for such scholars, the word, the line, the motif, the monument, the exemplum, which was passed as-was (and left that way for easy future identication) across perceived cultural lines and which remains intact as testimony to such exchange. Only then, it seemed, would the results of these crossings be allowed to inscribe themselves into the canon. Furthermore, it appeared as though a comparative enterprise only gained legitimacy if it produced, at the end of its inquiry, such pieces of evidence. This collection represents an attempt to interrogate and counter such a linear quest for palpable, cataloguable signs of inuence, which are mainstream scholarships prooftruths. Our prooftruths, while often made visible by the meticulous readings of our contributors, are simultaneously and also found in the erased not-there. As it so happened, certain key initial phases of the conception of
1 By Semitic and Latinate we refer specically to the perceived divisions between Jews and Muslims on the one hand, and Christians on the other hand in Medieval Iberia.

editors introduction

this collection coincided, most unhappily, with the events of September 11, 2001, while the nal phases of correction and compilation coexisted with operation Shock and Awe. The road map for this project, however, had been already laid out some six months before that day in September. Curiously, this road map was not one which required rerouting subsequent to those events. If there was one eerie parallel between our inquiry and the collective question mark which suddenly appeared over the continental U.S. the morning after 911, it was the following: how does one think through the paradoxical nature of the multiplicity of co-existence, taking into account all possible viewpoints, each of which could be defended, and many of which were voiced by the same people at dierent hours of the same day, both in 13th-century Seville and 21st-century New York? Clearly, such a task is impossible but, at the same time, failure to attempt it is a blatant submission to nihilism. Although apologetics presented in the form of previous, successful models of co-existence are therapeutic in times of confusion, this is not what we are able to oer. Our main task, as we see it and have set it for ourselves, is to preserve, acknowledge and foreground the often-frustrating (when they exist at the academic level) and painful (when they become real) contradictions to be found in comparative analyses and the phenomena they seek to elucidate. Accordingly, alterity will not be used here, as it has been in some recent cases, to stabilize our ndings; rather, it will be allowed to carry out the task most natural to it, that of destabilization. Furthermore, if certain essays contradict one another, and therefore do not present a denitive closure to the narrative they begin, these contradictions are inherent to the material being examined, and to the process of examination itself, as we have dened it. Our studys geographical boundaries coincide with those which might be traced around Castile, as it had been re-drawn and redened following the conquests of the rst half of the 13th century. Our chronological boundaries are set between the late 12th and the mid-15th centuries, with a primary focus on the late 13th and early 14th. The collections thematic agenda required that each essay oer rst a specic, contextualized object of inquiry. This is in response to shared frustrations concerning generalized or totalizing (and ultimately orientalist) attempts to paint medieval Spain with broad brush strokes. With the exception of Cynthia Robinsons essay, which considers a hitherto neglected manuscript, all pieces are re-readings of

editors introduction

canonical objects or moments in the history of medieval Castile. Second, each contributor was asked to consider larger implications of the comparative methodology she or he employed. This collection is not, however, strictly bound to a single identiable theoretical model. Rather, all studies focus closely on a primary source and then employ appropriate and diverse methodological tools for interpretation, from standard philological inquiry to post-structuralist exegesis, always privileging close explication and reading as the foundation of the analysis. * * *

Glossary And now, a vademecum. The rst part is concerned with the title of this volume, which we have deliberately packed with a number of often-used terms, to be considered in the order in which they appear: Under: harkens forward to the subtitles of the two clusters of which this volume is composed [top*/bottom*]; denotes a hierarchical relationship between top* (here, the king, or the Castilian state) and bottom (here, the subject); under also refers to the hierarchical relationship between history and ction. To wit, our rst cluster considers statefunded cultural artifacts which claim a specic referential eld (top*), and the second cluster examines sites of the imagination (bottom*). The bottom* (with, as shall be seen in the second cluster of essays, one signicant exception) maps and never erases experience; the top* traces, erases and fabricates experience. Inuence: the most problematic word in the entire title. The eld of medieval Iberian studies has been marked as dierent from the rest of medieval studies because of its relentless subjugation to the idea of inuence (the Arabs brought X to Spain; the Jews brought Y to Spain; the Christians made Z from X and Y; X and Y are inuences, Z is a product). Each essay in this collection textures the denition of this term to draw attention to its instability, which resides in a rejection of the assumption that stable cultural units even exist in medieval Iberia. It is not our intention to reject the idea of inuence, but to revitalize it and render it useful again by giving it multiva-

editors introduction

lence. Our task is to nuance and enact, in very specic contextual terms, the interpretive possibilities contained by this term. Questioning: Self-explanatory. Our understanding of questioning includes a move toward interrogation as well as inquiry. The former seeks specic answers, while the latter broadens the range of analysis possible. Comparative: In specic terms, we understand this as a methodological tool and necessity in the sense posited by Claudio Guilln in his Entre lo uno y lo diverso,2 translated into English as The Challenge of Comparative Literature. We are heartened by the directions taken today by comparative literature in Iberian studies, and we hope to contribute to that dialogue with this volumes compelling encounters between knowledge of primary sources and sophisticated analyses along current lines of interpretation. Perhaps the most signicant feature of the volume is to be found in its art historical oerings. Particularly as regards art history, we feel that there exists an urgent need for a renement of terms and handling of the primary sources particular to the discipline (buildings, parts of buildings, arches, arabesques, iconography). Unlike literary studies, art history still relies on the notion of discrete units to be compared, and these units are usually, if not always, established on the perceived stability and separateness of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian.

In addition, we wish to clarify our use of the following key terms present in current discussions; these will be treated in alphabetical order: Appropriation: in order for something to be appropriated, it has rst to belong, or to be perceived as belonging, to a person, a party, a race, a society. Needless to say, we wish the essays in this collection to problematize these assumptions concerning the term. Convivencia: The problematic nature of the term is amply acknowledged by current scholarship. One of the most eloquent problematizations is oered by Brian Catlos, who has argued for the replacement
Claudio Guilln, Entre lo uno y lo diverso: introduccin a la literature comparada (Barcelona, 1985).
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of this term with conveniencia.3 In short, and in agreement with Catlos, when convivencia is no longer convenient, it stops. For example, as stated by Mara Rosa Menocal, Convivencia is of course one of those much contested and vexed terms that does have to do with al-Andalus and Spain in particular, and like its equally vexed counterpart, reconquista, perhaps it is only problematic if we insist on some sort of uniformity and neatness, if we persist, despite our own likely observations of human nature, in expecting consistencies and purities of any sort.4 Hybrid: We do not intend for this term to stabilize meaning (a task toward which it is often applied), and thereby to provide closure or containment. Rather, we suggest that it always requires further explanation and contextualization; see comparative *. Moro (also moor, Moorish): We have allowed these anachronistic and somewhat outdated terms to remain, if individual collaborators have chosen to use them. The Iberian location implied in the term takes precedence over identication with Islam as a world religion. We allow it to co-exist beside Hispano-Islamic, Hispano-Arabic. Mudjar: As is well known, a hispanization of the Arabic mudajjin, with all of its attending semantic nuances. Our use of it here moves beyond its necessary ties to Islam, and proposes, instead, and more in line with the terms currency in literary analysis than in art history (where it constitutes a stable stylistic designator), a focus on the actual object of inquiry, rather than its supposed origins. In this collection, the term refers to the process of textual and artistic movement; contributions to this volume consistently privilege an erasure, rather than an identication, of origin. Where origins are identied, this is done with a heightened consciousness that the product is greater than the sum total of its parts.

3 Brian Catlos, Cristians, musulmans i jueus a la Corona dArag medieval: un cas de convenincia. LAven 236 (November 2001) 816; Contexto social y conveniencia en la Corona de Aragn. Propuesta para un modelo de interaccin entre grupos etno-religiosos minoritarios y mayoritarios. Revista dHistria Medieval (Valencia), 12 (2002) 220235; The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims in Catalonia and Aragon, 10501300 (Cambridge University Press, 2004) (see in particular p. 407 for the term conveniencia, and pp. 390408 for the idea of Mudjar Ethnogenesis.). 4 The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: the Literature of Al-Andalus, edited by Mara Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlein & Michael Sells (Cambridge, 2004) 14.

editors introduction

Multicultural: We understand this term as having a much broader scope than the simple Jewish-Muslim-Christian triangle. We are sensitive to the multicultural positions occupied within a seemingly monolithic culture by subjects which at rst sight do not appear to connote dierence. Thus, for example, Juan Ruiz is in a multicultural stance vis--vis the Castilian ruler; el Cid occupies a multicultural position vis--vis Leon; Ya Gidelli is multicultural vis--vis a theologian such as the 13th-century Damascene hadith compiler al-Nawawi. * * *

About the Two Clusters On its own, each essay in this collection is an innovative and exciting reading of its subject matter, and as such, contributes simultaneously to a number of current dialogues in Iberian studies. In the context of this specic volume, the essays have been grouped into two clusters of approximately equal length. This division highlights the ways in Castilian political ideology was inserted into an already extant, and to a large degree unselfconscious, fabric of multicultural reality. Obviously, this political ideology also inadvertently led to the production of genuine multicultural experiences at levels which were probably unperceived by the Castilian establishment, but were nonetheless highly creative and central to the overall process of aesthetic production. Received wisdom, however, highlights this process as a signicant feature of the 16th century and onward. The rst (top) cluster of essays engage with the Castilian state and its politically cultural landscape, emphasizing its constructed nature, and thus critiquing the notion of the transparency even of the Alfonsine cultural achievement. The second (bottom) cluster shows the ways in which the literature of the imagination subverted that process, generating a life of its own and, ultimately, escaping the control of hegemonic cultural agendas. Taken as a unit, moreover, the second group of contributions suggest that ction, which the top perceived as operating within clear and transparent generic lines, could in fact be used in order to highlight the wrinkles and loose ends of the tops project. This top-bottom dialogue is framed by Rouhi and Lius essays: the former calls for a critique of ethno-religious denitions from

editors introduction

within the very sphere that encourages the most rigid ideological division of all: the tradition of the Muslim-Christian debate of the medieval period. This opening into the collection looks ahead to the fteenth century, when the crystallization of religious divisions was seemingly well in place, and unpacks the terminology and procedures of scholarships reconstruction of a Christian-Muslim encounter to reveal the contradictions and diculties inherent even in the vocabulary of religious conict. Aware of its role as the gateway to the rest of the collection, the essay problematizes the most inexibly dened concepts of Iberian religious history (Christian theologian versus Muslim faqih), expanding the disciplinary eld of the collection. With symmetrical intent, the volume ends with Benjamin Lius essay looking without, towards the Mongol, oering denitions of a quintessentially outsider gure which contain surprisingly familiar contours that echo an earlier process of Spanish identity formation. Finally, both top and bottom clusters incorporate analyses of visual material which mark radical departures from art historical practice as it is currently applied to the Iberian culture of the 13th and 14th centuries. Iberian art historical practice continues to be encumbered by traditional questions of provenance, dating and particularly inuence driven by a largely unquestioning acceptance of Jewish, Muslim and Christian as stable stylistic categories. Although fashionable in many areas of critical practice, the concept of fragmentation (meaning, in Iberian art historical terms, the highlighted dierences between Jewish, Muslim and Christian stylistic elements) has been taken in an unfortunately literal sense, and the perceived combination of religiously stabilized fragments has been read consistently in terms of either agonistic or naively appreciative processes of appropriation and deployment. This situation is also complicated by the fact that practices of inquiry in the elds of Islamic and Western medieval art are, at present, so radically dierent. The discussion concerning the potential of nongural art to signify, among Islamicists, is still in its infancy and many key issues are hotly contested. The Christian tradition of stylistic and iconographical analysisnow well along its way toward a highly productive interdisciplinaritystands, clearly, at odds with its other. Iberia, caught in the middle as usual, is left to divvy up the fragments according to their religious aliation, with the result that Islamic contributions are read as merely decorative, while Christian iconography means.

editors introduction

It is important to underline that the four essays written by art historians (Ecker, Feliciano, Prado-Vilar, Robinson) consider their objects of inquiry as completely integrated and integral components to the production and reception of cultural meaning. Together they suggest, on the one hand, new and creative paths for the exploration of particularly Iberian visual idioms, functions and agendas which operate without need of support on imported scaoldings (Western, Islamic) and, on the other, paths through which art history might more fully integrate itself into the larger interpretive practice of medieval Iberian studies. Following an unapologetic abandonment of extant analytical models, visual objects are approached on their own terms, and in those of their specic cultural contexts. * * *

The Individual Essays Within Leyla Rouhis opening essay is as much an exploration of a specic historical encounter as it is an invitation for the critique of the terms used in reconstructing the story of such an encounter. The history of Juan de Segovias translation of the Qur"an (undertaken in order to refute Islamic doctrine) serves as a vehicle for the evaluation of the central role of erasure in the encounter, as well as of the challenges posed by facile labels such as Christian and Muslim in the context of Iberia. Rouhi focuses on the disappearance of the original Castilian correspondence between Juan de Segovia and his unlikely collaborator as a way of calling attention to the layers of articial symmetry imposed on this encounter by previous historiography. The label within refers to the Spanish identity of the two men involved in the project, yet conscious of the outsider status on two registers. First, their geographic exile. Second, their fteenth-century status, which, in contrast to the thirteenth century during which such a translation project would (a) have been state-funded and (b) not as dicult to accomplish (Ana Echevarras essay acutely highlights these dierences).

editors introduction Mandate From the Top: The Emperors New Clothes

As stated above, this cluster of essays engages and ultimately critiques the widely held view of 13th- and 14th-century Spain, and that of King Alfonso X in particular, as a model of successful convivencia. The new clothes woven by the emperor of Castile (a Castile which now, incidentally, included most of present-day Andalucia) have long been celebrated as humanistic haute couture that ushered in an era of cultural fusion and tolerance. With the fraying of its hems still blissfully unimaginable, the spell would last at least until the fratricidal debut of the Trastmara dynasty. The veritable industry of history-writing, translation and artistic production which characterized Alfonsos reign has been read particularly by scholars of literature and art historywith some relatively recent exceptions, among which Menocal and Tolan5 are notableas a unied and unequivocal embracing of the non-Christian others over whom Alfonso ruled. Alternately, historians such as Burns and OCallaghan6 have oered a vision of overwhelming Castilian (and Aragonese) expansionism, with all the expected complications of such a project; their narratives often skirt the issue of cultural production. Together, the four studies that make up this cluster subject the seemingly unresolvable contradiction suggested by these two views to close scrutiny, and therefore highlight a far more deliberately colonizing cultural ideology than that suggested by the convivencia model as it is generally understood. The Castilian-Alfonsine cultural agenda, in fact, was, in most of its manifestations, quite in tune with the expansionism foregrounded by the historians mentioned above. The measurable success of this ideology, however, was probably limited, as suggested in the sparsely populated (but carefully administered) Christian Seville evoked in Heather Eckers essay, which was inherited by Alfonso upon his ascension to the throne. Each essay following Eckers contributes toward an understanding of what was in fact a self-consciously hybrid and ultimately hegemonic
5 Mara Rosa Menocal, Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric (Duke University Press, 1994); John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2002). 6 Robert I. Burns, Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Societies in Symbiosis (Cambridge University Press, 1984); Medieval Colonialism: Postcrusade Exploitation of Islamic Valencia (Princeton University Press, 1975); Joseph OCallaghan, The Learned King: the Reign of Alfonso X of Castile (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993).

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aspect of the Alfonsine cultural project. The resulting hybrid, however, is hardly the consequence of transparent and indiscriminate borrowings of discrete and decontextualized cultural units (or, as Mara Felicianos essay demonstrates, the simple donning of the clothes of the other); rather, it is both multi-pronged and insidious. It knowingly constructs a melting pot in which a Semitic identity is appropriated for the advancement of the Christian state agenda of conversion. In this endeavour, sources are fabricated (see Echevarra), faces erased (see Robinson),7 religious emotions are manipulated (see Prado-Vilar) and identities thus contained. This presents a most dangerous supplement to the unproblematic loan-words, tropes, ornamental or iconographic motifs typically read as evidence of inuence which apparently results in multicultural existence. Therefore, some essays in this cluster would, upon rst examination, appear to exist in contradiction with others. This is in fact a welcome move both for this collection and for medieval Iberian studies: to attempt to systematize or resolve these contradictions would be to reduce our project to simple symmetries, or even to erase dissonances (see Rouhi). After all, scholarship cannot uncritically mimic the silences and wrinkles of its subjects. Heather Eckers essay underlines the troubled and enigmatic nature of 13th-century Castilian existence. She demonstrates that cohesion and control are mere constructs of state imagination. From her study, the reader comes away with images of empty cities neatly divided up into parishes, waiting to receive reluctant and ultimately absent repobladores. The triangular relationship (a conguration of great signicance for this collection) highlighted here by Ecker is a dysfunctional one which exists between two absent populationsthe desired and yearned for repobladores and the expelled local populationand the city, standing for an impotent deus ex machine, i.e., an ecclesiastical administration with nothing to administer. Ecker also points out, like Feliciano later, the centric position occupied by Toledo as superior to Seville, which should be taken into account by current cultural historiography of the 13th century. This realization constitutes a lesson which might be pondered with especial productivity by the eld of Art History as it attempts to come
7 While Robinsons essay appears in the second cluster, it nonetheless responds to the overarching problematic at stake here.

editors introduction

11

to grips with the deeply rooted regionalism which drives the study of late medieval Iberian visual culture. Eckers contribution to the texturing of inuence as a concept is found in her rejection of previous scholarships linking of the Castilian parish system as an urban organizing tool to Gregorian or broader Northern-European models. In her own words, the implementation of the Gregorian reforms, which promoted the establishment of parish churches, in the unique context of conquesta territory under monarchic, and thus, papal controlwas entirely dierent from its implementation in other parts of Europe. In Andalucia, there was nothing to reform in terms of ecclesiastical institutions, but a great deal to invent[.] Rather, as Ecker demonstrates, the inuence came, literally, from within, in the savvy appropriation of some existing mosques as the centers of new parochial cells. Francisco Prado-Vilars essay makes clear thatcontrary to the interpretive practice which has thus far characterized Cantiga Studies the corpus images do not exist as mere armers or illustrators of the text; rather, they form an indispensable and to a large degree independent component of the communicative and interpretive apparatus. The triangular relationship here is described by Alfonso X, the artists, and the reader/viewer. Prado-Vilar demonstrates that this relationship exists in a constant state of ux, and that the reader/viewers active participation in the interpretive process is indispensable for this latter to be eective. Also signicant is his disengagement of analysis of the Cantigas visual program from Franco-centric Gothic discourse: these images stand on their own terms as powerful catalysts of the realization of resemblance and consequent conversion. Perhaps most importantly, while the Cantigas have been read by past scholarship as singular and transparent achievements of an indiscriminate Alfonsine cultural fusion, in which Castilian multicultural daily life is faithfully represented, Prado-Vilar reveals the conscious and elaborate scaolding of manipulative intent upon which they were constructed. In a word, these images constitute yet another arm in the Alfonsine hegemonic arsenal: they function as a state-ofthe-13th-century-art, heat-seeking missile aimed at directly at the heart of humanitys collective and common emotional structure, and this to a very concrete purpose. Alfonso identies and uses the feelings of love inspired by images of maternity, mortality, and potentially dead babies, the overarching mandate being a uniquely Iberian

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editors introduction

aesthetic appeal, in order to further the Castilian state agenda of conversion. Mara J. Felicianos essay considers the social life of Andalusi textiles. Previous scholarship has contextualized these objects of luxury culture in terms of an unrelenting Muslim-Christian conict, with the textiles representing a perfect case-study of an Islamic inuence, which is then generally treated in one of two ways. In some cases, these textiles are read as the quintessential product of appropriation and thus a sign of domination; in others, they have been generalized into an eternally contradictory (and, in Felicianos terms, astonishing) example of Christian taste for Muslim neries. Feliciano transcends this binary vision, showing that the presence of ne fabrics of Andalusi manufacture has a long history, not only in Christian Spain, but throughout Europe. She then reveals the particular motivations behind their deployment on Castilian state occasions (particularly, funerals) to be almost exclusively rooted in economic concerns, and thus critiques scholarships insistence on their association with Islam, emphasizing that Castilian consumption of Andalusi textiles (which were manufactured into distinctly Castilian objects and garments) was materialism at its most blatant. Consequently, Feliciano is able to demonstrate that it was not the vegetal or animals motifs, the arabesque or the horror vacui (all consistently characterized by art historians as Islamic elements which crept, through the textiles, into the Christian visual vocabulary), but rather, the specic heraldic devices particular to fabrics actually commissioned by Castilian patrons, which held the meaning. As in the case of Eckers essay, Toledo looms large as an early focus of the sort of patronage analyzed here. From the presumed triangle of producers, consumers and fabric itself, Feliciano in fact succeeds in erasing the producers as signifying factors in the relationship; by the end of her essay, readers will question whether the designation of these fabrics as Andalusi continues to hold validity. Ana Echevarras essay is groundbreaking in its highly viable rereading of the Book of Muhammads Ladder. This work is often considered an authentic Arabic source rendered into Romance thanks to genuine Alfonsine eorts to translate and render useful nonChristian cultural material in service of the enrichment of his Castilian intellectual project. Through the lens of Tolans detailed model of

editors introduction

13

the construction of Alfonsine historiography, Echevarria examines the text as an answer to new polemic and ideological needs. The Book of Muhammads Ladder has traditionally (and even recently) been characterized as Alfonso Xs exotic gift to Dante. While not disregarding that obvious and key trace, Echevarrias most signicant contribution is her identication of the text as, not a translation from Arabic into Castilian, but rather from a body of Latinate traditions culled from the Qur"an and hadith, much of which had long before been translated into Arabic and then into Castilian. In other words, Asins authentic, missing Arabic text is a scholarly fabrication. Furthermore, by drawing attention to the racial categories used for descriptions of the prophets inserted into the Ladders isr" narrative under the patronage of Jimenez de Rada, Echevarria underscores the heavy-handedness of the Castilian multicultural agenda and its ultimate aim which will, at the very least, surprise the reader. This echoes Robinsons preliminary exploration of the emerging project of Alfonsine Anthropology visible in the to-date unexplained visual program of the Libros del Ajedrez. Gregory B. Kaplans essay re-denes the concept of inuence with truly important implications for the received wisdom on the Poema de mio Cid (PMC). Whereas the text has often been read as an assertion of Castilian Reconquest ideals at the expense of neighboring Len, Kaplans research shows that this simple binary opposition (Castille versus Len) is in fact much more complex: the two terms do not stand in a straightforward hierarchy to one another, as past criticism would have it. Inuence encompasses, here, vibrant tension and co-existence between the two regions as enacted by lvar Fez. The multiple functionality of lvar Fezas acquaintance of the Infantes, defender of the Beni-Gmez, and companion to El Cidboth demonstrates and problematizes the inuence of Leonese historiography as a monolithic concept. The triangle described by Kaplan, then, sets up three points of reference: historiography, ction and religious conict. The author shows the critical interaction of the three for the creation of a multicultural Castile, an interaction which, somewhat ironically, takes place in its signature poem. The essay therefore invites further nuancing of our understanding of the concept of multiculturalism in the peninsula, since it highlights lvar Fez as a multicultural entity in the world of El Cid, particularly as regards Fez relationship with the

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editors introduction

Beni Gmez, perplexing when set against his allegiance to the Infantes de Carrin. Interestingly, El Cid also emerges as a multicultural presence in the landscape of Alfonso VI. These positionings do not serve to stabilize the political and familial relationship[s] at stake but, rather the poems intense sensitivity to its own time and place of production. When considering the contribution of Kaplans essay to the volume, it is imperative to note that, although the PMC has been read as a manifestation of a purely Castilian ideology, it in fact questions the limits of denitions of ethnic or religious identity and of regional tensions. Kaplan raises the interesting question of the extent to which the Castilian historiographical project of the 13th-century sought to simplify the constant movement of boundaries between Christian states into black and white on the basis of religious distinctions. Voices From the Bottom: Undressing for Good Love This cluster of essays considers ction. Its scope is determined by parameters set by translation, orality, performance, literary models and levels of discourse in the consideration of the often subversive responses of the bottom, as dened earlier, to the mandates of the top. The three texts with which this cluster engages are Juan Ruiz El libro de buen amor, the Kalila wa Dimnah translations in Castile, and the adi Bay wa Riy, all produced between the mid-13th and the mid-14th centuries. As the essays will show, these respond to the crystallization of Castilian state identity in dazzlingly dynamic ways. The concept of undressing connotes a process of revelation carried out both by the ction itself and by the readings of that ction presented in this volume. Taking the central tropes of this ction sexuality, desire, mediationthe readings unveil the authentic multicultural threads running through the collective imagination of those who produced these texts, whose names we do not always know. In other words, whereas our rst cluster critiques and nuances received notions concerning the transparency of Castilian-Alfonsine multiculturalism, the second group of essays calls attention to the complex and also sometimes playful persistence of a genuine multicultural reality as translated into poetics, outside the sphere of royal patronage and hegemony. This literature is tethered to what we have identied as the bottom stratum of our study: imagination, desire, and authentic alterity. This bottom is critically sustained by the gure of the old female go-between, who emerges as protagonist in every single text under

editors introduction

15

consideration here. In this way, she represents a counterpoint to Alfonso: an old, illiterate woman, sometimes Muslim, sometimes Christian, sometimes Jewish, and often unspecied, poised against a powerful male emperor. Under the gaze of the old woman, and perhaps unseen by Alfonso, bodies are dressed in forbidden fabric (Robinson), undressed by the wrong agent (Hutcheson) and crossdressed by way of translation (Girn). In this way the texts celebrate and prolong their own multicultural existence. The presence of the one art history essay in this cluster underscores the complexity of the interaction between visual and textual registers, further complicating it with an acknowledgement of theatricality. Incidentally, this cluster also builds a bridge to art history, in its reection of the reading methods employed in the rst cluster. Louise Vasvris essay underlines the key place occupied by orality, as exemplied by the perversion of proverbs in the text. The triangle she describes involves the actual proverbs, their perversions and the poems simultaneous occupation of oral and written space. Her piece, which is an outstanding study of multivalence and heteroglossia in itself, in addition provides the perfect and necessary backdrop to the subsequent essays precisely by its foregrounding of the oral dimensions, not only of the El libro de buen amor, but of the various genres in which that text participates (in this case, Hadit Bay wa Riy and Kalila wa Dimnah). Her re-reading of that dimension endows all the texts considered in this cluster with a genuine oral vibrancy which is a part and parcel of their dialogue with one another. Vasvaris essay textures the denition of inuence by looking at it as an intersection of oral forms towards the production of a parodic text. Cynthia Robinsons essay, as mentioned earlier, represents the only reading in the book which is not a re-reading and, as such, expands the data available for the critique of the concept of inuence, as well as for our full acquaintance with the 'ajouz, or alcahuetas, permutations on Iberian soil. For Robinson, the vieja is, echoing the precious work of Leyla Rouhi and Francisco Mrquez Villanueva, beyond-hybrid and ultimately Iberian. Her essay sets up a triangle consisting of the 'ajouz as type, the very particular and peculiar 'ajouz of Hadit Bay wa Riy, and the visual program as an heuristic that explains the relation between the two. The centerpiece of the study is Vat. Ar. Ris. 368, the only surviving copy of the ad Bay

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editors introduction

wa Riy, an illustrated love story told both in prose and verse, which probably dates to the latter half of the 13th century. An argument for an interdisciplinary approach to the 'ajouz, the manuscript, together with its illustrations, opens the door onto considerations of visual andthrough the corpus of complete love lyrics preserved between sections of narrationtheatrical resonance for the Iberian 'ajouz. Indeed, these two registers force us to recognize the potential consequences of the very public nature of her existence as both literary character and social reality in the streets, courtyards and patios of Alfonsine Seville. Most importantly, however, this conjunction of the historical and the ctitious make the 'ajouz an ideal mouthpiece for (and indeed pawn in) negotiations concerning the survival or debasement and ultimate erasure of Andalusi Arabic culture. The 'ajouz of Hadit Bay wa Riy deliberately challenges the Alfonsine paradigm of the debased tercera through advocation for nothing more and nothing less than the impossibly pure love of the Ban 'Udhr". For this in fact rather astonishing presentation of the 'ajouz to attain its full resonance, however, the bedrock of commonalities reconstructed by Rouhi and Mrquez Villanueva, and solidly demonstrated by Girn in the following piece, must be in place. Luis Girns essay takes up not the erased or the not-there referred to earlier in our introduction, but rather a present and accounted for corpus which, as he argues, actually does attain an authentic multicultural objective successfully, quite possibly as intended by the translators working under Alfonso X. In this regard, Girns essay presents a vibrant and much-appreciated counterpoint to the idea of the Castilian state and sovereigns covert agenda of deliberate multicultural artice: his ndings suggest that in fact the two currents genuine diversity such as he identies it, and strained diversity such as identied equally validly by Feliciano and Prado-Vilarcan and do co-exist. Girn engages the divergent trajectories of translation to assess the dissemination of a particular fable in the Kalila wa Dimnah cycle as an altogether new paradigm of acculturation, not merely in the literary space, but also in the anthropological space of perceptions of linguistic diversity. In this process, Girn examines in detail two translations, one into Castilian and one into Hebrew, of the Arabic version of the fable of the go-betweens nose, both carried out in the 13th century. Rather than evaluating the translations as isolated

editors introduction

17

and decontextualized examples of inuence, Girns piece argues in favor of understanding these translations as comprehensive anthropological models. The implications of Girns study set up a thought-provoking contrast to, and point of contact between, some of the other essays the collection. If, as he suggests, the Castilian translation produced in the Alfonsine workshops represents an example of mutual understanding, the literalness of this translation and Alfonsos apparent lack of interest in interpretation are all the more striking. This, in turn invites the question of why, in the Hebrew translation and in other cases examined in this cluster, there does appear to be an overt act of interpretation. Thus, the triangle implied by Girns study extends dramatically to the whole collection; his contribution, literally, pulls top and bottom together. Gregory Hutchesons essay explores the permeability between literary and medical discourse, as well as the uid boundaries set by intertextual relations in El libro de buen amor. His problematization of the question of inuence centers upon a critique of literary models, long categorized by scholars as either Semitic or Latin, a concept which has only recently been opened up to challenge. As a result of this exploration, Hutcheson articulates a signicant concept concerning the issue of female sexual agency arrived at through the play of models and genres generally assigned to a stable category. Hutchesons categorization of desire as a privileged element of both El libro de buen amors and Islamic poetics places it above social, cultural and gender boundedness, proving that El libro de buen amor does not respond to already-existing templates of misogyny or promiscuity which are traditionally associated respectively with Christian and Islamic traditions. On one end of the spectrum, Hutcheson limits the unequivocal assertions of the Semitic genetics of the work while, on the other end, he challenges the views commonly held by some Hispanists suggesting that the role of desire in El libro de buen amor is a result of the elusive, complex and ultimately un-reconstructable moment of the books creation.8 In short, Hutcheson renders inevitable the
8 See in particular Libro de buen amor Studies, edited by G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny (London, 1970); Richard Burkhart, The Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: a Study in the Ovidian Background of the Libro de buen amor (Newark, 1999).

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editors introduction

conclusion that the arcipreste made knowledgeable use of the many literatures available to him. Previous scholars, such as Purtolas, have also advocated for an understanding of El libro de buen amor beyond Muslim and Christian templates. Hutcheson, however, reveals the crucial role of female sexuality in the construction of desire, arrived at through intertextual play and the presence of the body. The triangle described by Hutcheson, then, includes the male body, the female gaze and the go-betweens negotiation of these two forces (emphasis ours). Without Benjamin Lius essay, while structurally at the end, in fact points the way toward another thematic beginning: a move beyond Iberia. Too often Iberianists and scholarship concerned with medieval Iberia begin and end within the connes of the peninsula or of the Mediterranean. Liu focuses on Spains new and distant other, the Mongol.9 This is an other which to a large degree Spain shares with the rest of Europe. Lius study, while accepting instability as a parameter, also gives this term another eld of reference by texturing its denitions in the context of identity formation and identity politics, both Spanish and non-Spanish. The Mongols actual dierence is in fact his slave status, under which guise most Mongols were present on Iberian soil; Iberian texts, however, multiply this identity in order to populate the imaginary realm with conquerors, indels and even the Antichrist. Such a gaze without broadens our panorama beyond the triangle composed of Jew-Muslim-Christian. Our collection therefore invites scholars to look outward from Iberian objects and texts toward the rest of the medieval world within a comparative frame of reference that understands the Iberian cultural reality not as composite but as fused: not a case of simple hybridity, but one of complex fusion. Looking at the elements within this fusion, we challenge the idea that motifs and themes have a relentlessly stable identications with Jewish, Muslim, or Christian identity. Rather, they constitute another common idiom that is uniquely Iberian. It is our hope that this collection will inspire further critical questions on the anture of and appropriate uses for comparative methodology when dealing with medieval Iberia.
We use the term Spain here instead of Castile, given that Lius essay considers Catalan sources as well.
9

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Figures 123 belong to the article The Gothic Anamorphic Gaze: Regarding the Worth of Others by Francisco Prado-Vilar (pp. 67100). Figures 16 belong to the article Muslim Shrouds for Christian Kings? A Reassessment of Andalusi Textiles in Thirteenth-Century Castilian Life and Ritual by Mara Judith Feliciano (pp. 101131). Figures 16 belong to the article Going Between: The adth Bay wa Riy and the Contested Identity of the {Ajouz in 13th-Century Iberia by Cynthia Robinson (pp. 199230).

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[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 1. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 68v, detail (photo: Ornoz).

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 2. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 68v (photo: Ornoz).

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Fig. 3. Gautier de Coincy, Les miracles de Notre Dame. St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, MS. Fr.F.v.XIV.9, fol.103v.

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 4. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. B.R. 20, fol. 6r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 5. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 222r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 6. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 240r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 7. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. b.I.2, fol. 125r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

Fig. 8. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS T.I.1, fol. 170v (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 9. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 145r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 10. Al-Hariri, Maqamat, London, British Library, MS. Or 1200, fol. 68r (photo: courtesy of the British Museum).

Fig. 11. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 195r (photo: Ornoz).

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 12. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 195r (photo: Ornoz).

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[Prado-Vilar]

Fig. 13. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 59v (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 14. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 237r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 15. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 113r (photo: Ornoz).

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 16. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 227v (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

Fig. 17. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 196r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 18. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 224r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 19. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 228v (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 20. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 251r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 21. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 154r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

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Fig. 22. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio, MS. T.I.1, fol. 131r (photo: courtesy of Ediln).

[Prado-Vilar]

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Fig. 23. Cantigas de Santa Mara, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. B.R. 20, fol. 100r (photo: Ornoz).

[Feliciano]

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Fig. 1. Cope of the Infante Don Felipe, ca. 1270-1274. Silk and gold threads. Archivo Fotogrfico, Museo Arqueolgico Nacional, Madrid.

Fig. 2. Detail, Cope of the Infante Don Felipe. Archivo Fotogrfico, Museo Arqueolgico Nacional, Madrid.

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Fig. 3. Detail, Pluvial Cope Sancho IV, Archbishop of Toledo, ca. 1266-1275. Silk and gold threads. Cathedral of Toledo. Photo: Miguel Zapico.

Fig. 4. Tunic of Don Rodrigo Ximnez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, ca. 1247. Monasterio de Santa Mara la Real de Huerta, Soria. Photography by Sheldon Collins. Photograph Copyright 1991 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Fig. 5. Pluvial Cope of Sancho IV, Archbishop of Toledo, ca. 1266-1275. Silk and gold threads. Cathedral of Toledo. Photo: Miguel Zapico.

Fig. 6. Fragments from the funerary vestments of the Infante Don Alfonso de Castilla, ca. 1291. Museo de Valladolid.

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[Robinson]

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Fig. 1. adth Bay wa Riy, The Sayyidas Majlis, I, f. 7 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).

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Fig. 2. adth Bay wa Riy, The Sayyidas Majlis, II, f. 9 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).

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Fig. 3. adth Bay wa Riy, Riy Exiled From Her Ladys Company, f. 13 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).

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Fig. 4. adth Bay wa Riy, The Old Woman Counsels Bay, f. 15 (photo: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).

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[Robinson]

Fig. 5. Libros del Ajedrez, f. 22r, Slaves Chess Game (photo: Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial; Princeton University Library Rare Books Room).

[Robinson]

Fig. 6. Libros del Ajedrez, f. 48r, Alfonso Plays Chess with Slave Girls (photo: Biblioteca del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial; Princeton University Library Rare Books Room).

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WITHIN

A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY SALAMANCANS PURSUIT OF ISLAMIC STUDIES Leyla Rouhi

It isor by now should bewell-known that the term coexistence in the context of medieval Spain cannot be qualied with simple adjectives such as hostile or friendly. The nature of co-existence is by denition elusive because the phenomenon occurs across a range of interaction so wide that generalized evaluations of it cannot sustain themselves beyond reductive implications. The specicity of an historical moment of co-existence must be explored, each time, for the ongoing critical denition of the concept itself. This specicity has much to do with the nature and function of inuence as it relates to co-existence. Cultures are often said to inuence one another; this is indeed a form of co-existence, but any denition of inuence must come with a profound exploration of contextual specicity. The exchange of knowledge between Muslim and Christian communities in medieval Iberia is one of those overarching themes for which inuence is a basic category. Some of the adages that have emerged from the study of learning between Muslims and Christians in Iberia are today a part and parcel of most established discourses on the Middle Ages, not to mention non-specialized conversations on Islam and Christianity: Arabs brought x to medieval Europe, x being any discipline such as astronomy, philosophy, algebra, medicine. This is indeed true, and cannot be refuted. That said, the actual dynamic that facilitated this exchange must remain open to problematization. Such exchanges were by no means seamless activities that took place in an idyllic vacuum, free of frictions and conicts.1 In the case of medieval Spain in particular, there can be no illusion about a neutral process for the exchange of knowledge between Christians and Muslims, normore alarmingly, perhaps a rigid denition of Christian and Muslim. Rather, the exchange of
1 For an overview of attitudes to the transmission of knowledge in Europe via the Arabs, see Roger Boase, Arab Inuences on European Love-Poetry, in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Leiden, 1992), 457483 (457).

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knowledge is precisely the site in which certain integral tensions of inuence emerge in full. An important consideration when assessing the characteristics of such a tension has to do with the reasons for which Christians and Muslims, however hybrid and uid their religious identity, sought knowledge from one another. If genuine curiosity about facts obviously played a part, this was by no means the only motivation for turning to members of the other religion for learning. This is naturally true in the case of theology. Anxiety or elation over the threat of military or religious expansion, and the need to disprove the other religions fundamental errors of doctrine, had much to do with the pursuit of knowledge. Refutation was a common framework for medieval encounters between Muslims and Christians, and obviously it involved learning about the enemys religion. Christians who sought to refute Islam rst learnt about it, or at the very least, assumed that they did. The Middle Ages provide us with a veritably impressive library of treatises, letters, and sermons on Islam, produced by Christian theologians who learnt about Islam through translations, encounters, and readings. In these, which span centuries and oer several perspectives on Islam primarily in order to suggest ways for ghting and ultimately eliminating it, knowledge of Islam is the central foundation on which the writers base themselves to present their solutions.2 This extensive tradition builds itself on intertextuality, ongoing dialogue, and the display of diverse techniques of dialectical reasoning, showing Christian theologians of dierent cultures and leanings in conversation with one another across the centuries in the attempt to know Islam better, and therefore to combat it more eciently. An intriguing branch of this tradition is the one in which the access to knowledge on Islam involves the actual meeting of the Christian theologian with a Muslim counter-

2 The medieval treatise on Islam and Christianity as written by the opponent of each religion, whose aim is manifold though often includes theological and political refutation, is a very well chronicled one and the object of detailed study by numerous scholars. For a compelling point of departureamong manythe reader can consult Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam, edited by John Tolan (Garland, 1996). Ample bibliography is also available for the study of the other side of the argument (Muslim debate against Christianity). See Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Some Neglected Aspects of Medieval Muslim Polemics against Christianity, Harvard Theological Review 89:1 (1996): 6184; David Thomas, Early Muslim Polemic Against Christianity: Abu 'Is al-Warraqs Against the Incarnation, (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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part, be it in the form of live debate, correspondence, or a connection of another sort.3 For many scholars of religious history, one prominent interpretive impulse for understanding this corpus has often centered upon a decision: is a given text on Islam a blatant example of hostility and expansionism, or does it reveal a surprising tolerance of Islam by the Christian who wrote it? The aim of the present essay is to take one such encounter between Muslim and Christian, and to highlight the ways in which the very denitions of hostility and tolerance are problematized in the context of medieval Iberia. The essay invites a serious re-denition of the concept of inuence in the area where the neat division of hostility and tolerance begins to break down. No two people come to a debateespecially a medieval debate on Islam versus Christianityfree of the complications, nuances, and peculiar intellectual and social parameters of their own specic vital contexts. A precise historical moment engages the notions of co-existence and inuence in particularly meaningful ways, since it involves an uneasy exchange on three levels: personal, intellectual, and political. Any transmission of knowledge that does occur is ltered through so many contextual layers that it immediately begs the problematization of inuence as a concept. One of the most compelling instances of such an intriguing encounter occurs with the fteenth-century Salamancan theologian Juan de Segovia (ca. 13931458) and his invitation to the faqih of Segovia, Ya Gidelli (1420?1462 (or after)?) to join him at a Priory in France and help him translate the Qur"an into Spanish and Latin. Juan de Segovias frame of mind as a theologian, his approach to Islam, and its relationship to the meeting and correspondence with Ya have been the object of thoughtful and meticulously researched scholarship over the past few decades. In its reconstruction of events the present essay relies wholly and gratefully on the material and commentary oered by recent scholarship. Of indispensable reference is the work of Jesse D. Mann who has written extensively on
3 See for example P. S. van Koningsveld and G. A. Wiegers, The Polemical Works of Muhammad al-Qaysi (. 1309) and their Circulation in Arabic and Aljamiado among the Mudejars in the Fourteenth Century, Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios rabes XV (1994): 163199. This study also provides the background to the anti-Christian polemical tradition among the Muslim minorities of Spain in the fourteenth century, thereby oering an invaluable backdrop to the present essay.

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the Salamancan theologian, as well as that of Gerart Wiegers, and a number of other scholars.4 In the year 1427 the Patriarch of Constantinople met with the theologian Juan de Segovia in Rome and asked the latter to come up with ways of treating the problem of Islam. The request stemmed from the Churchs increasing preoccupation with Islams momentous advances, and the threats posed to Christendom by the political and military power of that religion. Juan de Segovia, known in the history of Christian theology also for his participation in the anti-papal council of Basle (14311439), spent much of the rest of his life contemplating the problem of Islam, and voiced his ardent belief in the possibility of the non-violent conversion of Muslims to Christianity (de via pacis et doctrine).5 An advocate of the close study of Islamic doctrine and the Qur"an, Juan was convinced that Muslims could be converted en masse to Christianity via disputation and the logical refutation of their erroneous doctrines, as long as the Christians debating with them showed a close knowledge of Islam and were able to refute the religion using learned debate. This rationale compelled Juan de Segovia to reject the viability of Crusades or the work of missionaries: he saw any conversions resulting from these as ultimately articial. In his treatise De gladio divini spiritus mittendo saracenorum he explained his approach; the other sources in which he recorded his view of the issue of conversion are his letters to three ecclesiasts: Nicholas of Cusa, Enaes Silvio Piccolomini (the future Pope Pius II), and Jean Germain. In this quest, one of his main objectives became to translate the Qur"an himself, as he was profoundly dissatised with the transla-

4 Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado: Ya of Segovia, His Antecedents and Successors (Brill, 1994). See also Jesse D. Manns Truth and Consequences: Juan de Segovia on Islam and Conciliarism, Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Culture in Conuence and Dialogue, (2002) 8, 1 (7990). Other important studies on Juan de Segovia whose ndings are used in this piece are Daro Cabanelas Rodrguez, Juan de Segovia y el problema islmico (Madrid, 1953); Antony Black, Council and Commune: the Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-century Heritage (London, 1971); Stefano Lator, Giovanni di Segovia e la prima versione bilingue del Corano, La civilit cattolica 96 (1945): 3744; Jesse D. Mann, The Historian and the Truths: Juan de Segovias Explanatio de Tribus Veritatibus Fidei, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago, 1993); Ana Echevarra, The Fortress of Faith: The Attitude Towards Muslims in Fifteenth-Century Spain (Leiden, 1999); Benigno Hernndez Montes, Biblioteca de Juan de Segovia: edicin y comentario de su escritura de donacin (Madrid, 1984). 5 Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 333.

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tions available to him. This dissatisfaction was compounded by his stated conviction that most Christian theologians did not understand Islam well, and were therefore ill-equipped to refute it. The fteenth century saw a surge of didactic treatise-writing against Islam, much of which was familiar to Juan. In his letters to fellow theologians Juan often identied himself as exceptionally well-placed for the rigorous study of the enemys religion. He coupled his disapproval of the crusading mentality and missionary work with the conviction that his comprehension of Islam surpassed that of most, if not all, Christian theologians.6 To produce his own translation of the Qur"an, which he envisaged as a trilingual text (Arabic, Romance, Latin), Juan managed to bring to the Priory in Aiton, Francewhere he had been living since his fall from favor due to his Conciliarist leaningsa learned Muslim theologian from Segovia, named Ya Gidelli. Ya appears to have been a prominent member of the fast diminishing Muslim community of Segovia and some type of a religious leaderfaqih of this marginal Mudejar community. Based on letters and texts written by both men, Gerart Wiegers reconstructs the meeting in France in some detail, as do the scholars mentioned earlier. Juan wrote to Ya in 1454, inviting him to Aiton. Ya arrived over a year later ready to fulll the task, equipped with several theological texts on Islam which he presented to Juan. In the four months spent with Juan in Aiton, Ya worked on a translation of the Qur"an into Spanish, closely observed by the Christian theologian who already knew some Arabic but who clearly needed help to decipher the Qur"an. As Cabanelas and Wiegers (and others) inform us, the faqih copied the entire Qur"an in the rst month he was in Aiton. In the second month, he vocalized the text. In the third month he translated it into Spanish, taking the time to explain points of grammar to Juan as they went along. In the fourth month
6 For example, and as this essay will develop further, to one of his critical correspondents named Jean GermainBishop of Nevers and co-participant in the Council of BasleJuan wrote that one of the greatest obstacles to the conversion of Muslims is the ignorance of Christian preachers who attribute unfounded notions to Islam, antagonizing Muslims and rendering them all the more resistant to discussion with Christians (Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 221 and 217). Also, in a letter to Eneas Silvio Juan wondered to what extent the learned authorities of the Church had ever examined Islamic doctrine closely, and whether they had truly understood the basic precepts of the religion, which Juan himself had made every eort to grasp (Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 223).

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he edited the translation using the original Arabic while Juan worked alongside him largely relying on the Romance version, unable to tackle the original fully. When Ya decided to go back to Segovia, Juan did all that he could to keep him, as he required the Muslims help for the Latin translation which heJuaninsisted be done using the Arabic. But Ya did not stay, so Juan began the process of producing the latinis lettris version using Yas Spanish. In his writings about the eort, he expresses deep frustration that he cannot use the Arabic version, and that Yas Spanish version, on which he must rely, is at times ambiguous.7 Of his three Christian correspondents, Nicolas of Cusa and Eneas Silvio approved of his proposition. Jean Germain reproached him adamantly stating numerous reasons in favor of Crusades and battle against Muslims.8 Juans other epistolary engagement was with Ya Gidelli, both before and after the faqihs visit to Aiton. Ya made it clear to Juan that he accepted the assignment since he saw it as a decisive, angelic cause, and a part of a Divine plan.9 In no uncertain terms he stated: I want this in order to serve [Gods] administration and the enlightenment of my soul to be attained by study and [of the soul] of those for whom I have a responsibility.10 Wiegers oers ample proof from Yas writing to show that the faqihs motives in helping Juan de Segovia were the same as his reasons for refuting any Christian who had harsh things to say about the Qur"an. In his writings to and about Juan de Segovia, Yas tone is respectful and friendly but by no means subservient: it is quite clear that he comes to the task of translation as a Muslim condent that the Qur"an will enlighten and guide its reader.11 Juans pursuit of Islamic studies takes shape, therefore, within a curious ve-way dialogue. On one end of it stand Nicolas of Cusa and Eneas Silvio, themselves eminent theologians and most interested in the problem of Islam (Nicolas has written about it himself ), and who agree with Juan. On another end stands Jean Germain, vehemently against Juan de Segovias approach, representing the mil-

See Hernndez Montes, 286, for a detailed description of this event. Cabanelas contains the full text of many of these letters. See chapters V to VII for the reaction of each theologian to Juan. 9 Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 101. 10 Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 233. 11 See in particular Wiegers 1045.
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itaristic crusading spirit. One more point of reference is provided by Ya Gidelli whose authority on Quranic language and interpretation, in Juan de Segovias own representation, clearly surpasses that of any Christians knowledge of the matter. But this authority is naturally complicated because Ya is the member of a disdained minority and a potential object of conversion himself. In other words, while he might possess unquestionable expertise as teacher, he does not exactly wield power as a political being. If the Christians correspondents of Juan seem to t easy templates, Ya complicates the dialogue in remarkably signicant ways. Being the quintessential Mudejar, his voice brings a fundamentally multicultural and Hispanophone resonance to the conversation. This sets him apart from, say, an Arab theologian residing within Muslim territory. Nor is his position as fragile as that of a slave. Ya is indeed versed in the Arabic traditions and writings that endow him with the authority of faqih, yet he is also a Spaniard. Wiegers and others depict circumstances that underscore the essential hybridity of Mudejar Segovia in Yas time. The scarcity of documentation does make the task of reconstruction dicult, but evidence of close involvement with Jews and Christians is compelling and not surprising, given Spains demographics. Every Wednesday, Mudejars and Jews went to the Church of St. Michael to hear Mass; some of the cofradas of Segovia possibly had Mudejar members. For minorities, law was enacted by Christian and Muslim judges together.12 If the Mudejars of Segovia were isolated by law or on paper, evidence certainly suggests that they mingled with Christians on many levels of existence. In his writings in Spanish, aimed for the Muslim minority as well as any Christian who wished to be enlightened, Ya Gidelli was at once translator and creator: it seems he translated from Spanish into Arabic for certain occasions, and produced his own texts for others.13 L. P. Harvey and Wiegers have shown that there are traces of Christian sources on Yas explanations of Islamic articles of doctrine: Ramn Llull is present, as is the Doze Trabajos de Hercules of Enrique de Villena.14 There are dierences and divergences as well, but the echoes cannot be denied.
Wiegers, 85. The other examples come from Wiegers 80 . For example, Wiegers notes, his Thirteen Articles of Faith could well have been a direct translation from an Arabic original, though it also might have been a transcript from Aljamiado (Spanish written in Arabic letters). 14 Wiegers, 956.
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In Yas vision of the Dar al-Islam, there is a strange mixture of social categories derived from medieval Christian Spain and dar alIslam such as he would have read about it from Muslim sources.15 Yas Breviario Sunni, a text designed for Castilian Mudejars explaining tenets of faith, Islamic cosmology, and ceremonies, is addressed to those Mudejars who could no longer read Arabic[,] and displays a consciousness of the decay of Muslim culture and the loss of wealth and tradition.16 In other words, it is a textdown to its very languageintended for the alienated, the marginal, the hybrid.17 It does attempt to ground its readership into an identity, but the identity remains elusive; it draws, for example, on terms in use in medieval Spain to designate purely Islamic concepts18 calling attention to the contrast between Muslims in medieval Castile and those who actually reside in Muslim lands. Yas very profession and title are peculiar to his Spanish ambiance: Wiegers points out that the titles of mufti and faqih as applied to Ya create some confusion, and are puzzling.19 Juan de Segovia refers to him as Alphaquinus Yca Gidelli, in civitate Segobiensi interpres et elocutor (?) sancti alchoran. Wiegers speculates that interpres here might mean interpreter but also mufti or qadi, while elocutor can suggest reciter of the Qur"an. Ya appears to have occupied an important position in the Muslim hierarchical structure of Segovia, but there is no evidence of the existence of such a structure.20 The meticulously gathered evidence by Wiegers on Yas social position in Segovia militates against hard and bold divisions that would set Ya easily against an opposing Other. The Muslim seems to have occupied several positions at once, and been many things to many people, inhabiting a world that had to rethink its own infrastructure on its feet almost every day. The Mudejar community of mid-fteenth-century Segovia shows all the markings of a group that

Wiegers 132. Wiegers, 125. 17 For example, his vision of the apocalypse privileges Jesus a great deal. This is a well-known Islamic eschatological image but the stress on Christ is prominent in his treatise for Muslims, the Breviario Sunni. It seems clear that his Breviario is for Hispanophone Muslims facing a crisis of belief and identity. (For documentation, see Wiegers 125 .) 18 Wiegers, 125. 19 Wiegers, 147. 20 Wiegers, 147.
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is at once marginalized and integrated, living an ever shifting existence vis--vis the Christian majority. As craftsmen and builders the most common occupations of Mudjarsthey connect with the majority on signicant levels while maintaining an acute sense of their own apartness. Thus the man who visits Juan de Segovia in Aiton is by no means a Muslim with easily dened contours: he is in every sense of the term a hybrid individual. This uid status is met by Juan himself, who, as the focal point of the dialogue, cannot project a rigid subject position either. Juan de Segovias vital context reects the hybridity of Yas status. In medieval theological history, Juan is considered one of the more tolerant didactic Christians especially in an era that saw the increase of hostility to Muslims in Europe. Ana Echevarria refers to the Salamancan as one of the most idealistic treatise-writers of the fteenth century, an exception to the intolerance and violence towards which Spanish Christian society was headed.21 In the biography of the theologian, Daro Rodrguez Cabanelas frequently praises Juan de Segovia for possessing an objective mind intent upon understanding Islam to the fullest, hoping to bring about conversion with no bloodshed.22 Benigno Hernndez Montes hails the theologians scientic honesty in the project to translate the Qur"an and understand Islam, and speaks of Juan de Segovias desire for faithfulness [in translating the Qur"an].23 Juans peaceful attitude is by now considered an integral aspect of his biography and writings. But Juan was rst and foremost a Christian theologian, well-read in Christian doctrine, and condent that the Christian mission was the correct one. The militant Christian quest to refute the Qur"an and Islam was a veritable tradition in his time, resulting in the production of numerous theses on the issue: to a great extent, Juan is inscribed in this tradition. Jesse D. Mann shows that there is in fact some danger in nding Juans proposed via pacis too attractive and familiar to our post-Enlightenment mind: there is far more reason to see him as an heir to medieval traditions rather than as a

Echevarria, 102. Juans honesty and objectivity are mentioned in Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 104, 112, 118, and 239. 23 Y si algo hay que resaltar en todo este trabajo segoviano es su deseo de delidad, su honestidad cientca. Se trataba de adquirir la vera notitia de la ley islmica por encima de toda otra consideracin, Hernndez Montes, 286.
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precursor to some enlightened and open-minded era.24 The scholar points out that the medieval commonplaces that characterized Islam as a violent, sexually promiscuous, and basically ignorant religion are by no means absent from Juan de Segovias work. Mann therefore rejects the idea that, in his capacity as a scholar of Islam, Juan de Segovia is an essentially open-minded Christian hoping to build bridges. His academic approach to Islammeaning his predilection for a university-based discovery of truth, his insistence on disputation, his emphasis on the role of doctores is, according to Mann, a traditional Christian one that uses the inferiority of Islam as its point of departure.25 Mann concludes:
In time, however, the academic approach to Islam, and other religions in general, produced greater and more accurate knowledge which, in turn, led to increased objectivity and ultimately to increased relativism (. . .). Hence, it is possible to conclude that Juan de Segovias essentially traditional attitude toward the Muslim religion contained the seeds of an intellectual revolution which he most likely would have repudiated.26

Mann, therefore, cautions against the attribution of a kind and gentle out-look on Islam in Juan de Segovias approach. This warning is important, and applies as much to Juan de Segovia as it does, in general, to the temptation to see medieval Iberia as a place of happy and fruitful co-existence.27

Mann, Truth or Consequences, 84. Mann, Truth or Consequences, 889. 26 Mann, Truth or Consequences, 89. 27 Another one of Segovias blind spots on Islam regards his view of disputation. By his own accounts, Juan had attempted to engage Muslims in disputation on religion on several occasions, and failed due to what he perceived as the Muslims ungrounded fear of becoming involved in debate, or their considerable ignorance in matters of doctrine, leading him to believe that most Muslims were not equipped for disputation. The letters to his sympathetic listenerthe inuential German cardinal Nicolas of Cusareveal this clearly (Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 180). Also, In a voluminous treatise on matters of Christian and Islamic doctrine, Juan conveyed his view of the erroneous nature of Islamic belief, adding that few if any Muslims are capable of defending their own doctrines. This treatise, mentioned in the present essay (De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo sarracenorum) had begun as a letter to Juans friend Cardinal Juan de Cervantes who had asked the former to elaborate on his views on Islam. The full reference to it appears in Juans list of his donated library: see Hernndez Montes, 173, n. 83. Juans conviction that Muslims were ignorant in ways of disputation had to do with personal experiences. In 1431 he had held a disputation with the Granadan ambassador in Medina del Campo,
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But in that very same context it is imperative to problematize the terms with which one constructs intellectual, literary, and political history. Manns argument, while reective and necessary, still operates on clear-cut divisions between Christian and Muslim, traditional and revolutionary, objective and subjective, absolute and relative. Ya and Juans positions as medieval Spaniards complicate these divisions, however. The many facets that render Yas identity puzzling and elusive have been mentioned above; in the case of Juan de Segovia, while he is indeed a Christian theologian seeking to refute Islam, he is positioned peculiarly inside the experience of Islam, much more so than a Nicolas of Cusa or a Jean Germain. In other words, while it would be an exaggeration to consider him a bridgebuilder between Islam and Christianity (as Mann points out), it is also important to take into account the fact that Juan speaks not just as a Christian but also as a Spaniard, and as such is aected by Mudejar existence. To further expand the terms of his interaction with Islam, he faces Ya who in a curious parallel is entwined with the facts of Christian life on a daily basis. The alienated proximity of both men to the other side truly complicates the setting within which they work together Juan de Segovia articulates his closeness to Islam in his own words. When Jean Germain, steadfastly critical of Juans proposed method
during which he had become convinced that Muslims barely mastered the art of reasoning, had no knowledge of Christian doctrine, and therefore failed in any attempt at disputation. He recalls the anger and frustration of the ambassador when confronted with Juans skill in debate, and concludes: I then knew, from this and other experiences, just how great is the ignorance of Muslims, who, due to their lack of knowledge concerning the true nature of our faith, abhor and insult Christians. Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 107, (my translation). Prior to that meeting he had attempted to arrange a disputation with other Muslims in Crdoba, and been told by one of their authorities that Muslims were afraid of speaking while on Christian territory. Upon Juans reassurance of absolute safety and discretion, the Muslim had confessed that in fact no-one among his people possessed the knowledge to speak on Islamic law. Juan concluded: I have known this very fact [that Muslims have no capacity for debate] through the many knights of the Order of St. John and others who have lived a long time in Muslim lands, that in the Mohammedan sect there is a marked dearth of learned men. Cabanelas, Juan de Segovia, 102, citing Vatican MS 2923. Again, this calls attention to the elusive boundaries between truth and imagination: Ya Gidelli too had complained of the decay of the Muslim community in Spain, so it is possible that Juan witnessed just such a phenomenon from his own pre-disposed angle. That said, it seems clear that Juan did not know, or wish to acknowledge, the rich tradition of disputation in Islam. For the tradition of disputation in Islam see George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh, 1981).

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of conversion, posits that ghting Muslims is the best way, and that French and Spanish emperors alike have always tackled the problem through war, Juan answers:
As regards what happened in Spain, Your Grace ought to know that you are dealing with a Spaniard. I am more than familiar with the battles waged against Muslims in this country for forty years, and with what went on before, since I have heard and read about it copiously; taking all of this into account, it seems to me preferable to choose the path of peace over war to ensure their conversion, especially since I have ascertained that their very law is the motive behind the bloody battles that they continue to support against Christians.28

Of note here is Juans anger (Cabanelas calls it uncharacteristic) regarding his own national origin: it seems he wishes Germain to understand that being a Spaniard sets him apart from other Christians somehow, bringing him closer to Islam. Elsewhere, in response to another objection by Germain that even those Muslims who convert eventually return to their old ways, Juan writes:
(. . .) in the ten years during which I lived in my home town I saw many conversions in spite of the fact that there were fewer than fty Muslims living there. (. . .) They are, denitely, good craftsmen, and very giving as servants, turning precision into a virtue, and they always show good will, which is why they are generally preferred to Jews. (. . .) I am not going to study here all the reasons which hamper their conversion; but one of the main ones is that Christian preachersI cannot say all of them but surely most of themhave hardly any knowledge of the Mohammedan sect, a situation to which Latin writers contribute by making all kinds of assertions in their treatises on supposed Islamic doctrines, which somehow they nd in the Alcoran. This provokes the irritation and disdain of Muslims, especially when in public sermons and private discussions their laws are falsely presented and when Mohammed, whom they respect as the greatest of prophets, is cursed and derided.29

It is quite clear that he is racially prejudiced, but it is also evident that he sees himself as an insider. While the term insider connotes a neat opposition with outsider, and as such suggests a falsely neat divisionthe very paradigm which the present essay seeks to problematizeit is nonetheless important to consider Juans location both within and without his imagined and real Muslim community. His
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Cabanelas, 210. My translation. Cabanelas, 221. My translation.

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commonplace Christian racism is counter-balanced by his awareness of the irritation and disdain of Muslims. His main claim to knowledge rests on his readings, yet his evocation of close encounters with Muslims (as a Spaniard) is meant to support his statement more strongly, showing o his privileged position as one who knows these people. It is as though he were looking into a house from an interior space within that house, and not from a clearly dened hostile outside, as other ecclesiasts might do.30 The theologian is therefore in a critical position of simultaneous dissatisfaction with both religions miscomprehension of one another, recalling to a pointat least structurallyYa Gidellis dilemma with his own Muslims. Both men emerge in their letters and treatises as hyper-aware of defective dialogue on all sides: Ya tries to reconcile Castilian Muslims and those who live in the dar al-Islam, with a nod to Christians who might benet from his works, and Juan wishes to enlighten the theologians of the two religions. Their meeting, then, is much more than a black-and-white event with clear delineations between Christian and Muslim. Nor is their debate a simple, general, timeless one on Christianity versus Islam, as much as they would think of it as such. At rst sight, the meeting in Aiton bears all the signs of two opposing points coming face to face. As mentioned, Juan reiterated that he undertook the endeavor as part of his eorts to learn about Islam and therefore refute it logically, while Ya made it clear that he had accepted the assignment since he saw it as a decisive, angelic cause, and a part of a Divine plan.31 In this light, the notion of inuence seems easy to decipher, for the setup appears neatly symmetrical: Juan hopes to learn and Ya hopes to teach, both for their own Crusading reasons.32 But the critical context from which they hail dislodges this symmetry; both advance towards one another from the margins: from edges that have had much problematic contact with the other. Contact that has rested

Black, refers in Council and Commune to the importance of political ideas inherent in the constitutionalism of Juans homeland, Castile, in the fteenth century. See also Mann, The Historian and the Truths, 26. 31 Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 101. Thus, when Juan invited him to Aiton, in the letter of acceptance Ya wrote: I want this in order to serve [Gods] administration and the enlightenment of my soul to be attained by study and [of the soul] of those for whom I have a responsibility. (233) 32 This would have been compounded by the advances of the Ottoman Empire which minority Muslims might have seen as a cause for joy.

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upon a dizzying variety of contradictory foundations: misunderstanding and ill intention coupled with inevitable experiences of the life and language of the other. A number of archival data oer compellingly emblematic images that would stress the complexity of the dialogue between the two men. Wiegers notes on several occasions that the original Spanish exchanges between the two men have been lost, and that all we have available to us today are the translations of these letters into Latin. About one such letteran important one on doctrine and the acceptance of the assignment written by Ya to JuanWiegers writes:
It seems obvious that the person who translated this letter into Latin (perhaps a clerk) had no intention of conveying Yas words as accurately as possible. Sometimes the word etcetera indicates that the continuation of a sentence was deemed as irrelevant. As a result the interpretation of the highly theological discourse of this letter has become a perilous aair. In spite of this, some conclusions can be drawn from this unique authentic source.33

Elsewhere, Wiegers registers his justied dissatisfaction with the loss of the original: Since we only dispose of the inadequate Latin translation, it is impossible to draw more exact conclusions[;] Again, we are obliged to proceed on the basis of the dicult and unsatisfactory Latin text which appears to state that (. . .).34 The principal scientic problem here is identied amply by Wiegers: Yas intentions have been obscured by a mediocre and careless translation into Latin. But the erasure of the original Spanish also highlights the attempt, perhaps unconscious yet denitely eective, to simplify the Muslim Spaniard. To read this translation symbolically is not a far-fetched act: an accurate, authentic original in the vernacular has been replaced by the inaccurate broad stroke of Latin. Ya has literally been erased rst, and then re-tted into, a universal Christian language that, unlike Castilian, bears no risk of cross-pollination with a Spanish brand of Islam. Such an over-simplication of Ya facilitates the reduction of his encounter with Juan into equally simplistic terms. The very fact that the two communicated in the vernacular and that the written trace of this has now been lost (erased) suggests an insoluble mystery. The

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Wiegers, 100. Wiegers, 102.

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terms of Yas arguments have been confused by an unsatisfactory and careless Latin: what knowledge, transmitted in that letter to Juan, has been lost? The documentary uncertainties compound the complexities in this meeting between Islam and Christianity. And the complexity does not end there. Some of the images of the mens personal interaction throw light on the instability of authority distribution in their relationship. In his answer to Juan de Segovias letter of invitation to Aiton, Ya mentions that the nancial compensation oered by Juan for moving to the Priory and translating the Qur"an amounted to the cost of engaging a gravedigger.35 As Wiegers points out: The keen irony of Yas words here indicates his self-esteem: he does not see himself merely as a subordinate informant.36 The complaint also serves to solidify Yas tone of authority by indicating his awareness of the potentially exploitative situation that the sojourn might represent, and his polite dissatisfaction with such a set-up. In light of the reverential tone of the letter and his acceptance of the task, the phrase creates a patiently humorous complaint and draws attention to the Muslims edge when dealing with Juan. Another forceful image of personal reaction is recorded in a letter written by Juan de Segovia to a friend about Yas stay in Aiton. The Christian theologian recalls that on one occasion Ya was served a pure of peas for dinner. Ya ate this, not realizing that it had been prepared with wine. The next day, Juan noticed, Ya limited his diet to bread as penance (panem in vesperam solum comedit velut penitentiam agens[.]).37 Wiegers concludes rightly that this indicates the faqihs high degree of piety. But Juans tone as he reports the incident is also worthy of notice. It connotes some admiration for the Muslims piety; more surprisingly it does not contain the formulaic, reproachful motif of a Muslims bizarre dierence, that is, his refusal to drink alcohol. Juans recollection of the incident is unexpectedly brief and nonjudgmental in tone; his interpretation of Yas act appears at once informed and even-keeled, setting up a compelling counterpoint to the image of Juan as an anticipated Islamophobic Christian ecclesiast. These two instances of personal reaction remove the men from the simple spheres of frightened teacher and dominant student, or
35 36 37

Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 233. Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 100. Cited in Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 150.

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blatantly hostile Muslim and Christian. In these instances we perceive, up close, Yas edge in dealing with Juan, and the latters puzzlingly non-judgmental gaze upon Ya: these invaluable records of quotidian scenes reinforce the sense of continual shifts of authority between the two men. What of the outcome of this meeting? In the case of Ya and Juan the result of the work at Aiton contains elements that further texture the vast semantic range of the concept of exchange. Juan de Segovia died in 1458, three years after the meeting with Ya. As mentioned, the principal result of their work in Aiton was a trilingual Qur"an, unfortunately now lost, to which Juan wrote a detailed prologue tracing the conception and development of the task undertaken with Yas help.38 In this prologue Juan recounted that Ya worked diligently, helped him with Arabic grammar, and supplied him with additional materials for study. Upon the faqihs departure from Aiton Juan de Segovia desperately sought another Arabic teacher, since he had now undertaken the Latin translation of the Spanish version produced by Ya and wished to refer to the Arabic original for accuracy. Failing to nd another teacher, he attempted the translation on his own. This required the laborious process of deciphering Arabic with which he was not overly familiar. Juan attributed his inability for full comprehension to the aws in the grammatical laws of Arabic.39 Elsewhere in the Prologue, he wrote of his conversations with Ya on the diculties of Arabic grammar and recorded the faqihs comment that in the cases of doubt regarding the meaning of a sentence in the Qur"an, Muslims turn to reason and to the guidelines set by precedent.40 This led Juan to conclude that Muslim theologians enjoy an unfair freedom of range in interpreting their Holy Book since they possess the advantage of using other elements of judgment which have little to do with substantiated facts.41 He also complained that Ya confused him every so often by attributing two dierent meanings to the same word, or employing too many synonyms, perhaps due to his lack of training in natural logic, moral philosophy, and theology.42

38 39 40 41 42

Hernndez Cabanelas, Cabanelas, Cabanelas, Cabanelas,

Montes, 107, n. 97 (MS reference of this Prologue). 157. 157. 158. 1589.

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Thus far, Juans complaints fall neatly within the framework of a Christian dedicated to proving Islam inferior. Yet on one crucial point Juan remains silent. He writes that the faqih did not assent to speaking about Quranic doctrine with him after they had nished the translation. Uncharacteristically, Juan does not comment on this in any substantial manner. Somewhat laconically, he attributes Yas reluctance to discuss doctrine to the latters rush to return home to his wife, or other reasons.43 Upon seeing Yas reluctance, Juan drops his request for the discussion of doctrine altogether. He does not attempt to explain Yas refusal to act as a teacher of tafsir (commentary of the Qur"an) in terms of accusations of ignorance against the Muslim. It does seem puzzling that a man normally so willing to formulate reasons for the inadequacy of Muslim scholars would stay silent at this point. This question gains momentum in light of two other related cases. In the inventory of the theologians library there is evidence of a letter sent to him by Ya after the sojourn at Aiton, in which the faqih, apparently at the Christians own request, brings up twelve points of doubt on the Christian faith and asks Juan to refute them.44 In a letter to an unidentied friend, Juan mentions Yas missive, and writes:
Upon my explicit request, he set forth, at the time he was in Spain, twelve points of doubt and sent them to me. These are [dogmas], as he said, denied by all Saracens, and he demanded a satisfactory reply. Following the doctrine of the Gospel [i.e. Luke 6:30] that one should seek to satisfy any believer who asks for something, by interrupting another unnished work, which I at the time intended to send to Spain, I put my hand to the plough, but as a result of intervening diculties, particularly a disease which nineteen months ago began to aect my bones, and since half a year my liver also, the powers of my body and soul have weakened, so that I am not able to work as I would wish because of the feebleness of my hands.45

Aware of the pitfalls of anachronistic reading, this essay does not wish to impose an unsubtle Freudian interpretation on an onslaught

Cited in Cabanelas, 2912, from the Vatican MS 2923, fols. 190191. Yas desire to return home to his new wife has been repeated by all scholars familiar with the life of Juan de Segovia as the main reason for the faqihs departure. 44 Cabanelas, 314: Vat MS 2923fols. 196v198r. 45 The Latin text (Cabanelas, 341: Vat. MS 2923, fols. 196v198r) appears also in Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 74, n. 20. The translation is from Wiegers.

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of illness at such a critical time. It is simply important to acknowledge that this statement adds yet another layer to the complexity of Juans engagement with Islam. (The letter by Ya, asking for the elucidation of the twelve points, was sent in 1456 and Juan died almost two years later in 1458. It is at the very least intriguing that the onslaught of pain should occur at such an important time, during which Juan would have had a two-year opportunity to pursue his life-long goal.) But more importantly, the letter itself maps a relationship that begs a new denition of their encounter. In the letter, Juan foregrounds the fact of a real relationship with Ya. He points to the existence of a veritable dialogue, in which one speaker asks for information and the other oers it, expecting feedback. He then brings in the Gospel, as would be expected from a medieval theologian, taking the argument into the realm of known Christian rhetoric. Then he abruptly pulls it out of that realm and focuses the attention to himselfhis body, specicallyrecalling the viscerally personal nature of his task. Incidentally, one other relevant work appears to have been unnished: it is the incomplete work mentioned in the letter cited above as well as in the inventory of his library under a colophon containing the phrase in quo permagna plurima secreta de ueritate legis gracie cessacioneque legis scripture et nullitate mahumetice secte, (the majority of the secrets of the truth of the law of Grace, the idleness of the law of the Scripture and the nullity of the Mohammedan sect.)46 Juan had started this work in Spanish, not Latin, since it was meant for Ya and the faqih did not read Latin; it seems to have centered upon both an elucidation of Catholic faith as well as a refutation of Islam. This is the same interrupted treatise to which Juan refers in his letter. It would be methodologically nave to attribute excessive documentary signicance to these three instances: an aborted discussion and two incomplete texts. The intention of this essay is not to use these as proof of a conscious decision on Segovias part to give up his task because of doubt or a sudden rush of aection for Islam. Manuscript culture and archival data are too complex to be read in such broad strokes. But the sum total of all the diverse facts gath-

46 Item 99 in Juans Donatio as edited by Hernndez Montes, 108. The translation is by Wiegers, Islamic Literature, 73.

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ered here does invite speculation with specic reference to the ideas of co-existence, inuence, and knowledge transmission. In the collaboration between Ya and Juan de Segovia there are numerous factors at work which present the necessity for expanding the semantic eld of the notion of Christian-Muslim encounter. By the time the theologian met the faqih, Spain had entered a new period of antagonism toward non-Christians. The Reconquest was reaching its nal destination, and any previously hybrid, multicultural nature of intellectual development was fast yielding to a new Latinized and adamantly Christian thrust. Until the fteenth century, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Spaniards alike had approached scholastic and intellectual growth in essentially Semiticized, nonLatinized forms. As Francisco Mrquez-Villanueva has shown, while the Kings of Spain respected Latin scholarship and turned to the Church as inspiration in matters of faith, in immense areas such as the sciences they adopted non-Christian models that were of innitely greater use to them.47 For example, precisely because he was interested in power and unity, King Alfonso X of Castile (12211284) consciously turned to Judeo-Islamic learning to fortify Castilian culture and make up for the relative weakness of the Spanish Church in matters pertaining to scientic and cultural progress. The concepts of University training and cultural growth were commanded in the Low Middle Ages in Spain by an acute awareness of Arabic and Hebrew as indispensable vehicles of progress, much more readily accessible to Spaniards than Latin ever had been. Even in some matters of faithusually kept separate from knowledgeoverlap between the two religions did occur in signicant ways. As early as the ninth century, for instance, Cordoban Christians perceived Muslims as those who worshipped the same God, albeit using a dierent law.

47 Francisco Mrquez-Villanueva, The Alfonsine Cultural Concept, in Alfonso X of Castile: The Learned King (12211284): An International Symposium: Harvard University, 17 November 1984. ed. Francisco Mrquez-Villanueva and Carlos-Alberto Vega (Cambridge, 1990), 76109. As regards the crucial role of multicultural co-existence in Spanish history, the bibliography on this topic is immense and still growing. See for example The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (cited in n. 1); Amrico Castro, the Impact of his Thought: Essays to Mark the Centenary of his Birth, ed. Ronald E. Surtz, Jaime Ferrn, Daniel P. Testa (Madison, 1988); Luce Lpez Baralt, Huellas del Islam en la literatura espaola: de Juan Ruiz a Juan Goytisolo (Madrid, 1985); Amrico Castro, The Spaniards: an Introduction to their History, translated by Willard F. King and Selma Margaretten (Berkeley, 1971).

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Such an ecumenical vision came to them from the Muslims themselves.48 In the eld of literature, all medieval Spanish masterpieces showcased the reality of multicultural identity: from the Cantar del Mo Cid (mid twelfth-century) to La Celestina (1499), the culturally composite nature of Castilian society emerged, overtly or subtly, as a basic contextual tenet of the literary work. The seeds for change from this Mudejar condition into a much more self-consciously Christian, Latinized state of aairs were planted in the middle of the fourteenth century with the rise of the Trastmara dynasty to power.49 This dynasty maneuvered the shift away from the cultural and educational vision of previous rulersprincipally Alfonso Xand established in turn a much more westernized outlook. Mrquez-Villanueva points out:
The new, more westernized concept never wholly overcame its comparatively weak roots and the original poverty of its Latin, clerical foundations. That is why what followed during the Fifteenth century under the Tratmaras, was largely an unsettled, chronic cultural crisis lasting to the very threshold of the Renaissance.50

The intellectual landscape of fteenth-century Spain thus reects, in numerous areas, the conscious waning of the Mudejar vision and the rapid advent of a more Latinized scholastic approach. As the theoreticians of Reconquest culminating in the fall of Granada in 1492 and the subsequent unequivocal hostility to non-Christians, Spanish theologians of the fteenth century paved the way for the animosity towards Muslims that was to mark the centuries after the fall of Granada. Ana Echevarra notes that fteenth-century didactic writers such as Pedro de la Cavallera and Juan de Torquemada (both in Juan de Segovias cohort) show very well the growth of the bias that was to become a dogma of the Spanish state in the years after the Reconquest.51 But the Mudejar fabric of Spanish society did not disappear as fast and as easily as the laws wished it. For example, even Miguel de Cervantes, writing some one hundred and twenty years after the fall of Granada, chronicles in his ction the ongoing and complicated
48 Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Chistian Views of Islam in Early Medieval Spain, in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam, ed. John Victor Tolan (New York, 1996), 85108. 49 Mrquez Villanueva, The Alfonsine Cultural Concept, 92. 50 Mrquez Villanueva, The Alfonsine Cultural Concept, 92. 51 See Echevarra, The Fortress of Faith.

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presence of new Christians in Castilian society.52 I have attempted to show that Juan de Segovia, born a mere 24 years after the rise of the Trastmara dynasty, was no doubt established in his career as a Latinized Christian but still living and facing the last stages of Mudejar life in his culture. As such, in his intellectual world, Ya Gidelli represented a powerful blend of associations: superior as pedagogue and repository of religious polemic knowledge,53 until recently equal if dierent as a countryman, and by now inferior as a religious minority. These contextual facts are as important as Juans solid Christian background, training, and ideology: they do not cancel out his Christian zeal, but texture his own intellectual make-up. Juan de Segovia represents an excellent case-study for the expansion of the referential framework through which the Christan-Muslim debate is analyzed. When we dene the paradoxical terms of this encounter instead of accepting broad and rigid denitions of Muslim and Christian, we witness a highly suggestive dramatization of the role of ambivalence as an integral element of knowledge transmission between the two religions. From the composite picture oered by this essay, Juan and Ya emerge as so complex that their debate recalls, uncannily, the idea of the rhizome labeled by the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari: The rhizome is an a-centered, non-hierarchical, non-signifying system without a general center and without an organizing memory or central automation, dened solely by a circulation of states.54 Juan and Ya indeed appear to enact an anti-hierarchical, anti-specicity type of contact which favors the multiplicity of languages, ideas, and debates, with the simultaneous connection of these to several interconnected linguistic and cultural points at once. The implications of Deleuze and Guattaris model of rhizomic contact are in fact surprisingly useful for understanding the outcome

52 See for example, the chapters pertaining to The Captives Tale in Part I of Don Quijote, and chapter 54 of Part II in which the tale of the morisco Ricote is recounted. Told with Cervantess usual gift for subtlety and insinuation, these two narratives bear witness to the complicated situation in which Spanish society found itself due to its culturally composite past in relation to Islam. 53 On the whole, medieval Muslims knew more about Christianity than Christians did about Islam. For an excellent overview and analysis of this fact, see Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, note 2. 54 Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota, 1987).

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of Juan and Yas work, as it relates to the tradition of MuslimChristian debate. Medievalists know not to belabor the ndings of post-modern thought as regards medieval subjects, but there is one framework suggested by the two philosophers that does help illuminate the meaning of this fteenth-century encounter. Borrowing their concepts of cartography (mapping) and decalcomania (tracing) we can reect upon the extent to which Juan de Segovia and Ya Gidelli trace or map a tradition of debate. Tracing is an act of representing again that which already exists, while mapping actually constructs by way of an experimentation of contact with the real.55 The multi-layered denitions of Spaniard for both men invite us to resist symmetrical reconstructions of the Christian-Muslim encounter, or to perceive it as having predetermined reference points. An encounter that can be simplistically cast as Muslim versus Christian turns out to be a rich conguration of dialogues, texts, positions, languages and lives causing its most basic terms to become subject to further scrutiny. If cartography and tracing are opposites, Juan and Gidelli are at once cartographers and tracers of a tradition of debate, enriching it by compelling it to look inwards from insolubly paradoxical positions. On the one hand, their nominal identities as Muslim and Christian oer up all the makings of a tracing: they reenact something which is already there, a medieval debate on the rights and wrongs of doctrine. On the other hand, their vital engagement with three languages, the paradox of their position as marginal political subjects who are authorities in a religious eld, the layers of their dialogue and the silences that ensue, all indicate a new mapping whichreminiscent of Deleuze and Guattaris notion rhizomically oers multiple points of entry into the tradition of debate into which they seemingly wish to inscribe themselves. The end result is at once a tracing of an existing tradition, and a new map for a substantially comprehensive understanding of inuence and co-existence; one that takes context every bit as seriously as text.

55

Deleuze and Guattari, 912.

MANDATE FROM THE TOP: THE EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES

HOW TO ADMINISTER A CONQUERED CITY IN AL-ANDALUS: MOSQUES, PARISH CHURCHES AND PARISHES Heather Ecker

The Castilian conquests and colonizations in al-Andalus in the thirteenth century present a number of paradigms of continuity and discontinuity to students of medieval history and material culture.1 One node of tension lies between the institutions of conquest and the physical context into which those institutions were implanted. Another, to which insucient attention has been paid, is how the imported institutions were shaped by the very context that their sponsors sought to transform. Both nested nodes of tension originate in the problems of settlement faced by colonizers: whether to blend or to expel (or to contain), whether to restore or to rebuild, and whether to control by persuasion or by force. For the Castilians, the lessons learned from one locale would be tried at the next, establishing a chain of precedents that can be traced back to Toledo, conquered by Alfonso VI in 1085. The laboratory character of long-standing modern colonial interventions, such as the French occupation of Algeria, ignored by medievalists, can help to explain practices which have been perceived not as experimental, but as normative. In her study of urbanism in Algiers under French rule, Zeynep elik writes,
The rst French law on urbanism dates from 14 March, 1919. Considered the charter of modern urbanism, this law called for a master plan for every town having more than ten thousand people in order to regulate growth and enable beautication (embellissement). The plan would thus determine the street network once and for all, specifying the layout and width of all the streets (including the design of new ones and the modication of old ones) and the location and character of all open spacespublic parks, gardens, and squaresas well as of monuments and public service buildings. Undoubtedly, the
1 Among the conquests of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, here we are referring mainly to the Castilian conquests and only briey to those of the Aragonese, but not those of the Almohads, which brought other kinds of urban reforms and discontinuities.

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technological, social and aesthetic lessons learned from city planning practices previously undertaken in French colonies played a primary role in devising ocial policies for urban development in both metropolitan France and outre-mer. Similar regulations for orderly urban development were in place in other parts of Europe at the time, and while the French were inuenced by these trends, they relied more heavily on their own ideas about urban planning. To reiterate a familiar argument, the colonies were true laboratories of modern planning.2

The predecessors of the French in Algeria, the sixteenth-century Ottomans, in administrative strategy and in the construction of fortications in Algiers, beneted likewise from their prior experiences elsewhere.3 One factor contributing to the perception of a normative, medieval colonial intervention is that the sourcesunlike the French law on urbanismdo not always contain strategic directives, and later phases of occupation tend to obscure the earlier physical plant. Thus, the footprints of overlaid, medieval urban strategies cannot always be pasted into a timetable. But, though the edices of Andalusian cities may not be self-revealing at present in terms of process, important primary strategies of intervention still need to be identied. For example, the mechanisms by which Islamic tax structures or juridical oces were adopted by the Castilians in Andaluca (and adapted elsewhere), though understudied, can provide a crucial understanding of how they underpinned the success of their regimes in the government of conquered territories. Likewise, the implanting of parochial structures in formerly Islamic cities can show a great deal about Castilian intentions for settlement.4 The Castilian conquests enforced intimacy and allowed for familiarity, if coerced, not only for the ir-clad archbishops and kings in the mosques and palaces, but for the surveyors, the speculators, the legions of scribes, the parish priests, the farmers, the shepherds,
2 Zeynep elik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations. Algiers under French Rule, (Berkeley, 1997), pp. 701. 3 Sakina Missoum, Alger lpoque Ottomane. La Mdina et la Maison Traditionnelle, (Aix-en-Provence, 2003), pp. 8283. Missoum argues that the decentralised urban fabric punctuated by mosque complexes that developed in Istanbul as a result of Mehmed IIs reforms of 1459, was replicated in Algiers, the capital city of the Turkish provinces in North Africa. She counts twenty-one individual zones or quarters in Ottoman Algiers. 4 Christian patrons, especially ecclesiastics, valued the work of Mudjar craftsmen in various media: ceramics, textiles, carpentry, masonry, metalwork and plasterwork are among the best known.

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the artisans, the militiamen and the hidalgos who were enticed south; these were all Peninsular northerners who came into contact not only with the products and means of production of Muslim craftsmen but also, intimately, with their buildings and urban structures.5 The expulsion of entire populations from large cities such as Crdoba and Seville as part of the surrender pacts meant that all types of immoveable propertyhumble, palatial, domestic, religious, hydraulic and ripariancame under the control and occupation of outsiders. The practical demands of administering every aspect of urban (as well as rural) life in an unfamiliar environment, as well as the task of attracting settlers to the frontier, meant that the Castilians were obliged to recognize, survey and adopt pre-existing spatial constructs, urban and rural, as well as the administrative approaches that these constructs suggested. This paper will explore one underlying principal of administration applied in the conquered urban centers of alAndalusthe division of the city into parochial cellsas well as its implications for the institution of the medieval urban parish. Prior to the thirteenth century, the Castilians had over a century of experience in the administration of Islamic cities. In Toledo, taken from the l-Nnids in 1085, they developed a series of practices that would serve as models for governing their later acquisitions. The four most important of those practices were the appropriation of congregational mosques and their pious endowments, the initiation of repartimiento and repopulation, the development and export of the fuero (legal code) of Toledo, and the employment of Arabic-speaking Mozarabs and Jews as administrators.6 The preliminary task for organizing the urban repartimiento the surveying, division and distribution of immoveable property to settlerswas the division of the city into parochial cells. To facilitate this partitioning, parish churches were founded in selected, converted neighborhood mosques. This method took advantage of an extant religious and municipal structure, and simplied the parceling out of properties to newcomers.
5 Instead of focusing on strategies and principals, most studies have examined what the surviving parochial documentation reveals about ecclesiastical personnel and their paychecks. 6 See discussion in: Heather Ecker, Toledoa model for all other conquests, in: From Masjid to Casa-Mezquita. Neighbourhood Mosques in Seville after the Castilian Conquest (12481634), doctoral thesis, University of Oxford (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1853; the relationship between the employment of these minorities and the collection of taxes in Andaluca has not been fully explored.

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The grid provided by selecting neighborhood mosques for conversion was not the only option for urban partitioning available to the Castilians; for example, the surveyors of cija quartered it by examining the city from a minaret and projecting over it an imaginary cross.7 This technique, however, proved to be an exception and the strategy of adopting neighborhood mosques as the nuclei of parishes and their equivalent municipal units became denitive in the thirteenth century. The strategy was most ecient in cities such as Crdoba and Seville, that were emptied of their populations. In cities such as Toledo and cija that retained a signicant portion of their Muslim populations for some time, the creation of parish churches from neighborhood mosques was a slower processthere is no evidence for the founding of parish churches in Toledo until the 1150s, for example, while cija was captured in 1240, but was not submitted to repartimiento until 1263. Strangely, the logical eciency of using neighborhood mosques and their spatial conguration to carry out repartimientos has been assumed by some Spanish medievalists to represent the imposition of an entirely new municipal pattern.8 This thinking assumes that a
7 We divided the city into four collaciones in remembrance of the Cross. The rst, the largest, holy and true Cross [sic], and on the right-hand side Santa Mara, and on the left-hand side San Juan, and that in front of all three Santa Brbara, in semblance of the people who were before the Cross, begging for mercy and praising the name of Jesus Christ. And we examined the city of cija from the tower of the mosque of the tavern (bodega) of don Nunno, at the edge of the butchers market, from which the three collaciones branch o (departen), Santa Cruz, Santa Mara and Santa Brbara . . . and after we had done this, we gave to each one of the populators houses according to what pertained to each one, following what we said, in the manner of a Cross . . . and as the city was divided in the manner of a Cross, so we divided the suburbs (termino) in the manner of a Cross. Mara Josefa Sanz Fuentes, Repartimiento de cija, Historia. Instituciones. Documentos III (1976), p. 542; Julio Gonzlez Gonzlez, Repartimiento de Sevilla (Madrid, 1951), I, pp. 5860. Santa Brbaras absence from Calvary notwithstanding, Gonzlez argued that the cruciform division imagined by its partidores, corresponded to cijas ancient cardo maximus and decumanus, a hypothesis conrmed by recent archaeological excavation. See Ignacio Rodrguez Temio, Pervivencia de alineaciones de poca romana en el tejido urbano actual de cija (Sevilla), Archeologia Medievale XVII (1990), pp. 61324, and, Aproximacin a la forma urbana islmica de cija, in: cija en la Edad Media y Renacimiento (Seville, 1993), pp. 37181; see also discussion in: Ecker 2000, vol. I, pp. 90100. 8 For example, Rafael Cmez, It is signicant that among the twenty-four Sevillian parishes, no remains or visible evidence has remained of those Islamic oratories with the exception of the patios and towers of the church of El Salvador and the Cathedral. One might be able to sustain the re-use of the mosques in those parishes that were smallest from certain irregularities in their plan that reveal the

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fully-evolved and xed administrative system from the North was imposed on an alien and mutable terrain in the South. The assumption can be tested in two ways: rst by examining the underlying urban pattern of distribution of neighborhood mosques and comparing it to the post-conquest distribution of parishesdata permittingand second, by examining Islamic concepts of urban partitioning. Few studies along the former lines have been undertaken, but probably most would show that not every neighborhood mosque was converted to a parish church.9 In large cities, such as Seville, there were at least a hundred neighborhood mosques. The extent and number of parishes relative to their Islamic predecessors therefore would be dierentone would expect fewer, larger parishes. Neighborhood mosques not selected for conversion to parish churches, then, would cease to function as dening nodes in the urban structure. At the very least, by default then, the selective privileging of pre-existing mosques in the post-conquest cities did not represent the
problems of adaptation of the new buildings in a specic and constricted space. Nevertheless, some of the peripheral parishes such as Santa Ana, Santa Marina, Omnium Sanctorum, those of greatest dimension in the city, were possibly raised up on site without previous building, as reveals the regularity of their plans, Rafael Cmez Ramos, La Iglesia de Santa Marina de Sevilla (Seville, 1993), pp. 256, and later, it seems logical that the initial repopulation impulse brought about the erection of parish churches in the peripheral collaciones of the northern zone of the city (San Gil, Santa Marina, San Julin, Santa Luca, Omnium Sanctorum, San Martn, San Lorenzo) with the objective of agglutinating and giving cohesion to the sparse population of that zone that was also the most unprotected and committed in its defense to the military orders, Rafael Cmez Ramos, La introduccin de la arquitectura gtica en Sevilla en el siglo XIII, in: Metropolis Totius Hispani. 750 Aniversario Incorporacin de Sevilla a la Corona Castellana, ed. Alfredo Morales (Seville, 1998), pp. 11213. There is not room here for a complete dismantling of these arguments, but briey: 1. this line of thought makes an articial distinction between the Castilian approach to rural and urban surveying and partitioning. It is clear from the surviving Libros de Repartimiento that the surveyors of rural properties recognized and preserved Islamic boundaries, cultivated crops, and often, place-names. 2. It makes no sense at all to attribute the regularity of the plans of churches erected in the fourteenth century to the virginity of the land upon which they were built, or for that matter, to the irregularity of others the possibility of rebuilding. 3. The parishes were established in Seville, according to documentary evidence with which Cmez Ramos is familiar, between August 1250 and May 1251. The success or failure of the rst urban repartimiento in 12521253 had no bearing on the previous organization of the parishes. Even if Cmez is referring to an earlier repopulation, before the ocial repartimiento, there is other data which points to suburbs in the northern sector of the city which had been brought inside its perimeter wall, probably in the Almohad period. The alleged desolation of this sector in the mid-thirteenth century had more to do with the expulsion than the lack of a built environment. See Ecker 2000, vol. I, pp. 134144, vol. II, pp. 3138. 9 See Ecker 2000, and forthcoming book Neighborhood Mosques in Seville.

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imposition of an entirely new pattern, but rather, a consolidation of an older, underlying structure. This consolidation at times created a grid of relatively equally sized parishes, as in Crdoba, and at others of unequally sized ones, as in Seville. Equal-sized parishes may not have been the only objective of the partidores, who may have taken into consideration the prestige of certain former mosques as well as the varying density of available housing in certain urban zones. The medieval Islamic administration of cities, not only in alAndalus, tended to be cellular: cities were broken down into discreet units located around each neighborhood mosque. Tax obligations would have been organized within the framework of these cellular units. For example, the tenth-century Crdoban notary Ibn al-'Attar describes a neighborhood in his notarial formula as bi-hauma masjid ka- (in the quarter of such-and-such mosque).10 Similarly, neighborhoods are described by their mosques in the context of the ta'tb, the well-known Almoravid tax imposed under the q-ship of Abu Bakr b. al-'Arab, designed by the amr 'Al b. Ysuf b. Taun to pay for the reconstruction of city walls: the people of Crdoba took responsibility to restore its walls (ramma aswriha) according to the ancient custom, in such a way that the residents of each mosque decided what corresponded to them and the work was completed without disorder or imposition. The same occurred with the people of Seville, in a judicious manner and without extravagance nor damage.11 It seems pretty clear that the installation of parish churches into neighborhood mosques which then became the basic units of the new ecclesiastical and municipal structure would have revisited an earlier, Islamic administrative strategy. The process of surveying, selection and conversion of these neighborhood mosquesas opposed to the conversion of congregational mosqueshad little to do with public ceremony; rather, it was something obscured behind the scenes and thus has been given little scholarly attention.12 Monarchic and ecclesiastical strategy and praxis
10 Ibn al-'Ar, Formulario Notarial Hispano-rabe, eds. Pedro Chalmeta and Federico Corriente (Madrid, 1983), p. 217. 11 Manuela Marn Nio, Documentos jurdicos y forticaciones, in: I Congreso Internacional, Forticaciones en al-Andalus (Algeciras, 1998), pp. 812; Ibn 'Ir alMarrku, Al-Bayn al-Murib ed. Ihsan 'Abbas (Beirut, 1983) vol. IV, p. 74. 12 Most of the secondary literature on parish churches in Andaluca is concerned with liturgical jurisdiction and architectural structure.

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Fig. 1. Parish churches, synagogues and parishes in Seville established after 1248 (after a plan by Toms Lpez de Vargas y Machuca, 1788).

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Fig. 2. Parish churches and parishes in Crdoba established after 1236 (after the plan by the Baron de Karvinski and Joaqun Rillo known as the Plano de los Franceses, 1811)

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Fig. 3. Partitioning and parish churches in cija, Repartimiento of 1263 (after a plan by J. Hernndez, A. Sancho, and F. Collantes, Catlogo arqueolgico y artstico de la provincia de Sevilla, Seville, 1939, dib.27)

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can be approached, however, through the analysis of the still inadequately explored libros de repartimiento, as well as ecclesiastical endowments and property-granting charters. The main strategic and practical precedent for the administration of conquered Andalusian cities was Alfonso VIs re-endowment of the mosque/cathedral of Toledo in 108889 with its own former waqf/hubus properties, in addition to the tithes and income from the former endowments of converted provincial Friday mosques. His endowment charters granted to the cathedral all of the estates, or houses, and shops which it had in the time when it was a mosque of Muslims as well as those churches which the Muslims call great mosques, where they have always been accustomed to meet on Fridays for the prayer, together with their old endowments, lands, vineyards, gardens, mills and pastures, however many they can nd and truly investigate except where there had been a bishopric.13 Implicit and explicit in these directives is the groundwork of a committee, the kernel of the later junta de partidores. The members of the Toledan research committee would probably have been Mozarabic notaries or clerics and Jewish administrators, knowledgeable in Arabic and capable of researching both waqyyt and an array of rural, income-earning properties in a countryside populated by Arabicspeaking Muslims and Christians. Few urban Libros de Repartimiento have survived from the thirteenth century, possibly because of their ephemeral valuethe early attempts to repopulate, as we shall see, did not stick. The earliest, although outside of the sphere of the Castilian conquests, is the Llibre de
Juan Francisco Rivera Recio, La Iglesia de Toledo en el siglo XII (10861208) I (Rome, 1966), pp. 702, and La Iglesia de Toledo en el siglo XII (10861208) II (Toledo, 1976), pp. 14, 509, 259; ngel Gonzlez Palencia Los Mozrabes de Toledo en los siglos XII y XIII (Madrid, 1930) vol. I, p. 156; Francisco Javier Hernndez, Los Cartularios de Toledo (Madrid, 1985), doc. 2, pp. 58, doc. 6, pp. 1112; Span. trans. Jos Miranda Calvo, La Reconquista de Toledo por Alfonso VI (Toledo, 1980), pp. 1836; Julio Gonzlez, Repoblacon de Castilla la Nueva (Madrid, 1975) vol. I, p. 115, vol. II, p. 163. The thirteenth-century author Ibn al-Kardabus recalls this initiative in his Kitb al-iktif", stating that there were eighty such cities with manbir, excluding villages and hamlets. Ibn al-Kardabus, Tar al-Andalus li-ibn al-Kardabs wawasfuhu li-ibn al-abb, ed. Ahmad Mutar al-'Abbadi, Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islmicos en Madrid XIII (19656), p. 87, and Historia de al-Andalus, trans. Felipe Mallo Salgado (Madrid, 1986), p. 108; some of these properties appear in Mozarabic documents from Toledo as shops of the endowment (awnt al-abs). Gonzlez Palencia (1930), doc. 20 (1134 A.D.), p. 160; see Susana Calvo Capilla, La mezquita de Bab al-Mardum y el proceso de consagracin de pequeas mezquitas en Toledo (s. XIIXIII), Al-Qantara XX (1999), p. 312, fn. 45.
13

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Repartiment de Mallorca from 1232. Redacted originally in Arabic, it depended on a detailed study of the pre-conquest urban terrain, accomplished probably through the oral transmission of local collaborators and certainly through the synthesis of Mozarabic scribes. Likewise, in cija in 1271, there is evidence from the rural repartimiento of the use of local Muslim informants and Jewish translators.14 The employment of Jewish and Mozarabic administrators in Seville in the thirteenth century is also attested in other documentary sources although the text of the urban repartimiento has not survived.15 The strategy of appointing research committees or juntas de

14 Sanz Fuentes 1976, p. 43: And we, the above mentioned partidores, went out of cija to put the boundary markers (mojones) in the places where the Moors showed us, by God and in their souls by the oath that they swore, that they used to be in the time of the Moors, of their fathers and of their grandfather . . . and we discovered the rst boundary marker where it was in the time of the Moors . . .. The committee of partidores, led by Martn de Fitero, archdeacon of Crdoba and probable associate of Lope de Fitero, the rst bishop of Crdoba, was aided by don Albahacea [Ab l-usayn?] and Albahacn [Ab l-asan?] and Atabas ['Addbas?] and Aboanbro [Ab 'Amr?], Moors, sons of the alcaide [warden of the citadel] and lord of cija, Abenportos [Ibn Butrs?], and other old Moors who were knowledgeable of the boundaries of cija, and don Ali Aben Habetu and don Haym Alhayra . . . the Moors testied by their qibla (alqabla) that they would tell the truth about this matter. 'Al b. Habaytu and ayym al-ayra were obviously Jews, probably from Toledo, who acted as interpreters between the Muslim vassals of Alfonso X, the old Moors and the Castilian partidores. The oath on the qibla, which may retain an artifact of the tradition of qasam in the mosque (see below), appears to be an Alfonsine regulation that is described almost identically in the Siete Partidas and the Espculo. In the third partida, title 11, law 21, entitled The manner in which Muslims must swear, it states, Muslims have their own oath that must be done in this manner. He who must swear must go with him who will receive the oath to the door of the mosque, if there is one there, and if not, to the place where he is ordered by the judge. And the Muslim who has to take the oath must be standing, and turn his face and raise his hand toward the south, to what they call the qibla. And he that must take the oath should say these words: Swear to me, so-and-so, Muslim, by that God that has no other but himself . . . etc. Las Siete Partidas, ed. Gregorio Lpez (Salamanca, 1555, rpt. 1974), fols. 61ab. Espculo. Texto jurdico atribuido al Rey de Castilla Don Alfonso X el Sabio, ed. Robert MacDonald (Madison, 1990), lib. V, tt. XI, ley XVII, Como deuen jurar los moros, p. 258. See also Las Siete Partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, ed. Robert Burns (Philadelphia, 2001), vol. III, p. 641. Swearing (aqsama) in the mosque before the qibla or in the presence of the Qur"an appears to have been prescribed in some cases compiled by al-Wanarisi from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, both in North Africa and al-Andalus. See Vincent Lagardre, Histoire et Socit en Occident Musulman au Moyen ge. Analyse du Mi'yar dal-Wansarisi (Madrid, 1995), no. 220, p. 59, no. 242, p. 64, no. 92, pp. 39697. 15 See Heather Ecker, Administradores mozrabes en Sevilla despus de la conquista, in: Congreso Internacional Conmemorativo del 750 Aniversario de la Conquista de la Cuidad de Sevilla por Fernando III, Rey de Castilla y Len (1998, Sevilla), ed. Manuel

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partidores, and the use of local informants and Arabic-speaking intermediaries as administrators meant that the Christian conquerors of Muslim cities were well informed about their structure, their contents, their institutions and their functions. Perhaps, for the partidores, the coincidence of abundant and abandoned neighborhood mosques in the captured Muslim cities and the parochial impulses of the Gregorian reforms was hard to resist. The parish ( parochia) and municipal (collatio) system of the reforms, under the charge of a central ecclesiastical authority and municipal administrators (concilium), is not identical to Islamic systems of neighborhood administration in Andaluca, but, it seems that there were enough similarities between them to make the transition easy, including the absorption in, some cases, of the mosques pious endowments. In the thirteenth century, the Christian parish that substituted the neighborhood mosque took on many of the same quotidian functionsdaily prayers, payment of tithes, administration of endowments, funeralsand other functions such as baptisms, confessions and weddings, which ensured its role as the focus of the geographical area to which it ministered. The municipal structures mimicked the parochial structure, or, as Linehan has written, were geographically coextensive with each other.16 Collatio/collacin is the designation of the parochial district in the repartimiento literature, and describes the well-dened juridical territory over which the parish church exercised authority. In thirteenthcentury charters, collacin is used to situate any structure within parochial borders (much like bi-hauma masjid ), as in vn solar de mezquita en la collaion de Santa Katalina (the site of a mosque in the collacin of St. Catherine).17 Historians of medieval institutions have taken dierent approaches to the concept of collacin: Luis Garca de Valdeavellano dened it from the perspective of socialization, an ecclesiastical demarcation which transcended civil life and was one of the elements which contributed to the progressive cohesion of the local group. Mara Asenjo Gonzlez, in her study

Gonzlez Jimnez (Seville, 2000), pp. 82138, and The conversion of mosques to synagogues in Seville: the case of the Mezquita de la Judera, Gesta, XXXVI/2 (1997), pp. 190207. 16 Peter Linehan, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), p. 263. 17 Sometimes other denominators are used such as barrio or cal ; Ecker 2000, p. 223, doc. 52 bis (1275 A.D.).

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of urban development in Segovia, described it in terms of practicalities, that incipient, cellular organization of urban space that converged on the juridical and gubernatorial level . . . for tasks such as the distribution of municipal taxes, the collection of royal taxes, urban militias . . . etc.18 Alain Guerreau described the collacin and parish as elements in a larger process of encellulement in the re-organization of medieval cities. He saw this process as one of the basic means by which urbanized, central monarchical and ecclesiastical authorities regained and maintained control over a growing population the formation of parishes being the principle engine of this development, as it was the smallest administrative unit providing control. He also saw the closing of ranks between the ruler and the church toward the end of the middle ages as creating a situation in which the tatisation of the Church considerably facilitated the use of ecclesiastical structures by States, the blending of ecclesiastical and municipal jurisdictions.19 That the post-conquest Andalucan collacin shared administrative practicalities with its northern counterparts and acted as a unit of control for a centralized state is certain, but it provided an ambiguous basis for social cohesion. The municipal or ecclesiastical structures established in the thirteenth century, would have to wait to be fullled in the late fourteenth and fteenth centuries. The Castilian project of repopulating the vast territory gained in the thirteenth century failed for a number of reasons: the frontier was dangerous and under constant attack by the Marinids settled in Algeciras, and there simply were not enough people to go around.20 Most of the allies and feudal dependents of Fernando III and Alfonso X who were granted properties in Andaluca sold or abandoned them soon
18 Luis Garca de Valdeavellano, Curso de Historia de las Instituciones Espaolas (Madrid, 1968), p. 534; Mara Asenjo Gonzlez, SegoviaLa Ciudad y su Tierra a nes de Medievo (Segovia, 1986), p. 86. 19 Alain Guerreau, Organisation et contrle de lespace: les rapports de ltat et de lglise la n du Moyen ge, in: tat et glise dans la Gense de ltat Moderne. Ed. J.-Ph. Genet and Bernard Vincent (Madrid, 1986), pp. 2738. 20 On the failure of repartimiento see: Linehan, pp. 41617, 51014; Manuel Gonzlez Jimnez, Un testimonio cordobs sobre la crisis castellana de la segunda mitad del siglo XIII, Anuario de Historia Econmica y Social III (1970), pp. 31924 and La repoblacin de la zona de Sevilla durante el siglo XIV, second ed. (Seville, 1993) and En torno a los orgenes de Andaluca: La repoblacin del Siglo XIII, 2nd ed. (Seville, 1988); Isabel Montes Romero-Camacho, Propiedad y Explotacin de la Tierra en al Sevilla de la Baja Edad Media (Seville, 1988), pp. 14576; Manuel Garca Fernndez, El Reino de Sevilla en Tiempos de Alfonso XI (13121350) (Seville, 1989), pp. 33344.

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after to buyers including the Church, ecclesiastics or speculators.21 As a consequence, it is impossible to measure the demographic density of the new collaciones from their initial repartimientos. In Seville, conquered in 1248, successive attempts to carry out repartimientos were made in 1252, 1255, and again in 1263 when Alfonso X lamented,
Because we discover that the noble city of Seville has depopulated and ruined itself, and that many houses are being destroyed by the fault of those to whom they were given, or by their men, who have [left] them empty and wrecked (malparadas), we order good men of the collaciones, who would know truly which of the houses are inhabited and which empty and wrecked, and we would give [them] our scribes, so that they would write [this information] down, and we would have them swear on the Holy Gospels that they would carry it out well and loyally. And they should walk by all of the houses in the city and give us written [evidence] of how many they discover inhabited and how many empty and wrecked and how many were sold contrary to our prohibition. And we, according to such written [evidence] will give our judgment and sentence. And we order Master Ferrand Garca, archdeacon of Niebla, and Garci Prez, our magistrate in Seville, and Johan, scribe, our man, that they divide up those houses which were written down as empty or as wrecked and those which fall under our judgment and our sentence so that they might give them to settlers . . .22

Thirteenth-century Andalucas depopulation should be a crucial problem for students of ecclesiastical history. Instead, the expansion of the institution of the frontier parish as a result of the conquests has
21 Glick has discussed the simultaneous consolidation of rural holdings in few hands after the repartimientos due to the rising tide of seigniorialism . . . the harshness of the frontier life, and . . . a voraciously active landmarket that did not favor the small, rural freeholder. Thomas Glick, Reading the Repartimientos: Modelling Settlement in the Wake of Conquest, in: Mark Meyerson and Edward English, eds. Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval Spain. Interaction and Cultural Change. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999, pp. 2039. But, see our reservations about some of his arguments regarding the repartimiento literature: Heather Ecker and Manuela Marn, Archaeology, Arabic sources and Christian documents (Review of: Thomas F. Glick, From Muslim fortress to Christian castle: Social and cultural change in medieval Spain. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies XXV (1998), pp. 33548. 22 Diplomatario Andaluz de Alfonso X, ed. Manuel Gonzlez Jimnez (Seville, 1991), pp. 29899, doc. 270. Garc Prez was a Mozarab magistrate from Toledo, whereas Ferrand Garca was career cleric, who later became a notary of the King (126875) and the archdeacon of Burgos (127785). For his rabble-rousing against the Dominicans, see Peter Linehan, A tale of two cities: capitular Burgos and mendicant Burgos in the thirteenth century, in: Church and City 10001500, Essays in Honour of Chistopher Brooke, eds. David Abulaa, Michael Franklin and Miri Rubin (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 81110.

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been treated as parallelor even integralto the contemporary growth of the urban parish elsewhere. The main diculty is that demographic rises, to which the growth of the institution of the urban parish has been partly attributed, cannot be considered as adequate cause for their proliferation in Andalucathese parishes were mainly devoid of parishioners. In addition, the implementation of the Gregorian reforms, which promoted the establishment of parish churches in the unique context of conquest, in a territory under monarchic, and thus, papal control, was entirely dierent from its implementation in other parts of Europe. In Andaluca there was nothing to reform in terms of ecclesiastical institutions, but a great deal to invent, and one might argue that the main aim of the bishops in the conquered territories was the evangelization of whole cities in preparation for Christian repopulators, rather than as a result of their settlement. The institution of the frontier parish in Andaluca needs to be disentangled from that of the Christian north. Here is what the ecclesiastical historians have to say: it is often stated that the establishment of the parish in the low middle ages the seeding of ecclesiastical authority in small, urban plotswas a result of the reforms pressed by eleventh-century pope Gregory VII (r. 107385). John Cowdrey has dened the primary objective of the Gregorian papacy as the freeing of the Church from the subjection of its Episcopal sees, parishes, and monasteries to temporal lordship, and the full committing of it to the service of God under the full and unrestricted authority of the Apostolic See of Rome.23 Echoing Cowdrey, Jean Gaudemet, an historian of canonical law, has written that the implementation of Gregorian reforms was . . . a fundamental stage in the history of the parish, not least for its legislative and doctrinal contributions than for the expansion of parishes across all of Christendom; this was favored by the vast campaign, an undertaking of the eleventh century which was still pursued in the thirteenth century, to liberate the local churches from the laymans grip, to restore to it its patrimony (and in particular the tithes), and to remove the choice of its patron from the whims of the local lord.24 In other words, Gregorys reform was not only concerned
23 Herbert Edward John Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970), pp. 1356. 24 Jean Gaudemet, Le gouvernement de lglise a lpoque classique (Histoire du droit et des institutions de lglise en Occident, vol. VIII, pt. II) (Paris, 1979), p. 219.

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with the establishment of parish churches, but also with the displacement of private interests in order to assert centralized control over ecclesiastical institutions. Gaudemet, signicantly, also linked the rise of the parish to contemporary urban development and demographic rises in cities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Gregory VIIs campaign for papal supremacy over ecclesiastical institutions and practices, especially parishes and tithes, and his populist call-to-arms against the lay authorities were intended to mobilize the soldiers of St Peter.25 The temple of this soldiery, the urban parish church, an institution of the people and of the lower classes, was the smallest unit which could be brought into the fold. By placing the parishes under the canopy of the reinforced ecclesiastical hierarchy, the Church not only promoted the homogenized Gallo-romanic rite throughout Europeand specically in the Peninsula where the Mozarabic rite was perceived as Adoptionist by associationbut was able to challenge the lay authorities, monarchic and aristocratic, over questions of endowments and access to corve labor.26 Jos ngel Garca de Cortzar has marked the beginning of this process in the Peninsula with the arrival of the Cluniac monks to the monastery of Sahagn, in the province of Len, in 1079 at the invitation of Alfonso VI.27 There is a link, through Sahagn, between the Cluniac eorts to reform the church and to eliminate, the Mozarabic ritethe superstitio toletana, practiced in Castile, Lon, and by the Christian communities under Islamic ruleand eorts to revive ecclesiastical institutions in formerly Muslim territory. Robert, the rst Cluniac abbot of Sahagn, who displaced the Mozarab, Julian, was himself replaced in 1080 by Bernard of Sdirac.28 Eight years later, Bernard
Cowdrey 1970, pp. 1401. The Adoptionist view, similar to that of the Monophysite churches, was that in his divine nature, Christ was the true son of God, but in his human nature, he was only the adopted son of God. It was promoted especially by Elipando, late eighth-century archbishop of Toledo, and condemned as heretical by a number of synods including that in Rome in 799800. Elipando was immune to the charges against him, protected by the fact that Toledo had been conquered by the Muslims, and was outside of the physical sphere of inuence of the Franks and Romans (this denition adapted from Adopcionismo, Enciclopedia Universal, II, p. 989). 27 Jos ngel Garca de Cortzar, La poca Medieval (Madrid, 1988), p. 276. 28 Bernard is called by many names in the secondary literature: de Sdirac, de Cluny, and de Sauvetat. According to Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo and court chronicler to Fernando III, Bernard was from the village of Salvitatis, in the province of Agen. Juan Fernndez Valverde, translator of De Rebus
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was conrmed by the Cluniac pope Urban II, successor to Gregory VII, in a bull entitled Cunctis sanctorum (All the Holy Places) as archbishop of the two-year-old cathedral of Toledo. In addition to the task of repressing the Mozarabs, he was granted the right to take charge of the restoration of the Mozarabic/Visigothic bishoprics in the whole of the Peninsula captured from the Muslims until the metropolitan sees were restored in the Muslim territories.29 Thus, Toledo was assured a central administrative role during the reconquest. Despite Toledos brief, what was to be restored, had to be invented, and what was to be reformed had never existed. The revived network of parish churches in Toledo, mainly installed in neighborhood mosques, bore only a hazy resemblance to its Visigothic predecessor four centuries earlier, and the Mozarabic rite was preserved in six parish churchesan insuppressible pocket of local resistance to the homogenizing aims of the Pope, his representative in Toledo and the crown of Castile.30 In Andaluca, parishes were established in former mosques because of an ideological program and not as a response to an increasing populationempty buildings were brought into the Gallo-romanic fold only after their inhabitants had been displaced. On the other hand, whereas the aim of the Gregorian reforms in Europe was to regain centralized control of parish churches from private interests, in Andaluca, the parishes were established by the central authority of the crown and its church, and were never used as private sources of income, for example, through tithes. The coincidence of the rise of the institution of the urban parish

Hispani, has identied this village as Sauvetat, which one assumes is Sauvetat-deblanquefort, north-east of Agen. Curiously, the late thirteenth-century Primera Crnica General identies Bernard as a native of the land of the Moors, from a castle that is called Salvidad (Safety), as the archbishop recounts (Et este don Bernaldo electo de la eglesia de Toledo era natural de tierra de moros, de un castiello que dizien Saluidad, assi como lo cuenta el arobispo). It is, in fact, a partially false citation of Jimnez de Rada, who did not mention this moorish feature of Bernards origins. As it is extremely unlikely that Bernard was a Mozarab, perhaps this phrase can be attributed to an historical memory of the eighth-century Muslim domination of the south of France and the foundation of safe havens there. Primera Crnica General, ed. Ramn Menndez Pidal (Madrid, 1977), vol. II, cap. 871, p. 540. 29 Rivera Recio 1966, pp. 1367, 295313; Miranda Calvo 1980, pp. 18991; Manuel Nieto Cumplido, La restauracin de la dicesis de Crdoba en el reinado de Fernando III el Santo, in: Antonio Domnguez Ortz et alia, Crdoba. Apuntes para su Historia (Crdoba, 1981), pp. 13548. 30 Francisco Javier Hernndez, Historia de los que parecan rabes, Revista de Occidente CCIV (2000), p. 55.

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outside of the Iberian Peninsula with the conquests within has perhaps created a false image of interdependence. According to students of ecclesiastical institutions such as Gaudemet and Catherine Boyd, the terminology and function of parishes, rural and urban was not well dened by the early medieval period: the terms parochia and diocesis were almost interchangeable, and the term ecclesia could represent any religious structure in the . . . hierarchy from the diocese to the most modest chapel.31 Joseph Avril citing the thirteenth-century bishop Henri de Suses denition of the parish as a territory with well circumscribed boundaries in which lives a community placed under the authority of a priest, and the territory is considered as a parish in as much as is applied there the spiritual right of a church qualied this denition by writing, . . . but it is only in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries that the parish frontiers were strictly delimited.32 Thus, the geographical boundaries of parishes, and the parochial administration of activities within those borders was only sharply dened by the thirteenth century. In the case of Italy, Boyd has cited the eighteenth-century writer Mario Lupis view, which became widely accepted, that except in Rome, the cathedrals were the sole urban parishes in Italy until the eleventh century, that is to say before the advent of the Gregorian reforms.33 She qualied Lupis view of the term parish to signify a church with the right to baptizein most cases the cathedral. The fact that in Italian cities there were other churches in which baptism was performed illustrates the porosity of the boundaries of the parochial institution. Boyd argued that in twelfth-century Italy, in a critical stage in the development of the parish, cathedral churches transmitted a share of their rituals, including baptism, to urban churches of lower rank.34 In Genoa, in this period, the responsibility for baptism was extended by the baptistery over the plebium, baptismal district, while the term parochia appears to have taken on a quasimunicipal signicance, dening the area in which the parishioners lived. These terms do not appear to equate, necessarily, the parish
Gaudemet 1979, p. 223. Joseph Avril, Paroisse, in: Dictionnaire Encyclopdique du Moyen ge. Dir. Andr Vauchez (Paris, 1997), vol. II, p. 1161. 33 Catherine E. Boyd, Tithes and Parishes in Medieval Italy: the Historical Roots of a Modern Problem (Ithaca, New York, 1952), p. 53, fn. 12; Mario Lupi, De Parochiis annum Christi millesimum (Rome, 1788), pp. 133266. 34 Boyd 1952, p. 53.
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with the baptismal church.35 Thus, until the thirteenth century, Italian parishes not only had hazy borders, but also hazily dened functions. In France, the foundation of urban parishes also appears to have increased from the twelfth century onward. In Paris, for example, small chapels were successively elevated to the ranks of minor parishes, whose priests only administered penitence and communion, during the twelfth century. The number of parishes grew in accordance with increases in the population.36 The bishop of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century, Maurice de Sully, was responsible for the reorganization of the parishes, the determination of their boundaries, and the provision of their religious services.37 By the thirteenth century, the pattern became standardized. The central cathedral church shed certain responsibilities such as baptism, marriage, funerals and the collection of tithes to the smaller parishes. The secular municipal functions which accompanied the delimitation of the urban space into parishes were adapted as a mirror image of the ecclesiastical functions: the administration of juridical disputes and policing, and the collection of taxes in money, in kind and in labor. England was perhaps the exception to the rest of Europe. By the end of the eleventh century, London had one hundred and twentysix parishes, including those of Middlesex, of which not only the boundaries are known, but also the locations of the parish churches. The reasons for this early eorescence of locales for popular worship have not been fully uncovered, but Brooke attributed it to weak, central, ecclesiastical control, rather than to partitioning by Gregorian reformists. This high number of parishes on the periphery of the Roman church could only have been sustained by the local support and patronage of a large population that, as Brooke argues, liked to worship in tiny boxes. Thus although the scene in London was bottom rather than top-heavy, demographic density was a crucial factor in the growth of its urban parishes.38 Here is the entanglement: in the Iberian Peninsula, it has been argued, the parish churcha previously diuse institutionbecame plausible because of the conquests and resettlement of displaced popBoyd 1952, p. 156. Michel Aubrun, La paroisse en France des origines au XV e sicle (Paris, 1986), pp. 109113. 37 Christopher N. L. Brooke, The ecclesiastical geography of medieval towns, Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae V (1971), pp. 289. 38 Brooke 1971, pp. 1531.
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ulations in the mid-twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Arguing in terms of social coherence rather than ideological program, Peter Linehan, like Garca de Valdeavellano, has written, Crucial though parochial loyalties were in providing a surrogate extended family to replace the complex of kin-based relationships previously destroyed by the dislocation of frontier society (if not the Church), what strength those loyalties possessed they derived not from the application of Gregorian principles but from the conditions of the frontier itself.39 The church building was a central element in the colonization of new territory, a symbol for Christians of military and social condence, religious consolation and refuge. And not only the cathedral, but to at least as great an extent it was the thirty or forty little churches, and the parishes of which in places such as Soria or Salamanca they were the centre and focus of loyalty for groups of displaced persons of dierent provenance, that provided a society organized for war with the means both of organization and of survival.40 The diculty with present arguments concerning the growth of the Iberian parish is that they fail to evaluate the strength and plausibility of the parochial institution in light of the subsequent depopulation. Gaudemet, for example, perceived the capture of Muslim cities in the Iberian Peninsula and the implementation of urban parishes within them as one of the intrinsic elements in the grand drama of the rise of the institution of the parish between the eleventhand thirteenth centuries. He wrote, Sustained by demographic growth, the urban renaissance, the evangelization of new zones in the East [read: Hungary], the reconquest of vast territories [read: Al-Andalus], the parochial expansion constitutes one of the major elements of the religious histories of our era.41 Garca de Cortzar concurred: From the beginning of the eleventh century, the power of the papacy and the other institutions of the secular Church were reconstructed. As a part of it, the role of the bishop and the parochial cell were strengthened. In Spain, this process strictly corresponded with that of the recovery of the lands occupied by the Muslims, and . . . the immediate character with which the new
Linehan 1993, p. 251. Linehan 1993, pp. 2623, and see Garca de Cortzar 1988, p. 178; for an anachronistic and outdated perspective, see Robert Ignatius Burns, The parish as a frontier institution in thirteenth-century Valencia, Speculum XXXVII (1962), pp. 24451. 41 Gaudemet 1979, p. 240.
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sees were created, or better put, according to the wills of the protagonists, the restoration of the ancient [sees] continued during the reconquest.42 And according to Garca de Valdeavellano, although many commercial and urban centers, and places on the Santiago pilgrimage trail in the north of Spain had a functioning civic concilium or concejo by the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the nal developments of urban municipal structure did not reach their apogee until the era of the Castilian and Aragonese conquests in the thirteenth century, when they acquired the great Muslim cities of al-Andalus.43 What were these civic structures? In the north of Spain, as early as the tenth century, local concilia were chosen by popular election; in fact, Jean Gautier Dalch emphasized that the concilium was found in the tenth century only in zones of re-populationduring a period of increased urbanization in the Christian northit was, indeed, a new phenomenon, closely linked to the circumstances which prevailed in these areas: weakness in both seigniorial inuence and in community rights of use of part of the territory. . . .44 In the northern Iberian Peninsula, therefore, there was a direct relationship between the self-consolidation of the population in a newly populated or re-populated area, and the rise of the administrative concilium. Thus, the same demographic rise that has been credited with the rise of the parish church in Europe, is credited with the rise of the communal municipal concilium in the north of Spain. Garca de Cortzar insisted, in fact, that the main characteristic which distinguished the Christian cities in the north of Spain from those in alAndalus was the fact the inhabitants enjoyed a political power which the residents of Muslim [cities] lacked, certainly a debatable point, but intended to distinguish the municipal institutions of the north from those of the south.45
Garca de Cortzar 1988, p. 178. Garca de Valdeavellano 1968, p. 534, The Concilium or Concejo [Town Council] of the High Middle Ages was not, of course, a Municipality, in light of the fact that its competence was reduced to few matters and it did not recognize any public juridical gure to whom was submitted the neighborhood assemblies by the authorities of the district. But the common action of all of the neighbors (totos sub uno, as it is put in one document) was already, however, a rudimentary manifestation of a local regime and a unifying link which contributed to the gradual formation of a collective consciousness of the community of neighbors and the growing intervention of this collectivity in the ordering of the life of the locality, and p. 537. 44 Jean Gautier Dalch, Historia Urbana de Len y Castilla en la Edad Media (siglos IXXIII), second ed. (Madrid, 1989), p. 45. 45 Garca de Cortzar 1988, p. 176; to what extent the Castilians and Aragonese
43 42

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The transfer of the popular political systems of the north, the concilium, the parochia, and the collatio to the territories taken from the Muslims in the south was not photographic, however, and perhaps it is in the process of re-imaging these institutions that lies the key to disentanglement. In the conquered territories of al-Andalus, the idea of the popular concilium, like the institution of the parish, was subverted by the central authority. In Toledo, for example, the concilium never held much power.46 In Seville, the concejo, manned by the so-called veinticuatros, was a body formed by royal election and under royal control, and generally composed of ocials from prominent families.47 This strategy helped to maintain centralized control over the cities in the frontier regions by making the authority of the
adapted and modied the previous administrative oces and systems of taxation in their conquered cities has not been as well investigated as, for example, the Norman adoption of the pre-existing chancellery practice in Sicily. The roots of the Castilian and Aragonese public oces such as alcalde, alguacil, alamn, alarife, almojarife, almotacn, zabalmedina that originate in Islamic administrative posts and their appearance in Fernandine and Alfonsine documents have never been well explained. Some attempts have been made with regard to the adaptation of the oces of market ocials. See for example, Pedro Chalmeta y Gendrn, La gura del almotacn en los fueros y su semejanza con el zabazoque hispano-musulmn, Revista de la Universidad de Madrid XIX (1970), pp. 14567, and El Seor del Zoco en Espaa (Madrid, 1973). 46 Gautier Dalch 1989, p. 115. 47 The veinticuatros (the twentyfours) were the city councilors who formed the municipal concejo in some Andalucan cities, including Seville. Their name and number probably derives from the clause in the ordinances of Seville granted by Alfonso X in which the hereditary oce of the jurados was described in relationship to the number of parishes in Seville: . . . there are twenty-four (veynte e quatro) collaciones in Seville; and from each collacin there are placed there two jurados, a knight (caballero) and another citizen. . . . Jos Damian Gonzlez Arce, Cuadernos de ordenanzas y otros documentos sevillanos del reinado de Alfonso X, Historia. Instituciones. Documentos XVI (1989), p. 109. The other Andalucan cities that also had veinticuatros were granted the ordinances and fuero of Seville and took on its institutions even if they were not divided into twenty-four collaciones. However, the origin of the institution of the veintiquatros has never been well explained. Nicols Tenorio saw the seminal institution in the twenty-four captains of the militia of the concejo, who were charged with guarding the gates of the city after the conquest. He also believed that the concejo was an open institution to which the veinticuatros, among others, pertained. Nicols Tenorio y Cerero, El Concejo de Sevilla. Estudio de la Organizacin poltico-social de la Ciudad (12481312) (Seville, 1901), pp. 85, 87. Whether the roots of this municipal organisation, then, had its basis in the partidores of each collacin appointed by Alfonso X is an open question. While Tenorio believed that the partidores or cuadrilleros who were appointed by Alfonso X to eect the repartimiento of each collacin developed as a group into the institution of the jurados, it is not entirely clear. Manuel Gonzlez Jimnez et alia have indicated that the role of the jurado in the earliest period in Seville is vague and variable, Manuel Gonzlez Jimnez (with Mercedes Borrero Fernndez and Isabel Montes Romero-Camacho) Sevilla en Tiempos de Alfonso X el Sabio (Seville, 1987), pp. 14951; Manuel Gonzlez Jimnez, Ciudades y concejos andaluces en la Edad Media: gobierno urbano, in: Concejos y Ciudades en la Edad Media Hispnica, II Congreso de Estudios Medievales (Mstoles, 1990), pp. 2456.

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nobility dependent on the king. However, in general, municipal institutions were still vague after the conquests, and did not have welldened roles until the fourteenth and fteenth centuries. Likewise, the parishes and collaciones in Andaluca were established by bishops promoted by the Crown and under the central control of Toledo for ideological and military aims, independent of demography. The eventual success of these partitioning schemes, secular and ecclesiastical, and not their early failures, is perhaps what has proved so confusing to students of ecclesiastical history. Thus, because they do not work in the conquered territories, it is necessary to disengage the arguments that describe the development of the institution of the urban parish in Christian Europe from an analysis of its development in Andaluca in the thirteenth century. These were separate realities that went by the same name. In their place, the engagement between Christian and Islamic urban structures and their administrations must be recognized and reconsidered. There was only one Crdoba, not two, and its physical plant at the time of the conquest when its parochial structure was determined owed nothing to northern Christian administrative institutions. Rather, its pre-existing cellular structure centered on nodes of urban mosques underpinned its Christian administration. The post-conquest administration of Crdoba, like those of other formerly Muslim cities in Andaluca, never got away from the physical plant of the Islamic city: for many centuries, the buildings were the same buildings, and the neighborhoods were the same neighborhoods; as we have seen, the relationship between the two administrations was made intimate by informed research. This is not to say that there was static preservation, on the contrary: buildings were demolished, others were erected and new streets were builtmany of these initiatives can be perceived in the documentary sources. It would be a tremendous mistake to assume, as it is sometimes, that mosques and other buildings in the conquered territories remained as they were in the time of the Moors forever. But these changes obscure rather than reveal the primary strategies of the rst Christian administrations. For example, in Madrid, denitively conquered in 1132 by Alfonso VII, only one parish church, San Nicols, retains any evidence at all that it was built as a mosque, and yet other parish churches in the oldest part of the city must rest on sites of former neighborhood mosques. But, as no documentary studies have revealed the process of partitioning Madrid

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after the conquest, no underlying Islamic urban administrative patterns have ever been perceived. In Seville, almost no physical evidence of the former neighborhood mosques remains, and yet their primacy in parochial partitioning is incontrovertible in the documentary sourceseven so, as we have seen, this evidence has been dismissed in favor of the idea of an imposition of a completely new and fully conceived Gregorian administrative structure. If the parochial administrative structure was fully conceived in the thirteenth century, and if it had anything to do at all with the aims of the Gregorian reforms, the link to Rome and Cluny was through the laboratory of Toledo and its neighborhood mosques. And, only in Toledo, where the institution of the urban parish developed over time, can the argument be made that it responded to demographic changesindeed neighborhood mosques may have been seized and converted to parish churches in response to Christian immigration and Muslim emigration after the conquest. The demographic argument when applied to cities in Andaluca such as Crdoba, cija and Seville in the thirteenth century is simply ridiculous. Glancing forward, the well-documented conquest and parochial partitioning of Granada in the late fteenth century throws a harsh light on a new and perverse twist to this story. In Granada the new parishes were implanted in neighborhood mosques that were re-endowed with their old hubus properties. The work of the ecclesiastic research committee responsible for implementing this strategy is preserved in the Libros de los Habices. But, there was no shift in the population, rather, forced conversion meant that the population stayed the same. The expansion of the institution of the frontier parish in the Peninsula had reached its logical and rather cruel conclusion.

THE GOTHIC ANAMORPHIC GAZE: REGARDING THE WORTH OF OTHERS Francisco Prado-Vilar

. . . saw the Aleph from everywhere at once, saw the earth in the Aleph, and the Aleph once more in the earth and the earth in the Aleph, saw my face and my viscera, saw your face, and I felt dizzy, and I wept, because my eyes had seen that secret, hypothetical object whose name has been usurped by men but which no man has ever truly looked upon: the inconceivable universe. I had a sense of innite veneration, innite pity. Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph 1

A sense of innite veneration, in the presence of a small object that contains the divinity, and of innite pity, when witnessing the divine essence being revealed in the image of a woman, seem to overcome the Moor that gazes upon an icon of the Virgin in the Escorial manuscript of the Cantigas de Santa Mara (Fig. 1).2 The scene illustrates
1 Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph, in Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley (New York: Viking, 1998), pp. 2834. 2 Fol. 68v of MS. T.I.1. The Cantigas de Santa Mara is a collection of more than four hundred poetic compositions in Galician-Portuguese, dated to the 1270s, which has come down to us in four manuscripts. Two of themMS. T.I.1 (Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio), and MS. Banco Rari 20 (Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale)once formed part of a single fully illustrated luxury edition, produced between 1275 and 1284, featuring musical mensural notation to guide the performance of each individual song. Most compositions are narrative poems (cantigas de miragre) recounting miracles performed by the Virgin and her images. Each cantiga is illustrated in a six-panel grid (33.4 cms. 22.3 cms.) which occupies the full length of the page. Songs whose nal digit is 5 are longer stories and, with few exceptions, they are expanded visually in two sets of six panels facing each other on opposite pages. Every tenth song is a cantiga de loor (song of praise) where King Alfonso X of Castile (r. 125284), self-proclaimed troubadour of the Virgin, acts as mediator between Mary and his audience, commenting upon her virtues through the language of courtly love and introducing issues of Marian theology and Christian dogma. For a description of the four manuscripts of the Cantigas, with particular attention to MS. T.I.1, see the volume of essays accompanying the facsimile edition, Alfonso X el Sabio, Cantigas de Santa Mara. Edicin facsmil del Cdice T.I.1 de la Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Siglo XIII, 2 vols. (Madrid: Ediln, 1979); for a detailed description of the Florence codex (MS. B.R. 20), see the facsimile edition, Alfonso X el Sabio. Cantigas de Santa Mara. Edicin facsmil del cdice B.R. 20 de la Biblioteca Centrale de Florencia, siglo XIII, 2 vols. (Madrid: Ediln, 1989). For a

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the story of a Muslim man who took a statue of the Virgin from the Christians as war booty. Enchanted by the beauty of the image, he kept it in his house and often went to gaze upon it and reason to himself that he simply could not believe that God would become incarnate nor be born of a woman . . . and walk among common folk.3 He deantly pledged, however, that he would convert to Christianity, if God manifested his power through the image. The Moor scarcely uttered this, recounts the poet, when he saw the statues two breasts turn into living esh and begin to ow with milk in gushing streams. The miniatures illustrating this miracle introduce substantial variations on the written text by oering a revealing look at the Moors intimate universe (Fig. 2).4 In the room where he looks daily at the imagerendered as an icon instead of the statue described in the texthis wife and son lovingly embrace in a way that resembles the painted Virgin and Child (panel 4). This similarity is still more marked in the following scene (panel 5), where we observe the Moor falling on his knees at the sight of the lactating icon while, simultaneously, his wife breastfeeds their baby. In perusing the miniatures,
remarkable study of the Cantigas as a source of historical information about the king, his family, and the events of his reign, see J. F. OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas de Santa Mara: A Poetic Biography (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1998). OCallaghans book also oers a selective overview of the extensive literature related to the Cantigas on issues such as dates of composition, theories of authorship, sources, and others. As this literature is long and quite repetitive, rather than overloading the critical apparatus of this article with a strain of bibliographical references, I will often refer to OCallaghans book whenever he provides an updated review of previous studies on any specic topic. For additional information on Alfonso X, see A. Ballesteros Beretta, Alfonso X (Barcelona: El Albir, 1984); J. F. OCallaghan, The Learned King. The Reign of Alfonso of Castile (Philadelphia, PA.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); and H. Salvador Martnez, Alfonso X, el Sabio: una biografa (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 2003). For an insightful assessment of Alfonso Xs cultural enterprises, see F. Mrquez-Villanueva, El concepto cultural alfons (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1994). 3 The standard edition of the Cantigas is W. Mettmann, Cantigas de Santa Mara, 3 vols. (Madrid: Castalia, 19869). Quotations from the Cantigas are taken from the English prose translation by K. Kulp-Hill, trans., Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, the Wise (Tempe, AZ.: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000). This translation is based on the stardard edition and follows, as I do in this essay, the numbering of the cantigas established by Mettmann. 4 For a discussion of basic art historical questions regarding the illuminations of the Cantigas, such as stylistic inuences and rhetorical structure of the visual narrative, see Roco Snchez Ameijeiras, Imaxes e Teora da Imaxe nas Cantigas de Santa Mara, in As Cantigas de Santa Mara, ed. Elvira Fidalgo (Vigo: Edicins Xerais de Galicia, 2002), pp. 247330.

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our shifting of attention from the mother and son to the Virgin and Childboth intentionally displayed facing the viewertriggers a play of resemblance. At this moment, the locus of representation moves from the parchment onto the spectators subjective consciousness, where the Moors inner experience may be actively reconstructed. By creating this thread of visual associations, the illuminator successfully involves the viewer in a perceptual stage that exists outside the narrative linearity of the miniatures and displays a constant uctuation between subjective perception and narrative distance. Semantically and ontologically, the space thus entered can be dened as one of intimate exteriority. Extimacy a neologism coined by Lacan to problematize the shifting binary oppositions between outside and inside, container and contained, that permeate the intersubjective structure of the unconsciouscan be recalled as a critical term in order to delineate the elusive space of signication that is both generated within the visual narrative matrix of codex and, at the same time, intentionally connected to the phenomenal world of the spectator.5 The icon of the Virgin in the Moorish household dramatizes how the concept of extimacy functions here, not only from the point of view of representation but also from the point of view of identity: it signals the presence of the Other and of its discourse at the very center of intimacy.6 In the visual conguration of the miniatures, this movement from narrative to extimate space requires an anamorphic view, the location of the adequate perspective through which a series of associations that substantially enriches the meaning and worth of the object being

5 The term extimit occurs several times in Lacans seminar; see, for instance, J. Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 19591960, trans. Dennis Porter (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 129. The concept was later elaborated by Jacques-Alain Miller in his 19856 seminar, where he emphazised the uses of extimacy to describe the relationship between self and other,expanding on Lacans denition of the Other (the unconscious) as something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me ( J. Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, p. 71). Accordingly, in Millers words, Extimacy says that the intimate is Otherlike a foreign body, a parasite. . . The subject contains as the most intimate of its intimacy the extimacy of the Other ( J.-A. Miller, Extimit, in Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure and Society, ed. M. Brachner [New York: New York University Press, 1994], pp. 7487, esp. 76). In my analysis, extimacy works as an operative concept at two levels, both from a formal point of viewin relation to the extroversion of the visual conguration of Cantigas and conceptually, in relation to the unstable boundaries of identity and otherness that characterize in the work. 6 Miller, Extimit, p. 77.

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regarded becomes possible and meaningful. This gaze cuts obliquely into the frame of the miniature, launching a second dimension of representation, which exists somewhere between the interior operations of the mind and the exteriority of narrative discoursivity. Through the abandonment of the simple frontal viewpoint that frames the icon as a cryptic token of an alien culture, and the adoption, instead, of a slanted perspective that connects the image it bears to the emotional semantic eld associated with the mother and son, a transfer of love ensues. As the alterity of the icon is absorbed and re-inscribed within the space of domestic tranquility, the Moors aective universe becomes now linked to the symbolic order of Christian worship. In this processwhose full implications I will outline in the rst section of this essaya new faith emerges, one that nds its grounding, through vision and memory, in the realm of resemblance.7 The dierence between the text of this miracle and its illustrations regarding the reasons for the Moors conversion bears important consequences. The subtle staging of the illuminations suggests that what triggered conversion was not the wonder-working power of the image, as the text claims, but, rather, the capacity of the intended viewer to observe the perfect mimesis between a strange external image and a familiar internal one. Such dierence betrays the existence of two distinct socio-cultural points of view from where the textual and the visual originate. In fact, the literary version of this miracle, said to have happened in the Holy Land, is common to other collections of Marian miracles, such as Gautier de Coincys Les miracles de Notre Dame, and reects the standard Northern rhetoric, oering testimony that the Virgin is more powerful than their God. The illustration of this story in a thirteenth-century manuscript of Gautiers Miracles adheres to the textual narrative presenting a sequence of two simple scenes that leads directly from vision to conversion

7 Anamorphosis is a valuable concept for the analysis the multiple dimensions encoded in the visual structure of the Cantigas as it plays out the interconnection between the diverse cultural background of the spectators and the capacity of objects to conjure up multiple meanings. It is through anamorphosis that we are able to enter the dimension of extimacy, where the process of conversion occursa simultaneous position inside and outside that determines the way the Moor relates to the intercultural symbolic and material universe around him. On anamorphosis, see J. Baltrusaitis, Anamorphic Art, trans. W. J. Strachan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977); see also J. Lacan, Courtly Love and Anamorphosis, in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, pp. 13954; and Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York: Verso, 1989), pp. 98100.

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(Fig. 3).8 It is only when we peruse stories that occurred in an Iberian context, where local history and legend intersect, that the nuanced and sophisticated conceptualization of cultural interaction that emerges in the Cantigas miniatures, also appears explicitly thematized at the level of the text. In cantiga 205a miracle set during the siege of a Muslim frontier fortress by Christian troopsthe enigmatic gaze that stages the play of resemblance in the illuminations of cantiga 46 becomes, indeed, the main protagonist of the story.9 The set of miniatures features, in the upper register, the Christian camp facing the Muslim citadel (Fig. 4).10 Within the citadel stands a tower that has been set ablaze during the assault, and, on top of it, a Moorish woman who has taken refuge there with her child. As the story goes,
Master don Gonzalo Eanes de Calatrava, who diligently waged war on the Moors in Gods service, and also don Alfonso Tellez . . . ordered an all-out attack upon the tower, and when they saw that the tower was completely destroyed and noticed that Mooress seated between the merlons, she looked to them like the statue of the Holy Virgin Mary depicted with Her Son held in Her arms. They and all the other Christians who saw her felt pity and imploringly raised their hands to God to save the two from death, even though they were pagans. Because of this, God performed a great miracle.

In the middle register, we witness how the side of the tower . . . slid down to earth on a great open plain, so gently that neither mother nor child was killed, harmed or shaken, and, as the right panel shows, the Holy Virgin Mary, to whom the Christians prayed for the Mooress sake, set them down in a meadow. Finally, in the lower register, a Christian knight brings the Moorish woman into a church and shows her a statue of the Virginher own mirror image and the source of her salvation. As a result, she decides to convert and receives baptism alongside her baby.
8 MS Fr.F.v.XIV.9, fol. 103v (St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia). For this manuscript, see I. P. Mocretsova, French Illuminated Manuscripts of the 13th Century in the Collections of the Soviet Union, 12701300 (in Russian) (Moscow: Iskussivo, 1984), pp. 10247; T. Voronova and A. Sterligov, Western European Illuminated Manuscripts of the 8th to the 16th Centuries in the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (Bournemouth: Parkstone Press, 1996), pp. 6667. For a brief comparative discussion of Gautiers Miracles de Notre Dame and the Cantigas, see Roco Snchez Ameijeiras, Imaxes e Teora da Imaxe nas Cantigas de Santa Mara, pp. 264268. 9 For the historical context of this miracle, set around the time of the fall of Crdoba (ca. 1236), during the reign of Alfonso Xs father, Fernando III, see OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, pp. 8990. 10 Fol. 6r of MS. B.R. 20.

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Here, the transfer of love through resemblance becomes the main theme of the story. The worth-bestowing anamorphic gaze reaches the object through the likeness of the Virgina mediating image which is presented, at the same time, as the screen where the individual outside the community may nd the blueprint for successfully adopting an identity within. Resemblance with the Virgin oers, literally, a new life: through Mary, the Christians regard the life of the Moorish woman as a life worth praying for; and also through Mary, the Muslim woman herself regards the Christian future she is tendered as a life worth living. These two miracles set the stage for the theater of interaction that I will explore in this essay. They oer a glimpse into the conditions that facilitate an intercultural exchange held in the midst of a hybrid visual regime, where Christian images were discussed by Muslims and Muslim beliefs were pondered by the Christian population. In the socio-cultural mosaic of thirteenth-century Castile each social and religious group existed in constant contact with all the others gazing eye to eye like the protagonists of these two storiesand was obliged to continually revise not only its image of them, but even its vision of itself, thus rendering contingent ideas that went unchallenged in the rest of Christian Europe. Reality and divinity were apprehended and represented through the merging of modes of discourse traditionally separated by political and linguistic boundaries. From this environment there emerges what I shall call the Gothic anamorphic gazea gaze informed by experience and direct knowledge of cultural and religious diversity, rather than by dogma and ingrained stereotypes of alterity. As I have briey shown, this gaze becomes manifest primarily in the visual matrix of the Cantigas, submitting the textmore tied to the Christian tradition and to the common topoi running through European medieval cultureto a notable revision. In the ideas and values that emerge from this dierence, we discover a consistent program of cultural approximation towards the Muslim minorityone which is ultimately driven by a political agenda of national integration. In this sense, the Cantigas conforms to Alfonsos strategic approach to the diversity of his kingdom as it was enunciated in his monumental law code, the Siete Partidas:
Christians should endeavor to convert the Moors by causing them to believe in our religion, and bring them into it by kind words and suitable discourses, and not by violence or compulsion; for if it should be

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the will of Our Lord to bring them into it and to make them believe by force, He can use compulsion against them if He so desires, since He has full power to do so; but He is not pleased with the service which men perform through fear, but with that which they do voluntarily and without coercion, and as He does not wish to restrain them or employ violence, we forbid anyone to do so for this purpose; and if the wish to become Christians should arise among them, we forbid anyone to refuse assent to it, or oppose it in any way whatsoever.11

Accordingly, there is in the Cantigas an openness towards the Other which is unprecedented in the Middle Ages, and can be more clearly compared, favorably in some respects, to certain modern enlightened colonial practices, from the British rule in India to the American occupation of Iraq. In these cases, control and acculturation are always promoted through the promise of a better life, which unfailingly coincides with the model proposed by the colonial power and requires, as basic condition, the full participation in its socio-economic structures of production and consumption. As in the modern examples, domination is implemented in the Cantigas through a combined strategy of seduction and repression. Concepts such as happiness, health, compassion, and salvation are inextricably linked, through propaganda, to the social model put forth by the dominant power, implying that the failure to comply with that model causes their loss. According to this rhetoric, the idea of what a good life is has been determined by others, the only choice left to the conquered subject is either to gratefully live it or become collateral damage in the grand scheme of history. The Cantigas presents the audience with myriad testimonies to the happiness that ensues from espousing the proposed modela community under the protection of the Virgin. The image of Mary is made a focal point that encapsulates a universal idea of divine love that transcends religious boundaries. The Virgin becomes accessible, acceptable and apprehensible in terms of experience, informed by subjective intercultural data, as is reected in the two aforementioned examples. One could say that, by exercising an anamorphic gaze, the Moor in cantiga 46 is able to discover the Aleph in the icon. Like the Aleph imagined by Borges, the likenesses of the Virgin in the Cantigas are gures that aim at containing the world at large,
11 Part. VII, Tit. XXV, law II. S. Parsons Scott, trans., Las siete partidas, ed. Robert I. Burns, 5 vols. (Philadelphia, PA.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) vol. 5, pp. 14389.

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both in its innite variety and its single universal truth, from the private to the social, in the midst of the Christian community and the Muslim aljama. They absorb meaning through resemblance and unify diversity into a totalizing representation of the divine truth, which is oered as guiding principle for the achievement of happiness and salvation. As a whole, the collection stages a national utopia, which is articulated and promoted through the creation of a virtual space of resemblance with contemporary reality where the audience might nd paradigms to regulate and reconcile the tensions arising within a uid and unstable social structure. In the process, they are compelled to channel their hopes along the teleological axis that leads invariably to Marian devotion and to an allegiance to Her favored interlocutor, Alfonso X. This essay develops in three stages, each centered on a scene of looking in which the anamorphic gaze generates a vision of the world that has been largely overlooked in traditional scholarship. That vision dees the formal and conceptual paradigms commonly associated with Gothic art and culture as they have been construed and dened through a narrow look at the art of the North. It reveals a world much more human in its contradictions and much more uid in its aspirations than it has been allowed to exist in the academic construction of the Gothic period. At the core of each section is a single scene: a Moor gazing at an icon (Fig. 1), a father looking into his sons eyes (Fig. 11), and a mother confronting a statue of the Virgin (Fig. 15, panel 3). When exploring the complex web of formal and conceptual connections among these three illuminations, a parallel history of the culture and society of the Gothic starts to come to light. It is a history that does not spring primary from texts but from vision and its objects. By following the direction of the anamorphic gaze, we may begin to comprehend the subtle mechanisms through which the phenomenal, the psychological, and the social conate when the subject enters a eld of vision permeated by alterity. The Mystic Mirror: Reection and Embodiment
She lived at Seville. When I met her she was in her nineties and only ate the scraps left by people at their doors. Although she was so old and ate so little, I was almost ashamed to look at her face when I sat with her, it was so rosy and soft . . . She was indeed a mercy to the world . . . One day I built a hut for her of palm branches in which to

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perform her devotions . . . I have seen various miracles (karamat) performed by her.12

The ostensible strangeness of a Muslim man being seduced into seeing the divinity in the image of a woman might be expelled by exploring the popular religiosity of Islamic Spain on the eve of the Christian conquest. In his al-Durrat al-fakhirah (The Precious Pearl), the Andalusian Su Ibn Arabi delineates, through a series of biographical sketches, a landscape of inuence, spanning from his native Murcia, on the Christian frontier, to Damascus, where he died in 1240. Among the persons who helped him along his path towards divine illumination, Ibn Arabi singles out numerous women whose spiritual prowess and devotion to God elevated them to a status of sainthood among the common folk. Estranged both from religious and political authorities, these womensuch as the one named Nunah Fatimah referred to in the passage quoted aboveled their existence among the poor and the lower classes, oering counsel by channeling divine wisdom. Nunah Fatimah belonged to a community of living saints who made God visible to a Muslim population accustomed to Gods imageless presence. By holding diverse occupations such as teachers, sellers of pottery, traders of henna, farmers, and beggars, they created multiple sites of belief within the social fabric. Their veneration was inspired by their benecial actions, in the form of miraculous healing, and from their words, which owed into the ears of the population in poetic recitations where music and dance carried messages of hope and spiritual bonding.13

12 R. W. J. Austin, trans., Sus of Andalusia. The Ruh al-quds and al-Durrat alfakhirah of Ibn Arabi (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), pp. 1436. 13 Ibn Arabis autobiographical narrative opens a window onto a world that was soon to undergo a dramatic change and, in the process, become a transformative inuence in Mediterranean Christian culture. The rapid expansion of the Christian kingdoms towards the south in the rst decades of the thirteenth century provoked the agglutination of most of those communities under a new political order. In 1243, three years after Ibn Arabi died in Damascus, his native Murcia fell into the hands of Alfonso, while the latter was still a prince. Soon afterwards, in 1248, the Christian expansion reached its zenith as Alfonso entered Seville at the side of his victorious father, Fernando III. While Muslim religious and political leaders ed to North Africa and to neighboring Granada, most members of the working classes remained in their land. Christian rulers, interested in keeping themto sustain the economy of those regionsissued laws to protect them and allow them religious freedom. See R. Valencia, La emigracin sevillana hacia el Magreb alrededor de

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Inspired by the popular sensibility of his native al-Andalus, where, in his formative years, Ibn Arabi saw reections of God and his miraculous powers in women such as Nunah Fatimah, he went on to state in his Fusus al-Hikam (The Bezels of Wisdom),
Contemplation of the Reality without formal support is not possible, since God, in His Essence, is far beyond all need of the Cosmos. Since, therefore, some form of support is necessary, the best and most perfect kind is the contemplation of God in women.14

Faithful to this conviction, he created a mystical system containing a principle of universal love centered on a female gure called Nizam (Harmony). Both a real maiden whom Ibn Arabi met in Mecca and a theophanic entity that unies his mystical system, he often refers to Nizam as the Virgin most Pure and the sublime, essential and sacrosanct Wisdom.15 Nizams transformation from human to theophanywhich recalls, incidentally, the process that Beatrice undergoes in Dantes Commedia helps us to understand the uid dynamics of divine embodiment that occurs in the Cantigas. In fact, the collection stems from Alfonsos eort to incessantly record testimonies to the real presence of Mary in the midst of the community and her active participation in human aairs. In cantiga 342, one of the numerous stories devoted to acheiropoieta (images not made by human hands), the poet spells out a pantheistic vision of divine emanation in the material world in terms not unlike those expressed by Ibn Arabi in the passage quoted above,
Rightfully can God reveal the likeness of Himself or of His Mother in His creations, for He formed them.

1248, in Actas del II Coloquio Hispano-Marroqu de Ciencias Histricas Historia, Ciencia y Sociedad Granada, 610 Noviembre de 1989 (Madrid: M.A.E. Agencia Espaola de Cooperacin Internacional, Instituto de Cooperacin con el Mundo rabe, 1992), pp. 32327; and R. I. Burns, Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia: Societies in Symbiosis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 14 R. W. J. Austin, trans., Ibn al-'Arabi. The Bezels of Wisdom (London: SPCK, 1980), p. 275. 15 The fundamental work on Ibn Arabis mystical theology is Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone. Creative Imagination in the Susm of Ibn Arabi (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1969); see also Claude Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1993); William C. Chittick, Imaginary Worlds: Ibn al-Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany, NY.: SUNY Press, 1994); and Stephen Hirtenstein, The Unlimited Mercier (Oxford: Anqa Publishing, 1999).

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For creating things in the form they have today or in many other forms, God made not, nor makes any eort, gives not any thought to shaping them, for He has great power to begin them as well as to nish them. Therefore, if He causes images to appear on stones, no one should be amazed at this, not likewise in plants, for He causes them to grow and gives them many colors to appear beautiful to us.16

The discovery of the multiple forms in which the Virgin materializes in the world is the central theme of many miracles and is at the core of the aforementioned cantiga 205 (Fig. 3), where the body of a Muslim woman is made, in a sense, into the material support through which Mary becomes visible. At this moment, let us reenter the private space of the Moor gazing at the icon of the Virgin in cantiga 46 in order to pursue the question of divine embodiment from a theological perspective. When looking at the icon, the Moor saw two gures who were fully accepted within the broad parameters of the Muslim faith and, more specically, at the level of popular religion in thirteenth-century al-Andalus. Marys central place in Islam is established in suras 3 and 19 of the Qur"an, especially in verse 3:41 where the angel of the Annunciation says to Mary: Oh Mary, truly God has chosen you and puried you and chosen you over the women of mankind.17 The theological signicance allotted to Mary in Islam was well known by Christians, as is attested in cantiga 329, which relates a miracle that the poet claims to have heard from the Moors themselves,
A large army of Moors invaded all the land around there [Tudia, southern Spain] and did much damage. With all they had stolen, they made a camp there around the church, and from their possessions

16 This cantiga 342 also stresses the relationship between the internalization of Marian imagery and the subsequent recognition of her presence in the world of nature through resemblance. This connection is made explicit by Alfonso in another cantiga that also retells a story of acheiropoieta (cantiga 29): We should always keep in our minds, exhorts the refrain, the features of the Virgin for the hard stones received their impressions. Here Alfonso advocates the interiorization of the gure of Mary, by keeping her likeness always present in ones mind, as if the human body was the material support for an acheiropoieton. 17 A. J. Arberry, trans., The Koran Interpreted (New York: Touchstone, 1996), suras 3:3040, 19:1535, 21:8595, 66:10; see OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, p. 87; Nilo Geagea, Mary of the Koran. The Meeting Point between Christianity and Islam (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984); Jane Dammen McAulie, Chosen of All Women: Mary and Fatima in Qur"anic Exegesis, Islamochristiana 7 (1981); and Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. Maryam.

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they took gold and silver coins which they placed on the altar in honor of the Holy Virgin from whom God was born. For, according to what Muhammad gave them written in the Qur"an, the Moors rmly believed, there is no doubt of it, that She became with child by the Holy spirit without suering any violence or harm to Her body, and thus conceived as a virgin. After She became pregnant, She then bore a male child and afterward remained a virgin. Furthermore, She was granted such a privilege that God made Her more honored and powerful than all the angels there are in Heaven. And so, although the Moors do not respect our faith, they hold that all this about the Holy Virgin is absolutely true. Therefore, the Moors went to pray in Her church, and each one placed some of what he had on the altar.

Although this miracle was not illustrated, we nd a visual counterpart for its theological digression in the set of illuminations for another cantiga that elaborates a similar theme. We observe a sultan marking with his nger the sura of the Qur"an dedicated to Mary, as well as a group of Moors oering gifts to an image of the Virgin inside a church (Fig. 5, panels 3 and 6).18 Besides the gure of Maryam, the Moor saw in the icon a representation of her Son, Isa ( Jesus), who is not only one of the most important prophets in the Qur"an19 but one that held a special place in Andalusian Susm. Among Ibn Arabis Su masters, there was, in fact, a widespread Christic devotion. Ibn Arabi himself claims to have been inspired to take the path of illumination in the presence of Jesus. He confesses in his Futuhat, He [ Jesus] was my rst teacher, the master through whom I returned to God . . . He prayed for me that I should persist in religion in this low world and in the other, and he called me his beloved. He ordered me to practice renunciation and self-denial.20
18 Cantiga 165 is illustrated in two sets of miniatures displayed on facing pages (fols. 221v and 222r of MS. T.I.1). The protagonist of the story is Baybars Bundukdari who in 1260 seized power in Egypt by assassinating the former ruler, Kutuz alMuzaar. The poem relates how Baybars, during the siege of Tortosa on the Syrian coast, was informed by his troops that the Virgin was actively protecting the city by sending heavenly soldiers to oppose him. When Baybars realized that there was a sura in the Qur"an conrming the virginity of Mary, he decided to end the campaign and oer donations to the local church. See OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, pp. 967. 19 See Neal Robinson, Christ in Islam and Christianity (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991); and Tarif Khalidi, ed. and trans., The Muslim Jesus. Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 20 Quoted by Addas, The Quest for the Red Sulphur, p. 39; also see pp. 3373, for an overview of the Christic character of several sects in Andalusian Susm.

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The two separate phenomena I have described so farthe popular belief in holy men and women, healing agents of God, and the theological tradition of devotion to Mary and Jesusintersect in the image of the icon and create the background that facilitates its acceptance within the parameters of Muslim popular religiosity. In this respect, the process of associative signication revolving around the icon of the Virgin that takes place cantiga 46 reveals much about the phenomenological and pragmatic dimensions of Alfonsos policy of approximation towards the Muslim community. Mary and her miracle-working images expand their signicance beyond the limits of Christian doctrine and occupy a devotional space centered on a feminine idea of divine presence. In so doing, they are able to penetrate religious barriers and converge with Muslim modes of popular piety. Many stories in the Cantigas refer to the miraculous power of Marian images in shrines of recent foundation within the newly conquered territories, opening the possibility that the collection as a whole might have been intended to promote a new geography of divine agency aimed at replacing other sites of belief within the social fabric, such as the network of miracle-working holy men and women which is documented in Ibn Arabis narrative. Indeed, with the advance of the Reconquest, likenesses of Virgin and Child multiplied in sacred spaces formerly devoid of images. In cantiga 292, Alfonso recounts how his father carried a statue of the Virgin with him during battle and how, whenever he conquered any city from the Moors, he placed her image on the main gate of the mosque. Some of those sacred images became centers of theatrical displays such as the lavish funerary monument of Fernando III, built by Alfonso in the main nave of the former Sevillian mosque.21 Cantiga 292 refers to a miracle involving this mausoleum, which was dismantled in the early modern era during the construction of the new
21 For the mausoleum, see OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, pp. 5055; and J. Martnez de Aguirre Aldaz, La primera escultura gtica en Sevilla: La capilla real y el sepulcro de Guzmn el Bueno (12481320), Archivo espaol de arte 68 (1995): 11129. For the interior arrangement of the cathedral-mosque of Seville in the thirteenth century and the original placement of the mausoleum, see T. Laguna Paul, La capilla de los Reyes de la primitiva Catedral de Santa Mara de Sevilla y las relaciones de la corona castellana con el cabildo hispalense en su etapa fundacional (12481285), in Maravillas de la Espaa medieval: Tesoro sagrado y monarqua, ed. I. G. Bango Torviso, vol. 1 (Len: Junta de Castilla y Len, 2001), pp. 23551.

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cathedral, and contains a brief description of it.22 It featured an inscription in Latin, Castilian, Arabic, and Hebrew, praising the one who conquered the city of Seville, the head of all Spain.23 Above the tomb there was a tabernacle set with jewels where an image of the Virgin and Child, covered with silver and dressed in red mantles, pelisses and gowns, was displayed. Below the tabernacle were the mobile statues of Fernando III and Queen Beatriz, lavishly dressed and seated on silver thrones. On the anniversary of Fernandos death, the mausoleum was the meeting point of the celebrations. Inside the church, ensembles of Christian and Moorish musicians played while the elegies composed by members of his troubadourial court were recited to a multi-ethnic audience, among them the Muslim vassals of Castile and foreign ambassadors. On one occasion, the ruler of Granada, Ibn al-Ahmar, sent a large delegation of notables bearing large white candles to place around Fernandos tomb.24 This awesome settinga former mosque transformed into a cathedral dedicated to Holy Mary and populated with Christian images and automatawas probably the intended primary stage for the Cantigas. Alfonso stated in his testament that the Cantigas be sung on the feasts of the Virgin in the church where he was to be buriedthat church was to be the former great mosque of Seville, where, in fact, the Cantigas manuscripts were kept until the sixteenth century. In this hybrid space, and in front of a multi-ethnic audience, the spectacle of the Cantigas would have exerted its power. Persons such as the King of Granada, his subjects, and the large Muslim population living in the former capital of Islamic Spain would have listened to stories that could provide multiple elements of identication. In that ritual space of collective celebration, the Cantigas would have performed a transformative function in the audience by inducing the
22 It relates how Fernando III appeared in a dream to the treasurer of the cathedral of Seville as well as to the goldsmith who manufactured a ring for his enthroned statue and ordered them to remove the ring and place it on the image of the Virgin. Unfortunately the illustrations for this cantiga on fol. 12r of MS. B.R. 20 were left unnished and only completed tentatively with coarse outlines at a later date. For the completion of these miniatures in the mid-fourteenth century and its relation to a campaign to canonize Fernando III, see Roco Snchez Ameijeiras, La fortuna sevillana del Cdice Florentino de las Cantigas: Tumbas, textos e imagnes, Quintana 1 (2002): 25773. 23 See OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, p. 55. 24 Ibid., p. 95.

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redenition of identities or social roles. Many of those individuals could have listened to stories of people like themselves whose anxieties, fears, and aws were mitigated by the compassion of the Virgin, here presented as head and protector of an inclusive national identity. The beautiful miniatures illustrating cantiga 181whose refrain contains the message that reverberates throughout the collection: The Virgin will aid those who most love Her, although they may be of another faith and disbelieverseem to evoke the ensemble of fashions, insignia, and languages that gathered in the cathedral of Seville during the celebrations of Fernando IIIs anniversary. Panel 4 shows the triumphal gathering of Muslim and Christian soldiers marching together under the banner of the Virgin (Fig. 6).25 This image recalls the intended eects brought about by the performance surrounding the Cantigas. The active role of the audience in the ritualstheir collective movementcontributed to the creation of a heightened sense of community. If a possible environment for the Cantigas was within the enclosure of the mosque-church of Seville, it was ultimately through performance on the public stage that the collection was intended to exert its full propagandistic and proselytizing function. The boldness of the project, giving music such a preeminent role in the kings pious artistic undertaking, reects a culture in which instrumental music and poetry were much more than entertainment, and where entertainment itself was considered a fundamental and benecial part of life. While this sensibility accords with Alfonsos participation and support of the culture of the Galician-Portuguese troubadours, in its religious dimension, however, it cannot be separated from the hybrid character of the society where it ourished. In the thirteenth-century, Muslim mystics and preachers started using popular poetic and musical forms such as the muwashshaha and the zajal as vehicles for the expression of mystical thoughts. In their proselytizing eorts, they organized gatherings where those compositions were performed with musical accompaniment. Such was the case of a contemporary of
25 Fol. 240r of MS. T.I.1. This cantiga is set during the siege of Marrakesh, last stronghold of the Almohad caliph al-Murtada (d. 1268), by the emir of the Marinids, Abu Yusuf (12581286). According to the story, the caliph received the recommendation to bring into battle a banner of the Virgin that was housed in the local church. With the aid of the Virgin and the Christian community, he defeated the aggressor, see OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, pp. 13537.

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Alfonso, the Su al-Shushtari, who developed an important poetic oeuvre in the neighboring kingdom of Granada, where he had emigrated after the Christian conquest of Seville.26 It seems more than probable that Alfonso realized the persuasive power of music to bridge the distance between the cultures of his kingdom and eectively bring people into his vision of a utopian nation under the protection of the Virgin. In fact, the songs were intended to be disseminated through public performances, as is explicitly stated in the concluding verses of cantiga 172 from this story we composed a song for the minstrels to sing. Performance by minstrels becomes, in fact, the celebrated theme in the illuminations of one the most important editions of the Cantigas, contained in the so-called codex princeps (Escorial, MS. b.I.2). Cantiga 120a song in which the king summons all who believe him to praise the Virgin, because they will be so well rewarded that they will never desire moreis ttingly illustrated in this manuscript with a scene showing a Christian musician playing alongside a Moor (Fig. 7).27
26 For an edition and Spanish translation of al-Shushtaris poems, see F. Corriente, Poesa estrca (cejeles y/o muwassahat) atribuda al mstico granadino as-Sustari (siglo XIII d. C.) (Madrid: CSIC, Instituto de Filologa, Departamento de Estudios rabes, 1988); also see, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. Sushtari. 27 Fol. 125v of MS. b.I.2. (Escorial, Biblioteca del Real Monasterio). The illuminations of this codex are devoted exclusively to musical performance. Every tenth cantiga is prefaced by a square miniature of the length of a text column featuring one or two musicians as they interact with their instruments and with one another. The forty miniatures of the codex reproduce in detail a great variety of instrumentsddles, zithers, shawms, bagpipes, etc.which are being handled by minstrels that are depicted with a high degree of individuality; see R. lvarez, Los instrumentos musicales en los cdices alfonsinos: su tipologa, su uso y su origen. Algunos problemas iconogrcos, in Alfonso X el Sabio y la msica (Madrid: Sociedad espaola de musicologa, 1987), pp. 6795. Nine years after Alfonsos death, the multicultural character of the Castilian musical court appears documented in the nancial records of his son, Sancho IV, which list 13 Christian musicians, 13 Moors (among them two women), and one Jew; see, J. Ribera, Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain: Being La msica de las Cantigas, trans. E. Hague and M. Lengwell (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1929), pp. 14259. The Arabic inuence in the music of the Cantigas has been a controversial issue since the groundbreaking study of the Islamicist Julin Ribera, who argued for an extensive presence of Arabic melodic and poetic forms (e.g. zajal ) in the Alfonsine works. Heated debates in favor and against that inuence have recently developed into more balanced assessments of the inescapable imbrications of each cultural tradition with the other; see H. H. Touma, Indications of the Arabian Musical Inuence on the Iberian Peninsula from the 8th to the 13th Century, in Alfonso X el Sabio y la msica, pp. 13750, and J. T. Monroe and B. M. Liu, Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition: Music and Texts (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 134.

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The diverse social, ethnic, and religious groups that made up the Cantigas performers and audience were compelled literally and guratively to look and listen to each other. As Lawrence Kramer writes,
Deeds of music seek receptive listeners. As part of its illocutionary force, the music addresses a determinate type of subject and in so doing beckons that subject, summons it up to listen . . . Listeners agree to personify a musical subject by responding empathetically to the musics summons. Their pleasure in listening thereby becomes a vehicle of acculturation: musical pleasure, like all pleasure, invites legitimization both of its source and of the subject position its sources address.28

The miniature that illustrates the same cantiga 120 in MS. T.I.1 could not reect more clearly the dynamics of authority and legitimization through entertainment and pleasure that Kramer describes (Fig. 8).29 Alfonso kneels before Mary and directs a group of musicians and dancers, by pointing to himself (those who believe me) and to Mary, to join him and perform in Her honor. Through music and dance, the Cantigas evokes an image of Paradise on earth within the coordinates of Castilian contemporary life. Paradisea place where God is always joyful and smilingis represented as a land of palm trees where music is being played in honor of Godan indirect allusion to Andalusia, and specically to Seville, which, as I have pointed out, was the natural environment for the production, performance, and reception of the Cantigas (Fig. 9).30 Honoring the diverse audience that the collection attempts to reach, the Virgin oers entrance into a Paradise that is imagined by combining dierent pictorial traditions. In fact, the compositional template structuring that Gothic vision may have originated in Islamic manuscript illuminations in particular in manuscripts of alHariris Maqamat (Fig. 10).31 Paradise in the Cantigas is, visually and conceptually, a place of convergence.

L. Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 2122. 29 Fol. 170v of MS. T.I.1. 30 Fol. 145r of MS. T.I.1. 31 London, British Library, MS. 1200, fol. 68r. For a description of this manuscript, dated 1256, see O. Grabar, The Illustrations of the Maqamat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 1213. The compositional similarities between several scenes of the Cantigas and miniatures of the Maqamat are explored in detail in my forthcoming book In the Shadow of the Gothic Idol.

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francisco prado-vilar The Space Between: Still Love and the Poiesis of the Community
What are days for? . . . We used to know the answer to that. Days were for living, for working, for the rituals of normalcy that make up the way of life we have come to know as American. These days had their ups and downs; they had their surprises and shocks. But they had as well a sense of reliability or modest predictability. We barely noticed these small moments of routine that, strung together, formed the ballast of a culture: the commutes to work, the family outings . . . and household chores. They acquired a rhythm that, although we easily forgot, took a revolution to begin, a civil war to resolve and dark and bloody wars to defend. And so this security built slowly upon itself, broadening and deepening until we took it for granted, the threats to it always remote and, though involving us, not about us.32

In an unfurnished room, a man welcomes the return of his family with extended arms (Fig. 11). His eyes, anxiously seeking those of his son, signal a moment of abandonment in which the characters cease to inhabit their physical environment as they plunge into one anothers consciousness. Every element in the visual eld has been reduced to its essentials, as if to direct the viewers attention away from pictorial signs and onto the invisible semantic kernel of representation: the empty patch of vellum that mediates between father and son. Left unpainted, the surface of the parchment has been freed from symbolic and decorative concerns, becoming a transitive space, a nexus that allows for the generation of emotional density as a purely relational aair. By submitting pictorial language to silence a silence that foregrounds a resistance to discursivity and to textual imposition on the visualthe artists have discovered what lies beneath the vellum as a page and reinvent it as a stage. In eect, they regarded the narratives they were commissioned to illustrate as scripts which elicited a mise-en-scne along the lines of theatrical mimesis, rather than texts that demanded to be translated into images which function as a parallel visual gloss. Like performance, these images emanate from the creative imitation of the emotional and physical responses operating in phenomenal reality. In the Cantigas, visual meaning emerges from the interaction of characters that are fully aware of the reality of other selves, not in symbolic or allegorical

32 Andrew Sullivan, This Is What A Day Means, The New York Times (September 23, 2001).

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terms, but rather in psychological and emotional ones. The emptiness of the parchmentits nature as a milieumakes possible the visualization of introspection and interior depth, that is, of sentience as a denition of being.33 The formal and conceptual importance of this miniature cannot be overestimated. It is painting outside of the grammar and syntax that characterizes most of the art of its time, from the images accompanying the Roman de la Rose and the miracles of Gautier de Coincy to the Bible moralise. Instead of enforcing a symbolic reading in terms of a complex language of substitutions, this scene lends itself to immediate consumption, pushing without resistance its emotional weight into the viewers mind to the point, as we will see, of rendering irrelevant the religious message supported by the text that it intends to illustrate. Cantiga 139, to which this miniature belongs, tells an edifying story of mortality overcome and the attainment of mystical union and eternal bliss. Yet, in approaching the images that illustrate it, we confront a tragic tale of life lost, love interrupted, and inconsolable grief (Fig. 12).34 In the visual representation of the text, the artists manipulated the spirit of the letter to the point of its negation, transforming a parable of Christian deliverance from the toils of earthly life into a unsettling vision of the marginality of human happiness in the face of Gods providential will. The rupture undertaken in the visual discourse reveals a profound shift of attentionattention that now concentrates on the dramatization of the conditions of a sentient humanity over the presentation of a Christian narrative of salvation. In this cantiga, Alfonso elaborates poetically the popular tale of a little boy who was granted Paradise for his devotion to Jesus:
Concerning this, I wish to relate to you a marvelous and mighty miracle which this Virgin, Mother of God, performed for a lady who went to the church of Her who, we hope and pray, may be on our side and let us see Her face in Paradise where God grants bliss and joy to those who please Him.

33 For a study of the etymological, philosophical, and literary aspects of the term milieu, see Leo Spitzer, Milieu and Ambiance, in Essays in Historical Semantics (New York: Russell and Russell, 1948; rprt. 1968), pp. 179316. 34 Fol. 195r of MS. T.I.1.

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This lady took with her a little boy, her son, who was very young, and gave him in oering to the Virgin so that She might keep him from harm and misfortune and cause him to say and know good things. The child, as I learned, was eating his bread. He ran up to the gure of the Holy Child on the statue and said: Do you want a bite? The gure of the Virgin discreetly said to Her son: Tell him without hesitation not to be afraid, but ask him to dine with you where there is always singing and pleasure and be rid of the cursed devil condemned for his wickedness. When She said this, the statue of Christ replied to the little boy: You will eat with me tomorrow in Heaven, and after you have seen me, you will dwell with me forevermore where you will hear the saints sing, which drives away care and woe. And so it was accomplished, and the little boy died and went straight to God.

The lyrics shun the implicit cruelty of the miracle by glossing over the anguish of the boys untimely death and shifting the focus forward to a description of the joys of Paradise. The child, the text implies, was rewarded by being spared the contingencies of human life, where the cursed devil jeopardizes happiness, and by introducing him without delay to the eternal delights of Heaven. Conversely, of the six scenes chosen by the artists to illustrate this miracle, ve focus on the aspect that the text so consciously evades: the loving bond between parents and child and the grief brought about by its rupture. Furthermore, and also contrary to the lyrics, Paradise itself never enters the visual eld and, instead, we are left with a snapshot of the uncontrollable despair of a broken family. The two lower panels epitomize the radical reversal undertaken in the design of the visual program. If they had faithfully attempted to give visual expression to the lyrics, the artists might have chosen a pair of scenes similar to the one that concludes cantiga 41 (Fig. 13).35 One panel features death as a momentary state of mourning, immediately superseded by the following scene where the blessed soul enters Heaven, an image that ts closely the verbal description of Paradise in cantiga 139. However, instead of this predictable solution, the artists decided to explore the emotional rather than the spiritual consequences of the plot by exercising a backward and intimate look at the environment struck by tragedy and by keeping, simultaneously, its theological justication out of the visual discourse. Instead of a proleptic view of Paradise, we witness the charming, but apparently inconsequential, domestic scene with which I began
35

Fol. 59v of MS. T.I.1.

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this section: the moment in which the father greets the return of his family from church by enthusiastically extending his arms to embrace his son. Parental love is framed here to heighten the dramatic eect of the nal scene, where we witness no eternal happiness but, rather, the tragic collapse of quotidian bliss. Visually, intimacy takes precedence over transcendence, loss over gain, past happiness over future beatitude. A comparison between the image that was edited outParadise and the one that was inserted insteadhomehelps us to understand some of the implications of the substitution. Both are transitive moments in which the child moves toward a source of nurturing love. One scene features his reception into his fathers arms, the other his passage into the Fathers bosom. The latter is supported by a textual tradition, as it appears reected in the lyrics, which, in turn, is given visual expression according to a pre-established set of iconographic conventionsit is symbolic, proleptic, dogmatic, and transcendental. The former originates in the interstices of the text. It springs from the artists comprehension of the emotional consequences of the plot on the stage of experiential realityit is descriptive, immediate, factual, and intimate. Two main questions emerge from this discussion. Why should intimacy and the quotidian be more important than transcendence and the eternal in the overall artistic scheme of the Cantigas? And how does the central visibility given to the sphere of everyday life in the Cantigas diverge from current notions about Gothic art, in particular, those which tend to explain this type of imagery through discourses of marginality?36 The Cantigas, like most of the art of its time, proposes a model to achieve existential completion in the search for spiritual fulllment and happiness. However, while in works such as the Bible moralise, such fulllment is permanently deferred, through typology, to a transcendent beyond,37 or in others such as the Roman de la Rose circulates elliptically in the sphere of allegory,38 happiness in the Cantigas
See M. Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1992); and idem, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 37 See M. Camille, The Book of Signs: Writing and Visual Dierence in Gothic Manuscript Illumination, Word & Image 1.2 (1985): 13348; and idem, Visual Signs and the Sacred Page: Books in the Bible moralise, Word & Image 5.1 (1981): 11130. 38 For an introduction to the Roman de la Rose, see J. V. Fleming, The Roman de la Rose: A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press,
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is made and unmade within the sphere of the quotidian and in the midst of the community. The Cantigas attempts to display a coherent view of mans place in Creation and his path to salvation, but rather than expressing it under the grid of allegory, it does so through the conguration of a harmonious texture of reality. In eect, the Cantigas presents the viewer with levels of reality and emotional textures that hardly nd a place in medieval art. There is a certain similarity of eect between the new framing reected in the art of the Cantigas and the rhetoric of still life painting. In his meditations on still life, Norman Bryson observes,
From one point of view, the worldly scale of importance is deliberately assaulted by plunging attention downwards, forcing the eye to discover in the trivial base of life intensities and subtleties which are normally ascribed to things of great worth . . . From another point of view, the result is that what is valueless becomes priceless . . . attention itself gains the power to transgure the commonplace, and it is rewarded by being given objects in which it may nd a fascination commensurate with its own discovered strength.39

Let us consider an instance in the Cantigas of what I shall call still love. Cantiga 178 revolves around the feelings of a child facing the death of his beloved pet (Fig. 14).40 The prevention of the childs grief becomes the central concern of all the characters involved in the story, from his parents futile attempts to conceal the pets sudden death, to the nal intervention of the Virgin bringing it back to life. In a series of subtly staged scenes, the illuminators engage us in an emotional journey through the childs eyes. In the rst panel, the little boy receives a gift from his fathera mule that has just been born in the farm. As the father introduces his son to his new pet, the boy, exhibiting both curiosity and shyness, partially hides behind him. Panel 2 features the moment when the father discovers the mules corpse in the stable, while outside his wife tries to prevent her son from witnessing the event. To this end, the father
1969). For an insightful study of ekphrasis, vision and self-reexivity in the Rose, see S.G. Nichols, Ekphrasis, Iconoclasm, and Desire, in Rethinking the Romance of the Rose, ed. K. Brownlee and S. Huot (Philadelphia, PA.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), pp. 13366. For a psychoanalytic examination of the structure of courtly love, see S. Zizek Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing, in The Metastases of Enjoyment (New York: Verso, 1994), pp. 89112. 39 N. Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked. Four Essays on Still Life Painting (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 64. 40 Fol. 237r of MS. T.I.1.

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takes the boy with him to the elds (panel 3) but he inevitably nds out. Despite the fact that the mule had been partially skinned when the boy discovers what has happened, resolution triumphs over despair, and he tells his mother he wants to oer his pet to the Virgin. Disregarding his mothers warning that he should not present the Virgin with a dead animal, the boy takes o his belt, measures the mules corpse and makes a candle of the same length for the shrine of the Virgin of Salas (panel 4). Finally, when the father reaches the shrine and lights the candle on the altar (panel 6), back on the farm (panel 5), the mule resucitates and receives food from its owners hand. By giving visibility to the minute details that determine individual happiness, the miniatures oer a model in which human emotions are valued. Animals themselves become the protagonists of several cantigastheir pain, tribulations and happiness are rendered in anthropomorphic terms and shared with their owners and other members of the community.41 To a great extent, the Cantigas opposes the visual economy of medieval art and turns its lens onto the overlooked interstices of human emotion. When moments such as the ones I have discussedonly a fraction of the hundreds to be found in the Cantigas enter the eld of vision, they bring with them a frame for reecting upon a category of emotions that generally nds no reason for existence in medieval art, other than lurking in the margins of sacred discourse. These scenes cannot be discounted as products of a marginal interest for the ordinary or an intrusion of vernacular imagery at the outskirts of the ecclesiastical master narrative but, on the contrary, play a key role in the expression of a specic conception of human existence, one that fosters a reconguration of narrative syntax and

41 The pantheistic compassion that emerges from miracles involving animals seems to reect a Franciscan pietya piety that can be felt as a diuse, although not determinant, source of inspiration throughout the Cantigas. There was, in fact, a substantial Franciscan presence in Alfonso Xs court, led by his secretary and close advisor, Gil de Zamora (Iohannes Aegidius Zamorensis)a Franciscan friar who studied in Paris, perhaps with Bonaventure. To Alfonso he dedicated the Liber Mariae, which contains 78 Marian miracles. He also wrote treatises on music, history, theology, and rhetoric. For a biography of Gil de Zamora, see Manuel de Castro y Castro, ed., Fray Juan Gil de Zamora, O.F.M., De preconiis hispaniae (Madrid: Universidad de Madrid, 1955); for the Liber Mariae and its connections to some miracles in the Cantigas, see F. Fita, Poesas inditas de Gil de Zamora, Boletn de la Real Academia de Historia 6 (1885): 379409.

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representational means and one which has strong political and social implications. Unlike other contexts in which we can nd snippets of the quotidian in medieval art, such as saints lives, prayer books, calendars or other collections of Marian miracles, the representation of aspects of daily life in the Cantigas is not ancillary and fragmentary but a central constituent in the expression of a comprehensive vision of human life, of the relational character of social identity, and its religious dimensions. The cultural and political function of the Cantigas is inseparable from its aesthetic dimension. Alfonsos determination to promote a poiesis of the community fostered the development of a pictorial language that emphasizes the transitive elements of visual signication as a way to esh out in images the elusive and overlooked threads which generate the matrix of daily life. It thematizes states of union and integration ranging from purely physical elements such as sex, to the constitution of the family, the creation of friendships, reconciliation, social bonding and, ultimately, as we will see in the next section, conversion. The relation between daily routines, communal life, and national identity is easily overlooked.42 Only by experiencing the confusion that ensues from their collapse, does their grounding importance become evident. Never has this been more clearly documented in recent history than in the shock that overcame Americans in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The following days witnessed the struggle of journalists and commentators trying to gauge the extent and nature of what was lost. It is in this context that Andrew Sullivan reected on these issues in the New York Times article partially quoted at the beginning of this section, which continues in the following excerpt,
To arrive from elsewhere onto American soil was always and everywhere a relief. It presaged the joy of security again, of family and friends and faith and work. We knew what days were for; and knew also that even when disaster struck or news shocked, the days them-

42 These issues have been discussed in relation to questions of political power, commerce, and practice by Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S.F. Rendall (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1984). Since its inception in the mid-1970, Alltagsgeschichte (history of everyday life) has become an important area of historical inquiry, shedding light on the multiple human agents involved in the fabric of history. For an introduction, see Alf Ldtke, ed., The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, trans. W. Templer (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1995).

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selves would encompass what we had to deal with. They would bracket us, shield us, support us. As any immigrant knows, this was the thrill of this country, its irresistible pull, its deepest promise. It was a symbol that the world need not always be the impenetrably dark place it has often been. It was a sign that someplace, somewhere, was always secureas powerful an icon to those outside this continent as those within it.43

In the Cantigas, Alfonso shows his subjects what days are for. Days are for praying, for celebrating, for loving, for building, and shows them also that all these small moments which form the ballast of society will be forever preserved from the agents that threaten to destroy them by the active presence of the Virgin in the midst of the community. That unbreakable bond between the Virgin and the kingdom, which the Cantigas incessantly records, was Alfonsos deepest promise to his subjects. It was a symbol that the world need not always be the impenetrably dark place it had often been, and a sign that someplace, somewhere, was always secureas powerful an icon to those outside as to those within it. Alfonsos extension of that promise to those outside is the subject of the following section.

The Politics of Compassion: Expanding the Iberian Dream


Try to imagine, yourself, how I could have kept Tears of my own from falling for the sake Of our human image so grotesquely reshaped, Contorted so the eyes tears fell to wet The buttocks at the cleft. Truly, I wept, Leaning on an outcrop of that rocky site, And my master spoke to me: Do you suppose You are above with the other fools even yet? Here, pity lives when it is dead to these. Who could be more impious than one whod dare To sorrow at the judgment God decrees? Inferno XX, 203044

Sullivan, This Is What A Day Means. Robert Pinsky, trans., The Inferno of Dante (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994).
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Dantes tears at the sight of the distorted bodies of the diviners in Inferno XX contain the kernel that might ultimately lead to a radical questioning of faith. They express a compassion for Gods victims whose danger Virgil immediately detects, compelling him to reprimand Dante with unprecedented harshness: Who could be more impious than one whod dare to sorrow at the judgment God decrees? Being the part of the Commedia where humanitys emotions, weaknesses and struggles are most movingly portrayed, Inferno also provides the path along which the pilgrim, and the reader, are blustered by intense portraits of pain and must learn to accept without dispute the severity of Gods judgment. Virgil is the gure that keeps Dante from turning compassion into indignation in the face of Gods active iniction of pain. The pilgrim must overcome emotion in the face of suering, leave compassion aside and align his own wrath with that of God, fully accepting a religious order in which punishment and pain constitute the necessary premises upon which Gods omnipotence and righteous judgment are grounded. As a whole, Inferno oers a penetrating portrait of mans struggle to reconcile human suering with divine justice, the reality of pain and the fact that pain ultimately exists because God allows it. The complexities of this struggle are dramatized with both subtlety and boldness throughout the spectrum of similarities and dierences between the lyrics and the illuminations of cantiga 76 (Fig. 15).45 It is the story of a devoted woman whose son was wicked, a bold thief, a gambler, and a brawler (panel 1). During one of his escapades, the son was caught with stolen booty, arrested and condemned by a judge to the gallows (panel 2). Crazed with sorrow upon learning of her sons death, the woman went to a Marian shrine, stood before the altar and angrily said to the statue: You are powerless if you cannot revive my son. When she said this, explains the poet, she became so furious that she went to the statue and seized the Child and wrested it from Her arms screaming: I shall have this one until I see my own come back alive and well with no illness or injury (panel 3). Immediately, the Virgin resurrected the womans son, who appeared in the church and harshly rebuked his mother for having taken Jesus from the Virgin (panel 4). In response, the woman returned the Child to the statue and entered

45

Fol. 113r of MS. T.I.1.

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a religious order to serve the Virgin better. The irreverent facts of the storya woman who rebels against a legal judgment, puts the blame for the death of her delinquent son on the Virgin, and consequently manages to successfully blackmail the Virgin into performing a miracle of resurrectionare mitigated and given moral validation in the refrain, which contains the basic message of the story: Whoever would separate the statue of the Virgin from that of Her Son is foolhardy, without a doubt. The conclusion of the miracle, having the woman enter a convent to serve the Virgin as atonement for her actions, is in accordance with the moralizing teaching of the refrain. It is precisely the conclusionthe element that tames a story of deance through the imposition of Christian punishment and atonementthat was changed in the illuminations. In eect, as the caption of the last panel explains, This is how the son of the good woman entered a monastic order. Not only is the woman spared punishment in the miniatures, but also the captions retell the story so that she is cast in a positive light, using the epithet good when referring to her. There is no mention of the idea expressed in the refrain nor of the sons condemnation of his mother when he came back to life.46 Such a radical reframing of the story responds to the same principles that guided the transformation staged in the illustrations of cantiga 139 (Fig. 12). While the lyrics oer a normative Christian framework for the acceptance of suering, the miniatures bring to the fore the essential paradox that lies at the heart of religion: the dicult reconciliation between the omnipotence of a compassionate God and his recurrent failure to relieve humanity from pain. They

46

The story retold in the captions reads as follows:

Panel 1: How the son of a good woman was a gambler, a thief and a brawler. Panel 2: How they caught the son of the good woman in a theft and they hung him for it. Panel 3: How the mother of the executed man took the Son from the image of Holy Mary so that She would give her son back. Panel 4: How Holy Mary resurrected the son of the good woman and sent him to the church to be with her. [The gesture with which the son addresses his mother in the miniature, which, according to the lyrics, would be one of condemnation and disapproval, becomes here, in light of the caption, just a gesture of greeting and, at most, advice to return Jesus to the Virgin]. Panel 5: How the good woman returned Her son to the image of Holy Mary. Panel 6: How the son of the good woman entered a monastic order.

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place us on a stage similar to Dantes in Inferno XX, although here eliding Virgils role (which is represented in the lyrics by the chastising voice of the resurrected son) and enacting the plot so that a passionate reproach of Gods neglect to avert human suering is not only accepted, but ultimately rewarded. It is, in essence, a retelling of the story from the point of view of sentience rather than from a moral or religious standpoint. The interpretation of pain in the Cantigas uctuates, dialogically and dialectically, between the realm of sentience and the domain of religion. Religious paradigms for the understanding of human suering are rendered contingent in the miracles, when channeled through characters who exhibit an remarkable interior depth and personal agencyone that is directly related to their own experience of pain. Detailed accounts of illnesses in the Cantigas serve to highlight Marys healing power and her compassion for those who suer. Statements presenting the Virgin as the one who wins health for us from God and gives us joy (cantiga 367) are echoed by myriad characters that testify in unison to her miraculous interventions. The scenes of individual healing depicted in the narrative miracles are condensed in beautiful tableaux illustrating verses from the lyrical songs, which underscore Marys compassion. As I have pointed out, her message of mercy reaches the people through Alfonsos voicean aspect that is emphasized visually in multiple miniatures, such as a scene from cantiga 170, where the king unveils before his audience one of those tableaux and tells them that the Virgin should be praised by everyone in the world, for some She saves, others win pardon, and She brings peace to the world (Fig. 16).47 The close relationship between the king and Mary in these miniatures, where one functions as the voice, interlocutor and messenger of the other, permeates throughout the Cantigas in numerous portraits in which Alfonsos enlightened poetic persona replaces clerical authority in the presentation of Christian doctrine: in cantiga 140, for instance, the king himself instructs a host of bishops and ecclesiastics, commanding them to sing the praises of the Virgin (Fig. 17).48 Taking into consideration Alfonsos multiple appearances in his functional duality as divine troubadour and spiritual guide, as well as the ecumenical and didactic religious message articulated
47 48

Fol. 227v of MS. T.I.1. Cfr. Figs. 8 and 9. Fol. 196r of MS. T.I.1.

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through his poetic voice, we might arrive at an understanding of the close relationship between the personal, the religious and the political in the Cantigas. Nowhere is this convergence most clearly felt than in the instrumentalization of compassion as a strategy to promote conversion. Cantiga 167 oers insight into the eects that the dissemination of those miraculous stories of healing surrounding Marian shrines was intended to provoke on the Muslim population (Fig. 18).49 Weakened and desperate after the death of her son, a Muslim woman decides as a last resort to emulate her Christian neighbors by going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin of Salas. Such an undertaking, which even involves making a wax gurine of her diseased son as an oering to the Virgin, appalls the other members of the Muslim community who struggle to convince the woman to change her mind. The grieving mother, however, falls into the net of hope cast by the Christians with their miracle stories. At the end of her successful quest for healing, she converts and adds one more testimony to the strain of voices promoting the cult of the Virgin. The refrain contains the central message of the story proclaiming that The Virgin will aid whoever trusts in Her and prays faithfully to Her, although he be a follower of another law. This multiplying and ever-expanding polyphony of testimonies to the healing power of the Virgin is inscribed in the structure of the Cantigas, where many miracles mirror each other, repeating the same circumstances although with dierent protagonists. The Muslim woman of cantiga 167 was probably responding to miracles such as the one retold in cantiga 171 (Fig. 19).50 It is the story of a woman whose son is resurrected and promises the Virgin of Salas that because I have always received without fail all I ever asked for you, I shall therefore seek to make known this miracle, one of the most marvelous among all your glorious works. It is noteworthy that the culmination of the story is not just the miraculous resurrection but also its dissemination throughout the community. Accordingly, the last panel shows, as the caption indicates, How they made this miracle known to all people and praised much Holy Mary. There, we see a mendicant friar preaching before a gathering of the faithful as he points dramatically to the revived boy and to the statue of the Virgin.
49 50

Fol. 224r of MS. T.I.1. Fol. 228v of MS. T.I.1.

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The miracles oer modes of behavior for people in distress to manage critical situationspathways towards healing which irrevocably lead to Mary. Suce it to cite cantigas 107 and 191 as additional examples of echoing and mirroring, in terms of cause and eect within a conversion strategy. Cantiga 191 tells the story of a woman who was trying to descend from her house, located atop cli, down to a valley in order to get water from a spring (Fig. 20).51 Swept o by a strong wind and falling rapidly (panel 4), she cried out to the Virgin for help and miraculously landed unharmed (panel 5). The poet concludes, explaining that she got up and gave praises to the Blessed Virgin, and this miracle became known throughout all Spain. Accordingly, the set of miniatures culminates with a scene showing, as the caption indicates, How this miracle was preached in all the land and they praised much Holy Mary. Among the people who heard this miracle could have been the Jewish woman we encounter in cantiga 107 (Fig. 21).52 When facing a similar situation, she said Oh, woe is me, how can anyone who falls from here remain alive unless it be Gods will? But you, Queen Mary, in whom Christians believe, if it is true, as I have heard, that you succor the unfortunate women who are commended to you, among all the other guilty women, come to my aid, for I have great need. If I remain alive and well, I will, without fail, become a Christian at once, before another day dawns. The illuminations, like most stories of conversion, conclude with the dramatic staging of baptism. The general purpose of the collection is revealed in the way these cantigas reect instances of behavioral emulation performed by persons when they nd themselves caught up in similar critical situations. By displaying a wide array of personal stories of triumph over adversity with the help of the Virgin, the Cantigas sought to trigger mimetic responses that culminated in integration into the Christian community, here portrayed as a safe haven sheltered from pain. Illness becomes the symbol of the failure of the old faith and health the reward that comes from embracing the new one.

Fol. 251r of MS. T.I.1. Fol. 154r of MS. T.I.1. For this cantiga, see John Esten Keller, Daily Life as Presented in Canticles of Alfonso the Learned, Speculum 33 (1958): 48498; and Albert I. Bagby, The Jew in the Cantigas of Alfonso X, el Sabio, Speculum 46 (1971): 67088.
52

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It is not a coincidence that most miracle stories thematizing conversion are addressed to the female population, and that they generally involve issues regarding procreation and the well being of children. For instance, cantiga 89 tells the story of a Jewish woman who has problems during her pregnancy and cannot give birth (Fig. 22).53 The text emphasizes her suering and helplessness in the situation, she lay there more dead than alive, crying and moaning and considering herself a miserable creature, abandoned in her great pain, in despair of living, for no medicine would help her. In the end, thanks to the Virgin, she was able to give birth and She told how her son was born and all her body was restored to health. The Virgins intervention to solve problems of infertility and bring about the resurrection of children is a recurrent theme in the Cantigas, one that should be understood in the context of Alfonsos repopulating policies. Promoting an expansion of the Christian population, either through procreation or conversion, was fundamental to facilitating the consolidation of the conquered territories. Alfonso issued multiple laws to encourage the settlement of Christian colonists in Andalusia and Murcia, both in the former Muslim cities and in cities of recent foundation.54 Muslim mothers and their children, susceptible canvases onto which to inscribe identity, constituted privileged targets to activate the models of becoming proposed by the narratives. In sum, religious conversion provides entrance into a community which is articulated and promoted primarily as a biopolitical space, that is, as a nation whose constitution promises priority for the protection of the life of its members in their status as biological entities.55 As I have noted, through their more that two thousand miniatures,

Fol. 131r of MS. T.I.1. OCallaghan, The Learned King, pp. 18995. 55 The concept of biopolitics was introduced by Michel Foucault in the last section of the rst volume of the History of Sexuality, see History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1990), pp. 13359; and later elaborated in some of his nal lectures. He denes biopolitics as the endeavor . . . to rationalize the problems presented to governmental practice by the phenomena characteristic of a group of living human beings constituted as a population: health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, race . . . See idem, The Birth of Biopolitics, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. P. Rabinow, trans. R. Hurley et al. (New York: The New Press, 1997), pp. 739, esp. 73. For a discussion of this concept and its analytical value, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1998).
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the Cantigas manuscripts put forth an utopian fantasy where happiness, rather than being postponed as in traditional Christian teleology, substantiates in multiple moments of joy that punctuate human existence. The Virgin assumes the total care of the population and it is the protection that she promises what denes the contours of the communitya nation understood as space of living whose members are joined in their common pursuit of happiness within the parameters of earthly existence. The key political role played by the gure of the Virgin in this project of acculturation through the promise of a better life can be further claried by recalling Slavoj ieks analysis of ideology. In asking what sustains the identity of a given ideological space, he point outs that,
. . . the multitude of oating signiers, of proto-ideological elements, is structured into a unied eld through the intervention of a certain nodal point . . . which quilts them, stops their sliding and xes their meaning. . . . This quilting performs the totalization by means of which . . . [these elements] become parts of the structured network of meaning. . . . What is at stake in the ideological struggle is which of the nodal points . . . will totalize, include in its series of equivalences, these free-oating elements.56

The Virgin in the Cantigas constitutes the quilting point or knot of meaningsthe signier to which things themselves refer to recognize themselves in their unity. Her image holds together the ideological space of the nation that Alfonso endeavors to forge out of a complex and diverse reality. The stories contained in the collection oer a wide array of role models with which the spectator could identify and subsequently nd a way to access the new cultural and religious order proposed by Alfonsoone which addresses, in present time, the daily needs, worries, and hopes of its members. For the multiple interconnections and the dynamic engagement between the world outside and the artistic discourse contained in the codex, the Cantigas constitutes the most complex, sophisticated, and ambitious expression of political praxis aimed at implementing a project of national formation ever articulated in the Middle Ages. On account of its nature as a major royal commission, the scope and ambition of its visual apparatus, and the objectives and claims to

56

Slavoj iek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, pp. 878.

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impose itself on the social fabric by providing an overarching model to regulate life, the Cantigas can only be compared to the Bible moralise in the corpus of Gothic manuscript illumination. Artistically, conceptually, and theologically, the Cantigas is as ambitious as the Bible moralise but, while the Bible moralise was a rather old-fashioned project for its time, the art of the Cantigas encapsulates the very essence of the meaning of modernity in the cultural and artistic panorama of the thirteenth century.57 This modernity lies in a radical transformation of Gothic visual language through the redenition of its central mechanism of visual signication: analogy.58 Unlike the codied typological structure of the Bible moralise, the Cantigas detextualizes the operative principles of analogy and relocates them in the phenomenological domain of vision. In that domain, through the chain of resemblances generated by the anamorphic gaze, we discover aspects of Gothic visual culture that have been largely neglected. In fact, the complex world of the Cantigaswhere the other is a constitutive part of the self, where religious dogma is questioned against considerations of individual happiness, where sacred images uctuate between diverse faiths, where the polarization between high and low is constantly transgressedposes numerous challenges to traditional epistemological paradigms regarding the Gothic. The Cantigas, like Dantes Commedia, stems from a similar cultural contexta Mediterranean world where the clash between East and West was being waged, not through reied theological arguments but in the aesthetic strength of their respective cultural productions. This aesthetic strength resides in the power to move, to draw audiences into a vision of the world made palpable through sentience and experience. The nal scene of this essay brings us to a chamber on fol. 100r of MS. B.R. 20 (Fig. 23). Surrounded by knights of the Order of
57 Here I am using the term modernity as a hybrid between its medieval usagemodernitas designating the present timeand also its later conceptualizations, referring to an art that tries to break new ground and stands at outer limits of the concerns of a specic cultural moment. 58 The classic study on analogy in medieval thought is Robert Javelet, Image et ressemblance au 12 e sicle, de saint Anselme Alain de Lille (Paris: ditions Letouzey et An, 1967); for a study of resemblance as a vehicle for intertextual rewriting, see Paul Vincent Rockwell, Rewriting Resemblance in Medieval French Romance. Ceci nest pas un graal (New York and London: Garland, 1995). For a meditation on the poetics of visual analogy, see Barbara Maria Staord, Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2001).

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the Star, Alfonso looks ecstatically at an invisible presence.59 He raises his hands as if to grasp an elusive patch of vellum framed by fading traces, which were originally intended as outlines for the painting of a statue of the Virgin. Left unnished, this representation becomes an emblem of the Cantigas and a metaphor for the transformation that Mary undergoes therein, where she becomes a polymorphic and malleable image capable of adopting multiple roles that uctuate at various levels in the cultural crossroads of the Castilian kingdom. Alfonso sustains a space of representation which is both Aleph, from the point of view of religious belief, and nodal point, from the perspective of political ideology. Such an insubstantial image, seized and construed by the holder of power, encapsulates the Void at the center of religionthe hypothetical object whose name has been usurped by men but which no man has ever truly looked upon.

59 For the short-lived military Order of the Star, founded by Alfonso X, see OCallaghan, Alfonso X and the Cantigas, pp. 15962.

MUSLIM SHROUDS FOR CHRISTIAN KINGS? A REASSESSMENT OF ANDALUSI TEXTILES IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY CASTILIAN LIFE AND RITUAL Mara Judith Feliciano
Honor se reere al vestido del cuerpo. Vestos, por tanto, conforme a vuestras posibilidades. Maimnides, Testamento espiritual.1

Andalusi textiles have long been the objects of stylistic studies whose tight focus on matters of provenance, dating, and ornamentation has not allowed for a deeper exercise in cultural interpretation.2 Traditional art historical investigations have taken a strictly formalist approach to the study of Andalusi luxury arts, treating textiles as little more than decorative objects lacking a useful social life. Such a restricted interpretive lens results from an academic practice that has established medieval Iberia as a society of extremes, either stressing the conictive nature of its culture or overemphasizing a model of peaceful, multicultural convivencia. Artistic and social nuances, therefore, often have been reduced to weapons in the all-encompassing struggle between Christianity and Islam or have not been considered in terms of the cultural pressures of an increasingly ambitious

1 Moses ben Maimum, Cartas y Testamento de Maimnides (11381204), ed. Carlos del Valle. Crdoba: Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Crdoba, 1989, p. 315. 2 My interest in the study of Andalusi textiles and their materiality was sparked by Gillian Moss, now retired curator of textiles at the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design. On a December morning three years ago, she devoted her time, knowledge, and microscopes to show me just what silk wrapped in gold looks like. To her, for literally and guratively opening my eyes, I extend my deepest gratitude. The eort to explain what such sumptuousness meant to its users and audience could not have been undertaken without the support of Constancio del Alamo, Miriam Basilio, Irma Patricia Daz Cayeros, Angela Franco Mata, Renata Holod, Gridley McKim-Smith, Cristina Partearroyo Lacaba, Deborah Roldn, and Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza. I am particularly indebted to the editors, whose patience, generosity and encouragement have proven invaluable throughout the writing process. Cynthia Robinson has had an especially meaningful presence in this project, having taken the roles of travel companion, soundboard, and intellectual cheerleader since early in its beginning.

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state-making agenda. In short, the social function of Andalusi textiles in medieval Iberias cultural arena remains to be explored carefully. The art historical disconnection between Andalusi luxury goods and the worlds of their makers and wearers has resulted in a further disengagement of textiles from the current intellectual discourse in Iberian studies, which, in recent years, has aimed to further our understanding of the intricacies and limits of interaction and domination among social groups during the Christian conquest.3 Isolated in their role as paradigms of a one-dimensional model of Christian appropriation of Islamic (that is, foreign) visual resources in medieval Iberia, Andalusi textiles have yet to be deemed eective, ubiquitous, and functional signiers utilized on both sides of the Iberian frontier, deserving of critical analysis. In order to lay the groundwork for their analysis in interdisciplinary terms, this investigation aims to suggest ways to reorient the study of thirteenth-century Andalusi textiles away from the limited art historical discourse that has focused on formalist questions and conicting ideas of race, religion and taste in medieval Iberia. Upon rst examination, the visual evidence reveals seemingly incompatible notions of cultural value in the thirteenth century, where contempt for the Islamic presence in the Peninsula excluded disdain for the neries produced by Andalusi hands. Beyond their ornamental purpose, however, the function of Andalusi textiles in Castilian courtly and ecclesiastical ritual, as well as their use in daily life, suggests that they were neither exotic nor incongruous elements of cultural display.4 A close examination of Andalusi textiles and their use by
See Mara Elena Diez Jorge, El arte mudjar: expresin esttica de una convivencia. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2001; Thomas Glick, Convivencia, An Introductory Note in Convivencia. Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick and Jerrilynn D. Dodds. New York: Georges Braziller and The Jewish Museum, 1992, pp. 19; Elena Lourie, Anatomy of Ambivalence: Muslims under the Crown of Aragon in the Late Thirteenth Century in Crusade and Colonisation: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Aragn. Brookeld: Aldershot, Hampshire, 1990; Mark D. Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991; Mara Rosa Menocal, Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994; Cynthia Robinson, Mudjar Revisited: A Prologomena to the Reconstruction of Perception, Devotion and Experience at the Mudjar Convent of Clarisas, Tordesillas, Spain (14th century A.D.) in RES 43 (2003), pp. 5177, and Colin Smith, Convivencia in the Estoria de Espaa of Alfonso X in Hispanic Medieval Studies in Honor of Samuel G. Armistead, ed. E. Michael Gerli. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1992. 4 As Valds Fernndez succinctly states, Al-Andalus no fue una realidad car3

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the Castilian elites suggests a high level of acquaintance with the items under consideration, and an equally great degree of disconnection between the ethnicity of the makers, the nature of the objects, and the desires of the wearers. Rather than being simple signs of dominion, I contend that Andalusi textiles were central to the formative process of the medieval Iberian aesthetic vocabulary and played a highly visible role in the development of identities through their use in ritual and daily life, outside of confrontation, in a rapidly changing cultural environment. The notion that medieval Iberian culture shared an aesthetic system independent of religious meaning has been argued convincingly in the eld of architectural history.5 The focus on architectural history, however, often has been detrimental to the study of the luxury arts,6 for its tight focus has not aided in the development of an analytical vocabulary that can be applied to objects outside of the built environment.7 Consequently, this study also seeks to broaden the scope of a discourse centered on the study of Iberian architecture, emphasizing the important role of textiles in the aesthetic choices

ente de contexto histrico, ni algo sorprendente y ajeno al mundo cultural rabeislmico, ni an a las grandes culturas clsicas que le precedieron o fueron sus coetneas. Expanding on this observation, it is also worthy of note that al-Andalus is often mentioned but not incorporated as a major textile production (and exporting) center in the surveys of the textile traditions of the greater Islamic world. See, for instance, Patricia L. Baker, Islamic Textiles. London: British Museum Press, 1995; Yedida K Stillman, Arab Dress: A Short History: From the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times. Leiden: Brill Academic Publisher, 2000; Fernando Valds Fernndez, Algunas reexiones sobre el estudio arqueolgico de los tejidos de origen o procedencia andalus in Tejer y vestir. De la antigedad al islam, ed. Manuela Marn. Madrid: CSIC, 2002, p. 392 5 Jerrilynn Dodds, for example, has argued that the adoption of an Islamic architectural style in medieval synagogues had nothing to do with religion per se, but had become instead part of their own cultural world. Jerrilynn Dodds, Mudjar Tradition and the Synagogues of Medieval Spain: Cultural Identity and Cultural Hegemony in Convivencia, pp. 113132. 6 The use of the term luxury arts throughout this presentation is a conscious departure from the more traditional terms decorative, industrial, or even minor arts, which generally have been used to designate such material objects in opposition to the more noble Fine Arts. To a great extent, this investigation constitutes an eort to highlight the usefulness, if not the importance, of luxury objects as eective tools in art historical inquiry. For the ground-breaking discussion of earlier Andalusi luxury arts in socio-cultural context, see Renata Holod, Luxury Arts of the Caliphal Period in Al-Andalus, pp. 4147. 7 Fernando Valds Fernandez notes the seriousness of this problem in the fact that Andalusi luxury arts are often absent from surveys of Andalusi and Mudjar art and architecture. See Fernando Valds Fernndez, Algunas reexiones, pp. 392.

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that facilitated power displays in Castile. Oleg Grabar has identied the question pointedly as one of two paradoxes in the art of the Spanish Peninsula, alluding to the existence of a common visual language for the expression of dierent thoughts and of dierent tastes and purposes in medieval Spain.8 Architecture, ritual and the objects that granted visibility to complex power displays should be examined jointly in order to highlight the multiplicity of use and meaning in the so-called Mudjar arts. The critical study of the sumptuary displays of the Castilian Church and State and their visible role in an increasingly successful eort to consolidate socio-political power during the thirteenth-century also allows for a cultural reassessment of commonly held notions of Mudejarismo in the artistic life of medieval Iberia. The academic assumptions concerning the endurance and pervasiveness of the Islamic aesthetic in Christian art9 raise signicant questions regarding the true extent of the practices of the Christian conquest and the nature of taste in a shifting socio-cultural setting. More specically, I argue that the Castilian readiness to don Andalusi-made textiles and costume had much less to do with the servility and subjugation of Iberian Islam at the hands of the Christian kings than with a well-established, pan-Iberian aesthetic that informed consistent patterns of conspicuous consumption throughout the thirteenth century.10 Traditionally, this pattern of consumer behavior has been studied following the conventional denition of Mudejarismo, which denes the problem simply as Islamic textiles woven for Christian patrons.11 The enduring academic interpretation of this phenomenon departs from a narrow perspective, generally limited to the study of the conquering and the conquered, and has not approached the question openly, so as to allow for its investigation in terms of the commer-

8 Oleg Grabar, Two Paradoxes in the Art of the Spanish Peninsula, in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, Vol. II, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995, pp. 58990. 9 Borrs Gualis, Gonzalo, Introduccin histrico y artstica in El arte mudjar. La esttica islmica en el arte cristiano. Madrid: Museo Sin Fronteras, 2000, pp. 3562. 10 Indeed, this was the case across the Iberian Frontier throughout the history of Al-Andalus. For a detailed examination of this trend, see Manuela Marn, Signos visuales de la identidad andalus in Tejer y vestir, p. 146. 11 Teresa Prez Higuera, for instance, has argued that the Andalusi make of the liturgical cope of Archbishop Sancho IV of Aragn serves as evidence of a possible Mudjar workshop at the service of the Castilian monarchs. See Prez Higuera, Objetos e imgenes, p. 95.

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cial exchange of luxury goods between al-Andalus and the northern Iberian kingdoms. As active participants in a Mediterranean-wide culture of consumption, Castilians certainly engaged in the use of high-end textiles and costume as life-long monetary investments and appropriate symbols of their authority.12 Andalusi textiles made of silk threads, wrapped in gold, colored in expensive trade dyes and woven by the most skilled hands, of whatever religious creed, were, indeed, the most decorous vestments with which to assert Castilian monarchic grandeur and cultural legitimacy.13 To understand this proposed model of Andalusi textiles as signiers of Castilian identity, the focus must shift to the study of their functional life and its relationship to thirteenth-century Iberian mentalities. For this purpose, this discussion avoids using the term Mudjar to designate the objects make, use, or aesthetics.14 With implications of conquest and submission, of power relations between the commissioning conqueror and the servile conquered, a traditional use of the word Mudjar stops short of describing the interactions that occurred with and around the objects at hand. Instead, I suggest that, during the thirteenth century, Mudejarismo was a pan-Iberian aesthetic vocabulary that permeated all aspects of life, at every social level. As an active cultural force, Mudejarismo also acted as a mediator of hostility and shared traditions, providing a set of common cultural practices (in the visual and literary arts, daily and ritual habits, etc.) throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Mudjar art ourished in a culture of the Mudjar, where private life and ceremonial practices assigned meaning to common aesthetic forms, independent
12 In the same manner that Islamic textiles from the Eastern Mediterranean (as well as Italian and Netherlandish woven goods) were coveted throughout the Mediterranean. See Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain. The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900 1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Yedida K. Stillman, Textiles and Patterns Come to Life Through the Cairo Geniza in Islamische Textilkunst des Mittelalters. Aktuelle Probleme. Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 1997, pp. 3552; Fernando Valds Fernndez, Algunas Reexiones, pp. 382384; and Michael G. Morony, Clothing as an Item of Economic Consumption in Early Islamic Society in Tejer y vestir, pp. 367378. 13 Manuela Marn accurately refers to sumptuous silks as part of the symbolic repertoire, or repertorio simblico, of kingship in Iberia since as early as the Cordoban Caliphate and the Taifa Kingdoms. See Manuela Marn, Signos visuales, p. 141. 14 Like the editors of this volume, I strongly believe that the use of the term Mudjar must be modied to reference an artistic practice that extended beyond the physical presence of Muslims in Iberia.

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of religious and ethnic conict. Placing Andalusi textiles in the midst of this cultural phenomenon, rather than isolating them from Castilian mainstream culture by labeling them Mudjar, opens up the subject to new interpretative avenues. Separating religious connotations from the Castilian taste for (and use of ) luxury items produced in al-Andalus constitutes another essential step in the eort to include Andalusi luxury goods in the greater cultural history of medieval Iberia. This study, therefore, also refrains from using religious terms, such as Hispano-Muslim, Moorish or Islamic, to designate Andalusi textiles, for they imply a religious association that was absent from their use across the Iberian frontier during the thirteenth century. Indeed, religious categories are so ingrained (and seldom questioned) in our understanding of the arts of medieval Iberia that their nomenclature has saturated the academic discourse, even as scholars work to erase the universally accepted notion of a religiously polarized society. In a critical examination of the terms of medieval Iberian convivencia in the court of Alfonso X, Colin Smith recognized the taste for things Andalusi at court, at home and in church, as a daily convivencia with Moorish objects.15 Nonetheless, his most signicant argument makes use of religious vocabulary while simultaneously (and accurately) maintaining that the relationship between the taste for Andalusi luxury goods and their use by the Christian elites is no indication of an Islamized Christian court.16 The use of religious designationseven to argue against the religious interpretation of cultural change (and, in this case, even commercial exchange) in medieval Iberiahas undoubtedly contributed to a recurrent state of amazement at the seemingly contradictory practices of Christians and Muslims during the thirteenth century. This sense of surprise also derives from the historical circumstances surrounding the discovery of most of the extant thirteenth-century Andalusi textiles, the vast majority of which comes to us from funerary contexts unearthed during the last decade of the nineteenth- and the rst half of the twentieth century. Like surviving examples of

Colin Smith, Convivencia in the Estoria de Espaa, p. 292. In his words,The Bishop and the Queens and their courts and retainers presumably used and loved these ne things, but they had these luxury objects simply because they were the best, and there is not the faintest sign that [they] were in any degree Islamized. Ibid., p. 292.
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Fatimid tiraz, many of these discoveries often were the product of unscientic interventions and resulted in the dispersal of fragments to collections throughout the world,17 as well as in the narrow interpretation of their exclusive use as mortuary vestments.18 The materials recovered from the royal pantheon at the monastery of Santa Mara la Real de Huelgas are perhaps the most famous and representative cache of Andalusi textiles in a Castilian setting.19 Not only does Las Huelgas provide the standard by which Andalusi textiles of the thirteenth century are measured, both in its elite royal environment and in the comprehensive nature of its exceptionally well preserved and rened wardrobes, it is also the perfect example of the isolation of the study of the luxury arts from that of architectural and social history. While the study of the Mudjar decorative program of the monastery at Las Huelgas has been assiduously undertaken, especially the ornamental plaster work at the Capilla de la Asuncin and

17 The nd in 1968 of the Aljuba of San Pedro de Osma and the complexity of its dating and attribution given the ambiguity of its location at the time of discovery oer a pointed example. See Valds Fernndez, Algunas Reexiones, pp. 389392. Other examples include the only extant fragment from the vestments of Fernando III which was taken from the kings mantle found in his tomb and later given to Phillip V in the eighteenth century. Today, this fragment is exhibited in the Real Armera in Madrid. The history of the acquisition and collecting of the vestments of San Valero, rst acquired by the Lleida Cathedral chapter and subsequently by a private collector, Llus Plandiura, and by the Museos de Barcelona, at the behest of Joaqum Folch i Torres, oer another typical example. The same can be said for the textile fragment of the vestments of San Bernard Calv, found in his tomb in Vich Cathedral, bought by Miguel y Bada and subsequently acquired by J. P. Morgan for the collection of the Hewitt sisters in New York. The textile fragment is currently part of the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. See Cristina Partearroyo Lacaba, Almoravid and Almohad Textiles in Al-Andalus, pp. 111, 320; and Rosa Martn i Ros, Vestments of San Valero in Al-Andalus, pp. 33233. 18 The parallel between Fatimid tiraz and thirteenth-century Andalusi textiles extends to this misinterpretation. Jochen Sokoly convincingly argues for a reinterpretation of the funerary context of tiraz by stressing the possibility that they were chosen from amongst the wardrobe of the living, a conclusion that applies well to the Iberian question but which has yet to be considered. See Jochen A. Sokoly, Between Life and Death: The Funerary Context of Tiraz Textiles in Islamische Textilkunst, pp. 7178. 19 Las Huelgas survives as the most undamaged of such medieval royal pantheons in the Iberian Peninsula. For a detailed account of the ndings at Las Huelgas, see Manuel Gmez Moreno, El Panten Real de Las Huelgas de Burgos. Madrid: CSIC, 1946; and Concha Herrero Carretero, Museo de Telas Medievales. Monasterio de Santa Mara la Real de Huelgas. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1988.

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the Claustro de San Fernando,20 any kind of relationship has yet to be drawn between the architectural decorations of this royal monastic retreat, the modes and manners of the royal bodies that occupied it, and the textiles that covered and adorned them (and that are exhibited currently at the site in its Museo de las Telas Medievales). Each aspect of the perceived Mudejarismothe plasterwork, woodwork, brickwork and textilesin the Cistercian monastery at Las Huelgas has been separated out from the other and considered only for its stylistic value. Moreover, in the vein of formalist art history, the evidence of Mudjar art in Las Huelgas has been separated from the more purely Christian Gothic and Romanesque components of other areas of the cloister and the church, instead of being considered as an aesthetic unit.21 The isolation of objects, styles, and categories of aesthetic analysis further supports the strict dissection of cultural life in medieval Spain along religious lines. When examined in this manner, each medium and each aesthetic choice becomes a source of amazement for modern scholars. In the end, a traditional interpretation of Mudejarismo does not render the style a sum of its parts. The historiography of Andalusi textiles at court echoes this problematic approach. Surveys of the surviving, thirteenth-century Andalusi textiles have provided a valuable catalogue of the pieces, as well as fundamental information regarding their provenance, technical composition, state of conservation and ornamental motifs.22 While this
20 See, for example, Francisco Iiguez Almech, Las yeseras descubiertas recientemente en Las Huelgas de Burgos in Archivo Espaol de Arte (1941), p. 306; Rosario Masuela, Las huellas musulmanas en Las Huelgas, Burgos. Madrid: 1961; Leopoldo Torres Balbs, Yeseras de Huelgas in Al-Andalus, t. IX (1944), pp. 19098. 21 Regarding this strict formalist practice, Gonzalo Borrs Gualis has observed sensibly (though, again, making use of religious nomenclature to designate ornamental components), los estudiosos se han dedicado a una diseccin de laboratorio para cuanticar y valorar dichos elementos artsticos por separado, en lugar de insistir en el carcter de sntesis de estos elementos formales cristianos y musulmanes, que da lugar a una expresin artstica nueva y diferente de los elementos que la integran. Gonzalo Borrs Gualis, Introduccin histrica y artstica in El arte mudjar, p. 41. 22 See, for example, Carmen Berns, Tapicera Hispanomusulmana (siglos XIII XIV) in Archivo Espaol de Arte 27 (1954), pp. 189211; Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda de Barcelona, La seda en la liturgia, Barcelona: Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda, 1952; Cristina Partearroyo Lacaba, Almoravid and Almohad Textiles in Al-Andalus, pp. 10513; Idem, Textiles. Telas, Alfombras, Tapices in Historia de las artes aplicadas e industriales en Espaa, comp., Antonio Bonet Correa. Madrid: Ctedra, 1994, pp. 34988. Also, A. F. Kendrick, Catalogue of Muhammedan Textiles

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corpus has laid the essential groundwork for the development of further studies, surveys have often fallen short of being critical. The textiles have been studied almost exclusively in relation to each other or in discreet connection to the objects own histories (as Mudjar works of art), thus limiting their interpretative value. The fundamental question, therefore, remains largely unexplored; what was the meaning of the use of Andalusi textiles at the highest spheres of Castilian power? The place of textiles in the greater schema of medieval Iberian cultural life has yet to be determined. In order to move forward in the study of this phenomenon, the question must be addressed in terms of the habitual use of Andalusi textiles across a signicant segment of Castiles power elite throughout the thirteenth century. The marriage between fashion and ritual (or displays of power and legitimacy) in thirteenth-century Castile resulted in culturally accepted ways to utilize a set of material objects that modern scholarship has characterized as unfamiliar. More explicitly, the consistent use of Andalusi materials to fashion Castilian clothes was a well-established cultural practice that amounted to a clear, unambiguous, and easily intelligible sign of respectability and propriety. A simple analysis of patterns of consumption indicates that, at the most basic aesthetic level, Castilians responded very favorably to Andalusi luxury items. But a more profound examination of the taste for Andalusi silks shows that their value went beyond their obvious ornamental quality and into the realm of functionality, as objects of both ritual and symbolic signicance in the Castilian cultural map. Certainly the use of Andalusi luxury textiles during the thirteenth century did not imply dressing like a Muslim since the acceptance of such objects by the Castilian elites was the continuation of a practice that may have begun as early as the ninth century.23 Nonetheless,

of the Medieval Period. London: Board of Education, 1924; Errera, Isabelle, Travail espagnol du XVIXVII sicles, Paris: 1927; Florence Lewis May, Silk Textiles of Spain. Eighth to Fifteenth Century. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1957; Mara Teresa Snchez Trujillano, Catlogo de los tejidos medievales del M.A.N. II in Boletn del Museo Arquelgico Nacional IV (1986), pp. 91116. 23 To date, the most nuanced study on Andalusi textiles prior to the thirteenth century is the late Annabelle Simon-Cahns discussion of St. Thomas Beckets chasuble, which takes into account the nature of pan-Mediterranean commerce and the place of Andalusi silks within that network, as well as details of St. Thomas Beckets life and the history of the cult of his relics. While Simon-Cahn correctly argue for a well-established taste for Andalusi silks in Western Europe already in

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the increasing demonization of the physical presence of Muslims on Iberian soil (a product of the burgeoning Castilian conquest mentality) and the simultaneous admiration of the products of their hands must be examined carefully, as the thirteenth century marked the height of taste for Andalusi textiles and witnessed their wide-spread use in Castilian civil and ecclesiastical sumptuary displays.24 If the success of the convivencia model depended on limited contact between ethnic groups,25 it is signicant that, during the thirteenth century, Andalusi products regularly touched royal, noble, and ecclesiastical bodies, in public and in private, in life, death and even in sainthood. An essential element of this discussion is the seldom-studied process of sartorial mimesis that took place simultaneously in Andalusi society. Just as Castilians sought out ne Andalusi silks, prominent members of Andalusi society also took on their neighbors fashion.26 Although a detailed discussion of this phenomenon falls outside of the scope of this study, it is important to address its main issues briey. The common interpretation of the taste for Northern Iberian costume in Andalusi society is marked with the same polarizing view of medieval Iberian conict that reduces the adoption of modes and
the twelfth century, she raised very important questions in her brief article that, unfortunately, have yet to be taken up at length. The importance of Andalusi textiles since their early adoption, occurring mainly at the ecclesiastic level (generally used to fashion religious vestments or to shroud saints relics in centers of orthodox Iberian Catholicism), remains a seriously understudied and essential piece of the puzzle. This question is further explored in a current study by the author. See Annabelle Simon-Cahn, The Fermo Chasuble of St. Thomas Becket and HispanoMauresque Cosmological Silks: Some Speculations on the Adaptive Re-use of Textiles in Muqarnas X (1993), pp. 15. 24 The complexity of multiethnic life in thirteenth century Iberia and its relationship to power structures has been explored in the elds of history and literature. See, for instance, Benjamin R. Gampel, Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval Iberia: Convivencia through the Eyes of Sephardic Jews in Convivencia, pp. 1137. 25 The limitations of space in this volume restrict a detailed undertaking of this very complex issue. By limited contact, however, I am referring to the legal aspects of this coexistence. According to the legislations of the Castilian Cortes in 1252, [Muslims] could not live in Christian houses, nor employ Christians in their service, nor give their children to be nursed by Christian women. They could not purchase lands from Christians, but if they did so they had to pay tithes to the church. A Moor who made so bold as to sleep with a Christian virgin was to be stoned, while she lost half her goods for the rst oense and all of them for the second. If the culprit were a married woman, she was left to the mercy of her husband . . . See Joseph OCallaghan, A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975, p. 463. 26 For literary and documentary evidence, see Manuela Marn, Signos visuales, pp. 14348.

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manners to acts of submission or domination. Utilizing the concept of assimilation found in Ibn Khalduns travel accounts, as well as in the Hadith commentary prescriptions, Manuela Marn recently concluded that, for Andalusis, adopting Christian fashion implied the recognition of the enemys superiority.27 The interpretative limitations of such a restrictive set of sources remains a problem. These, in the case of Ibn Khaldun, yield personal and critical information from the member of a politically prominent Andalusi family that settled in the Maghrib shortly before the fall of Seville in 1248. Ibn Khalduns family was composed of consummate courtiers and scholars who sought refuge from political change (i.e., the Christian Conquest of Andalusi territory) at court in Hafsid Tunis.28 His opinions were not those of an unbiased observer. Ibn Khalduns historical voice, therefore, should not be regarded as that of the Andalusi collective, or even the greater Islamic umma. Similarly, the use of Hadith recommendations against assimilation oers a limited ground for the interpretation of a highly complex phenomenon, as the nuances of life in the rapidly changing (though long-established) Iberian frontier simply cannot be measured by the limits of orthodox religious prescriptions.29 The time has come to reassess our characterization of the trend. Rather than maintaining the traditional interpretation that holds members of both Andalusi and Castilian societies to be plainly seeking out (appropriating, or even imitating) the marks of each others perceived identities, we must interpret the phenomenon as evidence of a far more uid pan-Iberian sartorial practice. To do this, we must make a clear distinction between yardage cloth, bought and sold or made-to-order to sew garments or decorative items of many types, and nished items of clothing, whose patterns conformed to either Andalusi or Castilian practice. Sources inform us that Andalusi garments were generally long and wide, while Northern
Manuela Marn, Signos visuales, pp. 14445. See J. J. Dawoods introduction to Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, ed. J. J. Dawood, transl. Franz Rosenthal, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. vii. 29 This, of course, is not to say that, for religious scholars and/or members of the political class, the adoption of Northern Iberian costume had negative signicance. Instead, I would like to argue for the acceptance of the multiplicity of meanings that such a practice must have had among members of dierent social and cultural classes in both Andalusi and Castilian territory. See Woodru D. Smith, Culture and the Concept of Consumption in Consumption and the Making of Respectability 1600 1800. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 924.
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Iberian costume was generally tighter tting and more revealing.30 The extant material evidence suggests that consumers made very specic choices that catered to individual desires. That is, Castilians preferred to purchase Andalusi silks to make Castilian-style clothes that responded to their particular needs, such as Northern Spains colder climate and dierent ceremonial requirements.31 In turn, sources indicate that Andalusis often adopted tighter-tting clothing.32 Wearing garments across the frontier resulted in the adoption of items of clothing that ultimately became common throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Such was the case of the aljuba, a long shirt of Andalusi origin commonly used during the thirteenth century that endured as a staple of Iberian wardrobes well into the seventeenth century.33 Clearly then, interpreting the adoption of costume as a strict act to mark religious or ethnic aliation is a one-dimensional analysis of a far more nuanced phenomenon. Instead, the answer lies in the qualities that made Andalusi textiles so desirable to their (dierent) consumers and the mentalities that allowed for their unrestricted travel through socio-cultural boundaries.34

30 See Manuela Marn, Signos visuales, p. 143; Gonzalo Menndez Pidal and Carmen Berns Madrazo, Traje, Aderezo, Afeites in La Espaa del siglo XIII leda en imgenes. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1986, p. 94. 31 Ecclesiastical vestments are, of course, the best example, as their typologies were well-established and their exclusive use was well-dened by the thirteenth century, diering markedly from common clothes. The popularity of the pellote during the thirteenth century, however, points to the increasing inuence of Western Europe on Castillian costume. Ibid., pp. 6265. 32 Marn cites the examples of Ibn Mardanis and Abu Bakr al-Turtusi. See Manuela Marn, Signos visuales, p. 144. 33 The aljuba was used by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike to the extent that they were deemed acceptable goods with which to pay for the rescue of Christian captives. See Carmen Berns Madrazo and Gonzalo Menndez Pidal, Traje, aderezo, y afeites, p. 65. Also Berns Madrazo states that, El sentido amplio de aljuba y la larga vida de este nombre explica que se aplicase, segn las pocas, a trajes de hechuras muy diferentes. Carmen Berns Madrazo, Indumentaria medieval espaola. Madrid: CSIC, 1956, p. 21. On the widespread use of the aljuba (J) across Islamic societies of the Medieval and early-modern period, see R. P. A. Dozy, Dictionnaire dtaill des noms des vtements chez les arabes. Amsterdam: Jean Mller, 1845, pp. 10917. 34 The case of sumptuary restriction on the Mudjar communities of Castille falls outside of the scope of this investigation, but it is a very meaningful (and complex) example of the political class great sense of ownership, or desire for exclusivity, of luxury items whose description matches the extant material evidence. While the Cortes legislated to restrict Mudjares in the kingdom from wearing items of clothing in gold, green and red, for example, the ruling elites were advised to dress precisely in such sumptuous materials in various contemporary writings (a discussion of which will follow). Still, and further supporting the notion of the multivalent

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The mortuary vestments of the Infante Don Felipe [Figs. 12] oer a pointed example.35 Don Felipes royal body was covered in death by ne Andalusi silks, decorated with geometric patterns and bands of Arabic epigraphy (reading al-yumn and al-hamdu li-allah). Though Don Felipe, the son of Ferdinand III, had been destined for an ecclesiastical career since childhood, he became infamous for challenging Alfonso Xs revision of Castilian feudal laws and joining a group of noblemen in exile in Granada in 1272.36 For nearly two years, his group of high-prole Castilians served as allies of Ibn al-Ahmar, even helping to secure his succession, and thus, the survival of the rival Nasrid dynasty.37 After a lengthy process of negotiation and upon his return to court in 1274, however, Don Felipe received the Infantado of Len and led a quiet life until his death in 1275. His body was laid to rest in the Templar church of Santa Mara la Blanca in Villalczar de Sirga (Palencia).38 Seemingly, the choice of posthumous dress was an appropriate selection for the burial of a man who once was an active member of the Nasrid court. This assumption, however, implies that had the deceased not spent time in Granada, he would not have developed a taste for Andalusi neries. Such a traditional view of Islamic-Christian relations erroneously presumes that, prior to the military campaigns, Castilians had limited contact with or access to Andalusi luxury items.39 In fact, Don Felipes costume, like his own body, traveled unrestricted across Iberias political frontier. While the funerary context of these textiles should not limit their interpretation to a discourse about the importance of Andalusi silks

nature of costume, there is no evidence indicating that these sumptuary legislations were enforced (or to what degree) during the thirteenth century. 35 Fragments of Don Felipes vestments are perhaps the most widely scattered samples of Andalusi textiles. They are found in museum collections throughout Europe and the United States. 36 For a detailed account of the noblemen grievances against Alfonso X, see Joseph OCallaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, p. 372. 37 Ibid., p. 374. 38 See Rodrigo Amador de los Ros, Restos del traje del infante Don Felipe, hijo de Fernando III, El Santo, extrados de su sepulcro de Villalczar de Sirga y conservados en el Museo Arqueolgico Nacional in Museo Espaol de Antigedades, t. IX, pp. 109126. 39 This perception is echoed in Teresa Prez Higueras interpretation of the heightened Christian taste for Islamic materials. She asserts that, Tras la conquista de Sevilla en 1248 la inuencia de tejidos islmicos se hizo patente en corte. See Teresa Prez Higuera, Objetos e imgenes, p. 96.

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only as mortuary vestments, a deeper look at the burial practices of the Castilian monarchy during the thirteenth century does reveal a widespread pattern of preference for Andalusi textiles as key items in Castilian power display. The common use of such objects by the royalty and nobility, the members of society most invested in the public presentation of their bodies, not only hints at the importance of Andalusi textiles in ritual life, but also at the their ecacy in sending a clear message of proper Castilian identity. Simply put, Castilian regalia adorned Castilian royal bodies. Unquestionably, the Castilian monarchy dened their taste in clothing according to characteristics that projected their power (to acquire, to control, etc.), exclusivity (from common life), and legitimacy (as rulers of an ever-expanding realm). In turn, those attributes no doubt reected common societal values. If we see the body as a symbol of society40 and consider its manipulation in relation to public ritual, the personal but highly visible choice that is the projection of desired qualities becomes more evident. If royal bodies also work as both, symbols of society and of the State,41 their presentation must be equally eective and appropriate at each level. Alfonso Xs Siete Partidas supports this argument. The text stresses the Castilian model of the king-vassal relationship in rather plain terms, describing the king as the heart, head, and soul of the state.42 Because the purity of the kings body reected that of the nation, and vice versa, Castilian royal bodies simply could not have been perceived as stained by ordinary contact with anything Muslim. Rather, they were publicly seen clothed in everything ne. Don Felipes body, like that of his father, San Fernando, and his brother, Alfonso X, was shrouded in and surrounded by Andalusi-

40 See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966). London: Routledge, 1996, p. 116. 41 See Ernst Kantorowicz, The Kings Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. 42 Partida II, Title I, Law V states, Moreover, as the heart is one, and from it all the other members of the body receive unity, in order to constitute one body; so also, all the persons of a kingdom, although they may be many in number, for the reason that the king is, and should be, but one, should be united with him, to serve him and assist him in all those things which he has to do. And, naturally, the wise men declared that the king is the head of the kingdom, for, as from the head originate the feelings by which all the members of the body are controlled . . . Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas, Vol. 2, ed. Robert I. Burns, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, p. 272.

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made luxury textiles, but guided by Christian beliefs and dignied by Castilian ritual. Partida I (Title XIII, Law VIII) protects interred and living royal bodies, as well as Christian ritual space, from contamination, forbidding the mortal remains of Jews, Muslims, and heretics from burial in Christian churches. The text goes so far as to prescribe that, Where any of the above-named persons have been buried in a cemetery or a church among true Christians, because it was not known that they were of such a character . . . they should be disinterred, and removed as soon as this is known, and mass should not be chanted in the church . . .43 Any perceived pollutant, therefore, was guarded from the sacred precincts and the bodies that they housed. Evidently, just as Andalusi textiles were coming in contact with Castilian royal bodies, so were the bodies anointing them with value, legitimacy and exclusive regal (and, therefore, culturespecic) qualities. In the context of the needs of Castilian courtly life and ritual, had Andalusi textiles been deemed reective of anything but Castilian identity and socio-cultural standards, their use would have been limited to Andalusi ritual needs. The use of Andalusi luxury goods for Castilian ritual purposes reached its zenith during the thirteenth century, a critical period in the Iberian process of state-formation. Castilian burial protocol also saw its moment of crystallization during this time.44 The spectacle that characterized thirteenth-century funerary rites only began at home, surrounded by family, clergy, and friends. It was followed by a very public ceremonial. Upon death, the body was prepared, washed, and clothed. A display on the streets followed the private ritual, where the population participated by weeping and witnessing the cons procession and entrance into church.45 Even at church, the body and its decoration were made visible; they were often displayed, and even touched, throughout the Eucharist as they were ritually anointed with holy water.46 Whether by contact with the
Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, Vol. I, pp. 17778. Torres Ballesteros, Nuria, La muerte como aspecto de la vida cotidiana medieval: Los sepulcros de Villalczar de Sirga in La vida cotidiana en la Espaa medieval, Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 1998, p. 429. 45 Though sometimes the body was taken out of the home in its own bed, making the body even more visible. See Gonzalo Menndez Pidal, La Espaa del siglo XIII, p. 145. 46 For detailed information regarding funerary rites as they developed in Castille during the thirteenth century, see Lahoz Gutirrez, Mara Luca, La vida cotidiana en el mbito de la escultura funeraria gtica in Vida cotidiana en la Espaa
44 43

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deceased body or simply by covering it, the textiles were also blessed during the Christian rite. It is dicult to overlook the central role that Andalusi textiles played in these important ceremonies. Yet, their preeminence in regal funerary rituals, where displays of power and socio-cultural aliation were of utmost signicance, underscores their value in the practice(s) of daily life. The fact that Andalusi silks were deemed to be suitable materials to make such visible and signicant garments has great implications where questions of body politics and display are concerned. The prominent role of Andalusi textiles in Castilian royal burials suggests that they inherently reected the prominence of the royal bodies in life. Contemporary writings also suggest that such objects had no proper place of use other than at such high social levels. Alfonso Xs Siete Partidas provides detailed sumptuary stipulations about the exclusivity of ornaments in funerary rites. Partida I (Title XIII, Law XIII) states that, Rich garments, or precious ornaments like those of gold or silver, should not be buried with the dead, except in the case of certain persons; as, for instance, a king, a queen, or one of their children; or some other distinguished man; or a knight who is buried according to the custom of the country; or a bishop, or a priest who should be buried in the vestments which belong to him . . .47 Implicit in this stipulation is the monarchic desire to control sumptuous materials and their use in public displays and to prolong the exclusivity associated with their paraphernalia. Nevertheless, placing Andalusi textiles in the context of their cultural role is to situate them in daily contact with noble bodies, as common trappings of the most exclusive lifestyles, not just as highly visible and easily interpreted signiers of power, civility, and righteousness in the midst of elaborate public ceremonies. In fact, a close examination of their ceremonial use underscores their role in both ritual and daily life. Given the increased prominence of public funerary rituals for the Castilian nobility and royalty during the thirteenth century, it is notable that there remains scant contemporary literature that describes regal mortuary vestments in the kingdom. This absence has led at least one scholar to infer that, during the thirteenth century, the Castilian monarchs were
medieval, ed. Miguel Angel Garca Guinea. Aguilar del Campo: Ediciones Polifemo, 1998, p. 429. 47 Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, Vol. I, p. 180.

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buried as nothing more than common Christians.48 The large corpus of extant funerary vestments, veritable outts of expensive and thoughtfully coordinated pieces, invalidates this conclusion.49 A more practical explanation for the lack of detailed descriptions of mortuary vestments could be that kings and nobles indeed were buried in the sumptuous trappings of daily life, rather than in vestments made to order specically for the funerary rite. The extant material evidence supports this claim. Two of the most prominent pieces in the collection at Las Huelgas, Fernando de la Cerdas mantle and pellote, were lined in rabbit fur, indicating their use during the Castilian winter.50 The use of sumptuous textiles in life is further emphasized in contemporary literature. Alfonso Xs Siete Partidas also oers detailed prescriptions for the proper presentation of a king. Arguing that appropriate clothing helps to readily dierentiate noblemen from peasants, Partida II (Title V, Law V) species that, Dress has much to do with causing men to be recognized whether as noble, or servile. The ancient sages established the rule that kings should wear garments of silk, adorned with gold and jewels, in order that men might know them as soon as they saw them, without inquiring for them . . .51 This explanation is useful to understand the Castilian use of Andalusi textiles because it describes the fabrics solely in terms of their materials and their eect, hinting at the characteristics that made them desirable. Their exclusivity and luxurious quality not only complemented

48 Denis Menjot, Un Chrtien qui Meurt Toujours: Les Funrailles Royales en Castille la Fin du Moyen Age in La idea y el sentimiento de la muerte en la historia y en el arte de la edad media, eds. Manuel Nez and Ermelindo Portela. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1988, p. 128. 49 As does the royalty and nobilitys increasing use of Franciscan habit as funerary vestments at the end of the thirteenth century. Manuel Nez argues that the growing inuence of Franciscan spirituality among the Castilian upper classes brought about this change, still as a continuation of the relationship between social class and posthumous memory. See Manuel Nez, La indumentaria como smbolo en la iconografa funeraria in Fragmentos 10 (1987), pp. 7284. 50 While pellotes were generally lined and widely used items of clothing, Fernando de la Cerdas is a notable example of the use of fur in its lining. Similarly, a fragment from Fernando IIIs mantle shows the remains of fur. In contrast, Enrique Is pellote, also at Las Huelgas, was sumptuously lined in extra-ne, gilded leather. See Concha Herrero Carretero, Museo de las Telas Medievales, pp. 3233, 3839, 68. See also Gonzalo Menndez Pidal and Carmen Berns, Traje, aderezo y afeites pp. 6265; Carmen Berns Madrazo, Indumentaria medieval, p. 21. 51 Alfonso X, Las siete partidas, Vol. II, p. 288.

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the regal body of the wearer, but they helped to identify him (or her) as a legitimate sovereign. Although the sumptuousness described in the Siete Partidas provides a direct reference to the visual evidence, the text does not mention any ornamental requirements or prohibitions that can further identify the textiles. The omission is signicant as it disregards the visual content of the fabrics (in this case, the decorative motifs that earned them the label Mudjar during the last century) in favor of their ne materials and their visual impact. It appears likely that Christian consumers saw each piece of Andalusi fabric simply as the sum of its parts, which were often silver, gold, ne silk, dicult-to-obtain dyes, and the awless execution of complex weaving techniques. The details found amid the basic components of the textiles (their raw materials) and the nished products (the garments themselves), therefore, lacked any Islamic meaning to the Castilian consumers. Because the specic contents of the decoration were deemed complementary to the richness of the materials and their overall eect, we must eliminate any ethnic or religious association from the aesthetic perspective of the Castilian consumers. This is not due to a Castilian state of cultural illiteracy, or to a lack of awareness, for example, of Arabic epigraphic information woven into the textiles, but rather to a well-established taste for Andalusi luxury goods that incorporated Andalusi decorative motifs into their aesthetic language. In their form, function, and eect, Andalusi textiles conformed to Castilian notions of sartorial correctness. In contrast to the basic appreciation of Arabic epigraphy as a common decorative element stand the powerful and recognizable heraldic symbols that ourished as textile ornamentation during the thirteenth century.52 Although these were common in special, made-

52 The fact remains that much work needs to be done in order to determine the level of multilingualism in the Iberian courts (and in society at large) during the medieval period. The acceptance of Arabic epigraphy as ornamental elements in textiles found in Northern Iberian contexts certainly raise new questions for consideration in this argument. Yet, as I am arguing for a context-specic reading of the materials in question, and because of obvious spatial limitations, this investigation cannot accommodate a discussion of the appreciation of Arabic epigraphic information by an audience that may or may not have been able to read it. Antonio Gimnez forthcoming Masters thesis entitled, La enseanza del rabe como lengua extranjera en la Espaa medieval (Trabajo de investigacin, Programa de Doctorado Mundo rabe II, Universidad de Sevilla) will focus on the didactic elements of the formal teaching(s) of Arabic in the Iberian Peninsula during the medieval period. While we await for this sorely-needed investigation to be completed and published,

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to-order textiles, they consisted of the same materials, labor, and techniques as the ne yardage cloth, which was bought ready-made. As symbols, the castles and lions representing the kingdoms of Castile and Len [Fig. 3] were the clearest signiers of power and monarchy.53 But these new iconographic motifs were simultaneously exhibited, and in no apparent conict, alongside Arabic epigraphy. As Castile consolidated and increased its political dominance throughout the Iberian Peninsula, the monarchy, which was already sharing the same aesthetic vocabulary with the rival (still well-established) Andalusi courts, began to imprint sumptuous textiles with the iconographic program of its own sphere of power. When woven into the same ne textiles and presented next to distinctively Andalusi decoration, the heraldic motifs continued to send a most intelligible message of Castilian socio-cultural primacy. The heightened taste for Andalusi silks by individuals who can only be associated with orthodox Catholicism at a critical juncture in Iberian socio-political history conrms this deduction. The funerary vestments of Rodrigo Ximnez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, and one of Spains most militant proponents of armed conict against Muslims, are a case in point.54 [Fig. 4] Though the vestments were
relevant discussions of the problem in Andalusi and other Islamic contexts can be found in Irene Bierman, Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998; Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992; Oleg Grabar and Richard Ettinghausen, The Legacy of Islam, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 224320; Rosamond Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art 1300 1500. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002; Franz Rosenthal, Signicant Uses of Arabic Writing in Muslim Intellectual and Social History: A Collection of Essays. Aldershot: Variourum, 1990; Cynthia Robinson, Mudjar Revisited, p. 55. 53 The fragment from the mantle of Fernando III is perhaps the best known example of the use of woven heraldic symbols on Andalusi textiles. However, the liturgical cope of Sancho IV, Archbishop of Toledo, was decorated with the heraldic symbols of Castile and Len, as well as with the Aragonese stripes and the Sicilian eagle to signify his status as Archbishop of a Castilian Archdiocese and his origin as Infante de Aragn. While the use of Andalusi textiles at court and church in the Aragonese and Catalunyan regions remains outside the scope of this investigation, it is important to note that Andalusi luxury objects were no strangers to courtly and ecclesiastical display in other Iberian kingdoms. 54 Archbishop Ximnez de Rada was an outspoken and active participant in the struggle that culminated in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa and, indeed, he found himself at the frontlines. See Joseph F. OCallaghan, A History of Medieval Spain, pp. 24548. In addition, Ximnez de Rada also was named legado especial para la Cruzada espaola in 1218 by Fernando III and aided the Infante Alfonso in Baeza in 1213. See Eduardo Estella Zelaya, El fundador de la Catedral de Toledo. Toledo: Tipografa de A. Medina, 1926, pp. 1718, 21. The history of the vestments

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part of the Granadine Emirs tribute payment to Fernando III, the ruler himself later bestowed them to Ximnez de Rada as an honorary posthumous gift.55 While, again, these emerged from a funerary context, it is certain that such neries were not unfamiliar to Ximnez de Rada in life. The detailed inventory of his possessions taken by Don Sancho Martnez, the Cathedral Chapter treasurer, in 1277, left evidence of the Archbishops great collection of sumptuous textiles, used during his lifetime, whose descriptions match the extant visual evidence.56 Further proof of the importance of luxurious Andalusi textiles in the ritual life of the Castilian elites is the surviving liturgical cope of another Archbishop of Toledo, Sancho IV, Infante de Aragn.57 [Fig. 5; Fig. 3 detail] This well-known item of ecclesiastical vestment, similarly made of a sumptuous Andalusi fabric, was not only used at church, but also outside of the sacred precinct during religious processions. The description of the inventoried collection of liturgical copes owned by Ximnez de Rada, his surviving mortuary vestments, as well as Sancho IVs extant cope point to a rmly established and sustained pattern of use of Andalusi textiles in ritual life. Ultimately, the fact cannot be overlooked that Ximnez de Radas funerary vestments had a long useful life themfollows the typical pattern of discovery and intervention mentioned earlier in this investigation. Ximnez de Radas tomb, located in the Cistercian Monastery of Santa Mara de Huerta (Soria), was opened at least nine times between the date of his death in 1247 and 1968, when the textiles were carefully removed from the body, thoroughly restored, and documented. They are currently housed at the Cistercian Monastery of Santa Mara de Huerta (though a very small fragment belongs to the Cerralbo Museum collection) after a careful and well-documented process of conservation and documentation. See Mara Socorro Mantilla de los Ros y Rojas, Vestiduras ponticales del Arzobispo Rodrigo Ximnez de Rada (siglo XIII). Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1995. 55 Though this is the accepted history of the vestments, further provenance research needs to be undertaken. See Aguilera y Gamboa, Marqus de Cerralbo, Discursos ledos ante la Real Academia de la Historia en la recepcin pblica. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1902. 56 Of his copes, we know that Ximnez de Rada left at least the following, quince de Xamet, dos verdes et dos blancas et dos bermeias a estrellas et lazadas de oro, et tres bermeias et dos crdenas et quatra amarillas. As cited from Archivo de la Catedral de Toledo, Documento A, 1211 in Estella Zelaya, El fundador de la Catedral de Toledo, pp. 8889. Also, see the subsequent discussion of the term xamet in this article, p. 127. 57 Don Sancho de Aragn, son of James the Conqueror, was Archbishop of Toledo from 12511261. Though he was an Aragonese, his career followed a similar path to that of Ximnez de Rada. He was an active proponent of the military campaigns in Andalusi territory and, in fact, met his death defending the city of Jan from a Granadine attack.

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selves. In a meaningful process of transmission, they passed from one monarchs hands to another and subsequently were interred with one of the most powerful ecclesiastical gures of the thirteenth century. The gure of Rodrigo Ximnez de Rada is most celebrated in art historical scholarship for his active role in the design and construction of Toledos Cathedral beginning in 1226. Nevertheless, his prominence in the ecclesiastical and political environment of Castile carried tremendous cultural weight and, indeed, saturated the rst half of the thirteenth century.58 As the rst Iberian to lead the archdiocese since 1086, Ximnez de Rada was instrumental in turning Toledo into a city of tremendous symbolic importance for the Castilian crown. Among other feats, he was instrumental in the preservation of Toledos Mozarabic ritual, as well as in the incorporation of Toledanos into the Cathedral Chapters power structure.59 Yet, Ximnez de Radas dealings with Muslims and Jews outside of the battleeld, in the midst of the renovation of Toledos urban and cultural fabric, remains a sorely understudied subject.60 It is, nonetheless, quite signicant that Fernando IIIs nal act of gratitude was to bestow him with clothes made of Andalusi materials for his own body. To present honoric vestments of Andalusi make as the ultimate posthumous act for one of the most loyal and important members of the Castilian elite (in fact, one utterly devoted to the development of Castilian identity), only stresses our contention that Andalusi silks carried meaning far removed from any interpretation that links them exclusively to the faith or ethnicity of the Andalusi hands that wove them. Indeed, even in 1558, when Abbot Fray Luis de Estrada ordered the opening of Ximnez de Radas tomb, the meaning of the vestments
58 Mara Angeles Franco Mata, Toledo Gtico: La Catedral in Arquitectura de Toledo. Del Romnico al Gtico, ed. Rafael del Cerro Malagn. Toledo: Comunidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 1991, p. 426; Juan Fernndez Valverde, El personaje in Vestiduras ponticales, pp. 1825; Ariel Guiance, To Die for Country, Land or Faith in Castilian Medieval Thought in Journal of Medieval History 24:4 (1998), pp. 313332. 59 See Francisco J. Hernndez, La catedral, instrumento de asimilacin in Toledo. Siglos XIIXIII. Musulmanes, cristianos y judos: la sabidura y la tolerancia, ed. Louis Cardaillac. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1991, pp. 9497. 60 For further detail about Ximnez de Rada and his position on the subject of religious minorities, see the work of Lucy K. Pick, Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada and the Jews: Pragmatism and Patronage in Thirteenth-Century Toledo in Viator 28 (1997), pp. 203222; Idem, Conict and Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Thirteenth-Century Spain. Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, Forthcoming; Norman Roth, Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada y los judos: La divisa y los diezmos de los judos in Anthologica Annua 35 (1988), pp. 469481.

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still had no connection whatsoever to their Andalusi manufacture. Quite to the contrary, from the sepulcher and the body emanated holiness and sanctity. Fray Luis de Estrada described the burial as follows,
La santidad de este Seor tambien se inere de la reputacin en que ha estado siempre su sepulchro . . . queste cuerpo deste bendito Seor ha sido tenido por Sancto desde la antiguedad, y que los enfermos sanaban al tocamiento deste sepulchro . . . Por dentro est el cuerpo del bendito Pontce todo entero hasta el dia de hoy vestido con su rico pontical, Mitra, guantes, y anillos . . . y las sandalias estn bordadas todas con aljofar, y su cabeza est llena de canas en toda la corona reclinada sobre almohada bordada de Castillos de Oro . . .61

It is signicant that during the second half of the sixteenth century, a period marked by tense, if not often violent, relations between Christians and Moriscos throughout Castile, Ximnez de Radas vestments were still described as sumptuous (ricos) ecclesiastical vestments (pontical), not as unrecognizable robes of Islamic make. Similarly, the heraldic information woven into Ximnez de Radas burial pillow (the Castillos de Oro) was readily identiable to the Abbot, in contrast to the Arabic script (reading al-yumn) woven into the aljuba, which he failed to mention. Three hundred years after Ximnez de Radas death, the opulent clothes and the saintly man were still harmoniously interrelated. The circulation of Andalusi textiles among the highest spheres of Iberian power underscores the unambiguous message of Castilian cultural identity that they exuded. In the case of Archbishop Ximnez de Rada, the choice of sumptuary display was neither at odds with his high-prole nor with his anti-Islamic socio-religious outlook. Unquestionably, his vestments were in complete accordance with the rites that he ociated, as well as with the standards of taste and decorum of his high ecclesiastical rank. We must place Ximnez de Radas body and its adornment in the midst of the spectacle and ceremonial that took place in Toledo, Iberias greatest center of Catholic life and ritual during the thirteenth century. Toledos cathe-

61 As cited by Juan Fernndez Valverde from Vicente de la Fuente, Elogio del Arzobispo D. Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada y juicio crtico de sus escritos histricos. Ledo en sesin pblica en la Real Academia de la Historia, el 19 de junio de 1862. Appendix XVIII, pp. 100101.

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dral, one of Ximnez de Radas greatest projects, often described as representative of the increasing French Gothic inuence in Iberia,62 staged the performance of purely Christian rites by its inuential leaders, who were appropriately dressed in neries fashioned from Andalusi silks. As ceremonial objects, these sumptuous goods mirrored the grandeur and legitimacy of the faith whose rituals they enabled. As luxury items, they simultaneously reected the modes and manners of the Castilian rulers that defended it. The funerary vestments of the young Infante Don Alfonso de Castilla [Fig. 6] and of his father, Sancho IV (El Bravo), rearm this position.63 Barely four years of age when he died in 1291, Don Alfonsos body was laid to rest clothed in Andalusi neries at the Convento de San Pablo in Valladolid.64 Upon his death in 1295, Sancho IV himself also was buried surrounded by Andalusi textiles at the Capilla de la Santa Cruz in Toledo Cathedral. Though his body was clothed in Franciscan habit, his body was wrapped in a sumptuous shroud and his crowned head rested on a magnicent, brocaded pillow decorated with the heraldic symbols of Castile and Len.65 Even his famous sword, also found in his burial, was the

See, for example, Joaqun Yarza Luaces, Baja Edad Media. Los siglos del gtico. Madrid: Slex, 1992. 63 Don Alfonsos vestments and elaborately painted con are currently housed in the Museo de Valladolid, while the surviving items found in Sancho IVs burial are housed in Toledos Cathedral Treasury. 64 Gutirrez Baos points out that although the tomb was explored around 1880 (under unknown conditions), it was surveyed in detail in 1916. A detailed study was rst published in 1945, by which time the sarcophagus and its contents were a part of the collection of the Museo de Valladolid. See Fernando Gutirrez Baos, Las empresas artsticas de Sancho IV El Bravo. Burgos: Junta de Castilla y Soria, 1997, p. 93. See also, Arca sepulcral y trajes de los infantes don Alonso, hijo de Sancho IV el Bravo, y un hijo del infante don Manuel (Museo de Valladolid) in Museo Espaol de Antigedades Vol. XI (1881?); Saturnino Rivera Manescau, Una urna sepulcral y unos tejidos del Museo Arqueolgico de Valladolid in Memoria de los Museos Arqueolgicos Provinciales, Vol. V (1945). 65 Manuel Nez has stressed Sancho IVs commitment to humility as espoused by his anity with the Franciscan order as follows, Sancho IV y Enrique III adoptaron un compromiso pblico con la tutela franciscana y con su ensea; ajenos a cualquier planteamiento ostentoso post mortem, rompern con la tradicin del manto escarlata y los atavos en oro y seda tan caractersticos de la muerte coronada. In this interpretation, Nez overlooks the rich mantle that wrapped the kings otherwise humbly dressed body and the ornate pillow that supported his crowned head. While Sancho IV did break with Castilian costume to take on Franciscan habit as funerary vestments, there was no complete rejection of luxury post mortem on the part of the monarch. See Manuel Nez, La indumentaria, p. 76.

62

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rened product of Andalusi silversmiths. That Sancho IV, a king more associated with orthodox religiosity and crusader spirit against al-Andalus than with a strong commitment to multicultural life in his realm, chose Andalusi luxury items as suitable components of his and his familys burials deserves close attention. As a monarch who usurped the throne, Sancho IV was keenly aware of the importance of the trappings of kingship and the proper presentation of the kingly body as legitimizing tools.66 In the Libro de los castigos, commissioned by Sancho IV and completed at his scriptorium, the concept of the virtuous king, chosen by God to rule the land and uphold Christian morality, is compounded by detailed symbolic interpretations of each element of the kings sartorial display.67 Elaborating on his father Alfonso Xs validation of the importance of the proper use of luxury to distinguish the members of the ruling class, and more specically, the king, from the rest of society (in Las Siete Partidas, discussed above), Sancho IVs Libro de los castigos stresses the value of opulence as a signier of the supremacy and high moral standard of the royalty.68 The most descriptive and famous image of the ruler in the Libro de los castigos, describes an enthroned king, adorned with a bejeweled crown and dressed in vestments of silk and gold, which, the text explains, stood to signify the riches of his kingdom and the monarchs bounteousness in sharing them with those that served him well.69 Furthermore, the text equates the kings

66 Even though his father, Alfonso X, disinherited him in 1282, Sancho IV seized control of the monarchy by imposing his right to the throne before that of Fernando de la Cerdas progeny (the designated heirs). See Gutirrez Baos, Las empresas artsticas, pp. 2223. 67 See Paul Groussac, Le livre des Castigos e Documentos attribu au Roi D. Sanche IV in Revue Hispanique 15 (1906), pp. 212239. 68 See Gutirrez de Baos, Las empresas artsticas, pp. 8990; Miguel Angel Prez Priego, Imgenes literarias en torno a la condicin del prncipe in La literatura en la poca de Sancho IV, eds. Carlos Alvar and Jos Manuel Luca Megas. Alcal de Henares: Universidad de Alcal, 1996, pp. 257265. 69 E este rey de que te agora fablo estaua vestido vnos pannos cubiertos de oro e de seda. E por esto se entienden por el oro las riquezas e las noblezas que ha el rey del regno. E por la seda e las aposturas que deue auer en s, ca las aposturas non las puede amostrar conplida mente nin continuada mente synon ouiere riquezas en que las muestre. Los sus pannos dste rey eran orofresados en aljfar e con piedras preiosas, la qual orofresadura se demuestra los galardones de bien que deue dar el rey a los que lo merecen seruindole bien e faziendo buenas obras. See Sancho IV, Castigos del Rey Don Sancho IV, ed., Hugo Oscar Bizzarri. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2001, pp. 14344. Also, see Prez Priego, Imgenes literarias, p. 263.

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purity and chastity to a mantle covered with gold.70 The use of sumptuous materials to signify such basic traits of a pious and judicious ruler went beyond the gurative use of literary imagery. The material evidence provided by the surviving objects from the burials of Sancho IV and the Infante Don Alfonso de Castilla suggests that, indeed, Andalusi textiles were the materialized form of these descriptions. Contemporary documentary evidence further reinforces the preeminence of Andalusi textiles in Sancho IVs power displays as well as the high symbolic value of sumptuous materials in the majestic spectacle of the thirteenth-century Castilian court. Fernando Gutirrez Baos careful study of the inventory of Sancho IVs household yields information of critical importance to our understanding of the role of costume during his reign.71 As is the case with the accounts of Ximnez de Radas belongings at Toledo Cathedral, there is a direct relationship between the description of the pieces in Sancho IVs wardrobe and the surviving material evidence provided by his and Don Alfonsos funerary vestments. Similarly, while the documentation makes no distinction between textiles of Andalusi make and those of Castilian or Northern European origin, the description of particular garments corresponds to the extant examples found in the tombs of the monarch and his infant son.72 Gutirrez Baos accurately points out that the most exceptional garments in the kings collection, those made from Andalusi fabrics, were generically, and simply, called pannos, or cloth, in the documentation. Their description, however, breaks down the components of the decoration not in term of ornamental motifs, as is the priority of modern scholarship, but according to the sumptuous materials (con oro et de seda) from which the fabrics were crafted. The adoption of Andalusi textiles provides revealing evidence of the Castilian monarchys sense of socio-political legitimacy. The Castilian ruling classes shared their taste for the same neries as their Andalusi counterparts, whose courts were consuming exclusive materials just as actively. A story from Don Juan Manuels El Conde

See Prez Priego, Imgenes literarias, p. 263. Gutirrez Baos, Las empresas artsticas, pp. 8998. 72 Descibed as, pannos con oro et de seda et otras cosas que tomaron por el Rey. Cited by Gutirrez Baos from Cuentas y gastos del rey don Sancho IV in Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Historia del reinado de Sancho IV de Castilla, Vol. 1. Madrid: 1922, pp. xxiiixxiv.
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Lucanor, recounts how three weavers swindled a Muslim king, claiming that they could fashion for him a fantastic cloth with magical powers. The king, anxious to own such a fabric, locked the artisans in a palace until it was completed, but not before the swindling weavers took in the raw materials, which were nothing less than much gold, silver, silk and money.73 Andalusi sumptuousness evidently was worthy of both Christian and Islamic regal displays, as neither the details of its ornamentation nor its place of origin infringed upon or subtracted from each others projection of power. The description of the textile, magical or not, in Don Juan Manuels tale is consistent with the same qualities required for the neries of a Castilian ruler, as prescribed by the Siete Partidas and made evident by the surviving garments discussed above. While the importance of Andalusi luxury items as spoils of war is a repeated theme in contemporary conquest chronicles such as El Cantar del Mio Cid,74 their role as desirable luxury items was rmly established at court and at church in Castile, where they were acquired and specically designed to outt the wardrobes of kings, nobles, and ecclesiastical gures. The conicting cultural fantasies oered by Iberian conquest epics, where sumptuous Andalusi goods are seized as booty of war, and literary works of ction, such as El Conde Lucanor, which stress the fantastic powers of their ne materials, speak more of Northern Iberian desire for ownership of luxury than of hostility through appropriation.75 In contrast, the use of textiles as narrative tools in poems such as the Libro de Alexandre, for example, oers essential information pertaining to the meaning and manipulation of sumptuous costume in courtly ritual. While the study of the eort to medievalize classical themes in the poetic tradition of the thirteenth-century has been widely undertaken by literary historians,76 I would like to stress the
73 Y despus que hubieron tomado para hacer el pao mucho oro, plata, seda y mucho dinero . . . Don Juan Manuel, El Conde Lucanor, ed., Alfonso I. Sotelo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1995, p. 157. 74 See Mara Eugenia Lacarra, El Poema del Mio Cid: Realidad histrica e ideologa, Madrid: J Porra, 1980, pp. 3250. 75 For a more detailed analysis of the relationship between medieval spoils of war and the Iberian imaginary, incorporating material culture and literary investigation, see Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Botn de Guerra y Tesoro sagrado in Maravillas de la Espaa Medieval. Tesoro Sagrado y Monarqua, ed. Isidro Bango Torviso. Madrid: Junta de Castilla-Len and Caja Espaa, 2001, pp. 3139. 76 See, for example, Ian Michael, The Treatment of Classical Material in the Libro de Alexandre. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970; Elena Ctena, Introduction in Libro de Alejandro. Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1985, pp. XLVIIILIV. This

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value of Andalusi textiles in this practice and, therefore, in daily life. The circumstances of the use of textile imagery in the eort to bring classical themes to a contemporary (that is, medieval) audience further highlight the central role of Andalusi textiles in the practice(s) of cultural display and perception at play in Iberian society. To begin, the description of Darius clothing in the Libro de Alexandre brings to mind the sumptuary prescriptions for the appropriate presentation of a kingly body found in Alfonso Xs Second Partida (Law V, discussed earlier) and corresponds to the textile items described in Ximnez de Radas and Sancho IVs inventories. The poem describes the Persian emperor as follows,
El emperant vestido asm de apartarse de solos ricos omes comen de tratar Slo en el aseo fazi grant pagamientoa podrigelo quisquiere que l era el rey Solament de su vista lo podri entender non es omne naido e de la su palabra de un xamet bermejo en aquel logarejo; zo un grant conejo, con ellos su consejo. del su buen contenente toda la su gente; conoer veramente de toda orente. quiquier que lo vidiesse maguer nol conoiesse: que grado non loviesse, grant sabor non prisiesse.77

Darius impeccably dressed body was covered in a luxurious costume made of scarlet xamet, or silk woven with gold.78 While the
phenomenon is not limited to Iberia, as demonstrated in C. S. Lewis, What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato in Essays and Studies 17 (1932), pp. 5675. 77 Jess de Caas, ed., Libro de Alexandre. Madrid: Ctedra, 1988, p. 308. 78 Xamet, samite and ciclatun (in all spelling variations) refer to a heavy fabric made of silk and precious metals, either gold or silver. The use of this fabric was common throughout medieval Europe, though etymologically the term seems to be of Persian origin. Very likely, it was introduced to Europe by way of the Arab use of the word siqlatun or siqalat. Nonetheless, there is no consensus on the origins of the term(s), or even the true distinction between xamet and siqlatun. See, for example, R. B. Serjeant, Islamic Textiles: Materials for a History up to the Mongol Conquest. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1972, p. 169; May, Silk Textiles, pp. 6063. In the Iberian historical and literary contexts, however, there is a clear relationship between the fabric xamet and the color scarlet, indeed hinting at an etymological relationship to siqalat. Descriptions along the lines of pannos de xamet bermejos con letras de oro are commonly found in Alfoson Xs Gran Conquista de Ultramar and General Estoria as well as in Sancho IVs Castigos e Documentos, the Crnica del Cid, and many other lyrical texts.

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poem only refers directly to the sumptuous materials that made the emperors clothes, the subsequent verses imply that the rened quality of his vestments and his resulting immaculate (stately) presence were sucient for anyone to recognize and admire him as king. Eventually, upon his death in battle, the richness of his adornment allow for the quick identication of his body among those of his soldiers,
Yazin cerca del rey yazin del otro cabo yazi el ome bueno l yaze en medio, Como era el carro comera el rey Dario spolo Polistratus, corri a Alexandre muertos los carreteros muertos los escuderos entr estos compaeros, los otros orelleros ricament adobado, de pareer granado, fue dent erticado, luego con est mandado.79

Following the medieval tradition, Darius ne clothes were buried with him. In preparation for his interment, the silks, like his body, were washed and readied. Darius costly funerary vestments, the valdoquis (baldaques), or silks woven Baghdadi-style, mentioned in the text in direct relationship to kingly honor, are described as follows,
Tollronle la sangre vistironle vestidos, calronle espuelas non compraran las luas e los paos untados, valdoquis muy honrados, con apatos dorados, aver de dos casados.80

The Persian kings was not the only regal body surrounded by ne textiles, however. The famous description of Alexanders tent is also marked by a vivid reference to Andalusi luxury. Expensive scarlet xamet was also the fabric chosen to fashion his enormous tent, which was of such high quality that it appeared like a mirror as it reected the suns rays,

Jess de Caas, Libro de Alexandre, p. 439. Ibid., p. 439. This passage recalls one found in the General Estoria, where Alfonso Xs honored the Conde de Tolosas death in battle by shrouding his body in exquisite textiles before the burial. Arrancado el campo descendio de so caballo e desarmo el mismo con su mano al Conde de Tolosa alli do yazie muerto e zol bannar. Desi uistiol un xamet de muy grand precio que ganara quando uenciera a Almanor. Et mandol fazer un ataut e crubiol de un panno preciado e metiol dentro. Alfonso X, El Sabio, Text and Concordance of the General Estoria II, BNM MS. 10237, eds. Lloyd Kasten and Wilhelmina Jonxis-Henkemans. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1993.
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Larga era la tienda, a dos mill cavalleros Apelles el maestro non fari otro omne El pao de la tienda era de seda na, comera bien texido, quando el sol rayava, redonda e bien tajada, dari larga posada, a ovo debuxada, obra tan esmerada. era rico sobejo, de un xamet bermejo; egualment e parejo; luzi como espejo.81

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The details of life in the Libro de Alexandre follow a decidedly contemporary (medieval) pattern. Elena Ctena has argued that, as a period piece, the Libro de Alexandre was intended to serve as an example of Christian life, easily understandable to its medieval audience.82 That such a highly moralizing tale was highlighted with descriptions of the Andalusi silks that circulated so freely through Northern Iberian courts and churches only helps to underscore the unambiguous message of Castilian identity that they radiated. Andalusi textiles were key elements in the relationship between the kings righteousness and authority, the proper presentation of the kingly body (a symbol of the wealth of his realm) and the textiles that facilitated a legitimizing, if theatrical, monarchic display. Yet, the use of textile imagery in the lyrical poem Razn de Amor,83 indicates that Andalusi textiles also projected notions beyond that of power among the socio-cultural elites. Describing the meeting of two lovers in a garden, the poem describes the beautiful, young female as follows,
Mas vi venir una doncela, Pues nai, no vi tan bella. ... por la entura delgada, bien est[n]t e mesurada. El manto e su brial
Jess de Caas, Libro de Alexandre, p. 557. Elena Ctena, Libro de Alejandro, p. XLIX. 83 Charles C. Stebbins described the importance of Razn de Amor in the literary history of Iberia as follows, The Razn de Amor is the oldest lyrical poem of Castilian literature that has been preserved. Given the paucity of Castilian poetry of the Middle Ages prior to the fourteenth century, particularly in comparison with the abundance of French and Italian works, this little poem, displaying real artistic merit, constitutes a literary and linguistic document of great importance. Charles C. Stebbins, The Razn de Amor: An Old Spanish Lyrical Poem of the 13th Century in Allegorica, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1977), p. 144.
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de xamet era, que non dal; un so[m]brero tien en la tiesta que nol ziese mal la siesta; unas luvas tien en la mano, sabet, non jelas dio vilano . . .84

The ladys beauty, coupled with her elegance, illustrated by her brial, or luxurious tunic,85 made of scarlet xamet, represent more than the beauty ideal of the female beloved. By stressing the noble origin of her tunic and gloves (the source of her elegance), the poet stresses the moral quality of his mistress and, therefore, his own.86 In this correspondence between elegance, beauty and virtue, and in the context of a chance meeting between two lovers, the Andalusi textile provides one of the rst, highly legible and sensuous signs that leads to attraction and the development of passion. Deeply infused with such culture-specic moral qualities, Andalusi textiles of the thirteenth century certainly had an exceptional place in the cultural map of Northern Iberian society.87 The power of transmission of Andalusi culture over ve centuries of development and interaction with Castilian society created a panIberian aesthetic unity that transcended ethnic, religious, and political boundaries. The continuation of this established taste, even as Castilian hegemony was quickly gaining ground across Iberia, was aided by the Castilian monarchys clear notion of the legitimacy of its political power and of its claim to conquest and empire.88 Thirteenthcentury Castilian regal display was as much a projection of power
Charles C. Stebbins, The Razn de Amor, p. 156. Berns Madrazo described the brial as a Tnica talar con mangas estrechas. En todo tiempo, el brial fue una prenda de lujo que se confeccionaba con telas muy ricas. See Carmen Berns Madrazo, Indumentaria medieval espaola, p. 15. 86 See Alicia C. de Ferraresi, De amor y poesa en la Espaa medieval: prlogo a Juan Ruiz. Mxico: El Colegio de Mxico, 1976, pp. 7879. 87 Indeed, the relationship between proper attire and virtue recalls Maimnides recommendation to his son in his spiritual testament, Has de saber, hijo mo Abraham,que Dios tenga piedad de ti, que la morada y los vestidos son los smbolos del cuerpo honrado. Moses ben Maimum, Cartas y testamento, p. 318. Evidently, Maimnides attitude towards the presentation of the body indicates a shared moralistic attitude towards sartorial display between members of Castilian society irrespective of religious creed. However, much works remains to be done with regards to this particular question. For innovative information pertaining to the relationship between Jewish Viziers and Mara de Molina, see Ana Echevarras contribution to this volume. 88 Ariel Guiance, Los discursos sobre la muerte en la Castilla Medieval (siglos VIIXV). Valladolid: Junta de Castilla-Len, 1998, p. 315.
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and control for the outside world as it was an assertion of sovereignty and legitimacy within its own realm, but this sense of authenticity and entitlement to the land and its people came at a time when a distinctive visual language of power had yet to be fully developed. By this time, however, socio-cultural identities were rmly established across the Iberian frontier. Cultural ambiguity was neither the goal nor the motivation and, consequently, not an accurate rationalization of the adoption of Andalusi neries in thirteenth-century Castilian sumptuary displays. Much remains to be done in order to understand the full extent of the use and meaning of Andalusi luxury goods in Iberian culture through the centuries. Their presence in Central and Northern Iberian cathedral treasuries, private homes, and royal palaces did not end with the defeat of the last Andalusi kingdom. Instead, they continued to be prized and guarded as valuable items wrapped around saints relics or kingly bodies, or even saved to serve as evidence of the sumptuous grandeur of past monarchs and bishops. Although modern academic practice has concentrated on their formal qualities, interpreting their value simply as objects of cultural appropriation produced on the other side of the frontier, the focus must shift to the investigation of the specic circumstances and relationships that created links between Northern Iberian rulers, the conditions surrounding their displays of power and the objects that facilitated them. This, in turn, will continue to ll the interpretative gap that is the distance between aesthetic appreciation, geo-political ambition, and religious zeal in the history of cultural relations between alAndalus and its Northern Iberian neighbors.

ESCHATOLOGY OR BIOGRAPHY? ALFONSO X, MUHAMMADS LADDER AND A JEWISH GO-BETWEEN Ana Echevarra This essay is concerned with the introduction of dierent versions of Muhammads Night Journey to the seven heavens into the polemical literature, written both in Latin and Castilian, of the Iberian Peninsula during the medieval period up through the thirteenth century. An understanding and acknowledgement of the ongoing reinterpretation of Arabic materials interspersed with Christian motifs dear to polemicists will prove essential to an analysis of the evolution of the narrative under consideration here, from an early biographical form to the late, complex, apocalyptic text compiled under Alfonso X.1 Authorship of each source reveals a high degree of knowledge about the other, always ltered through the literary conventions of a specic historical moment and context. The Jews crucial role as cultural dealers between Islam and Christianity is also underlined in this study by a careful consideration of Abraham of Toledos contribution toward the canonical version of the Book of Muhammads Ladder. In 1907 Miguel Asn Palacios started a successful trend in literary/theological studies focused on the comparative study of Dantes
For an approach to the main topics discussed by polemic authors from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, see Norman Daniel, Islam and the West. The Making of an Image, Oxford, 1993 (revised ed.) and John Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the Medieval European Imagination, New York, 2002, pp. 3169. 2 Miguel Asin Palacios, La escatologa musulmana y la Divina Comedia, Madrid, 1907 (reed. 1984, English trans. London, 1926); Giorgio Levi della Vida, Nuova luce sulle fonti islamiche della Divina Comedia, al-Andalus, XIV, 1949, pp. 377407; Vicente Cantarino, Dante and Islam: History and Analysis of a controversy in Islam and its cultural divergence, Urbana, 1970; Enrico Cerulli, Il libro della Scala e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della Divina Comedia. Rome, 1949 and Nuove ricerche sul Libro della Scala e la conoscenza dellIslam in Occidente, Vatican, 1972; Miguel Cruz Hernndez, La raz comn de la religiosidad del mundo de la profeca y la posibilidad de las relaciones entre la escatologa islmica y la Divina Comedia Revista de la Universidad de Madrid, 1965, pp. 4880; J. W. Morris, The spiritual ascension: Ibn 'Arabi and the Mi'raj, part 2, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1988, pp. 6378. See also the article Mi'raj in EI, vol. VII (B. Schrieke, J. Horovitz and J. E. Bencheikh).
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Divine Comedy and its possible source, the Book of Muhammads Ladder, a compilation of medieval traditions about Prophet Muhammads Night Journey to heaven.2 Asns great merit was that he never found the manuscript concerned, with the result that he had to employ adth material in order to try to rebuild the core of the narrative. Since several manuscripts of the work have appearedone in the Vatican Library, another in the National Library in Paris, and a third in the Bodleian Library, Oxford3the Book of Muhammads Ladder has been edited and translated into most modern languages and has provided key source material for a variety of approaches to eschatological doctrines both in Islam and Christianity. In the particular context of the Iberian Peninsula, however, the Book of Muhammads Ladder can be considered one of the canonical sources for medieval Christian polemics and chronicles from the eleventh to the fteenth centuries. Its so-called translation into the Castilian vernacular, and subsequently, into Latin and French is rightly considered one of the key and emblematic examples of the knowledge of Islam in thirteenth century Europe. However, in my view, the comparative cross-cultural approach to multi-confessional eschatology evidenced by previous scholarship concerned with this issue has completely missed the point of what medieval Castilian authors in fact intended and sought to accomplish through the inclusion of this narrative in their works. Far from using any existing version of the Book of Muhammads Ladder for introducing criticism on Islamic Paradise, as has often been argued, Christian theologians used the Qur"n itself as their chief source for Islamic eschatology.4 I have argued elsewhere that the tradition of the Night Journey rst appeared in the Iberian Peninsula closely linked to Muhammads

3 Vat. Lat. 4072, BNF Latin 6064 and Laudensis Misc. 537, respectively. The editions are: Joaqun Muoz Sendino, La escala de Mahoma, Madrid, 1949; Enrico Cerulli, Il libro della Scala e la questione delle fonti arabo-spagnole della Divina Comedia. Roma, 1949; Peter Wunderli, Le Livre de lEschiele de Mahomet, Bern, 1968; E. Werner, Liber scale Machometi: Die lateinische Fassung des Kitab al-mi"radj, Dsseldorf, 1986. Versions in modern languages have recently appeared, some of them in bilingual editions with the Latin text: Le livre de lchelle de Mahomet (trans. G. Besson & M. BrossardDandr), Paris, 1991; Libro de la escala de Mahoma, segn la versin latina del siglo XIII de Buenaventura de Siena (trans. J. L. Oliver, foreword M. J. Viguera), Madrid, 1996; Reginald Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam in Old French: The Romance of Muhammad (1258) and The Book of Muhammads Ladder (1264), Leyden, Brill, 1997. 4 N. Daniel, Islam and the West, p. 172.

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polemic biography.5 In the rst accounts present in medieval Iberia, it is always a part of Muhammads biographya liber in the Latin sense, i.e., a part of a literary workand it was in this form that it rst became a topos in polemical literature. Only later, in the thirteenth century, was it transformed into a separate work, known as the Book of Muhammads Ladder. Until now, scholars have agreed that the book was translated into Castilian vernacular by a JewDon Abraham of Toledofrom an unknown Arabic compilation of traditions. Only after his work as translator and editor did a Christian engage in its translation into Latin, for a more learned clerical public. King Alfonso Xs secretary, Bonaventure of Siena, was in charge of this work. Although J. Monfrin questions his authorship due to the scarcity of other sources about him, the information provided by Muoz Sendino suggests that he did in fact exist and work on the translation of the Book of Muhammads Ladder into Latin.6 The matter of the sources of the Book of Muhammads Ladder, however, has not been solved. This study will propose one more hypothesis as a solution to the problem: the book, as opposed to the liber form, is the nal rendering of a series of compilations and recreations of both Latin and Arabic material on the Prophets Night Journey which can hardly be called a translation. The reading of the Book of Muhammads Ladder oered here is based on the facts surrounding its transformation into a separate work for polemical purposes, some time before 1262. The justication of such improvement of the textual evidence was given by polemicists when they conferred the book the same rank as the Qur"n as regards Islamic revelation. Indeed, the need, on the part of Christian theologians, to establish an authoritative or canonical source of the tradition on Muhammads Journey led Christian authors to refer to the Book of Muhammads Ladder as Muhammads second bookin other words, they asserted that both the Qur"n and the Book had been written by Muhammad, and were not, therefore, inspired by God (i.e., that they had not
5 As dened by N. Daniel, Islam and the West, p. 100: an essential disproof of the Islamic claim to revelation, developed by J. Tolan, Saracens, pp. 13747, in his study of early hostile biographies of the Prophet. Cf. Ana Echevarria, La reescritura del Libro de la Escala con nes polmicos (s. XIIIXV), Cahiers de lingistique et de civilisation hispaniques mdievales, 28, 2005 (forthcoming). 6 J. Monfrin, Les sources arabes de la Divine Comdie et la traduction franaise du Livre de lascension de Mahomet , Bibliothque de lcole des Chartes, 109, 1951, pp. 277287, specially pp. 28889.

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been divinely revealed).7 Thus, the prophetic mission of the Prophet could be openly critiziced, particularly in view of his shocking claims concerning his ability to see Paradise and Hell, to have conversed with God and even to have been touched by Him. Given that the Qur"n was already available in Latin through the translations ordered by Peter the Venerable and Jimnez de Rada, the Alphonsine workshop quickly dedicated itself to the task of oering a Latin version of the Book of Muhammads Ladder for polemical purposes. Before examining the method of translation used in this case, I would like to introduce some of the possible sources. By the thirteenth century, authors of three dierent genres had included the Night Journey in their works: biography, polemics and encyclopaedic history. In all cases, the texts were concerned with explaining how Muhammad had risen and conquered most of the Roman-Byzantine world, and how God was planning to deliver Christians of such a threat, which they nonetheless had deserved as a punishment for their sins. In this context, the demonstration of Muhammads false prophethood was vital, since it also provided a justication for Christian domination over Muslims. Such a possibility began to be seriously envisaged as great territories fell into Christian hands. The rst source to be used was, inevitably, the Qur"n. Muhammads Night Journey to Jerusalem (isr ") and to the Seven Heavens (mi'rj ) was mentioned very briey in suras 17,1 and 53,79.8 Later, it was developed in adth literature as two dierent traditions. Both were transmitted in several versions, until they were nally combined to form a single account, which was cited by Christian authors.9 The third group of combined traditions was well established in the ninth century. As for other Arabic sources, they were known to Christian authors through Mozarabic and Jewish go-betweens. There are three works which certainly had a share in the making up of the Latin Book of

Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada: Historia Arabum, ed. J. Lozano, Sevilla, 1974, p. 9, reproduced in the works compiled by Alfonso Xs workshop. Cf. M. Asn Palacios, La escatologa musulmana, p. 376. I think this goes strongly against the interpretation of R. Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam, p. 1, where the author believes that the prophetic relation reproduces Muslim traditions free of Christian interpretation. 8 William M. Watt, Introduccin al Corn. Madrid, 1987, p. 59 thinks that this passage was an interpolation. 9 M. Asn Palacios, La escatologa musulmana, pp. 966, concerning the combination of the two traditions; texts edited on pp. 42543.

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Muhammads Ladder: the biography of the Prophet by Ibn Isq, edited by 'Abd al-Malik ibn Hishm (c. 828); Al-abars Tafsr (c. 861), which presented a corrected compilation of dierent renderings of the isr" and the mi'rj, prepared for didactic purposes,10 and alAsh'ars Kitb shajarat al-yaqn, a compilation of religious eschatological legends well known in the twelfth century. Northern Christian authors knowledge of these works probably started with Mozarabic polemical texts, rather than with proper translations from Arabic. Among the polemical treatises available to Christians was the Liber denudationis sive ostensionis aut patefaciens, dated between 1085 and 1132.11 The treatiseused by Ramon Llull, Ramon Mart, Ricoldo de Montecroce and Alonso de Espinahas reached us in a late manuscript of the sixteenth century, which hinders comprehension of the work as a whole. Although Burman points out that the thirteenth chapter of this late rendering of the text is in fact a treatise by Dominican Ramon Mart, he believes that the twelfth chapter, dealing with the mi'rj, is a part of the original manuscript. The quotation of Muhammads Journey was basic to the discussion of the Prophets mission and his ability to perform miracles, a subject which was much discussed in al-Andalus shortly before the Christian treatise was written.12 The interest in including this chapter is made clear in the text itself: the author explicitly addresses the Muslims, asking how could they accept that Muhammad had performed such miracles if the Qur"n itself said that he had performed none. Another genre which made ample use of the story of Muhammads Journey was biography. Polemical biographies of the Prophet were famous in the Early Middle Ages, but they did not refer to this subject. Only in the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, did
10 Jean-Pierre Guillaume, Le texte sous le texte: les sources du Livre de lchelle et le thme du mi'rj dans limaginaire islamique, in Le livre de lchelle, p. 42. I will provide internal evidence of these texts appearing in thirteenth century versions below. 11 Marie Therse DAlverny, Deux traductions latines du Coran au Moyen Age, Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du Moyen Age, 16, 1948, pp. 125127; E. Cerulli, Il libro della Scala, p. 354. Thomas Burman, Religious Polemic and the History of the Mozarabs, Leiden, 1994, pp. 5055. Concerning authorship, Daniel and dAlverny reject the posibility of a Muslim convert, and Burman proposes either a Mozarab or a Jewish convert. Neither of the other treatises mentioned by Burman include the Night Journey, because all of them focus on the discussion of the Trinity. 12 See Maher Jarrar, Die Prophetenbiographie im islamischen Spanien. Ein Beitrag zur berlieferungs und Redaktiongeschichte, Frankfurt, 1989; cf. Ibn Bashkuwl, Kitb al-qurba il rabb al-'lamn, ed. and trans. Cristina de la Puente, Madrid, 1995, pp. 77110.

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the topos of the mi'rj enter the biographical form. The intent behind this introduction is clear: Muhammad is presented as the prototypical anti-saint, based in distorted Islamic traditions, and in an antihagiographic style whose conventions are intricately intertwined with contemporary Christian hagiographies and of narratives of saints lives.13 This, of course, contrasts sharply with the apologetic scope of Islamic lives of the Prophet. The rst rendering of the mi'rj in this newly and self-consciously polemicized Christian context appears in the Cdice de Uncastillo, in Aragn.14 The contents of this short polemic biography are a succession of false miracles performed by the Prophet, which placed his prophetical status in question. The collection in fact culminates with the mi'rj this time with no references to the isr", or the journey to Hell. This short work has still another point in common with the Book of Muhammads Ladder : a Jewish intermediary. In this case, the author or translator of the biography was a Jewish convert called Pedro who wrote an antiJewish tract copied in the same manuscript. If it was Pedro Alfonso, the most recent editor of the text does not make the identication.15 In its main points, this version of the Journey is quite similar to the one quoted by Jimnez de Rada. Chronologically, there were only two other Arabic sourcescorresponding to the popular version of the mi'rj which could be used by Latin Christian authors to give a longer account of the narrative: a tenth century work on al-isr" wa-l mi'rj attributed to the Prophets cousin Ibn 'Abbs, and al-Qushayrs Kitb al-mi'rj16 (d. 1074). I do not know of any serious attempt to collate either of these two works with the rendering given by the Book of Muhammads Ladder, despite the existence of a good number of editions of both works. In the thirteenth century, Castilian history was being reassessed and recreated by two writers: bishop Lucas of Tuy, and archbishop
13 A very interesting suggestion by John Tolan, Antihagiography: Embrico of Mainzs Vita Mahumeti , Journal of Medieval History, 22, pp. 2541. By the same author, Un cadavre mutil: le dchirement polmnique de Mahomet, Le Moyen Age, CIV1, 1998, pp. 5372. 14 Edited by Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Vida de Mahoma segn un cdice latino de mediados del siglo XIII, Erudicin bero-ultramarina, II (1931), pp. 365395, and more recently, by V. Valcrcel, La Vita Mahometi del cdice 10 de Uncastillo (s. XIII): estudio y edicin, Actas del III Congreso Hispnico de Latn Medieval, Len, 2002, I, pp. 211245. 15 Always according to its editor, V. Valcrcel, La Vita Mahometi, pp. 238239. 16 Al-Qushayr, Kitb al-mi'rj, ed. Ali Hasan 'Abd al-Qadir, Cairo, 1964.

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Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada. Both in the translation of the Qur"n ordered from Mark of Toledo by Jimnez de Rada and in Tuys Chronica we nd biographies of Muhammad which do not mention the Night Journey.17 On the other hand, Jimnez de Radas Historia arabum and Alfonso Xs Estoria de Espaa have two versions of the account. These renditions of the narrative can provide a comparative perspective through which to evaluate the other work produced in the Alphonsine workshop,the Book of Muhammads Ladder. Jimnez de Rada used for his Historia arabum what he considered to be Islamic sources, i.e., Mark of Toledos translation of the Qur"n, the adth, the Chronicle of 754 and other works by Christian authors.18 His version still shows traces of Arabic sources. For example, let us take the case of the isr":
In eius secundo libro repperitur inscriptum quod Mahomat insidebat uni bestie, que dicitur Alborac et preponebat pedem posteriorem super pedem anteriorem, et talibus bestiis Prophete consueuerant insidere. Et in tali bestia Mahomat Iherusalem est profectus et, ut ipse in libro suo mentitur, inuenit ibi Abraham, Moysen et Ihesum et Prophetas alios ex antiquis, qui ibi conuenerant ad adorandum, et optulerunt Mahometo tria uasa: unum lacte, aliud uino, aliud plenum aqua. Et audiuit uocem celitus hoc dicentem: Si uas aque acceperis, cum tuo populo submergeris. Si uas uini, cum gente tua peribis. Si uas lactis, tu cum tuo populo dirigeris. Et ipse accipiens scifum lactis bibit ex eo. Tunc Gabriel angelus inquit ei: Nunc es directus tu et omnes qui crediderint legi tue. Et oratione facta cum a Iherosolimis recessisset, quod uiderat discipulis reuelauit et addidit que secuntur: Cum uidi, inquit, Abraham, Moysen et Ihesum, occuli corporis dormiebant, set cordis occuli uigilabant; et uidi quod Abraham similis erat michi, Moyses autem erat rubeus atque crispus, Ihesus autem, Marie lius, auus capillis nec longus nec paruus, set dispositione et statura media coaptatus, et uidebatur aqua ab eius capite prosilire, uerumtamen aqua non erat ibi.19

The physical description of the Prophets was taken from the adth narrated by Ibn 'Abbs:
The Prophet said: on the night of my Ascent to Heaven, I saw Moses who was a tall brown curly-haired man as if he was one of the men
17 Lucas de Tuy, Crnica de Espaa, ed. J. Puyol, Madrid, 1927, pp. 205206. Cf. J. Tolan, Saracens, pp. 180183. 18 J. Tolan, Saracens, pp. 184185. 19 According to J. Muoz Sendino, al-Qurtub s Tadhkra. R. Jimnez de Rada, Historia Arabum, pp. 912. More work on Jimnez de Radas sources is being undertaken at the moment.

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of Shan"awa tribe, and I saw Jesus, a man of medium height and moderate complexion inclined to the red and white colours and of lank hair. I also saw Malik, the gate-keeper of the (Hell) Fire and AdDajjl.20

The fact that Jimnez de Rada had Mark of Toledo working for him as a translator provides the key for the introduction of this new material from adth literature into historical sources. It is also interesting to consider the derogatory aspect of this denition of the Prophets in the eyes of Christians. Abrahams description ts the ethnic characterization of the Arab tribes. The fact that Abraham was considered the direct ancestor of Arabs may have played a role in this depiction. On the other hand, Moses and Jesus are portrayed as specimens of a completely dierent ethnic type, fair and blond; ethnic or racial dierences between them and Muhammad are thus highlighted. Continuing along the same lines, the Estoria de Espaa suggested that Muhammad was trying to create a new law for those who had converted, thus telling them the tale of the mi'rj and other suras to seduce them.21 It is crucial to underline that the General Estoria follows Jimnez de Rada, instead of producing quotes from the Book of Muhammads Ladder, recently available. It may well be that the Alphonsine workshop preferred to continue using the same source employed in former chapters, thus eecting a separation of historical works from theological treatises, exemplied by the long version of the Book of Muhammads Ladder. But the reason might also be found in the process of translation itself. Accident and convenience played a large part in this process during the Middle Ages: translation into vernacular was made at random, and smaller books often came rst, because they were easier and faster to translate. To this we have to add the problems posed by manuscript tradition itself, such as scribal errors, the elaborate system of abbreviations which could be wrongly enlarged and thus produce misunderstandings, illegibility and unrealiable copies which might in fact be notes, or commentaries made on the basis of a work not preserved in conjunction with the commentary itself.

20 Al-Bukhr, The Translation of the Meanings of Al-Bukhr, ed. M. Muhsin Khn, Ankara, 197476, vol. IV, p. 303. 21 E. Cerulli, Nuove ricerche, p. 66.

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Moreover, the translation of new sources was complicated by mistranslation, confusion, substitution (deliberate or inadvertent) and the inherent polysemy of the words themselves. A good example of this problem is posed by the title of the work in question. While in Latin and French the literal rendering of ladder was chosen for mi'rj, the Castilian version used asendimiento or subimiento, another possible translation for the Arabic word, and one which was in fact more appropriate to the plot of the narrative in those cases when only al-Burq is present as a possible vehicle for Muhammads ascent.22 This translation, in fact, was retained by Mudejars and Moriscos in their late renderings of the tradition.23 The method of compilation of chronicles and scientic works by the Alphonsine workshop has been thoroughly studied. The structure of the Estoria de Espaa was built up from a basic source which was rounded out by information culled from other authoritative sources to form a nal and unied narrative. The resulting whole was ordered and divided into parts and chapters with new headings, as opposed to the systems by which the information had been classied in the originals. A chronological frame was imposed on the entirety, combining chronologies of the most important rulers of each period. The spine of the General Estoria was formed by Jimnez de Radas work, combined afterwards with Lucas de Tuys Chronicon mundi. Finally, other fragments from diverse Arabic and Latin historical works, as well as popular epic poems, were added. Cataln argues that those sources which presented more diculties in terms of their

E proevasse otrossi por Mahomat, que dizen los moros que fue propheta de Dios; que el zo un libro a que llaman en aravigo Amorchrch que quier dezir del subimiento. Et esto es porque quizo fazer creyente por aquel libro que el subiera al cielo e que el viera a Dios e que sopiera mucho de las sus poridades. Alfonso el Sabio, Setenario, ed. by Kenneth H. Vanderford with a study by R. Lapesa, Barcelona, 1984, p. 118. The explanation for the two translations is also in Le livre de lchelle, p. 109. 23 Fernando Guilln Robles, Leyendas moriscas, Madrid, 1886, vol. II, pp. 269298, also quoted with modern transliteration in A. Galms de Fuentes, Los manuscritos aljamiado-moriscos de la Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia (legado Pascual de Gayangos), Madrid, 1998, pp. 105112. Other publications on this subject include Consuelo Lpez Morillas, Textos aljamiados sobre la vida de Mahoma, el Profeta de los moriscos, Madrid, 1994, pp. 121140; R. Kontzi, La ascensin del profeta Mahoma a los cielos en los manuscritos aljamiados y en el manuscrito rabe M 518, Actes du II Symposium International dtudes Morisques, II, Tunis, 1984, pp. 4554; V. Hachard, La ascensin de Mahoma a los cielos (notes sur les versions morisques du mi'raj, Actes du V Symposium International dtudes Morisques, I, Zaghouan, 1993, pp. 333340.

22

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harmonization with the rest of the material were left for the end and given to a specialised editor, just as in the procedures governing the addition of illuminations.24 Such was the case of the Book of Muhammads Ladder, whose longer version may have been waiting at the workshop to be integrated into the Estoria. The version in the Primera Crnica General reads:
E en el segundo libro de la estoria deste Mahomat fallamos que cuando el querie yr a alguna part, que cabalgava en una bestia que dizen en arabigo alborach, que andava mucho ademas, por que en tales bestias como aquellas solien andar los profetas antigos dell otro tiempo; e en aquella bestia fue Mahomat a Iherusalem a fazer oracion. Desta bestia dizen que non es bestia mas spirito en semeiana de bestia. E el mintiendo dize que fallo y estones Abraham et a Moysen et a Ihesu, et aun a otros de los prophetas antigos que vinieran y fazer oracion, et quel dieron como en orenda tres uasos; ell uno era lleno de leche, ell otro de uino, e el tercero de agua; e que oyo una voz del cielo quel dixo: si el uaso dell agua bevieres seras crebantado tu con todo tu pueblo; si el uaso del uino beuieres perder te as con toda tu yent; mas si el uaso de la leche beuieres seras enderesado tu et tu pueblo. E yo tome estones, dixo el, el uaso de la leche, et beui del et dixo me luego ell angel Grabiel: agora eres tu enderesado et todos los qui creyeren en tu ley. E pues que ell ouo fecha su oracion en Iherusalem, tornosse para Meca, e en viniendo por el camino dixo tod esto que auemos dicho a sus disciplos que uinien con el, et aun estas cosas que agora diremos: quando yo ui a Abraham et a Moysen et a Ihesu, dixo el, los oios deste mio cuerpo dormien, mas los oios del mio coraon uelauan; e semeio me que Abraham era tal como yo en forma et en cuerpo, et que semeiava mucho comigo; mas Moysen era ruvio et crespo; et Ihesu, jo de Maria, avie los cabellos amariellos, et non era luengo nin pequenno, mas mesurado et convenible, de forma mediana, e semeiavan los cabellos del que todos eran moiados et que corrien agua, tanto eran fremosos et claros.25

Even so, at the Alphonsine workshop, some changes were made in Jimnez de Radas version, which I have marked in the text. These are details taken from the Life of Muhammad by Ibn Isq, and more specically, a transmission by 'Abd Allh ibn Mas'd:26
24 Diego Cataln, El taller historiogrco alfons (mtodos y problemas en el trabajo compilatorio), in La Estoria de Espaa de Alfonso X. Creacin y evolucin, Madrid, 1990, pp. 4550. On Muhammads biography, contained in the part devoted to the Estoria de los godos, see the same author, De la silva textual al taller historiogrco alfons, Madrid, 1997, 6667; 85. 25 Primera Crnica General de Espaa (ed. R. Menndez Pidal y D. Cataln). Madrid, 1977, p. 272. 26 'Abd al-Malik ibn Hishm, The Life of Muhammad (Srat rasl Allh), trans.

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Buraq, the animal whose every stride carried it as far as its eye could reach on which the prophets before him used to ride was brought to the apostle and he was mounted on it. His companion (Gabriel) went with him to see the wonders between heaven and earth, until he came to Jerusalems temple. There he found Abraham the friend of God, Moses and Jesus assembled with a company of the prophets, and he prayed with them. Then he was brought three vessels containing milk, wine and water respectively. The apostle said: I heard a voice saying when these were oered to me: If he takes the water he will be drowned, and his people also; if he takes the wine he will go astray and his people also. So I took the vessel containing milk and drank it. Gabriel said to me: You have been rightly guided and so will your people be, Muhammad.

No Latin copy of this biography was available at this time in Europe, so it must be assumed that the team of translators had, rst, some knowledge about the work and, second, that they possessed a copy in Arabic for their use. There was just one Christian writer familiar enough with Ibn Hishms Sra who might be quoted: Dominican Ramon Mart, the author of the Pugio dei, who wrote his Explanatio symboli apostolorum and De seta Machometi around 1257. Furthermore, it must be remembered that the inclusion of the mi'rj in the Estoria de Espaa was justied in historical terms. As Tolan has remarked, the general ideological background underlying the vast cultural program sponsored by Alfonso X was grounded in far more complicated motives than mere literary admiration. According to Tolan, the Learned King made systematic attempts to appropriate and Hispanize Arabic culture. At the same time, he attempted certainly not coincidentallyto legitimate his rule over the Mudejar population of those kingdoms he had recently conquered or absorbed Andaluca, Niebla, Murcia. Since Muhammad had failed in proving his prophetic status through true signs, his law was superseded by Christianity, as shown by Gods favor in battle. The Christian king could thus legitimately claim the right to rule over his followers, who then joined the Jews among the ranks of the rightly conquered.27 My view follows this same line of thinking. Moreover, the new Alfonsine ideology of sovereignty needed a propaganda which would

A. Guillaume, Oxford, 1955, p. 182. This biography of Muhammad, compiled by Ibn Isq (d. c. 767) and reworked by Ibn Hishm (d. c. 830) became the fundamental source of information about Muhammads life in the Islamic world. 27 J. Tolan, Saracens, pp. 186189.

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legitimate it in multiconfessional terms, and the Book of Muhammads Ladder was used to demonstrate the theological arguments of this scheme. That, in fact, is the reason for the use of Muhammads polemic biography and the mi'rj in the Estoria de Espaa: to support Alfonso Xs political agenda.28 These changes in historiographical style (not to mention agenda) brought new approaches to the gure of the Prophet, always in some kind of polemical way. A most interesting example (because it links the old polemic biographies with the exemplary biographies in use by preachers after the thirteenth century) is found in the writings of Juan Gil de Zamora ( Johannes Egidius Zamorensis). The bishop of Zamora was an important gure at Alfonso Xs court. He became the infante Sanchos tutor, and was a prolic writer on a variety of subjects. His Liber illustrium personarum was conceived as a biographical dictionary of remarkable people and saints. He included monks, saints and kings, among others, in an attempt to provide his brothers (doctors and preachers) with exempla with which to illustrate points to their public and provide them with suitable moral examples, and thus help to preserve the social order. Most interestingly, among them he chose Muhammad, due to his fame and celebrity.29 Gils biography closely follows Jimnez de Radas account,30 but introduces some details unknown in other sources. He places Muhammads Night Journey after Heracliuss defeat, when the Prophet decided to seduce the souls with fables. Again, he refers to the Prophets second book, i.e., the Book of Muhammads Ladder.31 Let us go back to my former hypothesis on the Book of Muhammads Ladder as the nal rendering of a series of Latin and Arabic material on the Prophets Ascent to Heaven. Hyatte has suggested, rightly in my view, that the similarities between the Book of Muhammads Ladder and Christian apocalyptic texts helped to place its translation within a Christian literary genre. On the other hand, dissimilarities

J. Muoz Sendino, La escala de Mahoma, pp. 2767; N. Daniel, Islam and the West, p. 233; J. Tolan, Saracens, p. 188. 29 Juan Gil de Zamora, Maremagnum de escrituras. Dictaminis epithalamium. Libro de las personas ilustres. Formacin del prncipe, trans. & study by J.-L. Martn, Zamora, 1995, pp. 21, 49. Muhammads biography is taken from Biblioteca Universitaria de Salamanca, ms. 2691, pp. 5167. 30 In fact, his text of the isr" is taken almost word-for-word from Radas version, so I will not repeat the quote. 31 Juan Gil de Zamora, Libro de las personas ilustres, p. 64.

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with Christian revelation in the same text provided polemical material based on the errors of the Islamic faith.32 According to the foreword, the person in charge of the translation was Don Abraham, master, doctor and physician of Alfonso X (magistro, alfaquim, physicus were the words used). His surname is never mentioned in the translations, but he has been identied as the brother of ag (Isaac) ibn Wacar, physician to the infante Don Juan Manuel.33 He might be the same man as the alfaque Abraham who had Fernn Ruiz de Castros jewells in pawn when they were recovered by the king.34 He translated at least three works for Alfonso: the Book of Muhammads Ladder (1264) with Bonaventure of Siena, the Libro de la Aafeha by Azarquiel (1277) with Bernaldo the Arabian and Ibn al-Haythams Kitb f hay"t al-'lam, known in Latin as Liber de mundo et coelo or De motu et rmamento celorum (date unknown). It seems that his work in a religious text as Arabic translator paved his way into the eld of scientic translation, a eld in which he was in fact a neophyte.35
R. Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam, pp. 2629. According to the Libro de las armas by Don Juan Manuel, in september 1294 sali de aqui e fuy me para el Rey [Sancho IV] et fallelo en Madrit, et posava en las casas de las duennas de vuestra orden. Et estaba ya muy maltrecho. Envio por mi et quiso que estudiese en la fabla maestro Gonalo, el abbad de Arvas, et Alfonso Godinez et Pero Sanchiz de la camara, et don Habraham su sico, et Johan Sanchis de Ayala, mi mayordomo, et Gomes Ferrandez, mio ayo, et Alfonso Garcia que me criava et non se partie de mi, et don ag mio sico, que era hermano mayor de don Abraam, sico del Rey et mio, ca bien cred que el Rey Don Alfonso et mio padre en su vida et el Rey Don Sancho en su vida et yo siempre nuestras casas fueron unas et nuestros ociales siempre fueron unos. Don Juan Manuel, Tractado sobre las armas, ed. Pascual de Gayangos, Madrid, 1860, p. 262; cf. E. Cerulli, Il libro della Scala, pp. 2122. The surname Ibn Wacar was suggested by Yitzak Baer, Historia de los judos en la Espaa cristiana, Barcelona, 1998 (revised ed.), p. 151, 155. Another identicationas Abraham ibn Shoshanwas suggested by David Romano, Le opere scientiche di Alfonso X e lintervento degli ebrei, in De historia juda hispnica, Barcelona, 1991, pp. 147181, esp. pp. 161162, but it seems less likely in view of the rest of the sources. Other references to Abraham are found in Evelyn S. Procter, The Scentic Works of the Court of Alfonso X of Castille: the King and his Collaborators, The Modern Language Review, XL, 1945, pp. 1229. 34 E despus, vos teniendolo empennado a un judio de Toledo que dizian el alfaque don Abrahen, et las sortijas e piedras preiosas que fueron de don Pedro Fernndez el Castellano, quitole el rey todo e diovoslo, e diovos mucha mas tierra de la que tenia vuestro padre, Crnica de Alfonso X, ed. M. Gonzlez Jimnez, Murcia, 2000, p. 106. 35 Julio Sams, El original rabe y la versin alfons del Kitb f hay"t al-'lam de Ibn al-Haytham and Jos Luis Mancha, La versin alfons del F hay"t al'lam (De conguratione mundi ) de Ibn al-Haytham, both in Ochava espera y Astrofsica. Textos y estudios sobre las fuentes rabes de la astronoma de Alfonso X, Barcelona, 1990, pp. 115132 and 133208 respectively. Both scholars point out several important
33 32

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As for his life, there are few pieces of evidence compared to what is known of the circumstances of other contemporary Jews of his position. Only one direct reference to the kings astronomer tells of his capture by a group of marauders during the struggles between the nobility and the king around 1270.36 But, why should Alfonsos collaborator be kidnapped and kept as a hostage if he was not a rich courtier with important ties to other members of the Jewish community? For the moment this question is still unresolved. During the reign of Sancho IV, he continued with his activities as translatorthis time, Arabic scribe (escribano del arbigo)at the royal administration and physician of the king. He was rewarded a thousand maravedis for his oce in 1292 and two thousand in 1294. On that year he also received some textiles from queen Mara de Molina for his assiduous caring for the king.37 It is important to identify the Jewish translator of the Book of Muhammads Ladder because his mission, according to the foreword, was to translate the work from Arabic into Castilian vernacular, divide it into chapters and provide them with headings. What Abraham of Toledo most probably translated into Castilian vernacular were the adth concerning the mi'rj and the isr", to which were added Christian commentaries on the Arabic tradition which was already available in Latin translation, and this was probably the work of Bonaventure of Siena or another Latinist and theologian. More than

mistakes in the technical translation of the book. Apparently Abraham was not trained in astronomy. 36 Y. Baer, Historia de los judos, p. 141. 37 Mercedes Gaibrois de Ballesteros, Historia del reinado de Sancho IV de Castilla, Madrid, 192228, vol. I, pp. 3839, vol. II, pp. 349, 371; edited documents, pp. LVIIILIX, LXXVIII. See a more updated version of the transcription in Asuncin Lpez Dapena, Cuentas y gastos (12921295) del rey Sancho IV el Bravo (12841295), Crdoba, 1984, pp. 463464, 500, 634; on Abrahams successor as scribe, p. 669. The text reads: A don Abrahem, sico, por su traslado de carta del rey, por raon de la escrivania, mil maravedis. Dada XXIII de maro, era de XXX; mostro pago de LX maravedis. A don ag, sico, de los dos mil quatroientos maravedis que y tiene por tree alvalas, mil iento veynte e siete maravedis e medio. A don Abrahem, sico, de los mil maravedis, setenta maravedis. A un ome de maestre Nicolas et a otro de don Abrahem, sico, por carta de la reyna, a cada uno ocho varas, dada XVII de setiembre. Mostro carta del rey, que de los CCC et X mill maravedis que recabdava desta fonsadera, que diese todo Abraham Abenaar que avia aver dellos II mill marveds de la escrivania del Aravigo, mostro pago, mill. I understand that this Abraham is our man. See also Norman Roth, Jewish collaborators in Alfonsos scientic work, in Emperor of Culture, ed. Robert I. Burns, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania University Press, 1990, pp. 5971.

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a translator, Bonaventure was a specialised editor who added material from Christian authorities. Abrahams work was therefore only a draft, and that is why it has not been preserved, unlike other vernacular productions of the Alphonsine school which were intended for use in Castilian. It was the Latin version with interpolations that was intended for public use. But as I have argued before, we know that the person in charge of the draft translation also reworked the sources to t the overall plan of the book. Modications, additions and clarications were welcome when the text could be improved, so the translator was free to incorporate his knowledge into the nal version. For instance, the description of the angels who were supporting Gods throne in the uppermost heaven bears an interesting parallel to the gures of the Four Evangelists, a concept which was recaptured by the Setenario in the chapter concerning How the Prophets showed that there should only be four evangelists, and no more. Exceptionally enough, Muhammad was quoted among the prophets to declare that truth: Et dixo commo viera estas quatro animalias e gurolas asi commo avedes oydo. E puso en su rrazon que aquella que auya faz de omne rrogaria a Dios en el dia del juyzio por los omnes; et la que semeiava aguila por las aves, et la del len por las bestias eras.38 The description given by the Book of Muhammads Ladder was, of course, more complex:39
Know that the angels who bear the throne upon their shoulders came into being together with the throne, and the distance from their shoulders to their heads is the same as the thrones thickness. And the

Setenario, p. 118. Cf. E. Cerulli, Il libro della Scala, pp. 24, 26. The English version is taken from R. Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam, pp. 127128. The Latin rendering reads as follows: Scias quod hii angeli qui cathedram super humeros portant suos cum ipsa fuerunt cathedra simul nati, habentes in spisso ab humerus suis tantum usque ad capita eorundem quantum grossa est ipsa cathedra, cuius grossitudo tanta est quod nemo dicere ipsam posset, nisi solus Deus qui fecit eandem. Habebat enim quilibet eorum angelorum quatuor facies, unam ante, aliam retro, aliam a dextris et aliam a sinistris, et similiter guras quatuor, unam hominis, aliam aquile, aliam leonis et aliam tauri. (. . .) Angeli autem qui cathedra portant sunt quatuor, sed cum iudicii dies advenerit, ponet ibi Deus alios quatuor angelus et sic erunt octo. Et angelus existens in gura hominis rogabit Deum pro hominibus ut misereatur eis, et peccata dimittat; alius existens in gura aquile rogabit pro avibus; alius existens in gura leonis pro bestiis silvestribus et alius existens in gura tauri pro bestiis domesticis exorabit, Le livre de lchelle, pp. 158162. Reference is made to two main sources: Apocalypse 4, 68 and Ezekiel 1, 511, on the Christian side, and Qur"n 69:17.
39

38

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thrones thickness is so great that no one could measure it except Our Lord God alone Who made it. Each of these angels has four faces, one in front, another behind, the next facing right, and the last, left, and he also has four [kinds of] features: the rst is a mans, the second an eagles, the third a lions, and the last a bulls. (. . .) When Judgment Day comes, Our Lord will place there four more angels, and thus they will be eight. The angel with a mans features will entreat God on mens behalf to have mercy on them and pardon their sins; the next angel, who has an eagles appearance, will pray for birds; the third, with a lions features, will pray on behalf of savage beasts; and the last, who has a bulls features, will plead for domestic animals.

A single but striking example of simplicity in the narrative is given at the rst stage of Muhammads journey, the isr". Although more importance is given to the position of Muhammad among the Prophets and the prayers they said together, the source used by the translator of the Book of Muhammads Ladder did not linger on the description of each Prophet, and avoided the tradition about the glasses of water, wine and milk:
After I, Muhammad, entered the said Temple in the company of Gabriel, thereon I came upon all the prophets standing in a circle within the Temple whom God had made leave their tombs and go there to honor me. All stood waiting for me, and when they saw me, all began saying prayers. Then Gabriel told me: Come forward, Muhammad, and say a prayer before the others, for you are the king of all prophets and lord of all peoples. When I heard this, I moved forward and said two rather short prayers, and then I rose to my feet, and immediately all the prophets greeted me, showed me great joy, honored me much, embraced me, and told me glad tidings of the great good that God had prepared for me and my people. And each inquired individually about my aairs, and every one of them showed me openly that he desired very much for Our Lord God to do me great good and honor. And so all prayed to Our Lord about it for my sake. Chapter ve. After I, Muhammad, said my prayers in the aforesaid Temple with the prophets present who embraced and received me so honorably, as you heard, Gabriel took me by the hand and led me outside the Temple, and he showed me a ladder that extended from the rst heaven all the way down to the ground where I stood. And it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.40
40 R. Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam, p. 109. Distinctio IV capituli. Postquam ego Machometus intraui in Templum superius nominatum et Gabriel mecum similiter, ecce inueni ibi omnes prophetas stantes in circuitu templi de intus; quos Deus illuc

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Another source quoted literally in the Book of Muhammads Ladder is the description of al-Burq given by the twelfth century collection of eschatological legends compiled by Ab al-asan al-Ash'ar. It is dicult to know whether this text was translated ex professo for the Book of Muhammads Ladder, or if it was already included in an Arabic version. But it is also necessary to consider that al-Ash'ars chapter on al-Burq is inserted in a purely eschatological context: between the assembly of all creatures before the Day of Judgment and the sound of the horn at the time of resurrection:41
And this animal was of the following form: it was larger than an ass and smaller than a mule; it had a mans face; its hair was of pearls, and the mane, of emeralds, and the tail, of rubies; its eyes were brighter than the sun; it had feet and hooves like a camels; and all its color was of pure light.

There were other easily available descriptions of the Prophets mount in the context of the isr", in adth material and elsewhere. Why go into the trouble of nding its description, unless it circulated as a single legend transmitted separately? In any case, if it was the translator who included this paragraph, his knowledge of Islamic sources was remarkable.
uenire pro me honorando et exire de ipsorum fecerat sepu1turis. Stabant quidem omnes super pedes eorum me expectando erecti. Et cum uiderunt me, cuncti oraciones facere inceperunt. Tunc uero Gabriel michi dixit: Veni ante me, Machomete, et fac oracionem priusquam alii, quia tu es rex prophetarum omnium et cunctarum gencium dominus. Hoc autem audiens, misi me ante et feci duas oraciones satis leues. Deinde erexi me super pedes et statim omnes prophete me salutauerunt et magnum quidem gaudium facientes, et multum michi eciam honoris contulerunt, et amplexantes me dixerunt michi bona noua de maximo bono quod Deus michi preparauerat et meo populo uniuerso. Nam quilibet ipsorum quesiuit a me de agendis meis et nullus eorum fuit qui aperto non monstraret indicio se uelle quod Deus magnum michi bonum faceret et honorem; ymo pro me omnes Deum exinde rogauerunt. Distinctio V capituli. Oracionibus a me Machometo peractis in Templo superius nominato cum prophetis ibidem astantibus ac me honorice recepto ab eis, et prout intellexistis, eciam amplexato, ecce Gabriel me per manum accipiens duxit extra Templum et ostendit michi quamdam scalam que durabat a primo celo usque ad terram ubi stabam. Erat enim scala illa pulcrior res quam unquam uisa extiterit. Le livre de lchelle, pp. 106108. 41 R. Hyatte, The Prophet of Islam, p. 106. Hec namque bestia talis erat forme, videlicet quod ipsa erat grandior quam asinus et parvior quam mulus. Habebat enim faciem hominis et eius crines erant de perlis, toppetus autem de smaragdo, cauda quidem de rubino, oculi vero clariores sole. Pedes quoque habebat et ungulas ad modum cameli. Nam omne ipsius color erat purissime claritatis, Le livre de lchelle, p. 100; Ab al-asan al-Ash'ar, Kitb shajarat al-yaqn, Spanish trans. and ed. C. Castillo, Madrid, 1987, p. 15.

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What kind of translator was qualied to manage Christian and Arabic sources in such a way, without the prejudices endemic to the Christian clergy, but nonetheless willing and able to manipulate the material? We are confronted with a model of the learned Jewish courtier very much in keeping with the same gure in the golden period of Arabic Andalusi culture. Don Abraham ibn Wacar was not a gure of the highest rank within the Jewish communtiy, such as its head, rab Don odros ben Yosef Halev Abulaa. Nor was he as prominent as courtiers, tax collectors and bankers like Iac ibn adoc (Don ag de la Maleha) or Don Mer ibn Shoshn. However, he did enjoy a prestigious career as the kings physician and scribe. The escribana del arbigo was, strangely enough, always conferred on a Jew during the thirteenth century. The title involved directing the royal chancery of Arabic letters and translations; under his authority there were several interpreters (trujamanes) of lesser rank. They were in charge of writing communications to the Islamic kingdoms of the Peninsula and North Africa, and they could also be used as ambassadors (mandaderos), to carry the messages themselves. This situation was probably a consequence of the scarcity of learned Mudejars in Christian kingdoms who might be entrusted with this job. By the time of the reigns of Alfonso X in Castile and James I in Aragon, those Jews in charge of this oce were always at the same time translators and physicians (alfaquines), and were often members of the same families. In Aragon, there were the brothers Baye and Shelomo Alconstantin and Astruc Bonsenyor, all three under James I, and the brothers Shemuel and Yehud Abenmenass under Pedro III; Bonsenyors son, Bondavid, was in charge under Alfonso III.42 In Castile, only Abraham ibn Wacar and his successor Abulhagag are recorded for Sancho IVs period. The transmission of Arabic as a second language in Jewish families who were already uent in Hebrew and vernacular languages suggests a pattern of learned Jews adopted from earlier times, as seems to be the case in Toledo. Although Romance was the language of the majority, Arabic was still the language of culture for Jews. There were groups of Arabists well into the fourteenth century in cities like Saragossa and Toledo,
42 D. Romano, Judos escribanos y trujamanes de rabe en la Corona de Aragn (reinados de Jaime I a Jaime II), in De historia juda hispnica, Barcelona, 1991, pp. 239273. Unfortunately, there are no letters of appointment for Castile like the ones published in this article concerning Aragon.

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and knowledge of Arabic sources was combined with the use of Arabic responsa and contracts in legal confrontations, both in Christian and Jewish groups living in Toledo.43 The libraries of these learned Jews would tell us a great deal concerning what works they knew, what styles they copied, and what was the inuence of Arabic culture in their own. Unfortunately, their contents are dicult to assess for the thirteenth century.44 On the other hand, most of the Italian collaborators of Alfonso X were in charge of the task of re-translation, i.e., the rendering into Latin of those works already translated into vernacular by Jews. Romano cites three cases dealing with scientic texts: a certain Alvaro, Egidio de Tebaldis and Pietro di Reggio. To these we can add Bonaventure of Siena for religious works. The kings interest in Italian translators may have to do with the quality of their Latin, as the works were intended for a learned public all over Europe. The recurrence of working teams formed by a Jew and an Italian recalls the successful pair constituted by Abraham bar Hiyya and Plato of Tivoli in Barcelona (working between 11351145), who translated together astronomical and astrological treatises of utmost importance.45 All this goes to show that these translators played an important role in the transference from Arabic to vernacular languages of key works of scientic, religious and profane literature. However, in the case of Islamic traditions, these works were not translated for mere interest in the culture which produced them, but more in order that Christians might successfully engage in polemics and persuade Muslims of the need for their conversion. The relationship between Muslim and Jewish learned men coexisting in the royal court needs further study,46 but the world of the learned elites acted as a perfect melting

43 Eleazar Gutwirth, Asher b. Yehiel e Israel Israeli: actitudes hispano-judas hacia el rabe, in Creencias y culturas. Cristianos, judos y musulmanes en la Espaa medieval, ed. Carlos Carrete Parrondo and Alisa Meyuhas Ginio, Salamanca, 1998, pp. 97111. 44 A very engaging article on this subject, Ross Brann, Reexiones sobre el rabe y la identidad literaria de los judos de al-Andalus, in Judos y musulmanes en al-Andalus y el Magreb. Contactos intelectuales, ed. Maribel Fierro, Madrid, 2002, pp. 1358. 45 David Romano, El papel judo en la transmisin de la cultura, Hispania Sacra, 40, 1988, pp. 972973. 46 Interesting contributions to this eld are the articles written by Elazar Gutwirth quoted above, and Hispano-Jewish Attitudes to the Moors in the Fifteenth Century, Sefarad (1989), pp. 237262. Also, Steven M. Wasserstrom, Jewish-Muslim Relations

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pot for cultural schemes. The fact that none of the earlier religions Judaism and Christianityaccepted Muhammad as a true prophet provides this interesting example of hybrid literary style, half way between biography, eschatology and polemics. Yet again, a pattern which escapes a simple denition in the complex world of the medieval Iberian Peninsula. By revising the comparative approach to the Book of Muhammads Ladder as an eschatological work, it has been possible to demonstrate that, no matter how interesting such an approach seemed to scholars in the twentieth century, it was not the scope chosen by medieval authors. From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, the Islamic traditions of the mi'rj and the isr" suered a transformation in the hands of Christian writers. Polemic biographies and treatises used this material to discuss the Prophets mission and, ultimately, to discredit Islam. Later on, they considered it useful to have a completed version of the book, to use as the primary canonical source for antiIslamic polemics. To this end, they had a longer rendering of Muhammads journey translated and collated with Christian material. The participation of a Jewish translator together with a Latinist accords the work an intriguing cross-cultural dimension, due to the subtle re-elaboration of the text. The nished rendering of the Book of Muhammads Ladder was translated into Latin and French, and then used by most of the great polemic writers of the fourteenth and fteenth centuries in their criticism of Islam.

in the Context of Andalusian Emigration, in Christian, Muslims and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain. Interaction and Cultural Change, ed. by Mark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, Notre Dame, 2000, pp. 6987.

FRIEND OF FOE: THE DIVIDED LOYALTY OF LVAR FEZ IN THE POEMA DE MIO CID Gregory B. Kaplan

The Poema de mio Cid (hereafter PMC ) recasts the last decade of the Cids military career in order to underscore the theme of loyalty, which is exemplied in the poem by his constancy in the service of King Alfonso VI (Len, r. 10651109; Castile, r. 10721109). This theme is also communicated in the devotion displayed to the Cid by his own vassals, a band of warriors comprised of several adaptations of historical personages, including lvar Fez, Malanda, Muo Gustioz, and Martn Muoz. None of these is more important to the action of the PMC than lvar Fez, whose devotion to the Cid mirrors the Cids delity to the king. lvar Fezs function as a paradigm of loyalty is displayed on two levels in the PMC by adapting his historical career. While he serves as the Cids diestro brao (PMC, v. 753)1 in a literary exile imposed by Alfonso VI, history records that lvar Fez was during the same time one of that kings most trusted vassals and a close ally of Count Pedro Ansrez, the count of Carrin. Just as lvar Fezs service to the king is the historical foundation for his ambassadorial role in communicating the Cids loyalty to the king, his association in the PMC with the Infantes de Carrin and his defense of Pedro Ansrez at the court of Alfonso VI evoke the historical tie between lvar Fez and the noble Beni-Gmez family from Len, which opposed the Cid in ction and reality. lvar Fezs historical allegiances are integrated into the PMC without compromising his role as the Cids chief lieutenant, a technique that reinforces the overall theme of loyalty in the poem by perpetuating the image of lvar Fezs faithful service as a vassal. The present study endeavors to establish a parallel between the manner by which lvar Fezs kinship to Ansrez is woven into the PMC and the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, a Leonese historiographic text that treats the theme of loyalty similarly.
1 Poema de mio Cid, ed. Ian Michael, 5th ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1984). All further references will be to this edition.

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The existence of this parallel speaks to the critically neglected inuence exerted by Leonese historiography on the composition of the PMC, a Castilian work most likely composed during a period of tensions between Castile and Len. By extension, recognition of this Leonese inuence, which appears to have informed the poets decision to use lvar Fezs loyalty as a vehicle for portraying one of the most powerful Leonese noble families in a positive light, questions monolithic critical conceptions of the PMC as an assertion of Castilian Reconquest ideals at the expense of neighboring Len and points instead to the works broader appeal to audiences from both regions. Although they may have been related (lvar Fez is historically documented as the Cids nephew),2 history suggests that lvar Fez was anything but the Cids lieutenant. It is highly doubtful that lvar Fez accompanied the Cid during his second exile (Albricia, lbar Fez, ca echados somos de tierra! [PMC, v. 14]), which occurred in 1089 and which is the departure point for the poem. History records that, while the Cid was in northeastern Spain from 1090 to 1094, lvar Fez was in the southern part of the Peninsula or in northern Castile. For example, in a document from 10923 lvar Fez is situated in Almodvar; another, from 1093,4 places him in Len. lvar Fez almost certainly did not participate in the Cids capture of Valencia as the PMC relates. The most conclusive proof for this is found in a document from 10945 in which lvar Fez grants two of his vassals the rights to choose tombs in the cathedral of Burgos. The fact that this document bears lvar Fezs signature reveals, as Luis Rubio Garca points out,6 that he was indeed in Burgos, a considerable distance from the Cid in Valencia. The last time that the Cid and lvar Fez were actually recorded together was in 1076,7 at which time they both appear among the kings retinue. Shortly after, their political fortunes took dierent turns. While
2 The relationship is revealed in the Carta de arras que el Cid otorga a Jimena, which lists an Albaro Faniz as a nephew (sobrinus) of the Cid (Ramn Menndez Pidal, La Espaa del Cid, 2 vols., 7th ed. [Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1969], 2: 840). In the PMC, vv. 2858, 3438, and 3447 refer to the Cids daughters as cousins (primas) of lvar Fez. 3 Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 2: 766. 4 Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 1: 496, n. 1. 5 Menndez Pidal, La Espaa 1: 496, n. 1; Luis Rubio Garca, Realidad y fantasa en el Poema de mio Cid (Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 1972), 83. 6 Rubio Garca, 86. 7 Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 1: 221.

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the relationship between King Alfonso VI and the Cid was often turbulent during the 1080s and 1090s, lvar Fez appears to have been on particularly good terms with that monarch. lvar Fez was a prominent military leader, and played an important role in a number of battles, including Alfonso VIs most important victory, the conquest of Toledo in 1085. For H. Salvador Martnez, the memory of the historical association between lvar Fez and the monarchy explains his inclusion in the poem: fue elevado al rango de su mensajero ante el rey, porque se recordaba que el lvar Fez de la historia haba permanecido siempre de acuerdo con Alfonso VI.8 Unlike in the case of the Cid, lvar Fezs association with the king is thought to have made him the archetype of a loyal vassal in the eyes of contemporary publics, which suited him to his epic depiction. As scholars such as Roger R. Smith9 and Gene W. DuBois10 have observed, lvar Fezs role as deliverer of the tributes that result in the news of his own pardon (PMC, vv. 88688) and that of the Cid (PMC, vv. 1898b99) enlists him as the conduit through which the heros own loyalty in the PMC restores his good name. What scholars have yet to explore thoroughly is the manner by which the adaptation of the historical lvar Fez to this role expresses the theme of loyalty on two concurrent planes. On one, lvar Fezs vassalage to Alfonso VI appears to serve as the historical backdrop for his role as the Cids alter-ego o el Segundo yo,11 as such mirroring the loyalty displayed to the king by the Cid. On another, the particular historical allegiance of lvar Fez to the Beni-Gmez family is exploited by aligning him when possible with the Cids adversaries, which further enhances the theme of loyalty in the PMC. In the PMC the Infantes de Carrin (Diego and Fernando Gonzlez) become enemies of the Cid after they marry his daughters, demonstrate their cowardice before the Cids vassals, and abuse and abandon their wives in the Corpes episode. The Infantes are among several characters in the PMC, including their father, Gonzalo Ansrez,
8 H. Salvador Martnez, El Poema de Almera y la pica romnica (Madrid: Gredos, 1975), 377. 9 Roger R. Smith, lvar Fez: El alter-ego del hroe en el Poema de mio Cid, La cornica, 29.2 (2001), 23348 (24243). 10 Gene W. Dubois, The Afrenta de Corpes and the Theme of Battle, Revista de estudios hispnicos 21 (1987), 28 (4). 11 Roger R. Smith, 245.

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and possibly Asur Gonzlez (who is thought to have been Diego and Fernandos uncle),12 who were historical members of the noble BeniGmez family from Len. Whereas the enlistment of Diego and Fernando Gonzlez as the Cids rivals is purely ctional, there did exist an historical enmity between the Cid and a prominent member of the Beni-Gmez family contemporary to the action in the PMC. According to history, Diego and Fernando Gonzlez were never actually the ifantes of Carrin as they are labeled in the PMC. This title, as Colin Smith explains, was reserved for the main line of the family.13 However, the fact that Diego and Fernando Gonzlez are given the courtesy title14 of ifantes may have derived from their kinship to Pedro Ansrez, their uncle and the actual count of Carrin from the 1080s until around 1110.15 Pedro Ansrez was the brother of Gonzalo Ansrez,16 who was the father of Diego and Fernando Gonzlez according to the PMC (vv. 2268, 2441) and history.17 As Colin Smith intimates,18 the literary characterization of Diego and Fernando Gonzlez as adversaries of the Cid may have been grounded in the poets awareness of the historical enmity between the Cid and Pedro Ansrez, who was a prominent member of the Leonese nobility. The rivalry between the Cid and Pedro Ansrez had its origins in the struggle for power between Sancho II of Castile (r. 106572) and Alfonso VI,19 and, after the assassination of Sancho in 1072, would have naturally continued while the Cid was out of favor with the king due to the close association between Pedro and Alfonso. Pedro Ansrez would have likely been considered the patriarch of the main line of the Beni-Gmez family during the last two decades of the eleventh century.20 Ansrez, whose name was omitted from the PMC by the copyist in between v. 3005 and v. 3010 according

12 Ramn Menndez Pidal, ed., Cantar de mio Cid, 3 vols. (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1944), 2: 544. 13 Colin Smith, The Choice of the Infantes de Carrin as Villains in the Poema de mio Cid, Journal of Hispanic Philology, 4.2 (1980), 10518 (108). 14 Colin Smith, The Choice, 108. 15 Rubio Garca, 135. 16 Menndez Pidal, Cantar, 2: 545. 17 Menndez Pidal, Cantar, 2: 544. 18 Colin Smith, ed., Poema de mio Cid (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 166. 19 Menndez Pidal, Cantar, 2: 546. 20 Menndez Pidal, Cantar, 2: 54652.

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to Ramn Menndez Pidal,21 was a powerful feudal lord and served as one of Alfonso VIs most important and trusted vassals. His association with the king began during the reign of Alfonsos father, King Fernando I of Castile (r. 103565) and Len (r. 103765), when Ansrez was enlisted as the princes tutor in matters of arms. After Alfonsos ascension to the throne, Ansrez continued to be relied upon as a royal advisor.22 Ansrez was revered to such an extent that he was selected as temporary leader of Castile and Len, con el consenso de toda la nobleza,23 during the transition to the monarchy of Alfonso VII (r. 112657) after the death of Alfonso VI in 1109.24 lvar Fezs kinship to Pedro Ansrez is revealed in an early eighteenth-century history (F. de Berganzas Antigedades de Espaa): Cas lvar Fez con Melina Balcuana, hija del Conde Don Pedro Ansrez, Conde de Carrin, y Seor de Valladolid.25 Ansrez seems to have been on consistently good terms with his son-in-law and relied on lvar Fez as a witness in documents that detail signicant donations made by the count to the Church.26 Ansrez and lvar Fez also participated together in the kings military campaigns against the Muslims, such as the defeat suered by Alfonso VI at Consuegra in 1097.27 The PMC exploits the relationship between Ansrez and lvar Fez by establishing textual links between the Cids lieutenant and the Beni-Gmez family to which Pedro Ansrez pertained. The poem rst communicates a sense of familiarity between lvar Fez and the Infantes de Carrin, two literary representatives of the extended Beni-Gmez family, after lvar Fez leaves the royal court (in the second cantar) and the Infantes ask him to convey a message to the Cid:
Los iantes de Carrin dando ivan conpaa a Minaya lbar Fez: En todo sodes pro, en esto ass lo fagades: saludadnos a Mio id el de Bivar,

Cantar, 2: 54546. Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 1: 128, 203. 23 Rubio Garca, 136. 24 The relationship between the two deteriorated near the end of their lives, and the king exiled Pedro Ansrez from 1103 until 1109 (Richard Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid [London: Hutchinson, 1989], 83). 25 This quotation is from Rubio Garca, 88. 26 Rubio Garca, 83, 84. 27 Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 1: 535.
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somos en so pro quanto lo podemos far; el id que bien nos quiera nada non perder. (PMC, vv. 138589)

Although the three individuals in question have not met previously in the PMC, the manner by which the Infantes approach lvar Fez in the lines above suggest that they are already acquainted with him. The Infantes neither require a formal introduction to lvar Fez nor hesitate to accompany him as he departs from the court (ivan conpaa a Minaya lbar Fez [PMC, v. 1385b]). Moreover, they demonstrate condence in lvar Fez by choosing to reveal their message to him privately rather than publicly before the king. The acquaintanceship that appears to exist between the Infantes and lvar Fez prior to their rst meeting in the PMC does not, of course, serve as proof that such a relationship, which historical documents have not revealed, actually existed. However, the fact that lvar Fez is the only vassal of the Cid who is also a member of the Beni-Gmez family is, I submit, the reason he was chosen by the author for the initial meeting with the Infantes. The possibility that the poet was aware of the indirect family tie between lvar Fez and the Infantes is more explicitly conrmed in the third cantar. Immediately after they are publicly humiliated for eeing from a lion at the Cids court, Diego and Fernando are obligated to take part in a battle against the Moorish King Bcar, which causes them great consternation (PMC, vv. 232023). Their anxiety is revealed to the Cid (PMC, vv. 232627) by Muo Gustioz, whose disdain for the cowardly Infantes is echoed by Pedro Bermdezs refusal of the Cids request that he accompany the Infantes into battle (PMC, vv. 235557). In contrast to the attitude of these vassals of the Cid, lvar Fez essentially comes to the defense of the Infantes by drawing the Cids attention away from their cowardice and focusing on the Christian mission at hand:
Esta batalla el Criador la fer e vs tan dinno que con l avedes part. Mandadno los ferir de qul part vos semeiar, El debdo que cada uno a conplir ser. Ver lo hemos con Dios e con la vuestra auze. (PMC, vv. 236266).

In these verses a sense of familiarity between lvar Fez and the Infantes can again be identied. Moreover, lvar Fezs apparently deliberate interruption of the dialog between the Cid and Bermdez, Aqu lleg Minaya lbar Fez (PMC, v. 2361, emphasis added),

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may be said to enhance the possibility that his conduct toward the Infantes reects a loyalty that parallels the nature of his historical allegiance to Pedro Ansrez. lvar Fezs comments in the PMC after the defeat of King Bcar also appear to indicate a sense of family loyalty toward the Infantes. lvar Fez is the only vassal to persuade the Cid (PMC, vv. 246061) that Diego and Fernando performed well on the battleeld, which he accomplishes judging by the Cids reaction: Dixo Mio id: Yo desto s pagado,/quando agora son Buenos adelant sern preiados./Por bien lo dixo el id (PMC, vv. 246264). A little further on in the PMC, lvar Fez repeats his praise of the Infantes in the presence of the Cid and his court (PMC, v. 2517), praise that the Cid again takes sincerely as indicated by his subsequent declaration that Buenos mandados irn a tierras de Carrin (PMC, v. 2526). The afrenta de Corpes, during which the Infantes seek revenge for their humiliation by abusing and abandoning the Cids daughters, occurs at this juncture of the poem (PMC, vv. 2697762). It is signicant that lvar Fez is distanced from this episode if it is assumed, as in the present study, that the author consistently includes him in situations that enable him to speak positively about Beni-Gmez family members. Rather than lvar Fez, it is Flez Muoz who is asked by the Cid to accompany his daughters on their journey to Carrin (PMC, vv. 262021), during which he becomes the rst to nd the Cids daughters after they have been abandoned (PMC, v. 2777). Upon encountering the women Muoz condemns the cowardice of the Infantes and asks for retribution, as such anticipating the animosity felt toward the Infantes by the Cids other vassals during the trial: Ya primas, las mis primas, don Elvira e doa Sol,/mal se ensayaron los ifantes de Carrin!/A Dios plega e a Sancta Mara que dent prendan ellos mal galardn! (PMC, vv. 278082). While three more vassals, Pero Bermdez (PMC, vv. 331351), Martn Antolnez (PMC, vv. 336271), and Muo Gustioz (PMC, vv. 338389), participate in presenting the case against the Infantes before the king, it is not until after Alfonso has passed judgment by authorizing the second marriages of the Cids daughters to the princes of Navarre and Aragn (which annuls the previous marriages to the Infantes) that lvar Fez assaults the Infantes for dishonoring his cousins:

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Yo vos rruego que me oyades toda la cort, ca grand rrencura he de ifantes de Carrin Yo les di mis primas por mandado del rrey Alfonso, ellos las prisieron a ondra e a bendiin; grandes averes les dio Mio id el Campeador, ellos las han dexadas a pesar de ns. Ribtoles los cuerpos por malos e por traidores. De natura sodes de los de Vanigmez onde salin condes de prez e de valor; mas bien sabemos las maas que ellos han. (PMC, vv. 343645)

Although he is the Cids most devoted vassal throughout the PMC, lvar Fez is the fourth to verbally accuse the Infantes.28 The placement in the work of lvar Fezs accusations after the king ocially imparts his decision to restore the Cids honor with the second marriages (PMC, vv. 340926) distinguishes them from those launched prior to this point by Bermdez, Antolnez, and Gustioz. Whereas the charges leveled by these three vassals inuence the outcome of the trial (the kings interruption of Gustioz signies that he has reached a decision: Dixo el rrey Alfonso: Calle ya esta rrazn [PMC, v. 3390]), and enlist these three individuals as the Cids champions in combat as recognized by the king (Cras sea la lid, quando saliere el sol,/destos tres por tres que rrebtaron en la cort [PMC, vv. 346566]), those pronounced by lvar Fez occur after the marriage agreements have been nalized (metieron las fes e los omenaies dados son [PMC, v. 3425]), thus allowing him to avoid direct involvement in the process. lvar Fezs relatively passive role in the entire trial episode may be part of a strategy designed to minimize his involvement in this occurrence so as to dissociate him from the dishonor suered by the Infantes after being defeated in combat by their three challengers (Grant es la biltana de ifantes de Carrin [PMC, v. 3705]). In other words, the poet may have diminished lvar Fezs role in deference to his family relationship to the titular head of their noble (Beni-Gmez) family, that is, Pedro Ansrez. The direct aliation between lvar Fez and Pedro Ansrez is revealed in two verses from the passage quoted above, De natura sodes de los de Vanigmez/onde salin condes de prez e de valor

28 For Roger R. Smith, the lateness of lvar Fezs accusations reects his role as representante de lo positivo (244).

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(PMC, vv. 344344). In his declaration that from the Beni-Gmez family salin condes de prez e de valor, lvar Fez specically alludes to Pedro Ansrez, the one member of that family to whom he was directly related (by marriage). The immediateness of the declaration is conveyed in spite of the use of the medieval Spanish imperfect indicative tense verb salin.29 The imperfect indicative tense is used on other occasions in the PMC in descriptions of actions that are presently in progress, that is, from the perspective of the juglar reciting the poem.30 In the above-mentioned phrase salin condes de prez e de valor the verb salin refers to the recent past and alludes to Count Pedro Ansrez, lvar Fezs father-in-law.31 By dissociating Pedro Ansrez from the crimes committed by the Infantes, lvar Fezs declaration De natura sodes de los de Vanigmez/onde salin condes de prez e de valor, like the relatively passive role he plays in the trial scene, speaks to his historical loyalty. The ability of lvar Fez to maintain a divided loyalty in the PMC reects a seamless convergence of history and ction and suggests that the poet was aware of lvar Fezs historical allegiances. While the presence in the PMC of a signicant amount of veriable information has unanimously been considered by scholars to be an integral component of the work, there are diering theories as to the origin of the poems historical foundation. For Menndez Pidal, this aspect of the PMC reveals the presence of the anonymous juglar, whose composition of epic poems voices:
la ordinaria y permanente necesidad sentida por un pueblo que respira un ambiente heroico, necesidad de conocer todos los acaecimientos importantes de su vida presente, y deseo de recordar los hechos del pasado que son fundamento de la vida colectiva.32
29 For discussions of the medieval Spanish imperfect indicative -i endings, see Paul M. Lloyd, From Latin to Spanish (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987), 36162, and Ralph Penny, A History of the Spanish Language, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 199200. 30 See, for example, PMC, vv. 2879, 3611. For a discussion of verbal tenses in the PMC, see Rafael Lapesa, Historia de la lengua espaola, 9th ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1988), 22425, who asserts that the uso de tiempos verbales era particularmente anrquico (224) in epic poetry. 31 I concur with the English translation by Rita Hamilton and Janet Perry of v. 3444, which has produced counts of valour and worth (The Poem of the Cid, trans. Rita Hamilton and Janet Perry, intro. and notes Ian Michael [New York: Penguin, 1984], 200), which employs the present perfect indicative tense. 32 Ramn Menndez Pidal, La Chanson de Roland y el neotradicionalismo (orgines de la pica romnica) (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1959), 429.

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As Menndez Pidal argues in another study, the majority of the hechos del pasado represented in the PMC derive from the eorts of the rst of two juglares, who incorporated into the poem around 1105 the hechos histricos capitales en la biografa del Cid.33 Among these hechos histricos Menndez Pidal includes the trece nombres de la familia y de la corte del hroe . . . [y] ochos nombres de los enemigos cortesanos de Rodrigo34 that the juglar in question pudo recordar.35 Exactly how this juglar might have come across such information is an issue that Menndez Pidal does not explore in depth. Of course, it is possible that this juglar knew the Cid, which would explain his knowledge of the heros family. If Menndez Pidals early date of composition is correct, it is also reasonable to assume that even if he did not have a personal relationship with the Cid a contemporary juglar would have been aware of the most signicant events in the Cids life, perhaps as a reection of el inters popular por el gran conquistador.36 At the same time, Menndez Pidal oers no explanation for how this juglar might have known some of the more obscure historical details that are contained in the poem such as the association between lvar Fez and Pedro Ansrez. While juglares may have been responsible for disseminating the PMC, most contemporary scholars assert that the work, in part because of features such as its historical foundation, is of learned origin. According to Colin Smith: That the author should have been a mistrel or juglar, itinerant and probably unlettered, as pidalistas seem to maintain, is impossible given the high artistry of the poem, its numerous leaned features, and its written nature.37 Smith believes that the poet was most likely a legal expert: In my view the author cannot have been other than a lawyer, or at least a person who had been trained in the law and had considerable technical knowledge of it.38 Ian Michael, who strongly supports the theory

33 Ramn Menndez Pidal, En torno al Poema del Cid (Barcelona: Editora y Distribuidora Hispano Americana, 1963), 145. According to Menndez Pidal, the second juglar, working around 1140, was less inuenced by history: El refundidor de Medinaceli, como bastante alejado de los sucesos, se distingue por adiciones y reformas novelescas, libremente descuidadas de la exactitud histrica (En torno, 154). 34 Menndez Pidal, En torno, 146. 35 Menndez Pidal, En torno, 146. 36 Menndez Pidal, En torno, 146. 37 Colin Smith, Poema, xxxiv. 38 Colin Smith, Poema, xxxiv.

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that the author was a member of the clergy, also asserts the cultured background of this individual: Podramos imaginar que el poeta era clrigo; que fue educado por los benedictinos; que acaso llegara a ser notario del abad y a familiarizarse con documentos y disputas legales, teniendo libre acceso a crnicas. . . .39 For the characterization of lvar Fez, a learned composer of the PMC may have consulted one or more of a variety of contemporary texts. The Poema de Almera, the earliest datable reference we possess to the circulation of tales about the Cid,40 was composed around 1147 and incorporated within an incomplete Latin history, the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris.41 The anonymous author of this Latin panegyric lauds lvar Fezs dominance over the Muslims by describing him as a daunting emissary of King Alfonso VI (lvar Fez venci a las gentes ismaelitas, cuyas inexpugnables ciudades y castillos no pudieron resistir. Derribaba a los fuertes, as apretaba aquel esforzado).42 The association between lvar Fez and Pedro Ansrez continued to resonate in literature in the fourteenth century in Juan Manuels Libro . . . del Conde Lucanor. In Exemplo XXVII (De lo que contesi a un emperador e a don lvar Hez Minaya con sus mugeres), Ansrez receives a visit by lvar Fez, who is held in high esteem by the count: e al conde don Pero Anrez plgol mucho con l . . .43 The episode continues by recounting lvar Fezs marriage to Vascuana, the youngest daughter of Pedro Ansrez, and underscores Vascuanas undying loyalty to her husband in terms that dene lvar Fezs historical career:
E sienpre tiene verdaderamente en su talante que qualquier cosa que yo faga, que aquello es lo mejor; e lo que ella a de fazer . . . e sienpre lo faze guardando toda mi onra e mi pro e queriendo que entiendan las gentes que yo so el seor, e que la mi voluntad e la mi onra se cumpla.44

The exemplarity of lvar Fez as a loyal vassal of Alfonso VI was also disseminated in historical works that venerate his military
Michael, Poema, 50. Fletcher, 189. 41 Salvador Martnez, 2251, provides the original Latin text of the Poema de Almera and a corresponding Spanish prose translation. 42 Salvador Martnez, 39. 43 Juan Manuel, Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor e de Patronio, ed. Alfonso I. Sotelo, 16th ed. (Madrid: Ctedra, 1993), 193. 44 Manuel, 200.
40 39

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accomplishments in royal service. No doubt because of the respect that he commanded (and the fear that he inspired), lvar Fez was one of several high ranking vassals sent by the king into Islamic territories in order to secure the payment of royal tributes from Muslim rulers. The loyal service of these vassals was essential for maintaining the stability of the monarchy, which used tributes to remunerate vassals and troops, a system that Alfonso VI inherited from his father, Fernando I (r. 103565).45 lvar Fez is depicted in such a capacity in the Memorias del ltimo rey zir de Granada, a Muslim historiographic work written during the late eleventh or early twelfth century, which details the manner by which he extorted a payment from the sultan of Granada in 1090 on the kings behalf. Similarly, the Crnica particular del Cid, composed during the thirteenth century, celebrates the deeds of lvar Fez while on a royal mission to collect tributes from the Islamic leaders of Valencia during the 1080s.46 Further evidence in support the learned origin of the composer of the PMC is revealed by the use of the term escripto in connection with lvar Fez. The term is employed in a dialogue between the Cid and lvar Fez shortly after their conquest of Valencia, when the Cid suggests that his lieutenant compile a written record of the distribution of the booty:
Si vs quisiredes, Minaya, quiero saber rrecabdo de los que son aqu e comigo ganaron algo; meter los he en escripto e todos sean contados, que si algunos furtare o menos le fallaren, el aver me avr a tornar [a] aquestos mios vassallos que curian a Valenia e andan arrobdando. (PMC, vv. 125761b)

Terms similar to escripto, including escriz, escript, and escrit,47 appear in French historical poems contemporary to the PMC in order to assert the authoritative primacy of (written) documents.48 For example, in the Roman de Rou, Waces twelfth-century historical poem, escrit is incorporated into phrases that appear to have . . . [an]

Fletcher, 6972. Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 1: 311, 393. For more on the involvement of Ansrez in the collection of tributes, see Menndez Pidal, La Espaa, 1: 257. 47 Peter, Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Rochester: Boydell, 1999), 241. 48 On the relationship between these poems and the French chanson de geste, see Damian-Grint, 38, 4041.
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authorising function and that enhance Waces presentation of his work as scholarly, the fruit of research into specically written sources.49 In this light, the reference in the PMC to escripto as part of a request that lvar Fez compose a written proscription against early ight by the Cids men, suggests a poet who was cognizant of the auctoritas of the written word50 in the distribution of booty.51 Even if, as several prominent scholars assert,52 the composer of the PMC was from the Burgos area, there is reason to speculate that this learned individual relied with particular interest on Leonese historiography, which began to develop earlier in that region than in Castile as illustrated by twelfth century texts such as the Historia Silense and the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris.53 The early development of Leonese historiography is not surprising considering that the city of Len, named capital of the kingdom in 914, remain[ed] at the apex of national aairs54 through the middle of the twelfth century, when Castilian cities (in particular Toledo) gained greater prominence as the Christian Reconquest of Islamic Spain advanced southward. The Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris reserves its highest praise for Leonese nobles, which is considered evidence that the author was the bishop of Astorga, as Antonio Ubieto Arteta explains:
Damian-Grint, 241. Damian-Grint, 244. 51 The role lvar Fez plays as a quiero and the signicance that the PMC places on preserving written documentation of distributions of booty is explained by Angus Mackay: Algunos ociales, los llamados quieros, eran los encargados de dividir el botn, y el poema revela claramente que . . . se guardaba una copia escrita de este reparto (La Espaa de la Edad Media: Desde la frontera hasta el imperio 10001500, trans. Angus Mackay and Salustiano Moreta, 4th ed. [Madrid: Ctedra, 1991], 29). 52 See, for example, Michael, Poema, 50, and Colin Smith, Poema xxxvixxxvii. 53 With regard to the origins of the author of the Historia Silense, Peter Linehan, in one of the most recent studies of the evolution of medieval Spanish historiography, asserts that there is much to be said for Sahagn to the south-east of Len, and the traditional attribution to the Castilian monastery of Silos is plainly impossible (History and Historians of Medieval Spain [Oxford: Clarendon, 1993], 128). The date that the author stopped working on the Historia Silense, which is an unnished work, is not known, although scholars believe it was composed some time during the eleventh century, and possibly as early as 1118 (Linehan, 129, Juan A. Estvez Sola, Introduccin, Chronica Naierensis [ Turnholti: Typographi Brepols Editores Ponticii, 1995], ixxcix [lxxlxxix]). The Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris was composed between 1147 and 1149 (Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Sugerencias sobre la Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, Cuadernos de historia de Espaa 26 [1957]: 31726 [325]). With regard to this topic, Salvador Martnez observes that Castile no tuvo historia escrita hasta 1160 en que aparece la primera tmida tentativa con la Crnica Najerense (85). 54 Linehan, 128.
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los elogios . . . nos indican las preferencias de su autor en grado eminente por dos leoneses, y de stos el seor de Astorga, lo que viene a conrmar la idea que sea un prelado de tal ciudad el autor.55

Further evidence of the authors western (Leonese-Castilian) heritage may be found in his deprecatory attitude toward King Alfonso I, el Batallador (r. Aragn and Navarra from 11041134), a resentment that stemmed from that kings frequent involvement in problemas internos de los estados occidentales.56 In advancing his opposing theory that the author of the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris was from Catalonia, Ubieto Arteta57 underscores the fact that Catalan gures are portrayed in consistently positive terms, even when the individuals in question are Catalan vassals with strong ties to King Alfonso I. While on other occasions Alfonso is treated more harshly than any other gure in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, when he is depicted in conjunction with these Catalan vassals, the authors attitude toward the monarch becomes more benevolent. For example, while Alfonso is typically seen as tyrannical, Rex Aragonensis obsedit nos et uult opprimere uiolentia nos et uxores et lios nostros,58 the king is presented as a great military leader and liberator when he is accompanied into battle by the Catalan Oriolus Garsie:
Ascendit rex super Castrum Seliz et intus in munitionem erat Oriolus Garsie, qui erat magnus miles regis Aragonensis, et cum eo multa turba militum et peditum et debellabat magnam partem Castelle. Et circundebit rex castellum in circuitu muro magno et uallo ita ut nullus poterat ingredi uel egredi de ipsis, qui in munitione erant; et preocupati sunt fame magna et siti et petierunt indutias regi et miserunt legatos domino suo regi Aragonensi, ut ueniret et liberaret eos de manibus regis Legionis.59

55 Ubieto Arteta, 321. Raymond McCluskey, Malleable Accounts: Views of the Past in Twelfth Century Iberia, The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Paul Magdalino (London: Hambledon, 1992), 21125 (217), and Salvador Martnez, 79, 12021, also believe that the author of the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris was the bishop of Astorga. 56 Ubieto Arteta, 323. 57 Ubieto Arteta, 321. 58 Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, ed. Antonio Maya Snchez, in Chronica Hispana Saeculi XII: Pars I, eds. Emma Falque, Juan Gil, and Antonio Maya (Turnholti: Typographi Brepols Editores Ponticii, 1990), 111267 (156). 59 Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, 161.

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A parallel may be drawn between the divided loyalty that the author displays in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris (an attractive source for a poet interested in a positive representation of lvar Fez since it contains the Poema de Almera, which exalts lvar Fezs exploits as discussed previously) and the depiction of lvar Fezs divided loyalty in the PMC. In the PMC the author characterizes Leonese gures in consistently unfavorable terms except for the previously discussed episodes in which these individuals are involved with lvar Fez, as such mirroring the resentment displayed toward King Alfonso I in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, which disappears when the king is linked to Catalans. Whereas for Ubieto Arteta the authors display of divided loyalty in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris is indicative of his Catalan origins,60 the employment in the PMC of a technique used in that historiographic text infers a stronger tie than has been previously suggested between the author of the PMC and Len, a region that was at a pivotal historical moment in the evolution of its relationship with Castile when the PMC was most likely composed around 1207. Upon the death of King Alfonso VII of Castile and Len (r. 1105 57), his territories were divided between his sons Sancho, who briey reigned as Sancho III Castile (r. 115758), and Fernando, who became King Fernando II Len (r. 115788). The premature death of Sancho in 1158:
gave rise to a violent struggle for power [among] rival factions within the Castilian nobility. . . . [I]n the meantime, Castiles neighbours had taken the opportunity to feather their own nests, and in 1159 Sancho VI of Navarre ([r.]115094) and Fernando II of Len had seized a number of Castilian frontier towns. To add insult to injury, in 1162 the Leonese monarch took Toledo under his control. . . . By 1166 Toledo was back in Castilian hands. . . . Castile and Len would remain at loggerheads until they were nally reunited by Fernando III ([r.] 121752) in 1230.61

Once Sanchos heir, Alfonso VIII of Castile (r. 11581214), became entrenched on the throne he rmly established himself as the preeminent ruler among the Christian realms of Iberia.62 A tenuous

Ubieto Arteta, 32526. Simon Barton, The Aristocracy in Twelfth-Century Len and Castile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 19. 62 Barton, 20.
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political hegemony over Len was achieved after the death of King Fernando II of Len in 1188, when Fernandos son and successor, Alfonso IX ([r.] 11881230), was knighted by Alfonso VIII and required to pay homage to his Castilian cousin.63 The result of this political association was an escalation in tensions between Castile and Len. Fernando, [f]eeling humiliated64 after submitting to Alfonso, reacted by dedicating the next decades to seeking revenge.65 Derek W. Lomax asserts66 that the seditious actions of King Alfonso IX, including attacking Castile and not coming to its defense against the Almohades in 1195, fomented animosity toward Len that resonates in the depiction in the PMC of King Alfonso VI and perhaps even, in the Cantar de las bodas, [which may be] a commentary on the misfortunes awaiting Castilian girls who married over into the west.67 As Lomax explains,68 the unfavorable portrayal of Alfonso VI (who, for example, authorizes the marriages of the Cids daughters to the Infantes even though he suspects that the Cid will disapprove [PMC, v. 1892]) is intended to highlight the loyalty of the Cid to contemporary audiences, which would recognize in the faithful and honourable Castilian vassal of the distrustful and unjust Leonese monarch Alfonso VI a pointed comment on current events.69 Lomax is one of several scholars whose theories regarding the signicance of the Castilian perspective of the PMC cast the work as an expression of Castilian Reconquest ideals, that is, as literary propaganda designed to venerate the region (whose values are communicated in the comportment of the Cid) that would, of course, ultimately achieve supremacy and exert social and cultural inuences over neighboring Christian kingdoms, including Len. Julio RodrguezPurtolas sees the theme in a broader context, and denes the poems pro-Castilian attitude as:
el germen de algo que ser tpicamente representativo de la literatura castiza de los Siglos de Oro: la ridiculizacin de todo lo que no sea
Barton, 2021. Derek W. Lomax, The Date of the Poema de mio Cid, Mio Cid Studies, ed. A. D. Deyermond (London: Tamesis, 1977), 7381 (80). 65 Lomax, 80. 66 Lomax, 80. 67 Lomax, 80. 68 Lomax, 80. 69 Lomax, 80.
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estrictamente castellano-andaluz. . . . En el poema se ridiculiza . . . todo lo que no es cidiano-castellano: lo leons, lo cataln, los judos, los de Carrin, Bcar.70

In his characterization of the poet, Joseph J. Duggan also sees an individual who displays antagonism toward Leonese and other nonCastilian entities:
the poet . . . give[s] a pejorative cast to the depiction of certain characters. Presumably the systematic portrayal of Garca Ordez and the family of Carrin as cowardly, excessively proud, and cruel does not correspond to the conduct of those characters in history. It appears too that that the poet does not sympathize with the moneylenders, and he is obviously not favorably disposed toward the count of Barcelona. . . . The poet . . . would have been hostile to Garca Ordez, the family of Carrin . . . the Leonese. . . .71

Simon Barton infers a similarly monolithic interpretation of the PMC in his assessment of the early 1200s:
The conditions for a full-scale crusade against the Moorish south had never seemed riper and the papacy campaigned energetically to promote the idea. Within the peninsula, too, fresh attempts were being made to rekindle the ame of crusading spirit. The Poema de mio Cid, the vernacular poetic celebration of the deeds of El Cid, which was possibly performed for the very rst time before a gathering of the Castilian court in or shortly before 1207, may conceivably have been commissioned with this very purpose in mind.72

The references identied previously to the employment of lvar Fez as a conduit through which positive representations of Leonese gures are communicated challenge these views by revealing that the poet displays reverence for a kingdom that posed a serious military threat to Castile, and whose assistance in battles against Moorish forces was not completely assured until its nal reunication with Castile in 1230. Perhaps as a realization of the need to garner public support for future military campaigns conducted by both Castile and Len, the poet may have negotiated between Castilian and Leonese historiography in order to instill the poem with features that
70 Julio Rodrguez-Purtolas, El Poema de Mio Cid: Nueva pica y nueva propaganda, Mio Cid Studies, ed. A. D. Deyermond (London: Tamesis, 1977): 14159 (152). 71 Joseph J. Duggan, The Cantar de mio Cid: Poetic Creation in its Economic and Social Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 61. 72 Barton, 22.

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could be seen as favorable to either kingdom. As I have demonstrated, the existence of this duality suggests that the poet consulted the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, a Leonese inuence on the PMC that invites further speculation regarding the intellectual and cultural formation of this individual, whose identity remains a mystery. In particular, closer investigation may reveal whether the poets manipulation of the plot so that lvar Fez maintains to the extent possible a loyalty to the Beni-Gmez family signies the intervention in the process of composition of an individual, if not the principal poet than another person who may have contributed the information on lvar Fez, with a tie to that family or related sectors of the Leonese nobility. Regardless of the nature of the poets association with the Leonese nobility, he may have softened his anti-Leonese bias on several occasions in the PMC (that is, when lvar Fez is involved in the action) in order to attract listeners as well as inspire potential soldiers from Castile as well as Len, a technique, apparently modeled on the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, which would have had added appeal around 1200. A few years before Alfonso VIII advanced the Castilian cause with a victory at Las Navas de Tolosa (in 1212), achieved without the assistance of Len,73 the poet may have attempted to incorporate a limited appeal to Len through the discourse and actions of lvar Fez as a reection of a contemporary vision of the Reconquest as a multi-nationalthat is, Leonese and Castilian enterprise. During a period in the Reconquest when Len and Castile experienced an unprecedented expansion in their territories,74 the division of lvar Fezs loyalty in the PMC testies to an awareness of the comprehensive character of an episode in Spains history that is more accurately labeled the Reconquests of Islamic territories by the kingdoms of Christian Spain. In order to instill the PMC with such an attitude, the poet appears to have found inspiration in lvar Fezs career as a devoted vassal as well as a technique used in contemporary Leonese historiography, the elements that explain how the literary representation of lvar Fez functions simultaneously as an acquaintance of the Infantes, a defender of the BeniGmez family name, as well as the Cids faithful companion.

73 74

Barton, 22. Barton, 25.

VOICES FROM THE BOTTOM UNDRESSING FOR GOOD LOVE

NON HA MALA PALABRA SI NON ES A MAL TENIDA: THE PERVERTED PROVERB IN THE LIBRO DE BUEN AMOR Louise O. Vasvri

The book known as the Libro de buen amor (= LBA), or Book of Good Love, is a complex and very challenging fourteenth-century work.1 It is embedded in a frame structure, provided by a rst-person, pseudo-autobiographical thread that recounts the failed amorous adventures of the narrator, who is apparently identied with the named author, Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita. In its form the work is polymetric but with a predominance of the cuaderna va (a monorhymed four-line alexandrine stanza) narrative verse.2 The LBA belongs to those perverse narratives of early vernacular literary production characterized by permeability of generic boundaries and intertertextual relationships that cross discrete genres, satirizing and mixing generic conventions. The text comprises a range of materials, representing many subliterary and literary generic forms, from Aesopic tales, fabliaux, proverbs, riddles, and exempla to an Ovidian ars amandi, a comedia latina, a carnivalesque mock-epic battle of Flesh and Lent, and heterogeneous examples of medical, legal, and particularly religious discourse.3 The principal narration is constantly interrupted by the insertion of episodes that sometimes seem extraneous to the
1 This brief description of Libro de buen amor that follows can do no more than give a cursory introduction to readers not familiar with the work. For the most recent overview of the scholarly issues pertaining to this work see Haywood (2003), as well as the articles in Haywood & Vasvari (2003). Nor can I deal here in detail with Bakhtins theories on the carnivalesque and on novelistic discourse, to which I shall refer; for an analysis of Bakhtins theories and his relevance to the LBA, see Vasvari (2003). 2 The work is attributed to one Juan Ruiz, who is otherwise unidentied historically. The supposed author, whose name is embedded in the work in rhyme position, is most likely a joke. He is also the rst person-protagonist, otherwise also known as the Archpriest of Hita. I will, for simplicity, refer to Juan Ruiz (without the cumbersome quotes) when speaking of the author and to the Archpriest when referring to the protagonist. 3 I have written about all of these parodic appropriations elsewhere. See the articles cited here, as well as Vasvari (2003) for a complete list.

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story thread, while others comment explicitly on the success, or failure, of an adventure of seduction. This narrative ensemble is further stiched together by a large number of proverbs, which structure the embedded episodes and often serve to justify the action of the protagonist. Juan Ruiz turns all inherited discourses topsy-turvy, in a carnivalesque response to the high seriousness of canonized literature and particularly of the clerical cuaderna va form. In much of my previous work I have found it useful to study the LBA with the conceptual models of Mikhail Bakhtin, whose key terms heteroglossia (and polyphony), dialogic discourse, and carnivalization, serve admirably to study Juan Ruizs perverse parody, including, as we shall see, his creation of particularly perverse proverbs, or perverbs.4 One of the responses of the introduction of writing (and, subsequently, of printing) in the vulgar languages seems to have been the conscious intent on the part of many authors to demonstrate their ingenuity and control over the new means of communication by elevating and textualizing traditional oral forms, which Juan Ruiz does richly and always parodically. The proverb, on the other hand, he sometimes cites in conformist and moralizing fashion, with mnemonic and agonistic intent. However, with this form, as well, it is the comic and disrespectful, even obscene, distortion that predominates.5 In spite of its very heterodox nature, the LBA continues to be studied almost exclusively in the context of canonized literature. During the last two decades I have followed a conscious program of rereading the work within the dialogic context of the interactions of orality and textualization. As part of this larger project, here I want to study the proverb, the most compact of what Andr Jolles (1930) called the little genres of oral-based discourse.6 These medieval little genres, like fabliaux, exempla, riddles, and proverbs, short narratives that had a way of wandering between cultures and linguistic

I have shamelessly borrowed the inventive term perverb from a classic study by C. Grant Loomis (1949: 12). 5 Luis Combet (1971: 110) suggests that it is only in the fteenth century when proverbs make their great irruption into literature (in Spanish particularly in the Arcipreste de Talavera and in the Celestina), but he does at the same time allow that already in the LBA proverbs form a constitutive element of the discourse. See Barrick (1985), and Bizzarri (1995) for an overview of Spanish proverb collections. 6 A much briefer version of some parts of this article appeared in Spanish in Vasvari (2000).

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groups, have confounded those scholars who insist that literary inuences can be established solely on printed sources. The Middle Ages were a period when the oral culture still dominated the written, with manuscripts being essentially memory devices to serve in verbalization. Proverbs, in particular, the shortest primary oral form, yet used constantly in written texts, remind us of that important oral residue (Obelkevich 1987). After a preliminary linguistic and folkloric discussion of the characteristics of the proverb, I propose to illustrate how Juan Ruiz, the author-narrator-protagonist of the LBA manipulates this sapiential authority as a subversive intertext to structure his work. His intention is also to pervert and abuse the popular authority of proverbs through humorous relexicalization, in such a manner that many of the proverbs in the text function as jokes. In this study I will have to limit my analysis to a dozen or so proverbs among the hundreds that ll the book. Since proverb lore is pan-European, illustrative examples of analogous proverbs from a number of languages will also be discussed. On occasion these will serve to clarify hitherto unrecognized proverbs in the LBA; straight versions in other languages will also clarify Juan Ruizs parodically perverted use of them. My aim in this study is to illustrate how the systematic deformation of proverbs in the LBA functions, rst in the extradiagetic frame, in precisely those sections that are part of the system of interpretive signpost of the work, and within the diagesis, placed in the mouth of characters representing oral culture. The authors larger project is, through the incursion the voice of oral discourses into the textual matter, to subvert all inherited genres of canonized discourse that are embedded in his work, but, as I have said, in particular, to subvert the inherited and canonized mester de clereca. In the LBA, as proverbs become perverbs through relexicalization to the level of oro-sexual-violence (Vasvari 1994), so, too, all of learned culture is turned into a semiotic carnival of parodic debasement. On the denotative level the proverb is a set form of a short traditional discourse embodying popular attitudes concerned with human conduct, generally expressed in metaphoric form, and lending itself to innite connotative variations according to the given context; that is, the proverb is characterized by brevity, gurative language and a tendency to obscurity, with the rst two being the cause of the third. The proverb is characterized both by specic content and formal features; elements commonly found in proverbs include, most

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often, a binary rhythmic and semantic structure ( parelelismus membrorum) featuring various poetic and stylistic devices, such as personication, paradox, alliteration, parallelism, ellipsis, and archaic language.7 Proverbs, like stories, jokes, gossip, and other similar verbal behavior, are interactive verbal practices: goal-oriented, recurring episodes of face-to-face interaction that are signicant to the establishment and maintenance of social groups and communities. However, its conversational nature distinguishes the proverb from the other traditional little genres, since it interrupts the ow of conversation. Proverbs are mediated by communicative resources, such as intonation patterns, gestures, body stance, voice quality, paralinguistic features not retrievable from texts. In order to become a proverb, a syntagm must be accepted and memorized a given community and passed on orally from generation to generation. In spite of its special formal features, it is sometimes recognizable as a proverb only by persons with native intuition into a culture. The social function of the proverb is to provide structuring frameworks for creating, articulating, and managing of collective social histories. As Jolles (1930) and more recently Taylor (1992: 5) argued, there is much to support the view that the proverb is a genre, with the proverb and the exemplum seen as two extremes of a range of wisdom forms which display varying degrees of narrative (and see also Van Thiel [1997] and Bizzarri [1997] on the relation of the proverb and the fabula). Proverbs, like maxims, and slogans, are semantic prefabs, crystallizations of monological thinking, intended by those quoting them to inhibit consideration of dialogue in their listeners. On the other hand, the sum of stylistic features of the proverb can render it potentially ambiguous, and it is precisely in this ambiguity that a good part of its ecacy resides (Canellada 1983: 123). The quality of indeniteness of the proverb derives from three factors, its hetero-situationality, its poli-functionality, and its polysemy, with the result that the meaning of any given proverb cannot be analyzed except in its unique social context. We must, however, be careful to distinguish between the basic ambiguity of proverbs, which can change connotations in dierent textual environments, as in la mona vestida de seda, mona se queda a monkey decked out in silk clothes is still a monkey, which
7 On denitions of the proverb see Greimas (1960); Mieder (1993: 46, ll, 1819); Goldberg (1986: 12022); Taylor (1992).

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can be applied, say, to an ugly woman or to a lowly man who is posing as a gentleman, a hypocrite posing as a saint, etc. All of these meanings have as stable structural base, contrasting dierences between being and appearance (Alonso Hernndez 1984: 1415). This poli-functionality must be contrasted with the potential polysemy of the key word in the proverb, which relexicalizes the whole into another semantic eld, as in the LBAs blancos o negros, todos conejos black or white, they are all conys, where cony has the same sexual meaning as did that word in English until the nineteenth century. Proverbial citation is a medieval commonplace, both in Latin and in the Vulgar languages. Classical sententiae and Biblical and other ecclesiastic proverbs can be interspersed with folk proverbs from oral tradition and even with axioms invented by the medieval author (Goddard 1987: 55; Taylor 1992: 21). According to Morawski (1925), in his Proverbes francais anterieurs au quinzime sicle, at the beginning of the fteenth century there existed more than 2,000 proverbs in French, a number which grows exponentially if we take into account what Samuel Singer called gemeinmittelalterliche Sprichwrter, which he began to collect in his Thesaurus proverbium Medii Aevi, in which he projected collecting all existing proverbs in medieval Latin and in the Romance and Germanic languages, whose unity was based on the spiritual unity of Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. Many of these proverbs were translated from one language to another through various means. In their use in the pulpit common proverbs provided an illiterate public with a universe of familiar discourse and as a mnemonic device for recalling the moral of the sermon. Proverbs also circulated in Latin instruction in school and through wandering jongleurs. If we look at critical work on the LBA, it becomes evident that little attention has been paid to the utilization of proverbs. The interest of Lecoy, Spitzer and Lida de Malkiel, for example, was limited to relating in passing to what the perceived as the didactic, moralizing intention of the work. For his part, Lzaro Carreter (1951) expressed surprised that the old bawd Urraca should use proverbs of such crude, rustic, and oensive nature (see a review of this earlier the bibliography in Meja 1996). In addition, the proverbs in the LBA have only been studied in a very general and decontextualized sense. See, for example, Aguilera (1935) and Gella Iturriaga (19723); the latter qualies the LBA as a folkloric monument for its paremiological riches, listing some 400 in alphabetical order but he does

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so without the slightest interest for how Juan Ruiz includes them in his text. Even as ne a scholar as Goldberg (1986) does not extend her interest beyond dening the proverb and standards for identifying it in cuaderna va texts.8 But such catalogues have little utility because proverbs, as we have seen, are a form of micro-discourse which get inserted into larger discourses as a an empty structure, which gains sense only when we know who utilizes it and with what aim. As already stated, in the LBA proverbs appear extradiagetically either in the metatextual introductory material that provide a series of signposts for reading the work and in the beginning or end of embedded episodes, or, within the diagesis, in agonistic exchange among interlocutors. Further, in structural terms Juan Ruiz often puts extra emphasis on his proverbs by accumulating them in a long chain, which can go on for one or more strophes, or he places them in strophe-initial or strophe-nal position, thus creating a circular discourse. The nal verse in the monorhymed cuaderna va strophe particularly lends itself for placing a proverb-joke, which can serve as the punch line for a whole episode. This is a technique much recommended by Matheu de Vendme and Georoy de Vinsauf in their Latin poetic treatises as a technique ad jocum excitandum (see Yndurain [19723] for a list of proverbs in strophe nal position; Schulze-Busacher 1979: 91). Typical examples of proverbs in strophenal position include (705d), muchos panderos vendemos que non suenan las sonajas we sell a lot of tambourines which dont jingle, placed in the mouth of the bawd Trotaconventos, who relexicalizes panderos as hymen on the analogy of the ripped, taut skin of each. She also cites (1491d), a pan de quince das, fanbre de tres semanas for two week old bread, a three-week hunger, where the pan that she says her clients, young nuns and ardorous clerics, desire so vehemently is a sexualized bread (see the documentation in Vasvari [1983: 23]; cf. also the Fr. Double jene, double morceau the more prohibited, the more enticing [Quitard 1842]). In the LBA the majority of the proverbs from oral tradition function as a form of dynamic intertextuality in the construction of the written text, a technique that has not received adequate critical atten8 Exceptional in this regard are the two studies by George Shipley (1974, 1977), concerned with the abuse of proverbial authority in the Celestina. See also Fernndez Sevilla (1983) on the structural importance of proverbs in that work. Also useful are Alonso Hernndez (1984) and Goldberg (1993).

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tion. In fact, the proverb is literally insertedin partial or complete formas a pretext into the written work, simultaneously approaching and distancing itself between real or metaphorical quotation marks, either placed in dialogue, or introduced with expressions such as diz el proverbio viejo, diz la fabla, diz una escriptura, la [chica] fablilla que diz the old proverb says, the saying says, the writing says, the [short] saying says. Other proverbial sayings includes cierta cosa es sta it is a truth that, mimbresevos de lo que dezir suele remember what is usually said, dixo la buena vieja the good old woman said, como dize un derecho as a just statement says (see OKane [1950], Gella Iturriaga [1972: 2512], Goldberg [1986: 127]). Note that when a proverbial saying says diz or diz la [buena] vieja the [good] old woman says the speaker is simply an instrument of communication who cannot make any modication in the proverb. Juan Ruiz also places his proverbs at the beginning of tales, a technique called promythia. He thus alerts the audience to look for connections between the lesson and the narrative. In contrast, a proverb placed as an end moralization, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, called the epimythia, serves to direct the audiences understanding of the tale. Finally, a proverb may be placed in the middle of a tale, or between two stories ( paramythium), thus doing double duty by summing up the preceding tale and introducing the one that follows (Goldberg 1993: 106). However proverbs are placed, in chains, or in strategic positions, as an independent micro-discourse they always stand in dynamic opposition to the text in which they are injected. Such opposition has two possibilities: conrmation or derision. In the LBA typically the aim is the second, to pervert the gnomic authority of the proverb in particular, and of received discourses in general. Such excessive manipulation can only serve parody, because the proverb, like the clich, when is too much repeated becomes hackneyed (as in the famous case of old Polonius in Hamlet, who signals his simpleminded senility by constantly quoting trite sayings). The use of proverbs in the LBA, which has been seen by critics with the simple intention of including popular registers within the text, in fact, functions more frequently as a condensation of the ambiguous and polysemic nature of the whole, centered in its keyword buen amor, which I shall discuss below. Finally, some proverbs in the LBA have not been recognized as such, even in mere alphabetic listings, precisely because their rst textual appearance in Spanish is in the work itselfand sometimes only by syntactic or semantic

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allusion. In other cases, known versions in later collections can dier considerably from the earlier variant in the LBA. Nevertheless, I propose to show that if we study the LBAs proverbs within a broader oral tradition, it becomes possible to recognize additional proverbs and to provide a more appropriate contextualization for others.9 While all proverbs have a denotative meaning, they are as often reutilized with new connotation. Since traditional genres are characterized by a symbolic manner of apprehending reality, symbolism and the erotization of many semantic elds is a constant in myths, dreams, riddles, lyric, proverb, and other oral forms. For example, in the LBA the proverb (712b) que ivera en molino, quien ante viene ante muele can be understood as the analogous English proverb, rst come, rst served. But of greater interest is its manipulation, where the syntagm is dismembered, with play on the potential polysemy of its key word in the semantic eld of eroticism. On the basis of the relexicalization of molino as female sex organ and moler as copulate the proverb can also be used as advice to the lover, with the meaning that the suitor who rst approaches the desired woman is the one who gets to mill his ivera grain/semen (Vasvari 1995). Compare also (711d) non ay mula de alvarda que la troxa non consienta there is no mule with a packsaddle that doesnt consent to carrying a heavy weight, applied to woman, reduced to the level of animal, who voluntarily sustains the weight of a man on top of her. In spite of the existence of hundreds of equivocal proverbs like the foregoing in the LBA and in many other medieval texts, the theme of sexuality has been generally avoided in proverb studies. First of all, proverbial wisdom seems milder than it actually is since
9 Goldberg (1986) thought it inappropriate to use later collections, like Gonzalo Correass seventeenth-century Vocabulario de refranes for verication of proverbs in the LBA and other cuaderna va poetry because in her opinion the popularity of this form was such that it may have caused some witty saying and colorful metaphors to become proverbial only later. While this may indeed hold for a handful of cases, it is simply not a tenable argument for the recuperation of oral culture to insist on written sources earlier than the text being studied. There is often a lag of centuries in slang terms and oral forms being collected in dictionaries and in collections like that of Correas. See my discussion of this problem in Vasvari (1998), where I show that cock in the sense penis is traceable to the Middle Ages in folk genres and yet it has still not entered some dictionaries to this day. In any case, in my study I will not be relying only on Spanish analogues, later or otherwise, but will be collecting data from a number of European languages. But, I repeat that strict chronology of written sources is an impossible and misleading requirement in folklore research.

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proverbs on sex rarely reached print, having been regularly excised from collections (Obelkevich 1987: 49; see the discussion of the same process of bowdlerization for erotic riddles in Vasvari 1998). For example, Segalen (1976: 83), who collected hundreds of French proverbs about marriage, love, and women, is capable of maintaining that the theme of sexuality is almost absent from her corpus; she tries to explain the silence as due to condemnation of physical pleasure by Christian morality! Nevertheless, as Combet (1971: 125) discusses, alongside the conformist and moralizing proverbs there have always existed its irreverent contradiction. There is a certain class of proverbs that can only be understood as being obscene. Some of these are hardly understandable today, such as Mariquita, no comas habas, ke eres nia y todo lo tragas Mary [dim.], dont eat green beans, because youre a girl and you swallow everything, cited in Correas. Not only is this suspiciously suggestive but the choice of the name Mariquita, considered extremely vulgar, makes it more so; and, sure enough, it can be deciphered with the aid of another form, in this case an obscene lyric: Mariquita jugaba/con un frailecillo de haba . . ./todo el da en su mano andaba/aquel frailecillo de haba . . . Little Mary played with the little friar made out of a bean . . . all day it was in her hand, that little friar made out of a bean (Alzieu 1975: no. 86. In many other cases, as in the LBA, as I will illustrate in the second section of this paper, it is only with the help of folk material from other languages that we can decipher the perverse meaning of some proverbs.

Perverted Proverbs, or Perverbs in El libro de Buen Amor Because we moderns nd ourselves very far removed from the proverbial mentality of medieval people, we have paid insucient attention to the importance of proverbs when raised to the literary level. All the more, we are not likely to catch cases of what I have called silent intertextuality of the proverb, where a corpus of proverbs which do not actually appear in the text nevertheless manipulate its composition. Let us look at the episode of Don Mlon and Doa Endrina, the longest of the book, which is a very amplied adaptation of the medieval Latin twelfth-century comedy Pamphilus. Juan Ruizs version has two notable innovations. The rst is the change of the pastoral names of the protagonists, Pamphilus and Galatea to

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Meln melon and Endrina sloe plum (which I have dubbed vegetal-genital onomastics in Vasvari 1988). The second innovation is that Galatea, the virgin seduced and raped in the Latin version, is changed into the young widow Endrina. As I have studied elsewhere (Vasvari 1992), this change is nourished by the rich popular tradition of lustful and ckle young widows. The most developed version of this motif in the Middle Ages is the fabliau of the widow of Ephesus (rst textualized in the Satyrica by Petronius), of the widow who has sex with a young soldier on the tomb of her deceased husband (Huber 1990). The same tradition of the lustful widow also lives in proverbs such as viudas de ogao/largas tocas y anda el rabo widows of yesteryear, long toque but their ass is moving, la viuda rica/haze que llora y repica the rich widow pretends to cry but she moves her ass, tocas negras y los pensamientos verdes black mourning clothes but green [lustful] thoughts, viuda es, que no le faltar marido shes a widow, so shell soon get a husband, Cat. La viuda que plora molt altre marit volt the widow who is crying wants a new husband, la viuda ploranera, altre marit espera the weeping widow is waiting for another husband, viuda honrada te la porta tancada an honest widow keeps her door rmly locked (Amades 1969: 1190), Fr. Femme veuve, une allumette et deux pailles a widow, a match and two straws [is all it takes to light her up] (Segalen 1976: 43). So-called recipe proverbs featuring olla cauldron/stew with meat and vegetables cooked in the cauldron/female sexual organ, which I will discuss further below, also have their variant with widows: a la viuda moa y gorda el Diablo le cueze la olla its the devil who cooks/heats up the widows stew (Horozco 1994: no. 334), in Catalan lolla de la viudeta, petita i eixerideta the widows stewpot, small and benumbed with cold, viuda daltre marit, olla de caldo afegit widow of another husband, stewpot drowned in broth; per viuda i afamat no hi ha pa sec for a starved widow there is no dry bread (Amades 1969: 1190). Another example of the invisible proverb in the LBA is in also in the Meln-Endrina episode, where the bawd in her rst interview with Endrina, whom she is trying to obtain as a sexual conquest for her client Don Meln, tells her that she nds her very thin and yellow; but in her second visit, after having excited the young woman with the description of her suitor, greets her with the words vote bien loana, bien gordilla, hermosa I see you lusty, chubby, beautiful. To understand the ironic implications of the old womans supposed compliment, we must compare the tradition of the chubbyor better, as the Yiddish would say, the zaftig widow, where gorda connotes not

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only youth and good health but also lustfulnessthe aective vocative mi gorda in peninsular Spanish conserves in diluted from part of this connotation. The contemporary audience would not only have understood the allusion but would also have been familiar with proverbs like the Catalan la bona mola, como la bona viuda, grassa i voltadora the good mole, like the good widow, should be chubby and be changeable (Amades 1969: 1190), French si les morues/les sardines devenaient veuves elles engraisseraint if salt cod/sardines were to be widowed [even] they would fatten up (Segalen 1976: 43). If in the Meln-Endrina episode the proverbs having to do with lustful widows which structure it silently were missing, in another episode it is precisely the proverb in the punch line that serves to clarify an otherwise a truncated fragment, now become incomprehensible.10 The episode recounts a burlesque failed sexual encounter between a youth and a lustful old woman, which is evidently based on the humorous tradition from another mediaeval Latin comedy, La Vetula. What happens in the enigmatic tale between the unequally matched pair is only claried if we understand the proverb-punch line with which the old woman insults the protagonist. The very rst verse of the fragment, a stereotyped spring exordium, shows ambiguous intent, because all occurrences of variants of this hackneyed phrase in the LBA signal the beginning of burlesque carnivalesque episodes. The rest of the fragment oers only the slightest hint of a plot: a woman, identied only as una vieja, comes to visit the Archpriest only to insult his lovesick demeanor with a proverb: (945c) moo malo, moo malo, ms vale enfermo que sano you bad young fellow, a bad young fellow is better sick than well.11 He then grabs her and speaks to her en seso vano foolishly, and subsequently something unspecied occurs between them, after which she insults him once again with the proverb: Aipreste, ms es el roido que las nuezes Archpriest, the noise is bigger than the walnut. Rather than replying to her charges, the Archpriest defends himself before his audience by referring to her as one of those old hags whom the Devil should take and blames her foul-mouthed insults on her state of inebriation. Of the ve strophes of the introductory narrative only two are devoted to this sketchy
10 See Vasvari (1990), to which I am indebted for discussion of the vieja episode and the following one with the duea cuerda, but space limitations prevent me from providing the full documentation. 11 The proverbial moo malo, is documented in later proverbs, such as in the Marqus de Santillanas Refranero: al moo malo ponelle la mesa, y enbalo al mandado set the table for the bad young man and send him out on an errand.

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plot, while in the three remaining ones the narrator announces the cantares caurros burlesque songs (now missing from the text), which he claims to have written about the insults he suered. He proceeds to beg pardon of the ladies present, who he ask not to get angry at his dirty humor. The lengthy pseudo-disclaimer justies examining the two-strophe anecdote for clues to the bawdy humor. If one takes into account the similar episode in the probable source text, De Vetula, combined with the folkloric reputation of drunk old women for libidinousness, as well as potential sexual connotation of trabar seize, grab with violence, overpower, it seems that, having no better prospects, the protagonist attempted to have sex with the old go-between. And the old womans insult makes clear what happened. On one level the nuees proverb can be oered as a criticism when the results of an action dont measure up to what has been promised, or when something is found to have less importance than one might judge by appearances (Doval 1997). But we can easily visualize the erotic relexicalization of the proverb if we consider that it is precisely when the fruit that is inside the shell is already dried, shriveled and inedible when it makes the most noise. From the old bawd comment it becomes evident that the joke is on the protagonist. She was apparently unhappy with his performance, accusing him of promising more than he was able to deliver, or, more crudely, of having empty testicles. The term nuts to connote testicles is so commonplace in so many languages and in so many periods that it hardly needs documentation. It is with this erotic connotation of nueces nuts that Sebastin de Horozco insults an impotent man (no. 64): que no bast para armar/buena gafa y par de nuezes it didnt suce to arm himself a good cross-bow and a pair of notches was not enough, where nuez is the notch of a cross-bow/nuts/testicles. Compare also: !Ay mujer, y ay mujer! Vamos a apaar bellotas; Eso s, marido, s/pero delantre la boda Oh, woman, were going to collect some chestnuts; yes, my husband, but rst the wedding (Schindler 1941: 67). See also Old French croistre noiz crack nuts/copulate, Modern French lart de casse-noisettes the art of nut cracking (Delvau 1968), elle a craqu sa noisette she broke her nut/lost her virginity (Segalen 1976: 37), German Taube Nuss and hohler Zahn, junges Weib und alter Mann silent nut and hollow tooth, young woman and an old man and its variant, Der muss keine Nsse knacken, der hohle Zhne hat he who has hollow teeth should not try to crack nuts (Aigremont 1908: 91).

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The exchange of insults in this story fragment is a carnivalesque set piece, characteristic of what Bakhtin dubbed the familiar abusive language of the marketplace, where the insults and abuse serve as a grotesque debasement of the body to the zone of the bodily lower stratum. Such invectives, like proverbs, are complete units that function as little genres of oral discourse, but here the two become synonymous since it is precisely proverbs that function as insults.12 The old womans insult to the Archpriest is recycled in another episode, this time placed in the mouth of a desirable young woman, an unnamed duea cuerda a prudent lady, probably a nun (strophes 77104). The passage, although much longer, is as enigmatic as the passage with the old woman. Suce it to say that the Archpriest had a failed love adventure with the lady, about which she complains bitterly. She ends up telling a fable to the old go-between who arranged the aair, about the earth which bellowed loudly but gave birth to a tiny, laughable mole, to which she attaches a moral that makes very clear with the help of a whole series of proverbs the sexual interpretation of her exemplum (97abc, 101ab, 102ab):
Quando quiere casar omne con duea muy onrada, Promete o manda mucho; desque la ha ganada, E de quanto le prometi, o da poco o da nada; Faze como la Tierra quando estava preada. . . . E bien assi acaee a muchos e a tu amo, Prometen mucho trigo e dan poca paja-tamo . . . Omne que mucho fabla faze menos a vezes; Pone muy grand espanto, chica cosa es dos nuees.

(When a man wants to shack up with a very honored lady, he vows and promises great things; but after he has won her, he gives her little or nothing of what he promised her: he acts as the Earth did when she was pregnant. . . . And just so it is with many men and with your master: they promise much wheat and give a little cha; . . . The man who talks the most sometimes perform the least; [though] it can cause a very big fright, a pair of nuts is a small thing.). Both prometer trigo e dar paja-tamo to promise wheat and deliver cha, and chica cosa es dos nuees two nuts are a small thing, mean to deceive but the key term of each syntagm are simultaneously susceptible erotic reinterpretation. Words for seed have been conventional terms for ejaculation, and, by metonymy, phallus, both
12

See Bakhtin (1968: 16 et pass).

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because of the analogy between the fecundity of seeds and sex and the female body seen as the eld to be tilled, and by the further analogy between bread production and copulation. What makes the second proverb even more obviously hilarious than the old hags similar ms es el roido que las nuees is that cosa thing and all other terms of extreme generality, such as nothing, part, place, and various neuter pronouns can serve as either euphemisms, or, alternately, as a type of ostentatious disphemism to substitute via lexicalized ellipsis for the taboo names of the sexual organ of either sex. In humorous stories it is not uncommon to repeat a variant of the punch line, to make sure that the audience gets the joke. It is then no surprise that in the recapitulation of his misadventures with the duea, the Archpriest as narrator rephrases the girls insult (104a): tom por chica cosa aborrencia e grand saa, which can be understood either as she got mad because of a trie, or she got mad because of my small sexual organ. The ladys negative evaluation of the Archpriests cosa is by no means an unusal case of female sexual aggressiveness. Male selfpraise as well as debates over the relative sexual attributes of dierent men were commonplace in bawdy poems and stories, with female characters made to voice their preference for well-endowed partners. For example, in a fteenth-century French farce, Ragot, Musarde et Babille, Musarde, a young woman, says that men are always boasting about their attributes but when it comes to actual measuring, their boasted appendage turns out to be ung petit doy a little nger (much like the tiny mole in the ladys exemplum, above). Also commonplace is the related theme, as in these two episodes, united by their nue proverbs, that men who boast about their sexual prowess are precisely the ones who are not able to perform. This is the punch line of another French farce, an erotic exploitation of the proverb doing is better than saying, where a woman whose husband is unable to satisfy her agrees to try the skills of two labors, Dire Say, and Faire Do, on tilling her orchard.13 Dire, who talks all the time, can do nothing, while Faire says nothing but goes to work, satisfy13 On the meaning of huerta orchard as the female sex organ, compare the advice that Sir Love gives the protagonist in an ars amandi episode, where he encourages him with the proverbial advice that if he wants to get a girl he has to work at it very hard, in other words, he must perform like Dire in the French farce (472b): muger, molino e huerto sienpre quieren grand uso women, mills, and orchards need constant use.

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ing her three times. All of which brings us back to explaining that (102a) omne que mucho fabla faze menos a vezes must be understood with the identical sexual connotations as its two companion proverbs. After having considered in the Meln-Endrina comedia proverbs that structure an episode even though they do not actually appear in the text, and in the vieja and the duea cuerda stories having examined a proverb that does appear but in episodes that are so garbled that only the proverbs serve to clarify their meaning, let us now look at how most proverbs function in other parts of the text. As I have said, space limitations prevent the discussion of more than a few dozen proverbs. I have, therefore, chosen two points in the text where the use of proverbs is of central importance for the understanding of the whole work. The rst is a series of proverbs that cover two strophes (16c18), and appear very early in the work, immediately after the preliminary material, formed by the initial prayer and the prose prologue. As we shall see, the whole point of the overkill with ten proverbs is to lead up to the last, climactic one, which, however, is a pseudo-proverb invented by Juan Ruiz. The whole game is centered on the term buen amor, the enigmatic key word of the whole LBA. The second is the proverb (64c) non ha mala palabra si non ha mala tenida, which serves as the moral to the single most important episode for the interpretation of the LBA, the debate in sign language between a Greek scholar and a Roman rogue. We shall continue, out of order, with the second of the two passages because non ha mala palabra si non ha mala tenida and the exemplum to which it serves as the moral are arguably the anchor of the whole text. The whole strophe in which the key proverb appears reads as follows:
Por esto dize la pastraa de la vieja fardida: Non ha mala palabra si non es a mal tenida, Vers que bien es dicha, si bien es entendida; Entiende bien mi libro, e avrs duea garrida.

(This is why the proverb of the shrewd old woman says: No word [proverb] is bad if you dont take it badly. You will see that my word [proverb] is well said if it is well understood: understand my book well and you will get a beautiful lady.).14 Note here that we
14 For the Spanish edition of the LBA I use Alberto Blecua (1992), for the English translations Raymond S. Williss (1971) edition, sometimes augmented by my own translation.

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have, in a sense, three levels of proverbial sayings embedded in one: the shrewd old woman, that is, the proverbial voice personied, tells a proverb, which says that all proverbs are good if one has the proper folk understanding to understand them. As if on cue, this strophe warning the audience to get the correct drift of my proverbial message is followed in the next several strophes by many other proverbs, beginning with the innocuous fallars muchas garas, non fallars un huevo (66a) Youll nd many herons but you wont nd a single egg, and remendar bien non sabe todo alfayate nuevo not every new tailor can do a good job of mending. (I will deal below with the following, more complex proverbs of this section.) This proverb-laden palabra passage is extremely important for the understanding of how Juan Ruiz manipulates proverbs as well as for the understanding of the whole work. The strophe, centered, as we have seen, on the proverb Non ha mala palabra si non es a mal tenida, can also be read to claim that it is not just the proverb as palabra but the interpretation of the authors word, depends on the reader. This seems to imply that there is no correct interpretation, but then the audience or reader is once again derailed, because the last verse advises that it is only those who interpret correctly who will get the coveted prize, a beautiful woman. It might well be that the whole exemplum to which this strophe serves as the climax actually serves as a long gloss on the palabra proverb, rather than the proverb being the moral of the story. The latter is, in any case, the liminal or threshold story of the work, placed between the introductory material and the text proper. The exemplum of the learned Greek doctor and the streetwise Roman recounts an agonistic encounter in sign language, on one hand, a theological debate on Christianity, and, on the other, a kind of slanging match that is a never-ending folkloric dialogue between high and low conceptions of language. The tale belongs to a literary and folkloric complex known as the Dialogue of Salomon and Marcolf, where Solomon is the wise biblical king whose wisdom is constantly reinterpreted by the wily peasant Marcolf. Stories about Solomon and Marcolf circulated in both oral and written form throughout the Middle Ages (Griese 1994). The rusticus Marcolf is a trickster gure who appears in a variety of disguises, always representing a force of disruption, anti-language and bodily perversity. Solomon, or in our story, the learned Greek doctor, represents a written, rigidly codied, monologic, and ultimately, dead language, while Marcolf, or here

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the Roman rube, talks back to that dead world and represents the textualization of the spoken vernacular, a user-dened communicative instrument of a fundamentally oral culture. The episode of the Greek and Roman has been much discussed in regard to the question: what is the correction interpretation of the work. In sharp disagreement with my learned colleagues, I have discussed in some detail elsewhere (Vasvari 1994, and particularly 2003) that tradition only allows the rogue to come out on top. What applies to the palabra of the text as a whole applies to the palabra as proverb as well: Juan Ruiz, the rogue author who, as we shall see, deates the inherited authority of proverbs to the corporeal level. It should be mentioned in this context that while in the LBA, the dialectical debate takes place in sign language, in other versions of the exemplum part of the debate is a proverb contest, a variant of the contest-in-insults, where Salomon, as auctor of Proverbs, cites conventional pieties in the form of Biblical sententia, which the churl Marcolf caps with a vulgar parody, thus exposing the monologic limitations of Solomons gnomic utterances.15 Juan Ruiz, a gure about whom we know nothing historically and who has appropriated the author role for himself only through self-inscription into the text, may be, for all we know, just as imaginary as the folklorespouting Marcolf of tradition. He certainly treats proverbs with identical irreverence and humor. Perverted proverbs have a special place in the metatextual commentary of the work, thus subverting the very interpretation of the work. By way of illustration, let us look next at the playful but very important rst series of nine proverbs in the introito ajuglarado jongleuresque introduction, which cover part of three strophes very much towards the beginning of the LBA (immediately after the preliminary materials, made up of the initial oration and the prose introduction). In the Introduction the author asks Gods grace in writing his book: que poesia pueda fazer libro de buen amor aqueste (13c) so that I may write this book on good love. We have here the rst appearance of the term buen amor, which will reappear through this series of proverbs and then some fteen times throughout the work, providing the central polysemic keyword, around which the potential
15 According to Curtius (1963: 29) playing with language and giving referential meaning second priority was so prevalent in the Middle Ages because Latin was a language learned in schools.

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interpretation of the whole must hinge. Its potentially ambiguous meanings range from the pure love of God, to profane love, from courtly to obscene, and, at one point, even becoming one of the joke nicknames of the old foul-mouthed and proverb-spouting bawd, Urraca.16 After the ambiguous prayeris he asking God for help in writing a book about the love of good or an art of lovethe author turns to his audience, oering them the entertainment of his book in romance, that is, not in the dead letter of Latin but in the spoken tongue. He explains: e porque major sea de todos escuchado/fablarvos he por trobas e por cuento rimado (15ab) So that all may listen to me better, I will speak to you in lyrics and in rhymed narrative. Part of this declaration has to do with the poetic program of the mester de clereca verse form, but at the same time Juan Ruiz is saying that he wants to write a kind of verse that will be retained in the memory of his listeners, rather than being read. For mnemonic retention the utilization of rhyme is a necessity, but so is the use of other techniques recommended by handbooks of rhetoric, among them the insertion of proverbs. As the shortest genre proverbs are the most memorable. As Juan Ruiz himself will say in the well known joking praise of dueas chica small women: ca lo poco e bien dicho nca en el coran (1606d) for what is short and well-said stays in the memory. The two strophes in question, which follow immediately upon this denition of the mester de clereca, are nothing more than a series of proverbs, the whole expressing the very popular medieval rhetorical contrast between an ugly outer covering and a noble interior:
Non creades que es libro neio de devaneo, Nin tengades por chufa algo que en l leo; Ca segund buen dinero yaze en vil correo, Ans en feo libro est saber non feo. El axenuz, de fuera negro ms que caldera, Es de dentro muy blanco ms que la peavera; Blanca farina est so negra cobertera; Acar dule e blanco est en vil caavera; So la espina est la rosa, noble or, So fea letra est saber de gran dotor: Como so mala capa yaze buen bevedor, Ans so mal tabardo est el buen amor (str: 1618).
16 An understanding of the layers of potentially playful meanings of buen amor is necessary for the interpretation of the work. Here I can discuss only its initial appearance in this rst series of proverbs; for a detailed analysis see Vasvari (2003).

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(Do not think that this is a book of foolish nonsense, and do not take as a joke anything that I recite in it, for, just as good money can be stowed in a worthless purse, so in an ugly-looking book lies wisdom that is not uncomely. The fennel seed, on the outside blacker than a cooking pot, is very white inside, whiter than ermine; white meal lies within a black covering; sweet white sugar lies inside the humble sugarcane. Under the thorn lies the rose, a noble ower; in ugly letters lies the wisdom of a great teacher; just as under a bad cape lies a good drinker, so under a bad cloak lies good love.) Of the proverbs of this introductory chain only en feo libro est saber non feo, and its variant, en fea letra est saber de gran dotor, can be a direct allusion to his own book. The role of the other seven proverbs, all of them very conventional, is that by the repetition of the same pattern of good inside bad we come to accept the evident truth of the last two items in the series, which are far more problematic. It is an obvious joke to equate so mala capa yaze buen bevedor under a bad cape lies a good drinker (which, by the way, will be repeated by the Marqus de Santilla in the fteenth century, and by Cervantes in the Quijote) with the previous similes, which oppose a bad exterior with a good interior, while a good drinker is only good for getting drunk. Even more problematic than the good drinker is the pseudoproverb strategically placed in the nal verse: ans so mal tabardo est el buen amor so under a bad cloak lies good love, where mal tabardo a rough cloak worn by laborers and other rustics covers that famous buen amor, the enigmatic pivot of the work. With the repetitive rhythm of so many overused proverbs the tricky Juan Ruiz wants to deceive us with the gnomic authority of this climactic verse, which, however, is his own creation. The straight meaning of the verse would be that the good love [the love of God] does not dress itself richly but in poor cloaks, like the poor covers of much used books. However, the play throughout the work with the syntagm buen amor makes us doubt, right at the beginning, in its second occurrence, that its meaning would be so univocal. The polysemy of this term is intimately intertwined with the oral-textual dynamic of the work, as not only here but, as we shall see, in later proverbs buen amor makes an appearance. Our suspicion about the interpretation of the so mal tabardo est el buen amor verse is increased when we compare it with another similar verse, in the slightly later episode of the ars amandi type. Here Don Amor, the God of Love, recommends to the protagonist, who

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is disillusioned with his lack of success in matters erotic, that he secure the services of a female go-between:
De aquestas veijas todas, sta es la major; Rugal que te non mienta, mustrale buen amor, Ca mucha mala bestia vende buen corredor E mucha mala ropa cubre buen cobertor. (str. 443)

(Of all these old women, this one is the best; beg her not lie to you, display good love towards her, for a good broker is able to sell plenty of poor cattle, and lots of poor clothes can be covered by a good cloak.). These verses continue the play with the rhetorical opposition good-bad.17 The two proverbs in verses c. and d. are syntactically and semantically parallel. The rst, mucha mala bestia vende buen corredor, refers on the denotative level, to the fairs where clever gypsies managed to sells damaged horses (today we might say something like a good used car salesman can sell a bad car), but on the sexual level corredor is the pimp who, under cover of darkness, managed to sell his bestias, his damaged good, old or ugly women. The term mala bestia is already documented in Latin with the meaning prostitute (Huston 1980).18 The following verse, mucha mala ropa cubre ben cobertor, functions in a parallel way, where cobertor is a cover[let] for a bed but also means pimp, from the verb cubrir sexual union in animals. In a later episode, where the Archpriest insults his bawd with a humorous ritual invective of forty names, all synonyms for pimp and/or prostitute, he includes both cobertera (924c) and cobertor (925a). At the same time mala ropa is also a synonym of its apparent antonym, buena ropa loose woman. In the same ars amandi episode with Don Amor there appears an other well-known proverb with the term cobertor taken in the sexual sense, where Amor advises that the go-between should persevere in accosting the chosen woman: ca ms ebre la olla con la su cobertera (437d) the pot boils faster with a cover, variant of the more obvi17 For documentation see McGrady (1967: 183); Morreale (1969); and Cantarino 1979 on the sophism in the equivocatio between dierent senses of good-/morally good. 18 mala bestia functions as a synonym of res [muda] mute cattle/female sexual organ, in the episode where the protagonist, in a parody of the pastourelle, encounters one of the dominatrix mountain girls, Gadea de Riofro, who questions his sexual capacity with the challenge: non sabes el uso/cmo se doma la res muda? (990c) You dont know our ways, by which a dumb beast is tamed?

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ously obscene la mujer vieja, si no sirve de olla, sirve de cobertera, where olla pot/prostitute/female sexual organ. Here olla, as we have already seen in an earlier set of examples, belongs to the category of sexual metaphors where woman is seen as a receptacle, here, in addition, as a deep, dark, and hot one, with a wide mouth and capacity for containing liquids (Vasvari 1991: 7). Compare variants of the proverb in French: toute marmite trouve son couvercle every pot nds its cover, il ny a point de pot qui ne trouve son couvercle there is no pot that doesnt nd its cover, and a longer version which spells out the erotic interpretation, chaque pot trouve son couvercle et chaque badaud sa badaude every pot nds it cover and every pimp nds his whore (Segalen 1975: 60). Compare other so-called recipe proverbs and related lyrics, which also only gain their full sense through a sexual relexicalization: olla que mucho hierve, sabor pierde a pot that boils a lot loses its avo, olla sin sil no es manjar a stew without salt [spice] isnt t to eat, and, even more ingeniously, Dame el mi Moreno la olla al revs, la carne primero y el caldo despus my dark one, give me the stew backwards, rst the meat and then the broth, or Pens que no tena marido y comme la olla I thought she was unmarried and so I ate the stew, and the Occitan Dins las vilhas olas se fan bonas sopas in old pots you can make good soup (Perbosc 1982: 59). The olla proverb is glossed in Sebastin de Horozcos sixteenth-century Teatro universal de proverbios (1994: no 718) with this same sexualized meaning:
De olla a covertera Quando a la mala muger El tiempo y vejez desteta Y viene a ya no poder Entonces procura ser De las otras alcagueta. Y como esperimentada Es buena cobijadera De suerte que la malbada De olla bieja y quebrada Viene a ser la cobertera

(From pot to cover. When with time a bad womans tits sag and she can no longer perform then she tries to be a procurer for others. And since she is experienced she is a good pimp, so that the wicked woman from being an old broken pot becomes a cover.) If we now reread strophe 443, with the sexual relexicalization of the two proverbs, mucha mala bestia vende buen corredor and mucha mala

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ropa cubre buen cobertor, and if we also take into consideration the erotic context of the Don Amor ars amandi episode in which they occur, it becomes inevitable here, too, to read the buen amor of the preceding verse, mustrale buen amor show her good love in an equivocal sense. In fact, in the episode following, which we have already mentioned, of the forty insult names for the bawd, the Archpriest, in order to gain the old womans favor once again, agrees at her behest to substitute for those vicious insults a new name for her, buen amor: por amor de la vieja e por dezir razn,/buen amor dixe al libro e a ella toda san (933ab) for love of the old woman and to speak the truth, I named this book good love and her too from this time on. But what does buen amor mean? Juan Ruiz explains it to us a few lines earlier, with the help of another proverb: de prieto fazen blanco bolvindole la pelleja (929d) you can make dark out of light by turning a fur piece inside out, or, in Alices words: words are whatever I want them to mean. As I have continued to emphasize, buen amor is the most polyvalent syntagm in the LBA. Besides meaning the love of God and Augustinian caritas, in its profane sense it can mean everything from courtly love to various forms of sexual love, and, as we see above, even be the name of a prostitute, and then, by extension, the book can be called the Prostitutes Book. Such a variety of meanings can, as most critics have explained, produce an equivocal and indeterminate meaning. But, I would prefer to consider a more heterodox carnivalesque perspective. In discussing the exemplum of Greek scholar and the Roman rube, I suggested that Juan Ruiz, like him, is another trickster, who debases the works central hermeneutical proverb, no ha mala palabra sinon es a mal tenida, to the level of sexual procuring. Now, the single gure who tells most perverted proverbs in the work is Urraca, the old bawd. With her situational comprehension of reality, her presentism and mentality without abstraction she is the voice of proverbial lore. By naming the work El libro de buen amor, Juan Ruiz is saying also that she threatens to take over of the narrative with her joking speech. From this perspective it is possible to propose that in parts the book is a textualization of orality, of the popular, open voice, coded feminine. The best guide that the author gives us to the interpretation of buen amor is, as we have seen, in las del buen amor son razones encubiertas, where both buen amor and encubierta can be perversely understood as prostitute. This reading is authorized by Juan Ruiz with the popular proverb de prieto fazen blanco, bolviendo la pelleja, which not only can mean words [or proverbs]

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can mean whatever I want them to but where volver la pelleja can refer to that same restauratio virginitatis in which many old procurers also specialized. Parody is a kind of dynamic intertextuality, which always projects a pre-text into a new semantic circuit, which it imitates and distorts. It is a kind of anti-genre that deliberately empties an existent genre of its value, and at the same time, it is a transgressive dialogism, whose value lies in the regenerative power of the word. The parodic text plays with the horizon of expectations of its audience, who have to respond simultaneously to two codes in the text, and not all are competent to process such mixed signals, and much less those who read the text from a distance of some ve hundred years and without the aid of its potential metalinguistic signs, such as the intonation, a wink, an intentional slip of the tongue. As Bakhtin (1981: 7677) pointed out, all parody is an intentionally dialogized hybrid, the endless folkloric dialogue between eete ocial culture and the oral folk world, personied in the LBA, as we have seen, by the Greek scholar and the wily Roman rogue. The Romans antecedent, Marcolf, spouted vulgar proverbs, his debasing language serving as the carnival masque of the pedantic and squeamish language of ocial culture. The perverted proverbs in the LBA have the same ludic nality.

Works Cited
Aigremont, Dr., Volkserotik der Panzenwelt, Vol. 1. (orig. ed., 1908; reprint, Brensbach: Satyverlag, 1978). Aguilera, M., Frases del Arcipreste de Hita que parecen refranes, Amrica espaola 2 (1935): 14449. Alonso Hernndez, Luis. Interpretation psychoanalytique de lutilisation des parmies dans la littrature espagnole, in Richesse du Proverbe: II. Typologie et Fonctions, eds. Franois Suard & Claude Buridant (Lille: Universit de Lille, III, 1984), 198224. Alzieu, Pierre et al., eds., Floresta de poesas erticas del Siglo de Oro (Toulouse-Le Mirail: France-Iberie Recherche, 1975). Amades, Joan, Folklore de Catalunya. Costums i creencias, Vol. 2 (Barcelona: Biblioteca Selecta, 1969). Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World, trans. Hlne Iswolski (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). , From the Prehistory of NovelisticDiscourse. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. And ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 4883. Barrick, Mac E., Welcome to the Clothes: Changing Proverb Function in the Spanish Renaissance, Proverbium 1 (1985): 119. Bizzarri, Hugo, Oralidad y escritura en el refranero medieval. Proverbium 12 (1995): 2766.

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. ed., igo Lpez de Mendoza, Marqus de Santillana. Refranes que dizen ls viejas tras el fuego (Kassel: Editions Reichenberger, 1995). , Potencialidad del refrn. Revista de potica medieval 1 (1997): 93447. Blecua, Alberto, ed. Juan Ruiz. El libro de buen amor (Madrid: Ctedra, 1992). Canellada, Mara Josefa, Para una tipologa del refrn, in Homenaje a J. M. Blecua, no ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1983), 12334. Cantarino, Vicente, La lgica falaz de Juan Ruiz, Thesaurus 29 (1979): 44547. Combet, Louis, ed., Gonzalo Correas. Vocabulario de refranes y frases proverbiales (1627). (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires, 1967). , Recherches sur le Refranero castillan (Paris: Les Belles Lettres [Bibliothque de la Facult des Lettres de Lyon] 1971). Criado de Val, Manuel, ed., El Arcipreste de Hita, el libro, el autor, la tierra, la poca. Actas del I. Congreso Internacional sobre el Arcipreste de Hita (Barcelona: SERESA, 197273). Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (New York: Harper and Row, 1963). Delvau, Alfred, Dictionnaire ertique moderne (Gnve: Slatkine, 1968). Doval, Gregorio, Refranero temtico espaol (Madrid: Ediciones del Prado, 1997). FernndezSevilla, Julio, Presentadores de refranes en el texto de La Celestina, in Serta philologica Fernando Lzaro Carreter, I, no ed. (Madrid: Ctedra, 1983): 20918. Gella Iturriaga, Jos, Refranero del Arcipreste de Hita, in Manuel Criado de Val, ed.: 249269. Goddard, R. N. B., Marcabru, Li Proverb au Vilain and the Tradition of Rustic Proverbs, Neophilologische Mitteilungen 88.1 (1987): 5570. Goldberg, Harriet, The Proverb in Cuaderna Va Poetry: A Procedure for Identication, in Hispanic Studies in Honor of Alan D. Deyermond, ed. John Miletich (Madison: Hispanic Seminary, 1986): 11933. , The Judeo-Spanish Proverb in its Context, (1993) Publications of the Modern Language Association 108: 10620. Greimas, A. J., Idiotisme, proverbes, dictons, Cahiers de Lexicologie 2 (1963): 4161, repr. in Du Sens (Paris: Seuil, 1970): 30914. Greise, Sabine, Salomon und Markolf. Ein literarischer Komplex im Mittelalter und in der frhen Neuzeit. Studien zu berlieferung und Interpretazion (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1999). Haywood, Louise. 2003. Contexts, in Haywood & Vasvari: 2003. Haywood, Louise & Louise O. Vasvri, A Companion to the El libro de Buen Amor (London: Tamesis [2003, in press]). Horozco, Sebastian de, Teatro universal de proverbios, ed., Jos Luis Alonso Hernndez (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1986). Huber, Gisela. 1990. Das Motiv der Witwe von Ephesus in lateinischen Texten der Antike und des Mittelalter (Tbingen: Gnter Narr, 1990). Huston, Nancy, Dire et Interdire: Elements de Jurologie (Paris: Payot, 1980). Jolles, Andr, Formes Simples. (orig. ed. Tbingen, 1930; Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1932). Loomis, C. Grant, Traditional American Word Play. Western Folklore 8 1949): 121, 23547, 34857; 9 (1950): 14752. McGrady, Donald, Buena ropa in Torres Naharro, Lope de Vega y Mateo Alemn. Romance Philology 21 (1967): 18385. Meja, Alma, De apariencias y ambigedades: una lectura paremiolgica del Libro de Buen Amor, Medievalia 24 (1996): 5579. Mieder Wolfgang, Proverbs are Never Out of Season. Popular Wisdom in the Modern Ag. (NY: Oxford UP, 1993).

the perverted proverb in the

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Morawski, Joseph, Proverbes francais antrieurs au XV me sicle (Paris: E. Champion, 1925). Morreale, Margherita, Ms apuntes para un comentario literal del Libro de buen amor, sugeridos por la edicin de Joan Corominas, Hispanic Review 37 (1969): 13163. Norrick, Neal, How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies on English Proverbs (Berlin: Mouton, 1985). Obelkevich, James, Proverbs and Social History, in The Social History of Language, eds. Peter Burke & Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 4372. OKane, Eleonore, On the Naming of the Refrn, Hispanic Review 18 (1950): 15769. Perbosc, Antonin, Proverbes et dictons du pays doc. Reunis et presents par Josianne Bru et Daniel Fabre (occitan/francais) (Marseilles: Rivage, 1982). Quitart, Pierre-Marie, Dictionnaire etymologique, historique et anecdotique de la langue fraais. (Paris: P. Bertrand, 1842). Rhrich, Lutz & Wolfgang Mieder, Sprichwort (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1977). Schindler, Kurt, Folk Music and Poetry of Spain and Portugal (NY: Hispanic Institute of America, 1941). Schulze-Busacker, Elisabeth, Elements de culture populairedans la littrature courtoise, La culture populaire dans la litterature narrative du moyen ge francais: receuil et analys, ed. Pierre Boglioni (Montreal: LAurore, 1979): 81101. , Proverbe ou sentence: essai dedenition. Moyen francais 1415 (1984): 13467. Segalen, Martine, Le mariage, lamour et les femmes dans les proverbes populaires francais, Ethnologie francais 5 (1985): 11962; 6 (1986): 3388. Shipley, George, Es natural de la raposa: un proverbio estratgico de La Celestina. Nueva Revista de Filologa Hispnica 23 (1974): 3564. , Usos y abusos de la autoridad de los refranes en La Celestina. La Celestina y su contorno social. Ed. Manuel Criado de Val. (Barcelona: Borrs, 1977), 23144. Singer, Samuel, Thesaurus Proverbium Medii Aevi (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 19952002). Sullivan, Constance, Gender Markers in Traditional Proverbs, in eds. W. Godzich & N. Spadaccini, Literature Among Discourses: The Spanish Golden Age. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982): 82102. Taylor, Barry, Medieval Proverb Collections: The West European Tradition, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 55 (1992): 1938. Van Thiele, Helmut, Sprichwrter in Fabeln, Antike und Abendland: Beitrge zur Verstndnis der Griechen und Rmer und ihres Nachlebens 17 (1971): 10518. Vasvari, Louise O., La semiologa de la connotacin: lecturapolismica de Cruz cruzada panadera. Nueva Revista de Filologa Hispnica 33 (1983): 30024. , Vegetal-Genital Onomastics in the El libro de Buen Amor. Romance Philology 42 (1988): 129. Revista de estudios hispnicos 24.1 (1990): 122. , Why Is Dona Endrina a Widow? Traditional Culture and Textuality in the El libro de Buen Amor, in Upon My Husbands Death. Widows in the Literature and Histories of Medieval Europe, ed Louise Mirrer (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992): 25987. , Festive Phallic Discourse in the Libro del Arcipreste. La Cornica 22.2 (1994): 122. Repr. In The Semiotics of Phallic Agression and Anal Penetration as Male Agonistic Ritual in the El libro de Buen Amor, in eds. Josiah Blackmore & Gregory S. Hutcheson, Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissanc (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999): 13056. , El hijo del molinero: para la polisemia popular del Libro del Arcipreste. In Erotismo en las letras hispnicas: Aspectos, modos, frontera, in ed. Luce Lpez Baralt & Francisco Mrquez Villanueva (Mxico, D. F.: Colegio de Mxico, 1995): 46177.

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, Fowl Play in My Ladys Chamber: Textual Harassment of a Middle English Riddle and Visual Pun, in ed. Jan Ziolkowski, Obscenity: Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages (Amsterdam: Brill, 1998): 108: 35. , El refranero polismico del buen amor: so mal tabardo est el buen amor. Actas del XIII. Congreso de la Asociacin Internacional de Hispanistas, 611 de julio de 1998 (Madrid: Castalia, 2000): 23843. , The Novelness of the El libro de Buen Amor. In Haywood & Vasvari, 2003. Weiner, Jack, ed., Sebastin de Horozco. El libro de los proverbios glosados. 2 vols. (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1994). Willis, Raymond S. ed., Juan Ruiz. El libro de buen amor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). Yndurain, Francisco, En Criado de Val, ed., 1972, 21731.

GOING BETWEEN: THE ADTH BAY WA RIY AND THE CONTESTED IDENTITY OF THE 'AJOUZ IN 13TH-CENTURY IBERIA Cynthia Robinson

Introduction The character of the go-between1 in medieval and Golden Age Iberian2 literature (exemplied by the two most infamous meddling old bawds of Mediterranean literary history, Trotaconventos and Celestina) has, over the past few decades, received renewed attention from literary historians who have adopted a comparative or multicultural perspective to her; two of the most recent and signicant contributions to this discussion have been oered by Francisco Mrquez Villanueva and Leyla Rouhi.3 Although numerous earlier studies had begun to give serious attention to Jewish, Arabic and Persian antecedents for aspects of this quintessentially Spanish character (classical antecedents and origins having for long decades held pride of place),4 we owe to Mrquez and Rouhis monographs, both of which

1 Referred to in the texts in question as la vieja, el alcahueta or, in Arabic, as al'ajouz. 2 I have chosen the term Iberian as a designator for all those texts produced in the Iberian peninsula which in some way foreground or treat the gure of the Old Woman go-between, whether these be written in Castilian, Arabic, Hebrew or Gallego-Portuguese (though this study will not deal with the latter two categories). 3 Francisco Mrquez Villanueva, Orgenes y sociologa del tema celestinesco (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1993); Leyla Rouhi, Mediation and Love: a Study of the Medieval Go-Between in key Romance and Near Eastern texts (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1999). Substantial earlier bibliography existsindeed, both Mara Rosa Lida and Amrico Castro argued extensively for the importance of non-Western sources to the conception of both the El libro de buen amor and the Celestina and is cited in the notes and bibliography of these two studies. 4 Indeed, this is the line of argument taken even in some very recent studies; see, for example, Richard Burkard, The Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: a Study in the Ovidian Background of the Libro de Buen Amor (Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 1999). Burkard maintains that the medieval imitators of Ovid, foremost of which would be the Pseudo-Ovid of the Pamphilus, although he was certainly not alone, represent the most signicant inuences to have acted upon the Archpriest and, in several passages, strongly discounts the importance of Jewish and

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result from thorough combings of impressive arrays of sources that eortlessly span accepted culture and genre divides, the irrevocable painting of the Iberian bawds portrait in varied, multi-cultural and ultimately beyond-hybrid colors.5 The present study takes Mrquez Villanuevas and Rouhis conclusions as a point of departure for the exploration of a particular aspect of a manuscript housed in the Vatican library in Rome (Vat. Ar. Ris. 368), which contains the ad Bay wa-Riy (The Story of Bay and Riy, hereafter BR ). I will attempt to situate this manuscript and the story it contains within the extant discourse surrounding the 'ajouz, and will also argue that its program of illustrations oers us a productive avenue for further explorations of the 'ajouz as a common character familiar to all members of Iberian society, and thus potentially useful for social and political dialogue and negotiation in very determined and particular contexts. The entire essay might be read as an argument for the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach to the matter of BRs Old Woman narrator (indeed, to the matter of the Iberian 'ajouz in general), one which, together
Arabic sources. See esp. his chapter entitled, De Vetula, pp. 123138. He concludes the chapter, after qualifying both Castros and Lidas arguments as laced with gratuitous assertions and (particularly as regards Lida) the failure to take the Archpriests anti-Semitism justly into account, with the following statement (p. 138): One does better closer to home: in view of the existence of the De vetula, the Arabizing and Judaizing contentionsnever bolstered by hard evidenceseem superuous. Elsewhere in the chapter (e.g., p. 126), however, when discussing the Archpriests possible knowledge of Ibn Hazms Tawq al-Hamama, Burkard uses such suspicious terminology as Muslim zone and Christian zone which indicate that, for his part, he has not taken context justly into account the complexities of the Iberian situation; the earlier-quoted statement, of course, begs the question of just how one (chooses to) dene[s] close to home. Neither Mrquez Villanuevas nor Rouhis studies discount the potential importance of classical sources, transmitted through the eorts of their medieval compilers and imitators, as a contributing factor to the LBA (nor, for that matter, does this study wish to deny their relevance to the 13th century context at issue here); rather, each points out the impossibility of ever ascribing the origins of either Trotaconventos or Celestina to one work or even to one tradition (and certainly not as these are traditionally dened essentially, Jewish, Muslim, Christian). Of course, the approach taken by Mrquez Villanueva and Rouhi is a given for this volume, and thus there will be no need to further belabor the point here. 5 By this latter term, I mean that, to paraphrase Rouhis observations, made in numerous contexts throughout her study, the Iberian vieja is not merely a combination of elements from discrete and inherently separate traditions; rather, she is a [series of] unique product[s] which, while they do of course result from the presence and interaction of all three traditions in the Iberian peninsula for more than eight centuries, more often read as distinctly Iberian, whatever the religious aliation of any given incarnation, rather than as Western, Jewish, or Muslim.

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with Rouhi, moves beyond a strictly comparative perspective (i.e., one which, reads certain literary themes or elements as belonging to one implicitly religiously-dened culture or another), and toward an interdisciplinary one which further blurs the established boundaries between Islamic, Jewish and European categories of cultural artifacts, whether visual, textual or otherwise. It is, in fact, precisely the wide recognition of a set of commonly prescribed characteristics which makes the unusual portrayal of the 'ajouz in BR so worthy of note. Finally, I will argue that it is through BRs program of images and its relationship to the realm of performance, that its intertextuality with other 'ajouz stories is, literally, acted out, that it not only contributed, from within the (implicitly pure) AraboIslamic tradition, toward the formation of a (Spanish) Celestina, but actively negotiated, through the conscious manipulation of a literary topos and persona with clear social resonance for the period central to this collection, the validity and indeed the survival of a language and a culture which, for the most part, existed under increasingly siege-like conditions. Vat. Ar. Ris. 368 is composed of thirty paper folios, fourteen of which contain illustrations. The rst, last, and an undetermined number of the middle folios are missingif date and/or place of production or dedicatee were originally indicated, this information has been irretrievably lost.6 The typically sepia ink and characteristic script (in the case of BR, vocalized almost completely throughout) are clearly Mareb, almost certainly Andalus,7 and most probably datable to the thirteenth century.8 The manuscript is an unicum, both
Nykl (Chantefable, introduction) believes that BR might have been temporarily removed to Paris Bibliothque Nationale during the early 19th century; one of the folios bears a stamp from that institution. Monneret de Villard (Bibliolia, p. 211) for his part, suggests that it may have entered the Vaticans collection during the rst half of the 16th century along with other Arabic mss.; these mss. are not specied, and I have not yet identied them. 7 Monneret de Villard, Bibliolia, pp. 211213, cites and concurs with Levi della Vida, that the script is unquestionably Andalus. He also, however, concurs with Levi concerning a probable 14thcentury date for the ms., a conclusion with which I am in disagreement. I agree with emir (see Sabha emrs catalogue entry on BR, in Al-Andalus: the art of Islamic Spain, ed., Jerrilynn D. Dodds [New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art: Distributed by H. N. Abrams, 1992], pp. 312313) on the probability of a 13th-century date. 8 Monneret, Bibliolia, pp. 21011 . North Africa might also be considered as a provenance for BR. No illustrated manuscripts on secular themes are known to have survived from a Mareb Almohad, afsnid or Marinid context, but one imagines that they certainly must have been produced.
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in terms of its text and its images; I have yet to nd another mention anywhere of the ad Bay wa-Riy.9 Nykl, in his 1941 edition and Spanish translation of the text,10 refers to BR as a love epic.11 Although the term epic is not the one which springs most readily to mind, given the complete absence in BR of themes of travel and battle, the rst word in Nykls phrase could not have been more aptly chosen: BRs plot is entirely centered around love, and more particularly around the proper and improper (or, courtly and uncourtly) ways in which loves practice might be undertaken.12 The story is narrated in the voice of an 'ajouz, an Old Woman who, in the nest tradition of the medieval go-between, is absolutely integral to the plots development.
9 It might be possible to trace parallels, or parallel motifs, in either the Kitb alAghn or the Alf Layl wa Layl. This aspect of the project is beyond the scope of the present essay, and will be undertaken for the forthcoming monograph by this author, Three Ladies and a Lover. Cynthia Robinson, Three Ladies and A Lover: Mediterranean Courtly Culture through the Text and Images of the ad Bay wa Riy, a 13th-Century Andalus Manuscript (RoutledgeCurzon, in preparation). It should be mentioned, however, as this is of importance for one of the central arguments of this study, that BRs 'ajouz does not share any of the characteristics listed as typical of the viejas found in the medieval recension of the Alf Layl reconstructed by Mushin Mahdi (The Arabian Nights, translated by Husain Haddawy based on the text of the fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript edited by Muhsin Mahdi [New York: Norton, 1990]) and discussed, in terms of their possible relationships to Celestina, by Samuel G. Armistead and James T. Monroe in Celestinas Muslim Sisters, Celestinesca 13, no. 2 (1989), pp. 327. Armistead and Monroe also mention (p. 1) the sly crone as go between noted in Hispano-Arabic poetry and . . . The Doves Neck Ring by Malkiel, Garca Gmez, Castro and Alonso (Armistead and Monroe, note 2); as shall be seen, BRs 'ajouz diers pointedly from these prototypes. 10 See A. R. Nykl, Historia de los amores de Bayad y Riyad, una chantefable oriental en estilo persa (Vat. Ar. 368) (New York: The Hispanic Society of America, printed by order of the Trustees, 1941). No other edition or translation presently exists, and Nykls publication has long been out of print. An annotated English translation of the text, together with a complete study of text and images in the context of Mediterranean courtly culture during the 13th and 14th centuries, is in progress. See also Cynthia Robinson, The Lover, His Lady, Her Lady and a 13th-Century Celestina: A Recipe for Love-Sickness from al-Andalus, O. Grabar and C. Robinson, eds., Islamic Art and Literature (Princeton, Markus Wiener Press, 2001), pp. 79116. 11 Nykl, Historia de los amores. Nykl, in fact, entitles the narrative, Qiat Bay wa Riy. For reasons explained in a previous publication, having to do with the consistent use of ad in a small compilation of similar narratives compiled by Ibn Sa'd al-Andalus (or, at times, al-Mareb) during the latter years of the 13th century, I have re-titled the narrative, ad Bay wa Riy. See Cynthia Robinson, ad Bay wa Riy (Vat. Ar. Ris. 368; al-Andalus, sig. XIII = VII), in El Legado Andalus, ed. Jos Miguel Puerta Vlchez, forthcoming. 12 As discussed in greater detail in Cynthia Robinson, The Path to Perdition, or How to Get Lovesick: the ad Bay wa Riy [Vat. Ar. 368], in Oleg Grabar and Cynthia Robinson, eds., Seeing Things: Textuality and Visuality in The Islamic World

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Given her clear relevance to the ongoing discussion of literary themes of mediation in the Iberian peninsula and the larger Mediterranean world, as well as the thoroughness of the two most recent monographs on that theme discussed earlier, it would, upon rst consideration, seem inexplicable that our Old Woman was passed over, that what is in fact a key piece to the go-between puzzle, quite literally, fell by the academic wayside. BR, in truth, has not received signicant attention since the days of its discovery; it had slipped between the cracks long before Mrquezs or Rouhis studies were undertaken. As far as historians of specically Arabic literature are concerned, this certainly has to do with the rather pedestrian quality of the text itselfgreat poetry or exemplary rhymed prose it most decidedly aint. The images, however, have enjoyed something of a dierent fate. Islamic Art History has paid a fair amount of attention to BRs numerous illustrations, although often in the context of survey texts. This, in turn, is certainly accounted for at least in part by the paucity of similar artifacts to have survived from al-Andalus: BRs illustrations represent the only extant example of an Andalus tradition of secular book illustration and/or illumination. Despite the ready recognition on the part of art historians of their Iberian provenience, however, BRs images have, since their initial publication in 1941 in the Italian journal Bibliolia by Monneret de Villard,13 been studied almost exclusively as objects of a generalized and implicitly oriental Islamic visual culture. They are most often compared to the 13th-century illustrations produced in the so-called Central Islamic Lands to an 11th-century collection of narrations by al-arr, composed of short, anecdotal and amusing stories known as Maqamt.14 Despite their
(special issue of Princeton Papers, Fall 2001; also edited as Islamic Art and Literature by Markus Wiener Press, Princeton, N.J., 2001), pp. 79116. 13 Monneret de Villard, Un codice arabo-spagnolo con miniature, La Bibliolia, XLIII (OttobreDicembre 1941), pp. 209223. 14 arr, The Assemblies of al-Harr; Students edition of the Arabic text; with English notes, grammatical, critical, and historical introduction. By F. Steingass (London, Sampson Low, Marston & Co. 1897). For Arabic, see arr (10541122), Kitb al-maqmt al-adabyah (Egypt: al-Maba'ah al-usaynyah, 1326 [1908 or 9]). The maqma as a literary genre was quite well established in al-Andalus; the text of BR, however, appears to be several notches lower on the quality scale in terms of literary nesse than any of the better known Andalus maqmt. For al-Andalus, see F. de la Granja, Maqamas y risalas andaluzas (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1976); James T. Monroe, Misinterpreting False Dreams: al-Saraqustis Maqama of Tarif, in Samuel G. Armistead, Mishael M. Caspi, Murray Baumgarten

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shared Islamicness and certain formal conventions, the two groups of images are only related in the most general of manners, and the texts they illustrate are similar only in the broadest of terms. Once the Islamic label has been applied to an image (or to anything else), however, it is dicult to remove, and it is this label which has directed scholarly attention toward the similarities and dierences between the BR images and other artifacts of Islamic visual culture, and diverted it from a serious examination of them in the context of Iberian visual culture of the 13th and early 14th centuries, or with the text they accompany.15 Before considering BRs text and images against the backdrop of the conictive and complex social realm of previously Andalusian territories recently [re-]conquered, though, we must meet and thoroughly acquaint ourselves with BRs 'ajouz. * * *

Disjunctures: The Go-Between in Iberia; The Go-Between in BR Given that the narrative contained in Vat. Ar. Ris. 368 is likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, before addressing the 'ajouz in detail, I will provide here a brief summary of the plot in which she stars, relying largely on a similar summing up oered in an earlier publication.16 The story concerns a pair of young lovers, Bay, a merchants son from Damascus, and Riy, a slave-girl who belongs to a powerful jib, or minister, in an unidentied but almost certainly
and Carlos Norea, eds., Jewish Culture and the Hispanic World: Essays in Memory of Joseph H. Silverman (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 2001), pp. 41535; and ibidem, Al-Saraqusti, Ibn al-Astarkuwi (Part II), Journal of Arabic Literature 29, no. 2 (1998 July), pp. 3158. For the illustrations, see Oleg Grabar, The Illustrations of the Maqamat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), and for more accessible reproductions of some images (Grabars come in the form of microlm), see Shirley Guthrie, Arab Social Life in the Middle Ages: an illustrated study (London: Saqi Books, 1995). 15 The only scholar to suggest such a comparison has been Raquel Ari in Le Costume des Musulmans de Castille au XIIIe sicle daprs les miniatures du Libro del Ajedrez, in Mlanges de la Casa de Velzquez, 2 (1966), pp. 5966. The study is brief, however, and the images are examined purely in terms of the information they might contain regarding clothing during the 13th century; larger questions of cultural dialogue are not posed. In fact, the only study to have seriously considered the relationships which exist between text and image in Vat. Ar. Ris. 368 is Robinson, The Path to Perdition. 16 See Robinson, The Path to Perdition.

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Andalusian city.17 Bay has fallen hopelessly in love with Riy after having seen her only once, and has enlisted the help of the Old Woman, in whose voice the story is also narrated, in securing a rendez-vous with her. Following a series of visits by the Old Woman to the palace in which Riy is housed, the lovers meet in a majlis organized by Riys Lady (hereafter, the Sayyida, as she is referred to in the text), who is the daughter of the jib to whom Riy ultimately belongs. Following an extended session of singing and wine-drinking, Riy, along with the rest of the assembled company, listens enraptured to Bays description (waf ) of her, rst in prose and then in verse; the verse version is given somewhat reluctantly, probably due to his knowledge of the portentous nature of the tabb he is about to commit. After Bays performance, Riy loses control of herself and, amid tears and sighs, imprudently (i.e., sincerely, and in a decidedly uncourtly fashion, according to the texts standards of courtliness, at any rate) declares her love for him in a dubiously lengthy series of songs and verses. The fact that she commits her indiscretionunderstood in the text and, presumably, by the audience as much more indiscreet, somehow, than Baysin such public and elegant company serves, as comments to that eect by the Sayyida and the Old Woman underline, to exacerbate the gravity of her misdeed. Although what has gone on and been said would in no way t beneath the rubric of mujn (lewdness), courtly norms have been transgressed, as we are given to understand in no uncertain terms. The Sayyida is gravely oended, and makes her anger publicly known by shouting and rending her costly robe. The majlis breaks up immediately, with the Old Woman resorting to disguising her protg as a slave girl in order to get him home without further mishap. Much
17 No geographical indications besides Bays Syrian origins are actually given in the text. During his interview with the Sayyida, following his performance which was such a hit, he simply says that he has come to rest in your countryf baladikum (f. 8r). The only other possible reference comes in the form of the designation of the Old Woman as from Babylon (f. 16v): this latter, however, is probably more an indication of an exotic or somehow marginal or other quality which the narrator and her/his public attach to her, a view clearly communicated throughout the text. It might also be an indication that the story (or the character) had, indeed, migrated into al-Andalus from elsewhere and had, even for Andalus speakers of Arabic, an aura of the exotic about it; Amaia Arizaleta (Le Centre introuvable: La Babylone castillane du Libro de Alixandre, Licorne 34, [1995], pp. 14553) has identied it, in the Libro de Alixandre, as a center introuvable.

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of the rest of the story consists of exchanges of impassioned letters in verse between Bay and Riy through a series of third parties. These include fellow slave girls of Riys, as well as a relative of the Old Womans, referred to simply as the qarb, whose mission is to distract Bay through inducing him to engage in courtly and noble pastimes and, failing the success of these latter, to tail him and keep him from falling into harms way, particularly when he heads for the river where he is wont to meet up with the Sayyidas slave girls, and beside which he, while he wandered alone amidst the gardens, caught his rst glimpse of Riy. Also key in the resolution of the situation produced by Riys indiscretion are the Old Womans manipulations of situations, and particularly of language, in service of the two distraught and lovesick lovers. She, however, has her work cut out for her. At one point, we are even led to doubt the sincerity of Riys devotion, and to consider the possibility of her having, unbeknownst to Bay or to the 'ajouz herself, taken another lover (this, of course, despite the debilitating case of lovesickness from which she labors to recover); the eciency of the 'ajouz is thus placed into question, a matter of interest for her portrayal in the text in general. There are equally mysterious lapses of weeks and, once, even of months during which Bay receives no word from his beloved, this after a reconciliation between Riy and her Sayyida has been mistress-fully orchestrated by the 'ajouz, on the occasion of which a second meeting for the pair has been promised. A modern audience is, because of the manuscripts incomplete state, in the end left wondering as to the ultimate results of the Old Womans machinations, but the nal lines of the last surviving folio present Bay, again disguised as a slave girl, being spirited away from the 'ajouzs dwelling, where he has lodged throughout the whole unfortunate series of events through town toward the palace. The 'ajouz herself triumphantly heads the procession, composed of the bevy of slave girls and their one male interloper. Our hero will then be introduced into another majlis, again organized by the Sayyida and again in her fathers convenient absence, at which he will be united in festive song and wine-consumption with Riy, and at which it is hoped that both young lovers will conduct themselves properly. As summed up by both Mrquez and Rouhi, the intermediary or the go-betweenalmost always a woman, and generally oldappears

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in a myriad of contexts in both high and later medieval literature, and is particularly prevalent in Iberia. Indeed, as Rouhi asserts, the alcahueta, or the 'ajouz is everywhere illicit or extra-marital love is to be foundshe even posits illicit loves dependence on this triangularity for much of its medieval existence, particularly in Islamic, or Islamic-inuenced, contexts. The go-between delights in bringing lover and beloved together, often it would seem for the sake of intrigue alone, and with the almost infallible result that said couple wind up in bedindeed, in many cases, the 'ajouz very clearly derives vicarious pleasure from these illicit intimacies. Though pleasurable in the short run, the spiral of sex and unbridled emotion set o by the 'ajouzs tercera generally has disastrous consequences; she, however, is most often either unconcerned, unaware, or both, having received her reward prior to the completion of her duties. The mediator is glib of tongue and fond of good food and drink, preys on the innocent, the gullible, the unhappily married, veiled or tonsured, and generally makes it known that she expects free-handed recompense for her services. If one were to glance over Nykls comments prior to approaching the text itself, both in his brief introduction and those interspersed throughout his translation, one would be predisposed toward a reading of BRs 'ajouz as consonant with the list of characteristics enumerated above. For instance, in the following passage, Nykl sets the stage for the narrative and reconstructs, on the basis of clues and allusions present in the surviving folios, the circumstances under which Bay and Riy rst became acquainted:
As one can gather from the text, Riy [is] the favorite slave of a prime minister (jib); Bay, a young foreigner of noble breeding from Damascus, seeing her by chance while she was amusing herself in a garden by the shores of the river arr with her mistress, the jibs daughter, and other [slave] girls, fell in love with her and asked an old Celestina to aid him in obtaining a rendez-vous. The Old Woman promised great things, but in the end she was not as successful as might have been desired . . .18

Nykl has correctly reconstructed some of the circumstances and previous events he posits in the lines quoted above: Riy is in fact

18

Nykl, pp. 34; all translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

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the jibs favorite slave girl, though at least a certain degree of tension surrounds this ownership, and the jibs daughter in fact appears to have more control over Riys fate than does her father. Bay did indeed see her by chance one day when both he and she, independently, were dallying in the lovely gardens which border river arr (lit., chatterbox) and it is immediately clear that the Old Womans help has been enlisted in some way by the young man in his quest for a chance to interact face-to-face with his beloved. Nykls reconstruction also, however, makes a few unsubstantiated assumptions, the most signicant of which concern the 'ajouz. He assumes, for example, that Bay has received great promises from the Old Woman when, in fact, we know nothing of the promises he has received, nor of the manner in which they have been solicited or stated; he also assumes that she has in some way fallen short of Bays expectations, an assumption for which the text oers absolutely no basis.19 More importantly still, however, further on in the passage, Nykl uses the term Celestina to refer to the 'ajouz. This clearly

19 There is also a not-entirely-correct, as well as one patently incorrect, deduction, both of which are important to this essay. The patently incorrect deduction demonstrates that Nykl has not carefully noted the events described later in the text: at the moment in which Bay rst saw her, Riy was not . . . amusing herself in a garden by the shores of the river arr with her mistress, the jibs daughter, and other [slave] girls . . . Rather, she was, quite literally, up a tree and, as we are told later by the Old Woman during her attempts to jar Riys memory as to the young mans identity and the circumstances under which she met him (f. 3r), Bay was astonished, not only by her beauty, but also by the fact that she was perched among the topmost branches of a tree. He apparently improvised some verses to her, though the Old Woman does not elect to quote these, and the two of them concerted a rendez-vous for Friday. No mention is made of the Sayyidas presence, nor of that of the other slave girls. This encounter, in fact, constitutes the rst of a series of uncourtly transgressions of the courtly code committed, not by Bay, but by Riyshe has made a date with an unknown suitor without her mistress permission (this permission must later have been given, probably in the context of the Old Womans second visit to the castle, when the jib has already, and most conveniently, departed on a trip to an unspecied destination). The not-entirely-correct assumption on Nykls part concerns Bays putative noble estirpe (noble lineage): further on in the story, in fact, in the context of the Sayyidas majlis, when she asks him about himself and his family, we learn that he is the son of a merchant. In no moment is his noble lineage touted, either by Bay himself or by any of the other characters; rather, as discussed in Robinson, The Lover, His Lady, one of the readings which might be applied to the narrative is that of Bays passing of a series of tests through which he proves himself worthy of integration, both into the ranks of the ahl al-'iq, or the noble lovers of Islamic and pre-Islamic lore, and into courtly society itself, this latter being unequivocally represented by the Sayyidas court.

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attests to the hasty type-casting involved in his assessment of her, and, in large part, explains the basis for the other assumptions he has made, discussed below: he has extrapolated backward on the basis of Fernando de Rojas infamous bawd!20 In fact, however, the Old Woman narrator (and, in many ways, protagonist) of the ad Bay wa Riy is a-typical of the typical medieval go-betweenboth in Iberian and larger Islamic contextsin almost every respect, and her characterization by Nykl as a Celestina blurs the very aspects of her character which the anonymous author[s] of the text almost certainly wanted readers or members of an audience to consider as most signicant, due precisely to their discrepancies vis--vis well-established character traits for the persona with which a 13th-century Iberian audience would arguably have been familiar.21 One of the most important indications of the fact that this Old Woman was meant to be perceived as dierent, and arguably the circumstance which permits the Old Womans role as protagonist and her greater-than-usual complexity as a character, is her role as narrator, a role that dierentiates her sharply from both contemporaries and predecessors (indeed, her most direct parallel in this respect is Celestina herself ). This capacity, in turn, gives her numerous opportunitiesa greater number, in fact, than is accorded to any of the other principal charactersfor speech, and thus for presenting the motivations, whether these be true or merely a self-interested representation of herself, for her mediating actions.22 While the end
20 I myself have been guilty of this, in choosing the title for an earlier study, and take this occasion to oer my sincere apologies to the unjustly maligned 'ajouz. 21 See the discussion by Rouhi, Love and Mediation, of Riaterres intertextuality as applicable to medieval literature, p. 67, where the importance of the interpretation of the text in light of previous modes of representation as regards the literature in which a mediator gures is discussed. 22 Indeed, Rouhi, Love and Mediation, p. 2, points up the destabilizing eect which can be produced by discrepancies between narration and actions, e.g., when the narration/narrator asserts the 'ajouzs expert prowess at her trade, only to later have to narrate the failure of some of her eorts to produce results. No such ambiguities are present in BR, however, and this is due to the Old Womans privileged position as narrator; when necessary, other narrations (e.g., by her relative, who has followed Bay on one of his wanderings, or by one of the Sayyidas slave girls) are interspersed, but the principal narrative voice is unquestionably the Old Womans. In this BR is markedly dierent from all other 13th- and 14th-century texts which make use of similar characters; moreover, it is dierent from the Arabic text to which it is most commonly linked through its program of images, Harrs Maqmt, where the actions of the picaresque character are not narrated by the same. Some

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result of these mediations, the most grievous of which is Riys indiscretion and both consequent cases of lovesickness, constitutes a disruption of courtly protocol and norms which is, at least initially, disastrous for all concerned, both the reader/audience and the aected parties are assured repeatedly that the 'ajouz was only trying to help (esp. f. 15r). In order to attempt a fair evaluation of the Old Womans character in BR, then, we will allow her to take the stand in her own defense. Our initial encounter with the 'ajouz, at a majlis, or soire, in the palace which will later provide the scene for Riys lovesick suerings might, upon rst consideration, seem to indicate that she, as do her contemporaries and her progeny, habitually acts as a panderer or a pimp. Here, she describes one of the slave girls whom the jib has just summoned forth, as though to present her charms to the audience/reader:
. . . and another girl approached, with breasts like two apples on a marble platter, white-skinned, blonde. I looked at her legs, and saw that she had a golden all on each one, studded with precious jewels; when she walked, despite her tender years, she bewitched the senses with her light step, her grace, coquetry and perfection . . .23 Then the jib looked at me and said, Sister, is this girl not lovely? I said to him, She certainly is, and may God [always] concede such favors to my Lord, the jib! (f. 1 v./p. 3).

In fact, however, the 'ajouz merely observes and admiresno indication is given that she recognizes an opportunity in the youthful feminine pulchritude paraded before her for either personal gain or vicarious pleasure. She simply congratulates the jib on his good fortune, and desires him more of the same. Furthermore, a few lines on, when the jib summons Riy, we get our rst glimpse into the Old Womans interior, into the workings of her emotions and motivations, and these are sincerely empathetic with the young girls situationand I said to myself, Good Lord!, and then I said [in order to distract him], There are many among the girls named Riy! The 'ajouz fully recognizes the jibs desire for his slave and realizes that the situation is a precarious one; she hopes that
Andalus maqamt, however, are narrated in the rst person, generally presumed to be equivalent to the poets speaking voice; see F. de la Granja, Maqamas y risalas. 23 A similar instance is found on f. 3r, where the 'ajouz observes the beauty and grace of Riy, as she oversees the lavish preparations for the fateful majlis.

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there might be another Riy somewhere among the harem, so that her Riy will remain free for Bay. In another striking deviation from the Old Womans stock set of characteristics, BRs 'ajouz appears to have no need of artice in order to successfully carry out her mediating activitiesshe is beloved by one and all, and welcome, or so it would seem, pretty much anywhere. For example, she states unequivocally (f. 3r), on the occasion on which, in response to Bays request, she visits the castle one last time to test the waters before the ultimately fateful majlis, that she simply knocked and, when her knock was answered, asked to be allowed to enter, and she was. Similarly (although we cannot be absolutely sure of this given the absence of the rst folios of the manuscript), her presence at the jibs majlis, recounted on f. 1v, would not seem to have required the use of ruses, given that the minister addresses her as his sister.24 She even avoids all discussion of ruses or tricks, implying that mediation with her honest purposes in mind has no need of them: in response to Bays disconsolate, Oh, Mother, what ruse can we employ? (f. 2r), the 'ajouz ignores the nave question, oering instead her sage counsels concerning the way in which Bay should conduct himself at the Sayyidas majlis in order to come up to the snu of the noble gathering. In fact, rather than dictate intricate machinations through which Bay will be introduced into the majlis, the Old Woman rather innocently asks Riy, on the occasion of her nal visit to the palace prior to the majlis (f. 4r), how this might be achieved.
24 Similar cases are found throughout the text: the 'ajouz is called Sister by the jib (f. 1v), aunt (f. 7r) and mother (f. 24r) by the Sayyida (on this same folio, the Sayyida, before the reticence [!] of the 'ajouz to meddle more than she already has, announces that the 'ajouz is both father and mother to Riy, Mother by Bay on several occasions (. 2r [twice], 3r, 12r, 22r), and even Lady (Sayyida) by both Riy and the other slave girls (. 11r, 12v, 25r, 26r, 29v). Both Rouhi (Mediation and Love) and Armistead and Monroe (Celestinas Muslim Sisters) note that it is quite common for both lover and beloved to address the 'ajouz as aunt and mother, and for her to respond in kind with daughter, or son. Although the more aectionate epithets also appear in Romance texts such as the LBA, it is to be noted that they appear together with less attering characterizations of the viejae.g., maa, picaa, cobertera, almadana, garavato, etc., etc. (vv. 924930). These are listed, ostensibly, by the Archpriest in order to instruct his readers in what not to say, but the list is long (41 terms) and, as John K. Walsh observes, immediately comic: see John K. Walsh, The Names of the Bawd in the El libro de buen amor, in John S. Geary et al., eds., Florilegium Hispanicum: Medieval and Golden Age Studies Presented to Dorothy Clotelle Clarke (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), pp. 151164; p. 151. Nothing of the sort is said of BRs 'ajouz.

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Equally worthy of comment is the fact that the type of situation or interaction BRs 'ajouz promotes can in no way be described as socially or sexually transgressive. Rather, she seeks to instill the precepts of good sense and moderation, as well as noble love, into Bay. We come, for instance, upon the Old Woman standing by as she observes the eect on her protg of the rst batch of notso-great news she has brought from the palace (f. 2r); he sits and stands, and paces about the room in an obvious state of agitation. Despite the lacunae, it is clear that this news regards in some way the diculty of the task before them. As the Old Woman notes, she found it prudent to wait for him to calm down a bit before beginning her counseling. Indeed, prudence is the operative term as far as our 'ajouz is concernedmost of her advice serves to rein in her young friend, to make him think before he acts, and to assure that he is properly schooled in the etiquette of the noble lovers, both of yore and of today, rather than to add fuel to the re of his passion and spur him on toward the commission of transgressions of that etiquette which he will later live to regret. Witness the following advice, in response to Bays question, What else can you tell me? (f. 2r):
Well, what else do you want? I brought you the news and you were shocked, you were all bothered, you stood up and you sat down, and if you had a bit more sense you wouldnt have handled things in the way that you have. It looks to me like you are a bit weak in the [common-]sense department, and the proof of that is that you fell in love in the jibs very house, when you knew full well his great power and inuence, as well as his love for Riy and everything she means to himHow could you ever have dared, you, a foreigner, not knowing the customs of this country, fall in love with her? Boy, you were really o on that one!

Even the Old Woman, however, must have been surprised at the eects of her criticism on Bay: he falls immediately to the ground in a dead faint, hitting his head on the way down and causing blood to run down his handsome face. This, as the Old Woman tells us, aroused pity in her heart; she states to herself and, not entirely coincidentally, to her public, that she is to blame (f. 2r):
I have really been guilty of an enormous sin, giving hopes to this poor stranger about Riy, and then dashing them down. Oh, that I had never given him vain hopes!

She stays awhile watching over her charge, as the blood continues to run down his face and, in her own words, . . . felt great pity for him.

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When the young man awakens, there follows a discussion concerning love and its merits which is worth relating in its entirety (f. 2r):
He said to me afterwards: Oh, Mother, what ruse may we employ?, and I said to him, Oh, my son, there is no true love but that which is hidden and without shame: all those lovers about whom we hear so much, like Qays, Kuayyir, 'Urwa and others, too many to mention, have had to pay because they mentioned their beloveds in verses, giving away their secrets, becoming victim to amorous hallucinations, getting bad reputations, falling into disgrace, following paths of disillusion and divesting themselves of all possibility for obtaining pardon while of those who hid their secret, we know nothing, nor is anything told about them. Thus, many have loved and suered with patience, with the exception of those who laid themselves open to condemnation and became known. The Old Woman said: and he said to me, Oh, Mother, what can I say, since you have told me the truth? But loving passion is the guest of the noble and the adornment of well-educated literati, and the companion of the sharp-witted! And I said to him, Well, what are you going to do? Because you have already seen, by God, that Riy feels the double of what you feel regarding the sincerity of love and the force of aection, and in her consideration for you . . .

Moreover, in order to assure that sexually transgressive behavior will not mar the elegant proceedings of the upcoming majlis, she nishes her counseling session by arming the would-be courtly lover with a checklist by which he may ascertain whether his beloved is, or is not, worthy of noble aection (f. 2v):
. . . God willing, if you are there, keep your soul under control and be its master, like one who is master of his reason; if you look [at anyone], look at the Lady, and at me, just as though you felt no love in your bosom. The best people are the ones that measure before they slice, and consider before they cutand if you see Riy retiring, silent, prudent and calm, like one who has control of herself, you may have hope of her love, [but] if you see her [behave in a] light and playful manner, then dont hang your soul on her, and turn your heart away from her, for reason/understanding is the best among the created things, and the most noble of all that which God has given to his servants. Keep my advice in mind, Oh, Bay!

Perhaps the most surprising deviation of BRs 'ajouz from the typical features of her character type, however, is her resolute refusal to accept anythingeven thanksas recompense for her services. She acts, as she herself declares, in the service of the virtues of honesty, sincerity and (as shall be discussed below, somewhat contradictorily),

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courtliness. In the scene in which the 'ajouz attempts to prepare her young charge for the encounter with his beloved at the Sayyidas majlis, upon hearing her sage advice, Bay kneels down at her feet and kisses the ground in a gesture of respect and gratitude, the same gesture, in fact, with which the qiyn demonstrate respect and admiration at the Sayyidas majlis, both to the Lady and to Bay himself. The Old Womans response to this represents the rst of a series of iterations concerning her lack of desire for remunerationor for any sort of recompense, for that matterin exchange for her mediation (f. 3r):
My son, I dont want this from you, I only want that you keep your wits about you, and that you weave well together your words when you enter the alczar of a noble woman!

Bay then suggests the only suitable reward he can think of: May God compensate you for it! Allahs recompense will serve both as thanks for the advice, and as a preface to his next requestthat she approach the castle one last time in order to get an idea of how things stand. The 'ajouz acquiesces without a second thought, but her monosyllabic response to both blessing and request (Yes!) does not communicate whether or not she accepts even divine remuneration for her eorts. This highly uncharacteristic lack of greed on the part of our Old Woman would make anyone suspicious, but the complete lack of reference to money, baubles, clothing, perfume or any of the other sorts of remuneration generally coveted (and received) by alcahuetas the medieval world over leave us no choice but to accept, at least provisionally, the selessness of the 'ajouzs motivations at face value. Not a single gift or sum of money is mentioned (let alone given or received) in any of the tattered and timeworn folios, whether recto or verso, of the ad Bay wa Riy. Power is mentioned in the context of discussions of the jib, but never wealth, and although we are told that Bay is a merchants son (which would seem an ideal place for a discussion of matters mercenary, were it not for the fact that the scene takes place in the Sayyidas majlis . . .), no mention either of goods or money is made. Textiles, glasses, gardens and perfumes are enumerated, and their quality is noted, and these comments do indeed most often come from the mouth of the 'ajouz, but they are not made with a covetous intent. Rather, they are merely ejaculations of admiration (f. 4r). The Old Woman sees the goods,

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not as potential possessions, or as possible rewards for her services, but rather as appropriate to women of such noble standing as those with whom she has truck in the context of the narrative. Finally, the most dramatic of all the Old Womans statements of purposeand the one which gives us the clearest indication of the mechanisms through which BRs authors attempted to distinguish the squeaky-clean proceedings they narrate from the more seedy situations which result from tercera in, e.g., Kalla wa Dimna, or even the questionable intentions of terceras (with the exception, of course, of the Virgin Mary!)25 in the Cantigas de Santa Mara comes in the counseling session which most immediately follows the unhappy ending of the majlis and its gaiety as a result of Riys disastrous revelation of her true feelings of hopeless love for Bay. Bay is exhibiting all the classic signs of the lovesick lover, and expresses his impatience for the 'ajouz to nd a solution to his woes and reunite him with his beloved. His impetuous prodding receives the following response:
I only wanted the best, and it all turned out badly! I wanted the rightly guided and true, and I got ugliness and lies! What I did for you, I didnt do because of your troubles, or because I wanted something from you, but only [so that it be like] the free, noble and generous ones, those of noble lineage! . . . Stop this, my son! Do not reveal your sorrows, for in hiding them, there is much good . . . [Noble] lovers are content with letters, and even with less than that! (. 15r15v)

In fact, it would seem here that the 'ajouz is attempting the impossible: she wishes, not to incite her charge and his beloved to engage in illicit sex, but rather to foment a sincere, pure and blameless love, what contemporaries might have recognized as typical of the preIslamic Ban 'Ur. The problem, of course, is that even as early as the 9th century, Baghdad courtiers had recognized the topos for what it was, and expressed their doubts about the likelihood, not only of achieving it in their own society, but of it ever really having been like that for them.26 And even the Old Woman herself

25 On the tercera of the Virgin, see John E. Keller, Cantiga 135: The Blessed Virgin as a Matchmaker, in Florilegium Hispanicum, pp. 103118. As Keller makes clear in n. 2, it is to be noted that the Virgin, for the most part, attempts to steer her mortal children away from carnal love. 26 Teresa Garulo, ed. and trans., El Libro del Brocado = Kitb al-Muwashsh" (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1990), introduction, xvi.

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appears to be a bit unclear on the matter. She has already let on, for instance, even before the majlis, that the Sayyidas festivities are just for fun, (f. 3r)27 so that Riy may enjoy herself; they represent, in essence, a token of the Ladys aection for her favorite slave girl. Indeed, it is at this precise moment that the Old Womans only true betrayal of Bay occursshe knows the sincerity of his love for Riy, and yet, despite this, she plans to place him in a situation in which he will be expected to conduct himself in the manner betting, not a lover already well along the road to lovesickness, but an urbane courtier accustomed to singing and reciting verses of love (in the voice of a poet, rather than that of a lover) to an audience equally savvy in the rules of the game and, thus, well protected from the potentially harmful eects of cupids arrows. It is, in fact, in this guise that the 'ajouz (re-)presents her young charge to his beloved when she visits the castle on the eve of the majlis in order to ascertain that all is proceeding as planned (f. 3v):
I took [Riy] by the hand and got away from the others . . . and I said to her, Oh, Riy, Bay sends greetings to you . . . for love of you, and tell me, what ruse should be used, and how shall it be . . .? And she said, Who is Bay? I said: The young man, the literatus, the poet you saw from up atop the tree . . . and you two had a rendezvous for Friday . . .

This discrepancy between courtly and [true] noble love, in fact, is a conict which the text fails to resolve. It is, moreover, the conict which is most directly responsible for the disaster that occurs at the majlis, rather than any ineptness or mischievous intent in the Old Womans handling of the situation. In essence, the 'ajouz wishes, and seeks to bring about, the return of something which never existed

27 Bays statement (f. 3r: If things have to go the way you say [i.e., if I must speak pretty words and mind my ps and qs about whom I look at, and go through your checklist to determine whether or not Riy is a worthy beloved], Ill never be able to enter her castle!) indicates that he may be a bit worried about his own ability to carry o the charade. The Old Woman insists, however, that he play the game: By God, it cant be any other way! But what the Lady wants to do with this majlis is to make it something of a joke, so that sorrows may be forgotten and all may be happy; all this to give pleasure to Riy, because of her love for her. It is well known that kings love gay parties in gardens! Indeed, in order to be noble according to the courtly standards of court society, one must be insincere this is the moral dilemma which Bay must confront, and which the 'ajouz either ignores or chooses to ignore in her enthusiasm for helping her charge achieve the fulllment of his desires.

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in the rst place! The parallel with the impossible situation of alAndalus at the late-13th-century moment in which the text is being composed is dicult to resist, and Ibn Sa'd al-Andaluss late-13thcentury compilation entitled al-Muribt f-l-Murqit oers ample proof of the popularity of ad concerning the mythical lovers of the early years of Islam and the jhilya in al-Andalus at the time, something which it is not possible to assert with as much condence for earlier periods based on the textual record.28 The same poets oeuvre, moreover, is lled with expressions of his nostalgia for a rapidly vanishing al-Andalus.29 Among the ad collected by Ibn Sa'd, not coincidentally, is the story of Layl and Majnn, and it is to this narrative from among all the rest of those chosen by the 13th-century Andalus anthologist that I would like to suggest that BR is most closely related.30 Riys transgression of courtly norms through the sincere use of verse to speak of her beloved mirrors, of course, the transgression of that most famous of all famous lovers, Majnn. Despite the fact that the drama surrounding Majnns lovesickness unfolds, rst in Bedouin camps and, later, in the wilderness, while Bays and Riys saga is essentially an urban and a sub-urban one, the parallels between Majnns and Riys cardinal sins of sincere tabb, highlighted at the expense of all other motifs and segments in both narratives, would have been obvious to a 13th-century public, given that this occurrence provides the fulcrum around which both narratives revolve.31 Although Ibn Sa'ds narrative retains its original

Ibn Sa'd al-Andalus (12131286), Muribt f-l-Murqit (Bayrt: Dr amad wa-Mii, 1973). 29 See, for example, Ibn Sa'd al-Andalus, Al-Mughrib f hul al-Mughrib, ed. and intro., Zak Muammad aan (Cairo: Matba'at Jmi'ah F"d al-awwal, 1953). 30 Limitations of space prohibit more than a brief sketching of this relationship here; it will be more thoroughly developed in the forthcoming monograph, Three Ladies and a Lover. 31 Secrecy was very much at issue in the 'Abbasi redactions of Majnn Layl: see Ruqayya Y. Khan, On the Signicance of Secrecy in the Medieval Arabic Romances, Journal of Arabic Literature 31, no. 3 (2000), pp. 23853. Al-Murqist recounts a lengthy version of Qays woes, pp. 240 . It is, of course, quite common for medieval romance narratives to exhibit multiple intertextualities through the presence of discrete topoi or narrative phonemes which have been culled and re-cast from other narratives, as opposed to one narrative evidencing wholesale plot, character and setting borrowings from another. The texts, in other words, are in constant movement in relation to a group of other, closely related texts, each text maintaining a stable identity while deriving many thematic currents from contact with the other
28

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format and details, the context of BR has been urbanized, and it is this factor which may account for the insertion of the 'ajouz into a model from which she is normallyboth originally and in all subsequent versions of that particular narrativeabsent.32 I believe, however, that there may be other, more case-specic and pointed reasons for her insertion here: she addresses, on the one hand and through her very presence, the diculty and perhaps even impossibility of union for our 13th-century Andalus Layl and Majnn (drastic measures, that is, are called for) and, on the other, she appears to have provided, as will be argued below, a particularly rich focal point for cultural negotiationI believe that she was inserted precisely as an advocate for the nobility of Arabic love. In contrast to the relative absence of the go-between from European legal texts concerned with proxenetism, the alcahueta is described in great detail in Iberian legal texts of the 13th and 14th centuries, many of which may be related either directly or indirectly to Alfonso

texts. (Rouhi, Love and Mediation, p. 69; Zumthor, Intertextualit, p. 9, citation apud Rouhi). Rouhi argues that the go-between is, in fact, particularly well-elucidated by Zumthors mouvance, as she . . . engages the notions of movement and contact between texts continually, for [she] relies as much on inherent, invisible presuppositions from outside each text as on the actual poetics employed within the work. Recent publication history evidences much productive work being carried out concerning this aspect of literary transmission and interchange. Here, I will mention only a select few of those publications of greatest relevance to the case at hand. Armistead and Monroe (Celestinas Muslim Sisters) discuss several instances of this as relates to knowledge of both individual stories and frame narrative from the Alf Layl tradition in the medieval Mediterranean. C. Jean Campbells study, The game of courting and the art of the commune of San Gimignano, 12901320 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), discusses a phenomenon similar to that noted in BR, in that this process may be observed in both visual and textual phenomena designed to function in tandem. Nykl, in his brief introduction to the 1941 Spanish translation of BR, makes similar observations concerning BR and the anonymous 13th-century French text, Aucassin et Nicolette, and there are striking (indeed, almost verbatim), but as yet unexplained, similarities between specic passages from BR and the frame story or cornice of Bocaccios Decamerone; these were briey explored by this author in a paper entitled, Kissing Cousins in a Garden Paradise: Concerning a Forgotten Andalus ms. and Boccaccios Decamerone, presented at the 11th Annual Conference sponsored by the department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of New Mexico, 2122 February, 2002, Medieval Spanish Texts and Pre-Texts. This intriguing connection will be explored more fully in the forthcoming monograph, Three Ladies and a Lover, but for the present, it is to be noted that BR gured in the collection of the Vatican at least as early as the 16th century, thus suggesting the possibility that it arrived in the Italian peninsula substantially earlier than that. 32 Rouhi, Love and Mediation, pp. 175 .

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Xs attempts at social regulation through legislation.33 Although the descriptions of the 'ajouz are intensely unfavorable in these legal/historical texts, the fact remains that they are extensive, particularly in comparison to the European situation, and even to the Islamic one: indeed, the presence of actual 'awjz in medieval Islamic societies does not appear to have been considered problematic at all, and the same may be said for Jewish culture.34 The Iberian alcahueta is, in fact and at least initially, as Rouhi cogently argues, an amalgamation of the Islamic type with (on occasion, and these occasions certainly included Alfonsine legal writings) the European, and societys reception of her (and, thus, her portrayal[s] in the literature[s] of the period is also representative of the entire gamut of attitudes possible in both western and Semitic contexts, and many of these attitudes are in fact apparent in a single text). It is therefore, I argue, highly signicant that, into this 13th-century urban version of what is perhaps the Arabic languages most classic (and most impossible) love story, BRs authors choose, or nd it necessary, to insert an 'ajouz who promotes yet another impossibilitythe love of the Ban 'Ur. Moreover, as shall be seen, her prominence in legal texts produced under the Learned Kings patronage perhaps placed her in a position from which she could be particularly eective at getting under his skin.

33 Rouhi, pp. 205 ., with discussion and ample notes concerning Celestinas Iberian antecedents; see especially, Francisco Snchez Castaer, Antecedentes celestinescos en las Cantigas de Santa Mara, Mediterrneo, Guin de Literatura 1, 4 (1943), pp. 3390. For alcahuetera, see Mara Eugenia Lacarra, La evolucin de la prostitucin en la Castilla del siglo XV y la manceba de Salamanca en tiempos de Fernando de Rojas, in Ivy A. Cors and Joseph T. Snow, Fernando de Rojas and Celestina: approaching the fth centenary: proceedings of an international conference in commemoration of the 450th anniversary of the death of Fernando de Rojas, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, 2124 November 1991 (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1993), pp. 3378, which contains discussion of several important passages from the Siete Partidas and other Alfonsine legal writings; and, of particular relevance to the case under discussion here, Francisco Vzquez Garca; Andrs Moreno Mengbar, eds., Poder y prostitucin en Sevilla, siglos XIV al XX: tomo I: La edad moderna (Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, 1995). 34 See Mrquez Villanueva, Orgenes y sociologa, esp. Sociologa de la alcahueta hispano-oriental, La legislacin alfons, Siglos XIV y XV. La plaga social del proxenetismo, pp. 111 .

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La Vieja Sube al Escenario: Arabic and Symbols of Arabic Culture under Fire in Alfonso Xs Multicultural Hegemony In none of the numerous studies which treat either the El libro de buen amor or Celestina is a tradition of illustration mentioned.35 Conversely, such a tradition is demonstrably present in two Iberian narrative works centered around the theme of an 'ajouzs tercera: it is, as has been discussed, an integral part of the whole product which is BR, and there is evidence for a memory of this tradition having informed the creation of a similar story concerning the two star-crossed lovers, Bir and Hind, in the aljamiado manuscript discovered some twenty years ago in Urrea del Jaln (Aragn).36 The probable presence of images in the manuscript from which the text in question was copied is indicated by the frequent interspersion in the text of such phrases as fegura: Hindi escribiendo una carta a Bir, fegura: Biri leyendo la carta de Hindi, etc.; these phrases do not appear in any of the other texts bound with the ad Bir wa Hindi. It would thus appear arguable, rst, that the visual tradition, in Iberia, was specically linked with the Arabic tradition of such narratives, and, second, that when these imagesparticularly, as shall be seen, in Alfonso Xs Libros del Ajedrez (Figs. 56)are then consciously manipulated in a Romance-speaking context (in order to control or contain those elements such as the 'ajouz, which have potentially disturbing resonance outside the realm of ction), reference is being made specically to that Arabic tradition of stories foregrounding the 'ajouz a dialogue of direct and deliberate cultural relevance is being established. I quote here a summary description I have made elsewhere concerning the image program of BR (Figs. 14):
The consistent size and format of the BR images would . . . seem to be the product of a thoroughly organized enterprise of book produc35 Nothing of the sort is discussed, for example, by John Dagenais in The ethics of reading in manuscript culture: glossing the Libro de buen amor (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994). 36 See Federico Corriente Crdoba, Relatos pos y profanos del manuscrito Aljamiado de Urrea de Jaln; edicin, notas lingsticas e ndices de un manuscrito mudjar-morisco aragons, introduccin por Mara J. Viguera Molins (Zaragoza: Institucin Fernando el Catlico, 1990).

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tion and illustration,37 as would the easy division of the BR images into several types, upon which variations are produced according to the specic needs of the narrative moment in question. Interiors (Riys Fainting Spell, f. 3v; Bay Receiving Riys Letter, f. 22; Bay Asleep, f. 29r; Bay Playing Chess with the Old Womans Relative, f. 31)38 are presented frontally in almost identical size and proportions, with similar treatment of turrets or other exterior architectural features. Garden scenes (the three majlis scenes, . 4v, 9 and 10, with Riys Reunion with the Sayidda, f. 27r, constituting a potential variant on this theme) are similar and at times identical in their use of architectural features to frame a group of gures, as well as in their presentation of water, grass or other details of setting. Likewise, the two scenes which depict Bay receiving counsel or advice from the Old Woman (. 2v and 9) conform to a type. . . .39

In some of BRs images, the 'ajouz is a marginal character (i.e., she is physically marginalized in the space contained or indicated by the image; e.g., Bay Playing Chess with the Old Womans Relative, f. 31) or appears to be fomenting trouble. It should be pointed out, however, that these elements of the images do not always agree with the portrayal of the situation and the 'ajouzs involvement in it in the text: this may be seen in her placement in the succession of three majlis images. 4v, 9 and 10in which, in contrast to the events narrated in the text, the 'ajouz is shown with a wine ask in her

37 In light of this suggestion and of the comparisons which I wish to establish between BR and Alfonsine books, it is interesting to remark the existence of a treatise, in Old Portuguese but written in Hebrew characters, on the subject of the mixing and preservation of various colors used in the illumination of books; D.S. Blondheim, An Old Portuguese Work on Manuscript Illumination, The Jewish Quarterly Review XIX, no. 2 (October, 1928), pp. 97136. The treatise, according to Blondheim, was produced by Abraham b. Judah ben Hayyim (it is signed by him, at Loul, Portugal; although the document in question probably represents a later copy) sometime around 1262 A.D., a moment of intense activity on the part of Alfonsine workshops, and most likely contemporary to the production of BR as well. While Blondheim implies that the treatise pertains particularly to the illumination of Hebrew manuscripts, it certainly has a wider cultural semantic eld. The existence of such a treatise suggests that the illustrating and illuminating of manuscripts in the middle of the 13th century was a large enough business to warrant the production of such documents for the instruction of painters. Moreover, the colors which are given pride of place (rst gold, then blues, reds) correspond to the colors most used in the illuminated/illustrated Alfonsine codices. It is also interesting to note that the treatise contains information concerning the gilding of sword handles and varnishing, which its author appears to consider as within the professional ballpark of those who illuminated/illustrated books. 38 This folio is bound out of order. 39 Robinson, The Path to Perdition, p. 83.

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hand (Fig. 1), as though she were egging the majlis participants on toward even greater breaches of etiquette or, at the very least, toward taking another swig of vino. These slippages between image and text will require further investigation in the future, for they are also at odds with other components of BRs image program which portray the 'ajouz as a protagonist and in a favorable light (Fig. 2). There are two scenes, in fact, which place the Old Woman in the noble position of the imparter of valuable knowledge (. 2v and 9r; Fig. 4) [in each case, to Bay], an attribute which, as Rouhi has observed, is typical of the more positive eastern portrayal of her character, and is alien to the western concept of her. Likewise, in the scene showing Riy (Fig. 3), her face bloody, separated by a pond and a bridge from her Sayyida, the 'ajouz is portrayed in her now crucial role of go-between, exercising her verbal prowess in favor of the ladys clemency for her slave; as the Sayyida states in the text, she is happy to see the Old Woman, and had even thought of summoning her (. 12v13r); she is similarly foregrounded in the scene depicting Riys reunion with the Sayyida (f. 27v), whichas the text has narrated at great lengthshe has been instrumental in eecting. These images lead us in two directions. First, they invite comparison with contemporary Iberian texts which are similarly illustrated. An initial search for comparanda for the image program of BR soon led to the roughly contemporary Libros del Ajedrez, or the Book of Chess and Games (hereafter, LA ; Figs. 56), one of the most densely illustrated of the high-end of codices produced in the Sevillan scriptoria of Alfonso X.40 Since the comparison seemed such an obvious one, it was rather surprising not to nd it thoroughly explored in any of the literature which dealt with either object. And yet it is precisely in the juxtaposition of images from these two programs that we may begin to enunciate the true nature of the relationship of BRs 'ajouz toand her signicance forthe larger panorama of 13th-century Iberian go-betweens and, more importantly still, the usefulness of these latter, together with their often unspoken, but nonetheless present, religious aliations pertinent to specic embodiments of the topos, for what we might refer to as cultural negoti40 Alfonso, King of Castile and Leon; Mechthild Crombach, Libros del ajedrez, dados y tables, facsimile edition, 2 vols. (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional: Coeditan Vicent Garca Editores, Valencia [y] Ediciones Poniente, Madrid, 1987).

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ations, exemplied perfectly by the LA, in which context members of the three religions are dressed and undressed, separated and manipulated, in what was ultimately a fairly propagandistic and unrealistic manner.41 Here we will limit ourselves to remarks directly concerning the 'ajouz, whose manipulation in this context is even more obviousif such is possiblethan is, for instance, Alfonso Xs blatant demonization of her in Calila y Digna, for no words are involved; the images, as it were, speak for themselves. The LA is ostensibly a treatise about chess, and the words beneath the strikingly large images which adorn each page do indeed serve to elucidate the scenarios and strategies displayed on each chessboard. The images, however, would also appear to have a life and a sign system of their own, and one which makes repeated reference to and use of the code used to articulate the majlis, or noble party, and chess-playing scenes within the visual program of BR; one of these images oers direct commentary on the theme or topos of the 'ajouz/go-between. On f. 22r (Fig. 5), the 'ajouz appears, with much darker skin than that with which she is usually portrayed (e.g., in the Cantigas, or in BR), among a group of chess-playing black slaves, the starkness of whose architectural surroundings contrasts sharply, as it was doubtless intended to do, with the multimedia luxury amidst which Christian courtiers engage in the same game on the facing page (f. 21v). But while the Christians appear intent on their next moves, absorbed in the intricacies of this most noble of all games, as observed by the Learned King in his introduction to the LA, their Muslim counterparts appear somewhat distracted by a game of seduction which is to involve one of them, although just which one is not clear. A young woman bearing a wine bottle of unmistakably phallic design engages in secretive whispering with the 'ajouz, perhaps a discussion of the price to ask in return for her favors. Just as in BR (and even in the image program of the Cantigas, although direct stylistic relationships are here more dicult to argue), the LA 'ajouz is represented in prole, with coarse features and crude, unadorned head covering. Her thick lips and squinty eyes are unmistakable to us, and would certainly have been equally so to 13th-century viewers. It seems, then, that there existed a visual typology which

41 Again, this discussion will be more fully developed in the present authors forthcoming study, Three Ladies and a Lover.

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accompanied and played alongside the literary one for the depiction of the alcahueta, and that contemporaries were aware of the potential for manipulation contained in both registers. Further, but hardly necessary, contrast between nobility (the Kings chess game) and its bi-polar opposite (that of the slaves), which we might, for this context, term sleaziness, is articulated in the clothing of the two groups of gures. Alfonso and his demurely covered contrincante sport a splendid array and combination of fabrics . . . oranges, greens, ermine, gold . . . all, as is well known, strictly controlled substances within the context of Alfonsine legislation.42 While it is true that Alfonso also attempted to curtail what he believed to be excessive displays of luxury on the part of his Christian courtiers, there is something particularly pointed in the visual juxtaposition oered here: see-through, lmy fabrics are worn by all of the slaves,43 and are certainly intended to emphasize the sleaziness of the entire scene and its protagonists inherent licentiousness. It would seem that the qualities attributed by Alfonso (as made clear in the legislative writings referred to above) to the alcahueta, or the 'ajouz, have been extrapolated and applied to the rest of the company as well. Indeed, the similarity of the lascivious and revealing costumes sported by both male and female members of the company would possibly serve to feminize the male chess players, and to characterize the culture to which they all belong as corrupt to the very core, as only young female slaves and their old-lady pimps can be. In the LA, the Old Woman is, as articulated in the Cantigas, the giver of
42 As Raquel Ari (Le Costume des Musulmans de Castille au XIIIe sicle daprs les miniatures du Libro del Ajedrez, in Mlanges de la Casa de Velazquez, 2 [1966], pp. 5966) has noted, the bright colors and gold-trimmed robes sported by Bayad, Riyad and especially the sayyida might have meant more to the manuscripts owner[s] and audience than simple visual pleasure. In the Ordinances of Seville (1252), and again in the Cortes of Jerez (1268), severe restrictions were placed on the luxury items and fabrics which of which Muslims might make use. Among the forbidden items were white, red or green (and later orange) fabrics, along with gold trim at the necks or around the sleeves of garments. Perhaps the new ordinances were respected in public, but they were clearly outed in the realm of the imagination, and probably in the semi-public context of festivities such as those around which BR is centered as well. 43 Gonzalo Menndez Pidal (La Espaa del Siglo XIII, leda en imgenes [Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1986], p. 97), however, interprets these textiles as lujosas (luxurious). While that may well be, I stand by the sleazy reading as wellthe young slaves breasts and other body parts are clearly visible, and the phallic character of the bottle she holds is unmistakable, especially when compared to the one in the image next to it on ibid., p. 97.

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false information, of mal consejo. The alcahueta, for Alfonso and the illustrators of the LA (and in sharp contrast to the case presented by BR ), is inherently licentious, even murderous, and it would even appear arguable that Alfonso and/or those responsible for the illustration program of the LA in some way identied the alcahueta with Muslims in general, with Arabic culture in general and with the Arabic language in particular. It is signicant here, in fact, that the one characteristic which BRs Old Woman does share with both her Muslim and her more generally Iberian counterparts is the fact that her sharpest implements are her languageher Arabic languageand her wit,44 and it is through their manipulation that she carries out her mediation; indeed, numerous references are made throughout the text, both in her voice and in those of other characters, to her prowess at the use of both. In this image, however, the Arabic language is, as it were, dressed in a nightie, made ridiculous, toppled from its position at the pinnacle of the pyramid of eloquence and reduced to the dubious categories of the ribald and the lewd. This reading is further substantiated by the fact that BRs text insistently claims for itself, in the voice of principal characters (especially the Sayyida), the privileged status of a high-end Arabic text, something which it clearly is not. But would the two audiences posited for these two worksone Muslim and Arabic speaking, the other Christian and prone to express its ideas in castellanohave been conscious of these manipulations? If we must accept traditional historiographys compartmentalized approach to social and cultural history, it is dicult to argue that they would, and the characterizations which have been the focus of this paper lose a great deal of their punch. There is a place, however, where the two Old Ladies, the Andalus and the Alfonsine, might have rubbed elbows, or perhaps even have exchanged blows. It is in the realm of theatre. Keller, and now Prado, have discussed the theatrical and performative nature of Alfonsos Cantigas, and Keller has commented extensively on the Wise Sovereigns attempts to regulate this aspect, as so many others, of the collective and public lives of his subjects.45
44 These abilities as absolutely fundamental to the character of the 'ajouz in most Mediterranean contexts, independent of language and/or religious aliation, are made abundantly clear in Rouhis and Mrquez Villanuevas studies, as well as in much of the earlier bibliography they cite. 45 See Joseph E. Keller, Drama, Ritual and Incipient Opera in Alfonsos Cantigas,

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Many characteristics of the architectural setting against which several of the scenes in Bays aaire de coeur with Riy are chronicled are exactly reected in the patio of Almohad construction preserved within the Sevillan Reales Alczares. It would appear that it was not refurbished during Alfonso Xs reign.46 Particularly worthy of attention are such features as the diminutive staircases, which allow an elegant slave girl such as Riyeven in her moment of greatest distressto move about the garden without soaking her slippers, as well as the unexplained false doors which adorn the perimeter of the Almohad garden, almost identical to those which characterize certain of BRs scenes. It is probable that BR was also meant to be performed. One of the most convincing arguments in favor of this interpretation is that the large majority of lyrics cited in BR are cited completely, and are preceded by formulaic instructional phrases, perhaps to a storyteller or to performers, such as now we sing, or now we tell (the story).47 As is well known, the lyric tradition is intimately linked to the world of performance, in all of Iberian linguistic spheres and registers; moreover, in al-Andalus, performances in gardens are part and parcel of the lyric tradition.48 Given the literary (e.g., in her
in Robert I. Burns, ed., Emperor of Culture: Alfonso X the Learned of Castile and His Thirteenth-Century Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 7289, and Francisco Prado Vilar, Under the Shadow of the Gothic Idol: The Cantigas de Santa Maria and the Imagery of Love and Conversion (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2002). 46 See El Jardn Musulmn de la Antigua Casa de Contratacin de Sevilla, v. 1 and 2 (Seville, 1992) and, now, Antonio Almagro, El Patio del Crucero de los Reales Alczares de Sevilla, Al-Qantara, XX, fasc. 2 (1999), pp. 331376. 47 For similarities in the Romance (especially French) tradition developing at a moment roughly contemporary to that proposed for BRs production, see Maureen Barry McCann Boulton, The Song in the Story: Lyric insertions in French narrative ction, 1200 1400 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). Several of the cases of lyric citation studied by Boulton are quite clearly partial, and the comparison serves to further underline the signicance of what would appear to be complete citations in BR. 48 While this tradition is certainly not limited to al-Andalus (one has here only to think of, on the Islamic side of things, the Persian lyric tradition of the 14th c., for which the numerous publications by Julie S. Meisami may be consulted and, on the romance side of thingsto name merely one of numerous parallelsBocaccios frame story or cornice for the Decamerone, I do believe that it might be fairly stated that it has particular resonance there, as does the importance of gardens to Andalus and so-called mudjar architecture. This subject is vast in itself, and might be approached from many angleshere only a few relevant publications will be cited. The nawrya, or ower poem, appears to rst have attained an intense popularity in the relatively public context of panegyric during the early 11th century at

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description of the preparations for the fateful majlis supervised by Riy [f. 3r], the 'ajouz notes the numerous silk beds, pillows and furnishings being distributed by the slaves for comfortable performance-watching) and visual evidence oered by BRs visual program (note, for example, the striking parallels between the architectural details suggested in gs. 3 and 4 and those still apparent in the patio del crucero; particularly striking is the fact that the Sayyidas garden is clearly bi-level and quadripartite, as is the crucero),49 it would appear at least arguable that patio del crucero preserved in the Sevillan Alczares was designed (and perhaps preserved?) to serve just such a purpose, and if the popularity of narratives concerning her are any indication, at least some of these works would have given the old woman a starring role.
the courts of al-Manr ibn Ab 'mir and his sons, 'Abd al-Mlik and 'Abd alRamn, Sanchuelo; see Cynthia Robinson, In Praise of Song: The Making of Courtly Culture in al-Andalus and Provence, 10051134 A.D. (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), esp. Introduction, pp. 2021. Gardens and descriptions of them are of capital importance to taifa court culture; see Chapters Three and Four of part one of the same publication. The most recent and comprehensive publication concerning the history of gardens in Andalus palaces, in terms of structure and meaning, is D. F. Ruggles, Gardens, landscape, and vision in the palaces of Islamic Spain (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). The theme is of no lesser importance in Alfonsine and mudjar palace architecture; for the Almohad patio del crucero, most probably incorporated as-was, with some additions at either end, into Alfonso Xs alczares in Sevilla, see El Jardn Musulmn de la Antigua Casa de Contratacin de Sevilla, v. 1 and 2 (Seville, 1992) and, now, Antonio Almagro, El Patio del Crucero de los Reales Alczares de Sevilla, Al-Qantara, XX, fasc. 2 (1999), pp. 331376. For the same structure under Pedro el Cruel of Castille, see Ana Marn Fidalgo, El Alczar de Sevilla bajo los Austrias, 2 vols. (Sevilla: Guadalquivir, 1990), vol. I. An Almoravid case is discussed in Julio Navarro Palazn in the region of Murcia (Cieza/Siysa); see Julio Navarro Palazn, La Dr As-Sur" de Murcia. Un palacio andalus del siglo XII, in Colloque international darchologie islamique, ed. Roland-Pierre Gayraud, Textes Arabes et tudes Islamiques, 36 (Damascus, 1998), pp. 97140. For mudjar casas y palacios, see Balbina Martnez Cavir, Mudjar toledano: palacios y conventos (Madrid: Vocal Artes Grcas, 1980)., and, specically concerning gardens and irrigations systems at the Clarisan convent known as Santa Mara la Real at Tordesillas (14th c.), see Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, El Patio del Vergel del Real Monasterio de Santa Clara de Tordesillas y la Alhambra de Granada. Reexiones para su estudio, Al-Qantara 20 (1998), pp. 618. The Alhambras gardens are almost too famous a case in point to mention, and the publications are most certainly too numerous. And then, of course there is the 'ajouzs comment to Bay, in the context of her explanation of the Sayyidas intentions in setting up a majlis at which he will be united with the object of his aections: (f. 3r): . . . all this to give pleasure to Riy, because of [the Sayyidas] love for her. It is well known that kings love gay parties in gardens! 49 On the patio del crucero, see the publications listed in the previous note; Almagro suggests that these sunken gardens were typical only of the most luxurious and highend of Andalusian residences.

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Through her emergence onto the stage, moreover, the Old Woman goes public, and becomes a politically and culturally viable point for negotiation (conversely, if she had remained between the folios of her respective manuscripts in her respective languages for private reading, this open negotiation would be much more dicult). It will be remembered that BR s 'ajouz is also the storys rst-person narrator; the texts authors clearly wished their audience to hear the nobility of Andalus love and lovers proclaimed in her words (otherwise it would have been, as in the cases of Kalla wa Dimna or El Conde Lucanor, dominated by straight third person narration). Indeed, BRs particular relationships with Ibn Sa'ds faithful version of Majnn Layl might have been brought home to an Arabic-speaking public on stage as well, given that his text contains performance instructions for the lyrics.50 The love fomented by BRs 'ajouz is, as has been discussed, a noble one, and it ts (with a few exceptions which caution against drawing too straight a line between the French chaplain and the Andalus bawd) very neatly into the prescriptions for properly amorous conduct stipulated by Andreas Capellanus, as summarized by Donald A. Monson. . . the ennobling power of love [witness, eg., Bays striving for acceptance into the fraternity of the ahl al-'iq], the necessity for delity and for concealment [at issue, particularly in the case of the latter, throughout the text], the haughtiness of the lady [in this case the quality is transferred to the real lady, the Sayyida, while Bays lady is guilty of transgressions which place her actions in perilous parallel to the foibles and wiles of slaves], the danger of slanderers, the importance of sight and beauty in the generation of love, the passion of the lover [here, interestingly, the roles of lover and beloved are blurred; both are perilously passionate], the beloved as object of dreams and meditation, and love as a cause of suering

50 The verses come complete with isnd, verses and directions for performing them, similar to those found in the Kitb al-An; for an example of these performance instructions (which are quite common in the An ), see Ab al-Farrj al-Isbahn (897 or 8967), Kitb al-Aghn, 27 vols. (Bayrt: Dr al-Kutub al-'Ilmyah, 1992), vol. 1, p. 58. A possible link in the chain between the Aghni and Andalusian literature is also the 10th-century Tunisian al-Raqq al-Nadms Qutb al-surr f awsf al-khumr, ed., Amad al-Jund (Dimaq: al-Muqaddimah, 1969), a compilation of, among other majlis- and wine-related matters, drinking songs with isnd for both verses and music and performance instructions.

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and death.51 Indeed, the only crime committed is one connected to poetry and the use of language. As has also been discussed, the fulcrum around which ML, as well as BR, revolves is, in fact, this tabb. And the crime itself is presented, by the 'ajouz at any rate, as a noble one (and it certainly is so, at least in contrast to the lewd and lascivious shenanigans gotten up to by the protagonists of the Alf Layl or, on the Romance side of things, the LBA). Moreover, the Old Woman draws a specic and pointed link between the (ultimately tragic) nobility of the crime and the condition of freedom (as opposed to slavery). Equally tragically, this would appear to be a school of thought in which her young protg needs instructionit will be remembered that, at one point in the narrative, he insults her by trying to pay her for her services, thus revealing that he most denitely does not get it. In response to this faux pas, the 'ajouz declares emphatically that she has never expected anything in exchange for her services, perish the thought! She wants only that all concerned behave as freeurra and noble people do, like the fabled lovers of yoreand here she mentions, in particular, Qays and Layl. Riy s condition of slave girl would thus appear, at least potentially, to compromise her nobility and worthiness as a beloved for a young man who aspires to become one of the ahl al-'iq . . . at least until she is compared with the version of the qiyn rendered in the LA. On f. 48r of the LA (Fig. 6), the once-noble qiyn of classical Arabic poetry and literature are crudely portrayed (indeed, their features, at an undetermined moment in the manuscripts history, were wiped away in an act of what must have been deliberate defacement), dressed in extremely revealing garments and splayed before the gaze of the viewer, a chess board between them, with a game in medias res. The woman closest to the king is further disturbed in her eorts to concentrate on that most noble of all games by a royal hand which crosses in front of, or perhaps fondles, her right breast. Wordswhether noble ones in classical Arabic, in favor of noble Andalus lovers, or the measured syllables of a love lyric singing of hopeless (and unconsummated) passiondo not appear to be at issue

51 Donald A. Monson, Auctoritas and Intertextuality in Andreas Capellanus De Amore, in Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, eds. Moshe Lazar and Norris J. Lacy (Virginia: George Mason University Press, 1989), pp. 6979; 74. Citation apud Rouhi, Love and Mediation, p. 70.

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in this particular image. Their absence, though, is telling, for it was with wordsrather clumsy words, in fact, which nonetheless lay claim to the status of adaband through the voice of what is perhaps the only squeaky-clean 'ajouz in all of medieval Mediterranean literature, that Andalus Arabic culture defended its honor, during the late 13th century, before the onslaught of the likes of Alfonso.

HOW THE GO-BETWEEN CUT HER NOSE: TWO IBERO-MEDIEVAL TRANSLATIONS OF A KALILAH WA DIMNAH STORY Luis M. Girn-Negrn

Introduction The story of the shoemaker, the barber and their wives in the Kalilah wa-Dimnah cycle enjoyed, under dierent guises, an enormous popularity in medieval Europe. As noted already by Joseph Bdier in his classic study on the fabliaux, variants of the ancient tale enriched various pre-modern traditions of European short narrative. It was beautifully refashioned into medieval French in the fabliau Les Tresses.1 It found its way into Italian (most likely via the fabliau) in Boccaccios Decamerone.2 In medieval Iberia, Kalilah wa-Dimnahs version of the exemplum was particularly well known.3 Andalusian Muslims could read the 8th-century Arabic translation in Ab Muammad Ibn Muqaa's Kalilah wa-Dimnah (the oldest version of these fables preserved in its entirety).4 Arabic-speaking Jews and Mozarabic Christians could also savour Ibn Muqaa's rendering, but the story was subsequently translated into the other literary languages of the Iberian peninsula. By the mid-13th century, Castilian speakers could peruse

1 Along with Bdiers extensive analysis of the fabliau, see also Frosch-Freiburg (1971: 145160) and Du Val (1979). 2 Cf. Novella VII.8. 3 For a general overview of all the extant pre-modern translations, see Brockelmann (1975) and Grotzfeld and Marzolph (1993). On the Iberian reception of Kalilah waDimnah translations in the Middle Ages and through the early modern period, see Lacarra and Cacho Blecua (1987: 4050). 4 Based on a translation of the Breslau edition of One Thousand and One Nights, Bdier also believed that a truncated version of the adulteress tale gured in Sheharazades life-saving repertoire. However, Mahdis 1984 authoritative edition of the oldest extant manuscript of the medieval anthology does not include it. Our story was seemingly incorporated after the 17th century into the Egyptian branch of the manuscript tradition, one of so many tales added late to provide for each of the titular nights (in the ancient Syriac mansucript edited by Mahdi, the cycle only extended for 271 nights). On the literary evidence to One Thousand and One Nights plausible dissemination in medieval Spain, see Armistead and Monroe (1989).

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Alfonso Xs Calila e Dimna: the rst Eastern collection of stories ever translated into Castilian and a veritable monument of medieval Spanish ction.5 A new Spanish version would also appear in the 15th-century Exemplario contra los engaos y peligros del mundo, a translation of John of Capuas 13th-century Latin Directorium, which in turn derived from a 12th-century Hebrew version of Ibn Muqaa's Arabic by the mysterious rabbi Joel.6 Yet another Latin version, plausibly indebted to the Alfonsine and Capuan translations, was concluded in 1313 by Raimundus de Biterris at the behest of someone connected to the court of Philip IV of France.7 Last but not least, some decades before Alfonso, Spanish Jews were to be regaled with yet another masterly version: the Hebrew translation in rhymed prose by the Toledan maqama author Jacob ben Eleazar.8 The Iberian chapter in the history of this fables dissemination provides an excellent case study for the present volume: the impact of the pre-modern interactions between Muslims, Christians and Jews on the cultural and intellectual life of late medieval Iberia. The two oldest peninsular versions of the Kalilah wa-Dimnah tale (Eleazars Hebrew version and the Alfonsine romanceamiento) exemplify dierent yet related models for cultural exchange with Arabic civilization and its literary heritage. They illustrate what some scholars have described as Castilian-Arabic mudejarismo and Jewish-Arabic symbiosis (the cultural engagement of Spanish Christians and Spanish Jewsrespec5 For a general overview of this important translation and some relevant bibliography, see the introduction to Cacho Blecua and Lacarras splendid edition (1987: 977). 6 Joels version of the tale is not preserved in the extant fragment of his Kalilah wa-Dimnah, but Capuas can be consulted in Derenbourg (1889) and Hervieux (1899: 1279). First published in Zaragoza (Pablo Hurus, 1483), the Exemplario still awaits a critical edition, but one may consult, meanwhile, the 1934 facsimile of a later Zaragozan edition from 1531 (the tale appears in the folios XVIvXVIIr). 7 This translationcommissioned by a man who had also given a copy of the Alfonsine translation to Juana de Navarra, Philip IVs wifewas edited by Hervieux (1899: 379775our tale is found in pp. 4613). On its relationship to the Castilian Calila e Dimna, see Cacho Blecua and Lacarra (1987: 4244). 8 Jacob ben Eleazar was a grammarian, philosopher and poet from a distinguished Toledan family, best known for his exquisite collection of maqamot entitled Sefer ha-meshalim and written around 1233. Other extant works include some fragments of his Arabic treatise on grammar and lexicography Kitb al-Kaml, his philosophic work Sefer pardes rimmone ha-hokhmah wa-'arugat bosem ha-mezimmah, the ethical treatise Gan te"udot and a few liturgical poems. On Eleazars oeuvre, see Schirmann (1962), Navarro Peir (1988: 109110, 116) and the pertinent chapters in the brilliant, still unpublished dissertation by Decter (2002). For an authoritative and succinct review of the Arabic and Hebrew maqamas as a genre, Drory (2000a).

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tivelywith Arabo-Andalusian civilization).9 Both rubrics signal a movement away from discrete literary analyses of Iberian texts in culturally pure contexts and a critical step towards a richer anthropology of Iberian literary creativity in a multicultural key. S. D. Goitein, for example, in a classic historical survey on Arab-Jewish relations,10 uses the symbiosis rubric to depict the formative indebtedness of Hispano-Jewish writers to Arabo-Andalusian civilization and the full scope of premodern Judeo-Arabic culture. Mudjar, on the other hand, technically a Muslim under Christian rule in the reconquered territories, has been recently invoked in literary and art criticism as a general rubric for Arabic-Christian as well as ArabicJewish and Jewish-Christian cultural miscegenation in medieval and Golden Age Spain. Amrico Castro was the rst to coin mudejarismo literario in his characterization of Ramon Llulls Llibre de Amich e Amat.11 Francisco Mrquez Villanueva, following Castros lead, defends the mudjar concept as a functional and generic frame for the analysis of vast provinces in medieval Spanish literature.12 It has also been reclaimed by Juan Goytisolo both as a historico-literary paradigm and as emblematic of some of his works (e.g. his Crnicas sarracinas, rst published in 1981). The goal of this essay is to show how these Iberian translations of the Kalilah wa-Dimnah tale embody these two paradigms of acculturation in the literary sphere. This requires a systematic comparison of the Castilian and Hebrew versions with their common Arabic source. My comparative approach is primarily philological, with a new historicist turn: a glossed juxtaposition of parallel segments from the Arabic, Hebrew and Castilian texts that aims at elucidating linguistic and stylistic choices against the historical and cultural backdrop of their translators. Of course, such an anity with the new historicists is not a subscription to a repeatable methodology or a literary critical program,13 but a profound commitment to an explication de texte fully situated in a particular historical moment and sociocultural matrix. A shared faith in the illuminative power of the literary fragment or the pertinent anecdote, when critically

9 10 11 12 13

Perhaps from the Arabic mudajjan, those who remained behind. Goitein (1974). See Castro (1984: 277). See Mrquez Villanueva (1998). Gallagher and Greenblatt (2000: 19).

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parsed and carefully situated, undergirds my analysis of these translations from a mudejarista perspective. Close attention is thus paid in the process to the respective eorts of each translator in a semiconvergent direction: the capacitation of Spanish and the revival of Hebrew for new literary ventures on a par with the narrative traditions of Arabic ction. My interpretive model for these comparisons casts aside, at the same time, the reductive notion of isolated literary inuences in favor of a more comprehensive anthropological model.14 It is premised on the conviction that the specic relations between these literary works are expressive of a complex transformative moment in the cultural history of Iberia, a moment where Arabic is not easily separable from other strands of medieval culture, where it is often a part of a tight weaveas opposed to a proposed foreign inuence.15 This historical moment, as illustrated in my case study, is marked by creative hybridity and selective permeability, the active and passive intersection of literary cultures. It encompasses the transformative process whereby Arabic enabled Castilian literary prose to be born and Hebrew literature to attain a creative peak, when all three were inextricably enmeshed in a shared cultural trajectory. The Misogynist exemplum in Ibn Muqaa's Version The selected tale appears in the rst book of Kalilah wa-Dimnah. It can be traced back to an ancient Indian fable in the Sanskrit Panchatantra. The story is intricately lodged within the concentric frame narratives of Kalilah wa-Dimnahs rst book. It is the last of four successive stories told by Kalilah the jackal to his brother Dimnah. The latters eorts to ingratiate himself with a lion-king and to bring him the friendship of a threatening bull have seemingly backred and these exempla by Kalilah seek to explain the reasons. (The animal interlocutors are themselves characters in an edifying tale, conjured by a philosopher to admonish his king against corrupt advisers). The four stories are doubly intertwined. They are connected by the
14 Such an anthropological rethinking of literary contacts has informed, for example, the recent studies of Rina Drory on Arabic literature and Hispano-Jewish culture (1993, 2000b). 15 Menocal (2000: 16).

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presence of a shared characteran asceticinvolved each time either as protagonist or as witness to the main event. They are also unied by the shared lesson that the monk (and hence Kalilah) nally derive from each of these experiences: how misguided actions bring great evil upon the actors.16 The story can be summarized as follows. A monk, while still searching for a thief who stole his clothes in the very rst story, runs into a shoemaker. The latter takes him into his home to spend the night, entrusts him to the care of his wife and goes out again that evening to another party with his friends. As it happens, the shoemakers wife has a lover, whom she usually meets with the help of a barbers wife serving as their go-between. The adulteress sends her messenger to let her lover know that they have the house to themselves. The man comes to her place around nightfall and waits for her by the door, but the shoemaker, quite inebriated, returns earlier than expected and sees him there. In a t of rage and fueled by earlier suspicions, the cuckold goes into the house, seizes his wife and beats her violently. He then ties her to a post inside their chamber before quickly succumbing to a drunken slumber. After he falls asleep, the barbers wife comes back and tells her friend that her lover is still waiting. At the adulteress behest, they swap places: the shoemakers wife goes to meet with her lover while the go-between stays behind, fastened to the pillar. Of course, the shoemaker wakes up and calls out to his wife but the go-between can not answer, lest her voice be recognized, which infuriates him even more. He picks up a knife, cuts o her nose and tells her to go away with her lover before falling asleep once again into the same drunken stupor. When the wife comes back from her tryst, she nds her husband sleeping and the barbers wife maimed. She releases the poor woman and ties herself back again, while the go-between picks up her severed nose and runs back to her place (at this point, Kalilah reminds us that their guest had witnessed everything). The rst wife is now ready to complete her clever ruse. She cries out to God in prayer to restore her nose as a sign of her innocence in the eyes of her husband. When the husband comes up to her and realizes that her nose is
16 On the general question of didacticism and narrative technique in this collection, see Parker (1978), Lacarra (1979b) and Gmez Redondo (1998: 182213) (These studies deal primarily with the Castilian Calila e Dimna, but their perceptive remarks apply as well to the other pre-modern translations).

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intact, he pleads forgiveness: she has succeeded. Meanwhile, the barbers wife comes up with a ruse of her own to explain her nasal mutilation. At dawn, upon waking up, the barber asks his wife to bring him his working kithe needs to go and attend to a client but she only brings him a razor. He insists on his request, she ignores him again and brings back another razor.17 The enraged barber hurls the razor at her and misses, but she feigns to be hurt, crying out her lungs in fake pain, which draws the attention of her neighbors. They are brought before a local judge and he is declared guilty of slashing his wifes nose. As he is about to be punished, the ubiquitous monk steps in and declares the barber innocent. He further explains how each of the victims from the four stories brought upon themselveshimself includedthe injuries they endured.

A Tale of Two Women The tale just summarized (built around the motif K1512 The cuto nose in Stith-Thompsons taxonomy [19551958]) clearly serves its main purpose within the outer frame narrative of Kalilah waDimnah. It aptly exemplies Kalilahs main advice to his befuddled brother: that there are complicated situations in which a person should not meddle, lest one end up with a severed nose just like the barbers wife. But the monks fourth adventure is much more than a simple admonition against uninvited interfering. It also belongs to a misogynist tradition of popular exempla on the wiles and ruses of women. Two female characters in particular are upheld for tacit rebuke in this morality tale: the shoemakers wife as a resourceful adulteress and the barbers wife as her love messenger. Each of these characters oers a distinctive exemplar of a female literary type. They are both eectively and humorously deployed to illustrate the dangerous ways of women in a misogynist key.18 The barbers wife, on the one hand, harkens back to an archaic Indic prototype of the Arabic go-between. She is not as yet the con-

17 This bit (the repeated action) is missing in Cheikhos text, perhaps a textual lacuna in the Arabic manuscript he edited (all the translations contain the barbers repeated demand). 18 On the typology of female protagonists in medieval misogynist short ction, see Lacarra (1986).

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summate al-qawwd, an 'ajuz with a golden tongue wielding her erotological expertise and impressive rhetorical skills to facilitate an illicit aair la Celestina.19 This sly crone rather embodies the go-between as a trickster: una alcahueta de truco.20 She is an expert on deceit at the service of lovers, but verbal trickery is not her forte. She is no avatar of eloquence, the distinguishing mark of her more gifted sisters, but she knows how to accomplish her task and weasel out of a tight spot by dint of her devious thinking. Hers is the type classically embodied by Petrus Alfonsis crafty old woman in De canicula lachrymante.21 A literal go-between (and not the best in her mtier), the barbers wife is at rst a facilitator. But she is loyal to a tee and malevolently ingenious, and when the occasion arises, she comes to the rescue by her very silence at the sad expense of her nose.22 She might even had succeeded in concealing her mutilation had it not been for the monks sleight-of-hand witness to her murderous scheme. In this sordid capacity, she fully embodies her literary type: the reviled procuress so feared and censored in medieval Arabic culture and its Iberian avatars.23 The shoemakers wife, on the other hand, is the paradigmatic adulteress, that archetypal embodiment of female ckleness and intelligence in medieval misogynist literature.24 Of course, the husband deceived by an unfaithful wife is also a recurrent motif in Arabic collections of exempla such as the Tales of Sendebar, One Thousand and

19 On the centrality of the go-between in Spanish literature in light of its NearEastern predecessors, see Mrquez Villanuevas fundamental monograph (1993). For a comparative excursus on the go-between as a literary type in Spanish, Near Eastern and Latin sources, we also count on another indispensable study by Leyla Rouhi (1999). On her Hebrew counterpart, Dishon (1997). 20 I am indebted to Francisco Mrquez Villanueva for the sobriquet alcahueta de truco (which he contrasts with the alcahueta de labia) in reference to this subtype of the medieval go-between. 21 On the medieval fate of this famous tale, Petrus Alfonsis 13th exemplum in his Disciplina clericalis, see the pertinent bibliographic references in Mrquez Villanueva (1993: 70, n. 157). 22 Indeed, the fearsome extreme in which she incurs in faithful service of the adulteress could almost be read as a narrative exemplication of the Arabic phrase Na eB: literally at the cost of having the nose cut o but still used to signify at any price, regardless of the sacrice (of course, it could serve as well in Spanish as a literal exemplum against meddling, meter las narices [lit. to stick your nose]). On the use of exempla as illustrations of an Arabic proverb, see Mrquez Villanuevas analysis of exemplum XXXV in El conde Lucanor (1995). 23 Mrquez Villanueva (1993: esp. 1114). 24 See Lacarra (1986).

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One Nights (whose very frame narrative proclaims its ubiquity) and our Kalilah wa-Dimnah. But in her mastery of deception, she is cut from the same cloth as her loyal go-between. They are two variants of the same type.25 Indeed, in her cunningand in her success she clearly outdoes her accomplice. The carpenters wife gets away with the aair, despite suering some blows. Through trickery and outright lying, she convinces her husband of her innocence, and comes out not only triumphant but symbolically unscathed, her proboscis fully intact.26 Her verbal performance in her husbands presence is clearly worthy of a Celestina. This misogynist subtext to both female archetypes must be readily kept in mind when comparing our chosen versions of Kalilahs fable. This tale, after all, may be subordinated to the monks story cycle for the purpose of highlighting a specic piece of advice, but it works most eectively as an autonomous exemplum para aperebir a los engaados e los asayamientos de las mugeres.27 The relative success of both women in deceiving their gullible husbands is only compromised by the inverisimile witnessing of a silent, quasiomniscient monk. His nal intervention on behalf of the barber is but a narrative addendum, only meant to wrap up and highlight the joint lesson of four separate adventures. Indeed, the interlocking stories of these two women could have been perfectly told in the third person as object lessons on female cunning without recourse to his intervention. Dispensing away with the ascetic, the narrator could have redirected his audience to the exemplums primary theme: female treachery. It would have been, for sure, a perfectly amoral narrative, with no moral judgement made on the deception of both men at the hands of their clever wives. The adulteress success, at any rate, completes one narrative, but adds nothing from Kalilahs viewpoint to the main purpose of the story. The dangers of meddling,
25 On the interchangeability of their roles, see Rouhis perceptive gloss in connection to this story (1999: 219). 26 One need not be a committed Freudian to appreciate the emblematic character of the nose in medieval Europe as a symbol of sexual potency (male, but also female): e.g. the go-betweens naughty reference to the Arciprestes long nose in Libro de buen amor 1486d, signifying his sexual endowment (la su nariz es luenga: esto le desconpn). In the absence of punishment against the male transgressor, nose slashing for an adulteress can be construed in medieval lore as a symbolic form of female castration (on actual recourse to such a punitive measure in Spain, see our conclusions below). 27 A quote from the prologue to the Old Spanish Sendebar (Lacarra 1995: 64).

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of sticking your nose in someone elses aairs are solely illustrated by the sorry fate of the de-nosed procuress. In sum, its misogynist thrust is more central to the story than the practical admonitions against meddling drawn by the internal narrator. It revolves around the topos of female intelligence at the service of illicit sexual desire. The plausible impunity of its female protagonists, had the ascetic-witness been absent, could have also raised some disturbing questions for a medieval religious audience about morality and divine justice. The very humor of the situation projected onto the satire of such easily deceived husbandsalmost outweighs its misogynist roots to the uneasy delight of its audience.28 As will be shown in the next section, this proved the most signicant to some of its medieval translators. Three Variations on One Story: Ibn Muqaa', Alfonso and Eleazar What happens to Ibn Muqaa's tale in the Castilian and Hebrew versions? Briey, Alfonso aims at a precise and literal rendition of the Arabic, whereas Eleazar takes a few creative liberties in translation both for narrative purposes and with a Jewish audience in mind. To gauge the full extent of their contrast, I will proceed as follows. The story has been divided into seven clusters of juxtaposed passages from Ibn Muqaa's Arabic version and the Castilian and Hebrew translations. Each cluster will serve as the basis for a brief set of comparative remarks: issues of content, language, narrative structure and style. My analysis will then be capped with some general conclusions: rst, about each of these two translations; then, about the acculturation ideals that each of them embodies.29

28 Here we acknowledge Goldbergs typological distinction (1983), supported by Lacarra (1995:4748), between full scale anti-feminist stories of undiluted hostility against women and comic exempla with female protagonists. 29 Quotations from each of these translations will be according to the following editions: Cheikho (1923: 6667) for Ibn Muqaa's Kalilah wa-Dimnah; Schirmann (19541959: 2:233235, #324) and Derenbourg (1881: 339340) for Eleazars version; Cacho Blecua and Lacarra (1987: 139141) for the Alfonsine Calila e Dimna.

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Des amanei et fuese el religioso a buscar el ladrn a otro lugar, et ospedle un ome bueno carpentero. Et dixo a su muger:Onra a este ome bueno, et piensa bien dl, ca me llamaron unos mis amigos a bever et non me tornar sinon bien tarde. / wtybl whaybyw / wtwa har yx[ rjw ,trja hyrq la rqbb [ryznh] kyw / .hzwjw aybn wmk whwmk yk/ ,hzh ryznh hlylh ydbk / wta la rmayw .yrxj la bwa mh awb rjaw / ,yrbj [ twtl lwh ynnhw

The opening sentences of each version recall a necessary limitation that must be kept in mind throughout this exercise. There are variants among the extant versions of Ibn Muqaa's Kalilah wa-Dimnah, reecting, in turn, the variety of manuscripts that underlie dierent translation families. The Castilian and Hebrew versions, for example, were both translated from some recension of Ibn Muqaa's Arabic work. However, there is a telling discrepancy between these translations and the Arabic text used by Cheikho in his critical edition. In Cheikhos recension, the monks host is a shoemaker (fSaJr). Eleazars Hebrew version makes him into a carpenter (yx[ rj). The Alfonsine romanceamiento does the same. To make matters more complicated, the Alfonsine carpentero in both Escorial manuscripts turns again into a shoemaker midway through the story and without explanation (from this point onwards, the Castilian text converges, a few discrepancies notwithstanding, with Cheikhos Arabic text).30 Another minor variant found in both Alfonso and Eleazar but missing in Cheikhos edition also suggests that the two translations may have shared a common Arabic archetype: when the man tells his wife that he will be out with friends, he explicitly addsboth in the Spanish and Hebrew versionsthat he will be out drinking and is coming back late. Eleazar seems to have worked all the way through with a recension of Ibn Muqaa's work somewhat dierent from Cheikhos, whereas the Alfonsine translators based their romanceamiento
30 On the two complete versions of Calila e Dimna extant in the Escorial manuscripts A & B and the various theories about their relationship, Lacarra and Cacho Blecua (1987: 5057). They underscore the consistency of the Arabic tradition in designating the cuckold as a shoemaker (although they are seemingly unaware of Eleazars agreement with the Alfonsine deviation). At any rate, this variant is unattested in other European versions: e.g. Capuas Latin Directorium, the primary source for many subsequent European versions, does not identify the mans profession, which may signal that it was not identied either in his Hebrew source by r. Joel (sadly, this portion of Joels translation is no longer extant). Only Raimundo de Biterris, in his Latin version of the Alfonsine Calila e Dimna, albeit heavily indebted to Capua, refers to him as a carpentarius (Hervieux 1899: 461, noted by Cacho Blecua and Lacarra 1987: 57). In the Sanskrit Panchatantra he was a weaver.

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on at least two dierent Arabic manuscripts, one of them obviously closer to Eleazars immediate source. This fact is important in the context of the comparative glosses. That said, a minor but telling change in Eleazars excerpt should be noted at this point. In the Hebrew version, the carpenter describes our ubiquitous monk to his wife (always termed a nazir rwzn), also as a prophet (aybn) and a clairvoyant (hzwj). The Hebrew term for the Nazirites (the Biblical sect of abstinent devotees to God epitomized by Samson) was used by medieval Jews to designate monks, ascetics or hermits as illustrated in here. But the added reference to his prophetic powers seems at rst superuous, not meant solely to underscore why their guest should be treated with any special deference. Eleazars addition, as with so many other details, probably served a narrative purpose: in this caseone can guessto substantiate the monks nal testimonial on issues that he did not witness. How, for example, did he know about the desperate ruse of the barbers wife? Ibn Muqaa' and Alfonso do not bother themselves with this question, and we are left to surmise in both cases that the monk deduced it la Sherlock Holmes. But this implicit rationale was apparently insucient for Eleazar, who was singularly concerned over such narrative lacunae. Endowing the nazir with prophetic gifts could have served as well such an explanatory purpose: to wit, lending his nal testimonial greater narrative verisimilitude.

Et esta muger ava un amigo, et era alcahueta entre ellos una muger de un su vezino. Et mandle que fuese a su amigo, et que le feziese saber que su marido era conbidado et que non tornara sinon beudo et grant noche. / htnk blg ta / hyn yb almh / hynyb rbjmh yhyw ,bgw[ hyh wtal yah ya yk / ,qjk ybgw[ yaybh ,ykl hl rmatw / .htrbj twyhl rjbtw .qwjrm rdb lh wtybb

In this second cluster, two major characters are introduced. First, we meet the lover, properly designated in the various versions: in Arabic, he is the man she covets ('aaqat), later the wifes khalil as in Arabic love literature; in Hebrew, he is her 'ogeb and in Spanish, her amigo (the quintessential designation of the male beloved in

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Castilian and Galician female love lyric). We also meet the gobetween, our female deuteragonist. In Arabic, she is neutrally described as a rasl, a messenger, whereas in Spanish she is called alcahueta (from the Arabic al-qawwd ) an expert procuress of illicit loves with all its pejorative connotations.31 In Hebrew, she is designated both a mal"akh (the literal translation of rasl ) and also a meabber (from the root br to link, to connect). The messenger happens to be her neighbor, the wife of a local barber.32 As to the nature of the translations, each version begins to show its basic dening traits. On the Castilian side, the translators are still relying on the carpenter recension, but the Arabic text is close enough to Cheikhos edition to illustrate the guiding principles of the Alfonsine translation: literality and clarity.33 The text aims at a faithful rendering of the Arabic into idiomatic Castilian, a readable, transparent calque of Ibn Muqaa's prose. It reproduces Arabic syntactical forms: e.g. the exception clause l . . . "ill as non . . . sinon (non tornara sinon beudocf. Galms de Fuentes 1996: 2246). Even a simple Arabic phrase such as 'inda "abihi is precisely rendered by the Spanish conbidado. As to Eleazar, two distinctive features are already in evidence. First, his Hebrew translation is in rhymed prose (saj "). He adopts the prose style of the Arabic maqamas and risalas, brilliantly cultivated in
31 By this point, the Castilian alcahueta had come to signify the full range of illicit, brothel-related activities in which she was involved, as shown by the previous story where alcahueta is also used in reference to its protagonist, a ibatu ba y (whoremistress) and a zniyatun (whore). In Biterriss translation, the barbers wife becomes the lovers meretric[i] procuratrix (Hervieux 1899: 462). Rouhi (1999: 219) perceptively notes how this particular alcahueta, bent on killing the lover of one of the prostitutes under her power, exemplies the extreme forms of ethical behaviour expected from her type (a point further buttressed in this case by her abject failure in carrying out the murdershe accidentally kills herself with the poison intended for that young man). Indeed, the Arabic version of the Spanish original goes even further in showing her lack of scruples, given the scatological features of her assassination attempt elided in the Alfonsine translation (Lacarra 1979a). 32 Connecting with the classical tradition, John of Capua refers to the go-between as a lena (. . . eratque lena mulier quedam, uxor barbitonsoris, vicina eius). However, the 15th century Exemplario based on Capua refers to her as medianera, a term much closer to the original Arabic. 33 The only lacunae vis a vis Cheikhos Arabic text are the latters explicit declaration that the rst husband had left and the identication of the go-betweens husband as a barber. As to the other translations, Eleazar also omits the husbands departure but not the reference to the neighbor as a barber. Capua, following Joel, omits neither one (. . . et abiit vir . . . eratque lena quedam, vxor barbintonsoris . . .), just as in Cheikhos text. Biterris, in turn, as in the Alfonsine text, makes no reference to the carpenters departure but does refer to the barber in line with Capua.

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literary Hebrew from at least the 12th century onwards by its HispanoJewish emulators and throughout the Jewish world.34 Ibn Muqaa's unencumbered prose was in itself exemplary (his Kalilah wa-Dimnah had introduced the mirror of princes tradition into Arabic literature, helping to forge, along the way, the plain style of the Arabic translated narratives so inuential in the West).35 But Eleazar went one step beyond his immediate source. He refashioned Ibn Muqaa's classic in the highly ornate style of the Haririan tradition, an act of stylistic one-upmanship on the plain prose of the original. Eleazar also goes beyond the ornamental eects of rhyme to engage his Spanish Jewish readers at another level: with the sophisticated interweaving of aptly chosen Biblical phrases. For example, he rewrites the wifes wishes into the following request, which she makes to her messenger in a direct address: Go and fetch my lover as usual, for my husband is not at home, he is gone far away. The second half of this quote is excerpted from the seventh chapter of Proverbs (Prov 7:19).36 In the course of this Biblical chapter, a fatherwhile advising his son against the wiles of forbidden womenwatches from his window how a woman on the street, provocatively dressed, approaches a young man at night and lures him into her bed in the absence of her husband. The excerpt from the harlots speechand an adulteress at thatcould not be a more appropriate marker. A perfect Scriptural context is economically evoked with a mere turn of phrase; the carpenters wife is recast in the guise of a Biblical prostitute; and the tales primary purpose is established as a moralistic exemplum on female waywardness.

Et vino el amigo et asentse a la puerta atendiendo mandado. Et en esto vino el carpintero, su marido della, de aquel lugar do fuera, et vio el amigo de su muger a la puerta, et avalo ante sospechado. Et ensase contra su muger, et entr a ella, et rila muy mal, et atla a un pilar del palaio.
34 35 36

See Pagis (1978). Cf. Chrabi (1996) and Moucannas Mazen (2002). qwjrb rdb lh wtybb yah ya yk.

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Pues qu l fue adormido et dormieron todos, torn a ella la muger del alhageme, et dxole:Mucho he estado a la puerta, qu me mandas? Dixo la muger del carpintero:T vees commo est, et si t quisieres, fazerme as bien et desatarme has, et atarte yo en mi lugar un poco, et irme he para l et tornarme he luego para ti.

awbyw / .htbhab hgw hyh yk / ,htyb jtpb byw bgw[h awbyw ,k [tw hm / r[sbw s[kbw [zb / r[gyw /-wta la ab hbgw[ / wtwarbw ,hya yk / ,hanw hbyab htwa yw / ?bwj awh ta twnzl /-bwy hzh [gmh ta awbtw .htwkhl swyw / htwa rsa tybh dwm[lw / ,hanq jwr wyl[ rb[ / ?hr[h jtp bgw[ by ytm d[ rmatw / hrwsa ayh yk artw blgh .tjt pn yrsaw / ytwrswm yqtnw dsj ym[ y[ rmatw [tw The Castilian romanceamiento, in line with the Alfonsine cultural directive, is by and large a faithful rendition of the Arabic original. It follows Ibn Muqaa' very closely and the language exemplies 13th century Castilian usage (e.g. the use of the Arabism alhageme for barber, one of its earliest recorded instances).37 The passages quoted so far illustrate, again, some of the typical syntactical and stylistic calques of Arabic prose in the Alfonsine corpus: e.g. the paratactic e or the pleonastic use of possessive pronounssu marido della.38 There are some discrepancies vis--vis Cheikhos Arabic text (e.g. the Arabic species that the returning husband is drunk), but at this point, it is not clear whether they reect a dierent Arabic recension used for this part of the story or an alteration made by the Spanish translator.39 Eleazar, with a Jewish readership in mind, subtly retouches the episode to highlight the moralistic drama. First, he elides Ibn Muqaas reference to the carpenters drunkenness upon returning home (all violence against his wife is presumably committed in full sobriety). Instead, he makes the wifes paramour inebriated with love (htbhab hgw Prov 5:19): in light of the Biblical reference, an ironic
37 According to the Diccionario histrico de la lengua espaola, vol. 2, fasc. 3 (Madrid: RAE, 1977) p. 277, the oldest reference to an Old Spanish variant of the Arabic al-ajjam appears in a 1212 document (alfagin), almost four decades before the Alfonsine Calila e Dimna. But the term acquires greater currency during the rst half of the 13th century and especially with the Alfonsine translations. 38 Cf. Galms de Fuentes (1996: 1859 and 1324, respectively). 39 There is an interesting alteration that could reect a translation mistake or a scribal error. In the Castilian text, the barbers wife says: I have been at your door [mucho he estado en la puerta] for a long while, what do you want me to do? In both Cheikhos Arabic text and Eleazar, the go-between asks how much longer will the lover remain at the doorstep. I wonder whether the Castilian could have been mucho ha estado.

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indictment of her lover for pursuing the aections of a married woman (in Prov 5, a father advises a son never to allow himself to be infatuated with a forbidden woman, but rather to remain forever inebriated with love of the wife of his youth).40 Eleazar further dramatizes the husbands rage over his wifes indelity by giving voice to his thoughts with the pointed questions he hurls at her: What is that crazy man doing, sitting there? Does he intend to commit adultery with you? (one can not fail to notice the semantic triad here deployed to underscore the husbands violent state of mind as he addresses his wifehe admonishes her with fury [[z], anger [s[k], agitated [r[s]nor can one miss the paronomastic link between the lovers inebriation [he is ogeh] and his madness [he is meuga' ]). Thirdly, the Toledan author notes that the carpenters angry beating stems from the fact that he was overcome by a t of jealousy, a verbal allusion to another Biblical subtext (Num 5:14): Gods instructions to Moses on the appropriate rituals to be carried out in cases of jealousy, when a man suspects his wife of indelity, whether or not the suspicions prove true (the ritual involves the drinking of a spell-inducing water to test the womans innocence). Fourthly, in Eleazars text, unlike Ibn Muqaa's, the husband continues to beat his wife after tying her up to the pillar with a linguistic nod to Numbers 22:25 (another ironic touch, given the tacit comparison with Balaams beating of the innocent donkey for its refusal to approach, unbeknownst to him, the angel of the Lord standing on their way).

E fzolo as la muger del alhageme, et desatla et atse a s mesma en su lugar. Et despert el apatero ante que tornase su muger, et llamla et non le respondi por miedo que non conosiese su boz. Des llamla muchas vezes, et non le respondi; et ensase, et levantse con un cuchillo en la mano, et cortle las narizes, et dxole:
40 Jewish readers would also have been aware that the primary meaning of agah was to go astray, to err, a meaning that applies particularly well to this situation (cp. the commentary ascribed to Ibn Ezra ad locum).

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Toma tus narizes et presntalas a tu amigo. Et pues que fue tornada la muger del apatero et vio a su compaera de aquella guisa, desatla et atse en su lugar. Et tom la muger del alhageme sus narizes et fuese, veyendo esto el religioso. / whtn[ alw hl arqyw hl[b qyyw / .hb ll[tyw / hbgw[ la ltw ,k [tw wl [dwnw / -ylwq ryky :hrma yk / ,whtbyh alw twbr ym[p hl arqyw whykylwh hl rmayw / hpkb whmyyw / hpa trkyw hyla qyw / .yl[m yk artw / htwnzm trjah ktw / !bhal dw[ yswy awhw bgw[l hjnml . . . . hytjt / hpn rsatw / hytwrswm qtntw / ,htw[r a trkn

From this point onwards, the Alfonsine carpenter turns into Ibn Muqaa's shoemaker and along with him, the Castilian romanceamiento follows its source more closely. Except for a couple of minor lacunae, the Alfonsine translation faithfully renders the Arabic version as edited by Cheikho. It succinctly depicts the go-betweens mutilation, the wifes sneaky return and the formers departure, nose in hand, within the monks purview as conveyed by Ibn Muqaa'.41 The faithful Spanish calque of the Arabic paratactic sequence conveys the cumulative eect of the husbands violent actions (et despert . . . et llamla . . . et ensase, et levantse con un cuchillo en la mano, et cortle las narizes . . .). The language choices are precise, with no rhetorical deviations from the source. The Alfonsine directive in his Calila e Dimna is still clear: the reliable transmission of this Arabic exemplum in a language that reects 13th-century Castilian usage. As to the Hebrew tale, Eleazar deftly retouches this episode with a few alterations. First, after swapping places with her go-between, Eleazar starkly observes that the carpenters wife slept with her lover (wayit'alel bah: cp. Judges 19:25). Unlike the Arabic and Castilian versions, the implicit is brought to the fore and explicitly stated. The translator also adds a note of sarcasm to the husbands cruel taunt as he hurls the nose back at the disgured bawd (Bring this as a present to your lover and he will love you even more). When the wife returns from her tryst, Eleazaryet againreminds us explicitly that she has just committed adultery. Finally, in a change that illustrates his attentiveness to narrative coherence and ow, he reminds us of the monks presence only after the carpenters wife has accomplished her deceit: that is to say, up to the very last event to which
41 The monks presence is also underscored at this very moment in Capuas Directorium (Cumque rediret mulier ab amasio suo . . . et uxor barbitonsoris abiit in viam suam, heremita vidente hec omnia), which reects Joels adherence to Ibn Muqaa's text.

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he could have been witness, and immediately before the narratives transition to the return of the de-nosed messenger. This alteration clearly separates the two stories and the precise scope of the ascetics witness, as if to correct his premature exposure in Ibn Muqaa's original.

Et pens la muger del apatero de aquello en que era cada et de que era sospechada, et al su boz et dixo:Ay, Dios, Seor!, ya vees mi aqueza et mi poco poder, et qunto mal me ha fecho mi marido a tuerto, seyendo yo sin culpa. A ti ruego et pido por mered que, si yo s sin culpa et salva de lo que me apone mi marido, que t tornes mis narizes sanas as commo ante eran, et demuestra y tu miraglo. Des llam a su marido et dixo:Levntate, traidor falso, et vers el miraglo de Dios en tornarme mis narizes sanas, as commo ante eran. Et el marido dubd e dxole:Qu es esto que dizes, fechizera mala? Et levantse, et enendi lunbre, et fuela a ver; et quando le vio sus narizes sanas, pidile perdn et repentise, et escussele de su pecado. / ,yl[b yl h[ ra ta fbh / !ynwdah ynwda la / ynwnjtb hlwq rtw k yrjaw / !yl[p rhfl ysn harhw / yl ypa bhw / ylm[w yyn[ har ypa byh ra / la l[p hm / ,lah ysnh ta har ,wq hl[b la hrma hah / ,tpfm ta hm hl rmayw / .wmwm ypam ryshw /wmwqml l / !hljtb rak / hljm ylb l hpa hnhw A aryw hyla qyw / !tpanmh yaw / hyqn ta yk yt[dy ht[ rmayw / hylgr yb lpyw / hyla njtyw al ra ha lk a yk / ,yswa al A ytl[p wa ma / .hymr jwrb l[w / hawr ryznh taz lkbw / .yljy dw[w A trky a / ynjt alw hft .hatm hyrbd

As the wife launches into prayer to deceive her husband, both Alfonso and Eleazar seem to take some poetic license. The wifes deceitful prayer in Ibn Muqaa's version is succinct and to the point: O God, if my husband has done me wrong, restore my nose in a sound state. Departing from the usual literalness, the Alfonsine wife puts on a ashier show. Her plea for a miracle turns into a full apostrophe to God, her witness. She bemoans her impotence and vulnerability in a confession reeking with the histrionic excess of other misogynist soliloquies (almost an embryonic precursor to the verbal

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outpourings of such anti-feminist caricatures as in Talaveras Corbacho). Eleazar, for his part, also retouches her false profession of innocence, but once again in a Biblical key, as he recasts the mendacious wife into a Davidic supplicant pleading for mercy (Oh God, Lord of lords! See what my husband has done, look at my aiction and suering [Psalm 25:18]. Restore my nose and show wonders purifying me of my action).42 As it turns out though, the Alfonsine expansion on the wifes prayer is drawn from the Arabic taunt to her husband that follows her call for a miracle. The bulk of the Spanish prayer, (Ay, Dios, Seor!, ya vees . . . qunto mal me ha fecho mi marido a tuerto . . . A ti ruego et pido por mered que, si yo s sin culpa et salva de lo que me apone mi marido . . .) recasts almost verbatim most of the Arabic boast in the form of a petition (Get up, you evil doer, and see what you have done . . . How merciful He is in view of my innocence of what you suspected me!note, for example, the Old Spanish aponer which perfectly renders the Arabic 'ittihama).43 This portion of her prayer, along with the shorter reproach in Spanish, adds up to most of the Arabic counterpart, with sections of the original source shued and rearranged for narrative eect. After that, Alfonsos romanceamiento faithfully renders the taut depiction in Arabic of the apologetic husband seeking his wifes forgiveness once he has inspected her restored proboscis (he even reproduces such details as the kindling of light better to see her face). Eleazars reelaborations follow a dierent route. He also puts words of apology in the husbands mouth to dramatize his awe and repentance over the healing miracle. Falling at her feet (a dramatic gesture absent from the other versions), he implores: Now I know that you are innocent and that there is no deceit in your soul (Psalm 32:2). Although I have committed an act of iniquity, I will not be doing it again, for if a woman who has been neither adulterous nor impure gets her nose cut, that nose can grow back ( Job 14:7).44 The
42 It seems that R. Joel also drew from the Bible to rewrite the wifes prayer: in Capuas Directorium, the line . . . si videris aictionem ancille tue seems to reect I Sam 1:11 (Derenbourg was the rst to notice although his edition mistakenly points to I Sam 1:12. In typical fashion, Capua translates Joels Hebrew quotations into Latin rather than resorting to the Vulgate (. . . si respiciens videris adictionem famulae tuae). 43 Cf. Alonso (1986: 3412) on the Old Spanish aponer. 44 In Hebrew:

yljy dw[wAtrky a

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carpenter thus exculpates his wife in the language of a penitential psalm. However, the contrite husbands conclusion, even without a verbal cue, could not but remind a Jewish reader of the 5th chapter of Numbers quoted earlier. After all, her nasal mutilation stands in lieu of the priestly ritual with the spell-inducing water by which the womans delity could be miraculously tested. The noses regeneration, in a darkly humorous parody of the Pentateuchal passage, assuages the well-grounded suspicions of her pathetically jealous husband. At this point and not before, Eleazar nally reminds us of the nazirs surreptitious presence. There was no one else at the barbers home to witness what happens next.

Et pues que lleg la muger del alhageme a su casa, pens en arte por do saliese de aquello [en] que era cada, et quando era erca del da, pensando et diziendo en su coran:Cmmo escusar a mi marido et a mis parientes de mis narizes cortas? Et en esto despert su marido, et dixo a la muger:Dame mi ferramienta toda, ca me quiero ir de maana a un noble omne. Et ella non le dio sinon la navaja. Et l dxole:Dame mi ferramienta. Et diole de cabo la navaja. Et l ensase et echla en pos de ella a lbregas. Et dexse ella caer en tierra, et dio grandes bozes, et dixo: Ay mi nariz! Mi nariz! Vinieron sus parientes, et prisieron al marido, et levronlo al alcall, et mand el alcalld a justiiar. / hlyjb tbawkw tbx[m / htwa twrwqh lkm tgawd / htybl blgh ta ltw bya hmw / ytjpmlw yl[bl rma hm :trmwaw / ,hl trkn ra ah l[ / ,ytkalm ylk lk yl ynt / hl rmayw / hl[b yqh k yrjaw / ?ytjkwt l[ alh hl rmayw .wdbl r[th ta wl ttw / . ytkl ylwdgh tyb la yk r[th ta wl ttw / !ylwdgh tyb la hklaw / ylkh ta yl ynt :l ytrma hlyl wyab / hlwdg hmjb r[th hyrja lyw .twbr ym[p k [tw ,wdbl hynk hyla wxbqtyw !ypa ypa rmatw / hlwdg hq[x q[xtw / .hlpaw l[ / hl[b fpwh la wbyrqyw / hybhwa lkw htjpm [ / hybwrq lkw .wtwn[hlw wbyakhlw / wtwkhl fpwh wxyw / .hl trk ra ah

We nally come upon the barbers wife, as she reects upon her best escape route on her way home. In the Arabic, she searches for

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some means, a ruse (al-la) to conceal her mutilation. The Alfonsine version renders the Arabic hla in perfect castellano drecho as arte. Ruse, trick, subterfuge was a standard meaning of the Spanish arte since at least the 11th century, although from the 13th century onwards it had also come to signify craft, profession, as did its Latin root ars, a sense which could have been applied, intentionally or not, to the metier of the go-between herself (her arte was, after all, to mediate in matters of love relying upon her mastery of the other artes of deception). Eleazar also captures the gobetween on the road scheming against her husband (this is the classic image of a trotting alcahueta). Always attentive, however, to lapses of credibility, he pauses to note the obvious: notwithstanding her predicament the woman has to be blinded by a searing pain from her wound. Ibn Muqaa' had bracketed her pain, much like the Sanskrit prototype, to focus on her stratagem. But Eleazar draws attention to her suering and only then does he verbalize the wifes brainstorming for a solution, using what is by now no longer surprising, that is, a Biblical quotation: She said: What will I tell my husband and my family? What will I reply to his complaint about me? (Hab 2:1). Both versions adhere more or less to Ibn Muqaa's account from this point onwards. Leaving aside what seems to be a lacuna in Cheikhos text (perhaps, something akin to a haplography),45 the Alfonsine version, once again, renders the Arabic passage literally in Spanish with vividness and precision, down to the comically feigned cries of the barbers wife (Ay mi nariz!). Eleazar is almost as faithful to the Arabic as Alfonso. There is but a single, most subtle verbal reminiscence of a Biblical subtext. The enveloping darkness that allows her to feign being slashed by the razorhe hurled it -l-ulmati in Arabic; a lbregas in Spanish; behemah gdolah in Hebrewis further qualied by Eleazar as hlpaw hlyl wyab: yet another discrete allusion to the seventh chapter of Proverbs (verse 9) quoted earlier, whichas a learned Jewish reader would have readily recognizedrefers to the dark hours of night when a lad without sense walks into the house of a forbidden woman. The

45 Cheikhos Arabic text is missing the barbers repeated demand to his wife to bring him his kit, for whichonce againshe only brings him the razor. This repetition is registered in all the translations consulted hereAlfonsos, Eleazars, Capuas. Our conjecture is that either Cheikhos manuscript (or perhaps Cheikho himself ) inadvertently omitted the portion that would have been bracketed by the repeated locution except his razor ('ill bi-l-ms )a typical haplographic mistake.

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Biblical reminiscence reinforces her complicitous association with the adulteress who was responsible for her facial disguration. The exemplum proper could easily end at this point, with the husband unjustly sentenced to punishment at the hands of the judge (the alcalld).

Et en levndolo a justiiar, encontrlos el religioso, et llegse al alcalld, et dixo:Sofridvos un poco por amor de Dios, et dezirvos he todo lo que contesi. Sabed qu el ladrn non furt a m los paos, nin la gulpeja non la mataron los cabrones, nin el alcahueta non la mat la vedeganbre, nin la mujer del alhajeme non le taj su marido las narizes, mas ns mismos le fezimos. Rogle el alcalld que gelo departiese todo commo era, et dsole toda la estoria fasta en cabo.

al yk / .ydy rh l br / .ydb[ l[ rhmt la :fpwl rmayw ryznh [yw ta alw .arh hgrh t[xwbh alw .yl[yh whwgrh l[wh alw .ynbng bngh wnjxr wnjnaw / .hla lk ta wnbbs wnjna lba / .hpa trk rjh blgh twrwqhw / .har ra yrbdh lk tf wl dgyw / .wnyrmw wn[p wnjn / .wnykhw .hakn hb ra The four-stories cycle about the wandering ascetic is brought to conclusion with his nal testimony. The wifes mutilation was self-caused, as were the aictions of the other three victims in the previous events he witnessed. The Castilian version, as expected, faithfully renders most of the Arabic. There is only a slight modication of the ascetics opening sentence (Ibn Muqaa's You should not have any doubts, your honor . . . becomes Sofridvos un poco por amor de Dios . . ./Bear with us a little more for the love of God: probably a minor eort to make him sound more like a monk). Otherwise, the Alfonsine translation is remarkably literal. Even the Arabic syntactical variants are meticulously reected in Spanish to capture the rhetorical eect of the ascetics polysyndeton and changed word-order (note, for example, how, among the four clauses referring to each of the four victims, the direct object comes before the verb in the second and the third [la gulpeja, el alcahueta]; the indirect object precedes the verb in the fourth [la muger del alhageme]; and the subject does come before in the rst [el ladrn]). The Castilian text aims at reproducing the expository rhetoric of the original, to great eect.

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Eleazars rhymed version, consistent to the end, expands on the ascetics testimonial with the rhetorical air of two Biblical interpolations. In his dramatic plea for a stay of the execution, the monk repeats Gods very words to His avenging angel from 2 Samuel 24:16, ordering him to halt the pestilence sent over Israel in punishment for Davids sin before it could reach Jerusalem (Enough! Stay your hand!). His acknowledgement of their own responsibility for their self-inicted woes is also amplied into a histrionic, almost comedic mea culpa, capped with a profession of guilt from Lamentations 3:42: we have transgressed and rebelled. His words, as expected, sway the judge, and, in a nal eort to tidy up the story, Eleazar perceptively notes that the monk confessed to him not only the events that he saw, but what could be inferred from them as well.

Conclusions My comparative remarks should suce to draw some preliminary conclusions about the two translations examined here. 1) The Alfonsine version is most revealing from a linguistic and stylistic angle.46 Alfonso seems to have become involved with the translation of Calila e Dimna while he was a young prince. The work was probably translated in 1251,47 years before his full-edged sponsorship of the sundry translations and composition of scientic, historical and juridical works that would help consolidate the Castilian vernacular as a sophisticated instrument of literary expression. Still, Alfonsos literary personality, cultural directives and linguistic ideals are clearly evidenced in this short exemplum. His translation of Ibn Muqaa's prose is obsessively literal, yet lively, adroit, eminently readable and remarkably accurate. Based on the concerted assimilation of Arabic syntactical forms and style, the writing is already becoming agile, a supple calque, and its vocabulary rich, refreshingly unencumbered by Latinate cultisms: a precocious embodiment of his castellano drecho. There are, to be sure, a few cosmetic changes which are aesthetically motivated, but the lions share of the
46 The next paragraph on the Alfonsine translation slightly paraphrases our concluding remarks about him in another, as yet unpublished, comparative excursus on the premodern translations of a didactic passage from Kalilah wa-Dimnah. 47 For a summary of the scholarly debate on the date of this translation (1251 or 1261), see Cacho Blecua and Lacarra (1987: 1419).

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translators eort is devoted to producing an accurate translation. Moreover, unlike many of the European and Near-Eastern translations of Kalilah wa-Dimnah by Christian and Jewish scholars, there are no religiously motivated emendations or additions to Ibn Muqaa's text in the Alfonsine translation. This early romanceamiento was guided by the same commitment to literal accuracy as in the mature translation projects where Latin was cast aside in favor of Castilian as an ocial language of culture.48 Such straightforward rendering of this misogynist tale thus lacks in didactic amplications, Scriptural paraphrases or edifying glosses. Nothing can be gleaned about contemporary Christian views on adultery and deceit from the Alfonsine text. Unlike Ibn Muqaa' himself, who selectively modied references to Hindu religious life in his Persian source deemed problematic for an Islamic audience, the Alfonsine translators rarely tampered with the Arabic original, even at its most provocative (e.g. their faithful rendition of Ibn Muqaa's proemial statements about his unability to determine if there was a superior religious law). Translation as an intellectual activity was, for him, the initial foundation of a distinctive cultural project: the reassertion of Castiles political preeminence through the concerted assimilation of the Arabic cultural and scientic heritage in his Romance vernacular. This, of course, does not mean that his cultural project was a straightforward model of successful convivencia. As the essays in this volume persuasively suggest, an ideology of cultural fusion and religious tolerance can not be anachronistically projected onto Alfonsos opportunistic appropriation of Arabo-Andalusian traditions to advance Hispano-Christian political and religious hegemony in premodern Castile. My comparative interest here in Calila e Dimna is of a narrower scope: the formative impact of the Alfonsine translations in Spanish literary history. 2) Hebrew literary prose does not originate with Eleazar, in the way Castilian prose does with the Alfonsine and pre-Alfonsine translations. After all, by the 12th-century Hebrew already enjoyed a rich, multisecular literary history and the cultural revival of Hebrew through contact with the Arab world was already an established fact, even if not an unnished process, in Muslim Spain since the 10th-century. Eleazars translation of Kalilah wa-Dimnah thus diers from the Alfonsine romanceamiento in two signicant ways. Stylistically, Eleazar

48

Cf. Mrquez Villanueva (1994: 124).

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simply follows the steps of his Hispano-Jewish predecessors. He showcases Hebrews aesthetic parity with the language of the Qur"n by rendering Ibn Muqaa's plain Arabic into the ambitious rhymed prose of the Arabic and Hebrew maqama tradition which he himself had enriched. His Hebrew rendition of the Arabic tale thus brims with, and exceeds, all the literary niceties of the latter: a miniature tour de force. As to content and narrative structure, Eleazar does not limit himself either to a literal, passive rendition of the original Arabic tale. Narrative inconsistencies are corrected and plausible lacunae are lled with artistic perceptiveness, literary nesse and a persistent concern for narrative credibility. Moreover, almost a dozen Biblical allusions are woven into the translation, most of them carefully chosen not for ornamental purposes, but rather to evoke a broader context of reference for the benet and enjoyment of his learned Jewish readers. They carry along what some semioticians have suggestively termed a content-nebula: a complex web of intertextual associations to lure the attention of its readers.49 In this case, such Biblical interpolations, while artistically eective, buttress his moralistic appraisal of the ancient misogynist tale: e.g. the transformation of the adulteress and her conniving accomplice into literary ciphers of the forbidden women decried by Proverbs. As to his edifying take on this violent fable, there may also be some concurrent explanations. In reelaborating this tale, Eleazar may have been mindful, on the one hand, of contemporary punitive measures for illicit sexual relations. Even if adultery for a married woman carried the death penalty in Jewish law, there is at least one documented case of nose slashing as punishment for a sexual trangression endorsed by a Spanish rabbinical authority. Almost a century after Eleazars time, an unmarried Jewish woman from Coca (Segovia) became pregnant by a married Christian and upon giving birth to twins, confessed to her sexual dalliance. In a letter from 1320, a Castilian Jewish aristocrat, Judah ibn Wakkar, recommended to the German-born rabbi Asher of Toledo that she have her nose cut o so that the beauty of the face which she adorned for her adulterous wooer be disgured, and that she be made to pay a ne to the lords of the city, a harsh sentence that was carried out with Ashers ratication.50
49 50

Eco (1986: 21). Neuman (1942: 1:13940)

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In the Kalilah wa Dimnah tale, the go-between is the immediate recipient of such a punishment, whereas the adulteress almost gets away with it (had it not been for the monks testimonial, the tryst and succesful deceit of her husband would have gone unnoticed and her adultery unpunished). Eleazars subtle reelaboration brings the story in line with Jewish religious sensibilities and normative response to adultery. The female protagonist in Eleazars version still keeps her nose, but her culpability is established and her deception unmasked both explicitly and allusively. The initial parody of Scripture for humorous purposes gives way to a morality tale in the language of divine retribution and justice, with the monk-turned-nazir as their Providential agent. Eleazars narrative skills and subtle reliance on the shared Biblical literacy of his audience thus makes his Kalilah and Dimnah a model of Hebrew translation as creative recomposition. * * *

In his study on the fabliaux, Bdier decries the translation fate of our Kalilah wa-Dimnah story as cette existence inorganique, livresque.51 His primary motivation, part of a concerted eort against Benfeys Orientalist theories about the Indic origin of Western fables, was to contrast what he deemed the artistic and logical inferiority of the Indo-Arabic prototype, passively reproduced sauf quelques menues trahisons, de consciencieux traducteurs, with the superior, protonovelistic artistry of the French reelaboration.52 Casting aside the whocame-rst debate (ideologically biased and mostly futile when it comes to pre-modern folklore), Bediers assessment of these medieval translations is still o-the-mark. There is nothing inorganic nor purely bookish about the aesthetic, linguistic and intellectual choices informing the two Iberian translations examined in this essay. Both translators were conscientious, but in the pro-active adaptations of their

Bdier (1969: 174). Bdier (1969: 170). From this comparison, Bdier would argue that the fabliau type was not a later reelaboration of the Panchatantra model; on the contrary, the fabliaus logical superiority seemed to him an unequivocal indication of its greater proximity to a primitive archetype, whereas the Panchatantras narrative defects conclusively showed that it belonged to a later stage in its evolution. Suces it to say that artistic perfection and logical superiority do not seem a sucient basis to establish a tales position within an earlier or later stage in its literary history.
52

51

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literary model: their deliberate eorts to adapt the stylistic and aesthetic forms of Arabo-Andalusian literary creations and forge a new literary idiom in their chosen languages. Something larger was signied by their selective cultural engagement with the Arabo-Andalusian tradition: in essence, the birth of Spanish and the renewal of Hebrew as exemplary instruments for literary prose. Of course, what I term their selective, pro-active engagement with Arabic narrative traditions is but one of several models for the diverse ways in which Iberian cultures interacted historically. Other models of cultural interaction can be invoked in dierent spheres of Iberian intellectual life in the Middle Ages. One could talk about the semipassive internalization of the cultural reexes of a dominant milieu by either a minority or an incipient culture. Such osmotic receptiveness to an outer culture could oer, for example, a viable linguistic model to describe some of the semantic loanwords and calques from Andalusi Arabic among the emerging Romance languages: the oral enrichment of Castilian (among others) both through the daily interactions between Andalusi-Arabic and Castilian speakers and, especially, through the distinctive contributions of bilingual mozrabes (Arabic-speaking Christians) and mudjares (Andalusi Muslims under Christian rule).53 One could also talk about the non-causal correlation between external and internal cultural processes that stimulate each other across an ethnic or religious boundary: the model invoked by Moshe Idel to account for the emergence of Castilian Kabbalah. In this model, the external developments in European Christian mysticism are perceived as concurrent stimulants for the outburst of Kabbalistic creativity in 13th-century Castile, without, however, implying that the specic contents of the Kabbalistic thought are dependent upon the specic concepts dominant in its environment.54 Our case study remains, nonetheless, within a particular sphere of active cultural agency: the selective contact with an outer culture as a deliberate object of study. Ibn Muqaa's Kalilah wa-Dimnah was chosen by these gifted translators as such an object of study and a literary template for their narrative experiments. They recapitulated, in the process, a similar experience to Ibn Muqaa's: a courtly scholar whose repercussive translation from Persian helped forged a

53 54

Cf. Corriente (1992). Idel (2000: 65).

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distinctive prose style in Arabic literature during a formative period.55 Their translations strictu sensu gave way to the broader translation of cultural ideals in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society and at a time when Arabo-Andalusian civilization still cast a lengthy shadow. The Spanish and Hebrew literatures of the Iberian Middle Ages were forged at the intersection of such cross-cultural currents.

Works Cited
Alonso, Martn. 1986. Diccionario medieval espaol. Salamanca: Universidad Ponticia. 2 vols. Armistead, Samuel G. and James T. Monroe. 1989. Celestinas Muslim Sisters. La Cornica. 13.2: 328. Bdier, J. 1969. Les fabliaux. Etudes de littrature populaire et dhistoire littraire du moyen ge. Paris. H. Champion. Benfey, Theodore. 1859. Pantschantantra. Fnf Bcher indischer Fabeln, Mrchen und Erzhlungen. Aus dem Sanskrit bersetzt mit Einleitung und Anmerkungen. Leipzig (reimpressed by Hildesheim, G. Olms Verlags-buchhandlung, 1966). Brockelmann, C. 1975. Kalila wa-Dimna. Encyclopdie de lIslam. Nouvelle dition. Paris-Leiden: E. J. Brill-G. P. Maissonneuve. 4: 524528. Cacho Blecua, Juan Manuel and Lacarra Mara Jess (eds). 1987. Calila e Dimna. Madrid: Castalia. Carrete Parrondo, Carlos; Dascal, Marcelo; Mrquez Villanueva, Francisco; and Senz-Badillos, ngel (eds). 2000. Encuentros y desencuentros. Spanish-Jewish Cultural Interaction Throughout History. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Castro, Amrico. 1984. Espaa en su historia. Cristianos, moros y judos. Barcelona: Editorial Crtica. (1st published in 1948). Cheikho, P. L. 1923. La version arabe de Kalila et Dimnah daprs le plus ancien manuscrit arabe dat. 2nd. Edition. Beirut. Chrabi, Aboubakr. 1996. La rception de Kalila et Dimna par la culture arabe. Aux origines du conte. Crisol. 21: 7788. Corriente, Federico. 1992. Linguistic Interference Between Arabic and the Romance Languages of the Iberian Peninsula. In The Legacy of Muslim Spain. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (ed.). Leiden: Brill. 443451. Decter, Jonathan Philip. 2002. A Myrtle in the Forest: Displacement and Renewal in Medieval Hispano-Jewish Literature. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Dgh, Linda. 1981. Conduit-Theorie. In Enzyklopdie des Mrchens. Handwrterbuch des Mrchens. ed. Kurt Ranke. vol 3. Berlin and New York. cols. 12426. Derenbourg, Joseph (ed.). 1881. Deux versions hbraques du livre de Kalilah et Dimnah, publies daprs les manuscrits de Paris et dOxford. Paris: F. Vieweg. (ed.). 1889. Johannis de Capua. Directorium vitae humanae alias parabola antiquorum sapientum, version latine du livre de Kalilah et Dimnah. Paris: mile Bouillon. Dishon, Judith. 1997. The Evil Go-Between in Medieval Hebrew Literature (In Hebrew). In Between History and Literature. S. Nash (ed.). Tel Aviv, 113124.

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Drory, Rina. 1993. Literary Contacts and Where to Find Them: On Arabic Literary Models in Medieval Jewish Literature. Poetics Today. 14: 277302. . 2000a. The maqama. The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: The Literature of Al-Andalus. eds. Mara Rosa Menocal, Raymond Scheindlin and Michael Sells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 190210. . 2000b. Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture. Leiden: Brill. Du Val, J. 1979. Les Treces: Semi-Tragical Fabliau. Critique and Translation. Publications of the Missouri Philological Association. 3: 716. Edgerton, Franklin. 1924. The Panchatantra Reconstructed. 2 vols. American Oriental Series (vols. 2 and 3). New Haven, Connecticut. Eco, Umberto. 1986. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Frosch-Freiburg, F. 1971. Schwankmren und Fabliaux. Ein Sto- und Motivvergleich. Gppingen. Gabrieli, F. 1932. Lopera di Ibn al-Muqaa'. Rivista degli Studi Orientali. 13: 197247. Gallagher, Catherine and Stephen Greenblatt. 2000. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Galms de Fuentes, lvaro. 1996. Inuencias sintcticas y estilsticas del rabe en la prosa medieval castellana. 2nd edition (corrected and enlarged). Madrid: Gredos. Goitein, Shlomo. 1974. Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages. New York: Schocken Books. 3rd revised edition. Goldberg, Harriett. 1983. Sexual Humor in Misogynist Medieval Exempla. In Women in Hispanic Literature: Icons and Fallen Idols. Beth Miller (ed.). California: University of California Press. 6783. Gmez Redondo, Fernando. 1998. Historia de la prosa medieval castellana. I. La creacin del discurso prosstico: el entramado cortesano. Madrid: Ctedra. Goytisolo, Juan. 1998. Crnicas sarracinas. Madrid (1st edition, 1981). Grotzfeld, Heinz and Sophia and Marzolph, Ulrich. 1993. Kalila und Dimna. In Enzyklopdie des Mrchens. Handwrterbuch des Mrchens. ed. Kurt Ranke. vol 7. fasc. 4/5. Berlin and New York. cols. 88895. Hervieux, L. 1899. Les fabulistes latins depuis le sicle dAuguste jusqu la n du moyen ge. Paris: F. Didot (reimpressed by G. Olms Verlag, 1969). Vol. 5: Jean de Capoue et ses derivs. Hottinger, A. 1958. Kalila und Dimna. Ein Versuch zur Darstellung der arabisch-altspanisch bersetzsungskunst. Berne: A. Francke Verlag. Idel, Moshe. 2000. Kabbalah in Spain: Some Cultural Observations. In Encuentros and Desencuentros: Spanish-Jewish Cultural Interaction Throughout History. Carlos Carrete Parrondo, Marcelo Dascal, Francisco Mrquez Villanueva and ngel Senz Badillos (eds). Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects. Irving, Thomas Ballantine (transl). 1980. Kalilah and Dimnah. An English Version of Bidpais Fables Based upon Ancient Arabic and Spanish Manuscripts. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta. Kosegarten, Godfried (ed.). 1848. Pantschatantrum sive Quinquepartitum de moribus exponens. Bonn. Khne, Udo. 1992. Johannes von Capua. In Enzyklopdie des Mrchens. Handwrterbuch des Mrchens. ed. Kurt Ranke. vol. 7, fasc. 2/3. Berlin and New York. cols. 580583. Lacarra, Mara Jess. 1979a. Algunos errores en la transmisin del Calila y el Sendebar. Cuadernos de Investigacin Filolgica. 5: 4357. . 1979b. Cuentstica medieval en Espaa: los orgenes. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza. . 1986. Algunos datos para la historia de la misoginia en la Edad Media. In Studia in hinorem prof. M. de Riquer. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema. 1: 339361.

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(ed.). 1995. Sendebar. Madrid: Ctedra. Mrquez Villanueva, Francisco. 1993. Orgenes y sociologa del tema celestinesco. Barcelona: Anthropos. . 1994. El concepto cultural alfons. Madrid: Mapfre. . 1995. Sangre y matrimonio: El mancebo que cas con una muger muy fuerte et muy brava. In Erotismo en las letras hispnicas: aspectos, modos y fronteras. Luce Lpez-Baralt & Francisco Mrquez Villanueva (eds). Mxico: El Colegio de Mxico. 315334. . 1998. Presencia juda en la literatura espaola: releyendo a Amrico Castro. In La sociedad medieval a travs de la literatura hispanojuda. VI Curso de cultura hispanojuda y sefard de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Marsan, Rameline E. 1974. Itinraire espagnol du conte mdival (VIIIXV sicles). Paris: Klincksieck. Menocal, Mara Rosa. 2000. In The Literature of Al-Andalus. Mara Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin and Michael Sells (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moucannas Maze, Rita. 2002. Kalila et Dimna arabe. Cahiers de linguistique et de civilisation hispaniques mdivales. 25: 267281. Navarro Peir, ngeles. 1988. Literatura hispanohebrea (siglos XXIII). Panormica. Crdoba: El Almendro. Neuman, Abraham A. 1942. The Jews in Spain, their Social, Political, and Cultural Life during the Middle Ages. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. Niermeyer, J.F. 1976. Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus. Leiden: Brill. Pagis, Dan. 1978. Variety in Medieval Rhymed Narratives. Scripta Hierosolymitana 27: 7998. Parker, M. 1978. The Didactic Structure and Content of El Libro de Calila e Digna. Miami: Ediciones Universales. Rosen, Tova. 2003. Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Rossi, Luciano and Straub, Richard (eds). 1992. Fabliaux rotiques. Paris: Librairie Gnrale Franaise. Rouhi, Leyla. 1999. Mediation and Love: a Study of the Medieval Go-between in Key Romance and Near Eastern Texts. Leiden: Brill. Schirmann, Hayyim. 1962. Les conts rims de Jacob ben Elazar de Tolde. Etudes dOrientalisme dediees la Mmoire de Levi-Provenal. Paris. 1: 85297. . 19541959. Ha-shirah ha-'ibrit bi-Sfarad u-be-Provence. Tel Aviv. 2 vols. Solalinde, Antonio, Kasten, Lloyd and Oelschlger, Victor. 19571961. General Estoria, II. Madrid: Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cientcas. Thompson, Stith. 19551958. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classication of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, JestBooks, and Local Legends. 6 vols. 2nd edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Yaziji, Khalil al- (ed.). 1888. Kalilah wa-Dimnah. Beirut.

GAROZAS GAZE: FEMALE SEXUAL AGENCY IN THE LIBRO DE BUEN AMOR Gregory S. Hutcheson

Dixo doa Garoa: Que ayas buena ventura, que desse acipreste me digas su gura, bien atal qual sea, dime toda su fechura; non respondas escarnio do te preguntan cordura. (Libro de buen amor, st. 1484) [Said Lady (Garoza): May good fortune attend you, and please will you tell me what the Archpriest looks like; just as he is, tell me his entire appearance; dont give a mocking answer when someone asks you in earnest.]1

The so-called Libro de buen amor, composed in Castilian sometime in the rst half of the fourteenth century, recounts in the rst person the adventures of Juan Ruiz, a libidinous archpriest whose priorities lie somewhere between sexual gratication, poetic virtuosity, and salvation of his immortal soul.2 The LBAs circulation as a written text seems to have been limited to the clerical circles of Romance-speaking Iberia: it has come down to us in only three manuscript copies two of which are incompleteand a folio or two of a translation into the Portuguese. As an oral text it reached a somewhat broader audience, although evidently only in sound bites that could be readily incorporated into the professional entertainers repertoire. And yet since its reemergence as a complete work in the eighteenth century (when T. A. Snchez saw t to produce the rst print edition), it has received intense critical attention and sparked some of the most heated debates in modern Hispanomedievalism. Scholars continue to
1 Both original-language text and translations are drawn from Williss bilingual edition, although unlike Willis, I prefer to keep proper names in the original language. I enclose my occasional editing of his translation in brackets. 2 So strong is the narrative voice that scholars have traditionally treated the work as pseudo-autobiographical at the very least and scratched their heads over the identity of the historical Juan Ruiz. In the present study, I use Juan Ruiz as a convenient placeholder for an author who may or may not have been Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, and indeed, who may or may not have been a single author.

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wrangle over matters relating to the works authorship (is Juan Ruiz as author merely another of the works ctions?); its didacticism (to what degree does the work transcend or subvert its repeated caveats against worldly love?); or its mudejarismo (in what ways is the work indebted to non-European lifestyles and literary forms?). While such discussions certainly serve to keep the LBA in the limelight of Hispanomedieval studies, they also tend to squeeze out contemporary modes of interpretation (e.g., feminism, cultural studies) and neglect what is surely one of the works most provocative aspects: its production of a dizzyingly complex matrix of sexual agencies and desires. One point of such production crops up in the last meaty episode of the LBA. Here Juan Ruiz, still desperate for buen amor after halfa-dozen failed attempts, authorizes his go-between Trotaconventos to turn her attentions to the nun Garoza. Consummate Conventhopper that she is, Trotaconventos sets readily to the task, engaging the nun with every discursive weapon in her arsenal; the nun, for her part, responds with defenses ranging from the spiritual (her call to chastity) to the practical (fear of betrayal). After two days of animated exchange, Garoza nally cuts to the chase and asks, So what does this Archpriest look like? As soon as she hears Trotaconventoss deliberately erotic, limb-by-limb description, she is only too happy to set up a tryst. While scholars have locked horns over whether this tryst ever leads to consummation, what cannot be disputed is the decisive role Trotaconventoss portrait of Juan Ruiz plays in breaking through the nuns resolve. In contrast to other seductions of the work, key here is the female gaze, the evocative point of contact between an active female agency and those discourses of human desire that operate as the greatest common denominator throughout the work. But what authorizes this female gaze? How does it enter into dialogue with the overriding premise of the work, the narrators explicitand explicitly masculinistquest to couple with a pleasant female (aver juntamiento con fembra plazentera [st. 71d])? Most importantly, to what degree is Garozas gaze informed by Arabo-Islamic erotology, by texts and practices that had begun to take deep root in Iberian soil as of the tenth century? Of primary interest to me here is the LBAs groundedness, even in its most canonical moments, in a morada vital the term is Amrico Castros, and I use it unapologetically here that begins to inect in unaccustomed ways those normativities

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governing both gender identity and sexual agency in Latin Christendom of the late Middle Ages.

Medieval narratives of seduction, or Wheres Ovid? Operating as the linchpin of masculinist readings of the LBA is the works core episode, a tale of seduction freely adapted from the medieval Latin elegiac comedy Pamphilus de amore. Authored anonymously in the twelfth century, the Pamphilus enjoyed enormous popularity among lettered audiences throughout the thirteenth century and had become almost topical by Juan Ruizs day.3 Here the roustabout Pamphilus pines for Galathea, the winsome girl-next-door whose superior social standing keeps her well out of reach. Emboldened after a pep talk with the goddess Venus, Pamphilus sets out in active pursuit, rst making his entreaties in person, then enlisting an old woman to serve as go-between. Through the wiles of the old woman, Pamphilus manages to seduce the young girl, not only quenching his own desire but ultimately forcing her hand in marriage. All told, he wins twice over, and we as readers are left to extract the moral lesson either that go-betweens cannot be trusted or that guile and persistence will assure any man the sweetest of prizes. In Juan Ruizs adaptation, Pamphilus becomes the dapper Sir Melon (serving temporarily as the narrators alter ego), Galathea the sophisticated Lady Endrina, widowed at a young age and just completing the obligatory years mourning. Venus once again makes an appearance, while Trotaconventos, in her debut performance in the LBA, steps in as go-between. Armed with the wisdom of her years and the guile of her profession, Trotaconventos battles it out with Endrina in a volley of exhortations and fables that swells the 780 lines of the original work to more than 1500. Nonetheless, the skeletal structure of the tale remains the same, so too the outcome, including Endrinas seduction by and marriage to Melon in a perfunctory eort to preserve her honor.

3 Evidence of the Pamphiluss tremendous popularity is its circulation as both a literary and an oral text: Elliott notes that by the beginning of the thirteenth century it had already been incorporated into the stock repertory of the Provenal jongleurs (xxxiii). Juan Ruizs several o-the-cu references to the Pamphilus suggest that it was well known to his audience.

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The LBAs Endrina episode is most often read as poetic grandstanding, as Juan Ruizs giddy adaptation of a stock tale of seduction that just happens to serve the greater didactic purposes of his work.4 Indeed, at tales end he makes explicit his indebtedness to the Pamphilus and, via the Pamphilus, the medieval Ovidian tradition.5 Ovid, Augustan Romes self-styled praeceptor amoris, had for centuries served as the authoritative voice for Latin Christendoms fashioning of a scholastic spin on love, one that foregrounds rhetoric as the primary engine of seduction. While Ovid situates seduction within an amoral context, in relative indierence to any consequence beyond the indignation of a snubbed husband, in medieval renderings all parties (from male suitor to female pursued to go-between) become master rhetoricians, positioning and repositioning themselves within the connes of a moralizing dialectic that allows very little wiggle room for subjectivity (whether male or female), even less for discourses of human desire. When desire erupts, it does so almost invariably from the male body, at cross-purposes certainly with the dialectic, not, however, with the male prerogative.6 Enabling this male prerogative is the thoroughly medieval notion of female honor, predicated in great part on the Churchs imperative to control female sexuality. Within the narrative of seduction, honor puts the gag on female desire, permitting women to speak

4 See Gybbon-Monypenny (Dixe la por te dar ensienpro 12324) for a review of studies up until 1970. Gybbon-Monypenny himself argues for the episodes deliberate confection as an exemplum to warn women against the snares of worldly love, idle gossip, and crafty go-betweens (146). Seidenspinner-Nez nuances this interpretation by reading the episode both with and against its didacticism, as an exemplar of what she calls Juan Ruizs parodic perspectivism (3858). Mrquez Villanueva (Orgenes 88 .) and Rouhi (239 .) also move beyond the episodes rote didacticism by exploring the ways in which Trotaconventos embodies Near-Eastern modes of seduction and so resists too easy an accommodation within the moral codes of Latin Christendom. 5 If I have said anything oensive, please let me have your pardon, since what is unseemly in the story was told by Pamphilus and Ovid (st. 891cd). 6 Burkard reads medieval imitations of the Ars amatoria as an eort to modernize the work by rewriting both the satire and the instructional aspect in a manner that would have greater appeal to a contemporary inside audience (2627), that is, a sexually active clergy fully immersed in a medieval culture of seduction. Such a reading fails to take into account the patent disjuncture between Ovidian and medieval moral codes and the frequent shortcircuiting of sexual agency in the medieval amatory corpus. It does serve, however, to remind us of the homosociality (as dened by both patriarchal social structures and latinitas) governing the composition and reception of Ovidian imitations throughout the Middle Ages.

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only obliquely about sex.7 Where women cannot express complicity, the sexual act cannot help but be rendered as violation. The Pamphilus certainly echoes Ovid when it advises: If you get the chance, woo her with gentle violence (iocundis uiribus). What you scarcely hoped for soon she will oer herself (vv. 109110).8 But Ovids violence emerges invariably within the parameters of a sort of erotic contract between partners, while in the Pamphilus it is purely the product of an aggressive male agency.9 In sum, while the medieval narrative of seduction replicates all the commonplaces of Ovids amatory works, it does so through the template of ethical codes and gender prerogatives that conspire to privilege male sexual agency while keeping female sexual agency in absolute check. Juan Ruiz appears to depart only in the particulars from the medieval Ovidian tradition in his retooling of the Pamphilus. Moreover, he adheres most closely to his source precisely where it privileges the male prerogative.10 Unlike the Pamphilus, however, the Endrina episode does not stand as an independent work, but rather has been inserted so purposefully into the master narrative that it cannot help but be inected by what surrounds it. Immediately preceding Melons
7 Rouhi argues that female characters in medieval Latin comedy almost invariably betray a latent willingness to engage in sexual activity (89). This willingness seems to surface, however, through means of a coded language that keeps sexual agency once removed from active discourse. In Alda, for example, the lustful young girl speaks of her seduction as a lesson, and so casts herself in the far more benign role of eager pupil. Fernando de Rojas will make use of this double-speak centuries later when he has Melibea collude in her own seduction through subscription to a medical discourse craftily manipulated by Celestina. 8 In book one of the Ars amatoria: Its all right to use forceforce of that sort goes down well with The girls: what in fact they love to yield Theyd often rather have stolen. . . . (1: 67375) 9 Galathea protests after being manhandled by Pamphilus: Youve conquered me, however strongly I resisted, but all hope of love is shattered between usforever! (vv. 69596). Both Elliott and Schotter argue against uncritical readings of the Pamphilus as a tale of seduction and Galathea as a consenting partner. Schotter further argues for discerning in Galatheas nal protestations the underpinnings of twelfth-century canonical debate on the legitimacy of marriage precipitated by rape (250). 10 For example, his Lady Venus aords Melon the same allowance as does the Pamphiluss for applying pressure when the occasion arises: When you are talking to her, if you see that there is an opportunity, dont fail to caress her (non dexes de jugar), just a little, as though timidly (st. 629 ab). So too does Trotaconventos urge Melon just before his climactic encounter with Endrina to be a man and to remember the proverb: When they oer you a small goat, come running with a little halter (st. 869 b, 870 ab).

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rst glimpse of Endrina is Sir Loves high-spirited defense of love, in essence a 150-stanza crash course in the art of seduction. Here the praeceptor amoris takes the shape of a seasoned (and sexually potent) master of the art of love who claims to have taught Ovid everything he knows.11 Sir Loves idiosyncratic ars amatoria a grab-bag of admonitions, story-telling, satirical rants, and common-sense advicecertainly parrots all the commonplaces of the medieval Ovidian tradition. Not only does he enumerate the stock virtues of the suitor (eloquence, persistence, discretion), but he recommends the use of a gobetween as mediator of passions and upholds as a general principle the notion of seduction as learnable art.12 In stark contrast to medieval turns of Ovid, however, here female honor plays little part; indeed, the woman is aorded an active role in the art of trysting:
After all is said and done, ask of your go-between a question: whether she is a merry woman; whether she turns on the tide of love; whether she has cold saddle-cloths; whether she goes hunting for everything she scents; if she says Yes to a man, join yourself to that woman. (st. 449)13

Desire is unleashed in a sense, given free rein to operate between consenting bodies unobstructed by medieval codes of moral conducta fact that moves Sir Loves ars amatoria closer to the spirit of Ovid, if not necessarily to the letter.14

11 If you will read Ovid, who was my disciple, in him you will nd statements that were taught to him by me, and many useful ways for a lover: Pamphilus and Ovid were instructed by me (st. 429). 12 Burkard detects at this episodes core a skeletal outline of the twelfth-century Pseudo-Ars amatoria. Thematic consistency is compromised, Burkard feels, by interpolation of illustrative expansions (the portrait of the ideal female type, the characteristics of the go-between, or the examples of the lazy suitors, Pitas Payas, and the drunken hermit). The episode serves ultimately as a catchall for linking pieces that were previously independent (98). What Burkards reading fails to consider is the role of authorial intention, that is, the potentially deliberate juxtaposition of texts as a means of producing new readings by bringing pressure to bear on the terms of the Pseudo-Ars amatoria. 13 The cold saddle-cloths continue to puzzle scholars. Gybbon-Monypenny suggests in his edition of the work perhaps the most logical reading, explicit comparison of the woman to a mount whose saddle-cloths are cool, that is, not overheated by a nervous disposition (note to st. 449). 14 At most Sir Love makes mention of vergea shame, the sole obstacle to a womans full complicity: Make her just once shed her sense of shame; do everything you can for this, if you want to have her; once a woman has lost her sense of shame she does more devilment than a man can hope for (st. 468). Just as in Ovid, shame here seems less bound up in discourses of honor than it is in notions

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The absence of a discourse of female honor cannot help but have immediate consequences for that indispensable gure of the medieval Ovidian plotline: the worldly-wise go-between. The go-between is incidental in Ovida bit player among the Amoress cast of characters, scarcely mentioned in the more doctrinal Ars amatoria; only in the Middle Ages does she assume her place as the suitors staunchest ally, the rst line of attack in the battle of love, charged with breaching, whether by argument or by ruse, those defenses mounted by female honor.15 Sir Love certainly endows his go-between with all the persuasive arts of her medieval predecessors when he prescribes that she be well-spoken, subtle, and familiar with her job and that she [know] how to tell beautiful lies (st. 437 cd).16 But in Sir Loves ars amatoria her function as mediator takes a temporary back seat to her more immediate usefulness as voyeur. Indeed, Sir Loves portrait of the quintessential go-between (st. 43543) is actually a sidebar to the more pressing matter of exposing the female body (st. 43050): Try to get hold of some woman who can see her without her blouse on, who will tell you about the form of her body (st. 435 cd). The go-betweens textual presence fully activates the male gaze, allowing Sir Loves otherwise stock description of the female body to take a decided plunge below the neckline:
If she tells you that your chosen lady does not have long limbs, nor thin arms, ask her next if she has small breasts; and if she says Yes, inquire about her whole gure, so that you can be more sure. If [she] tells you that your beloveds underarms are just a little damp, and that she has small legs and long anks, is nice and wide in the hips, with small, arched feet, this is the kind of woman that is not found in every marketplace. (st. 44445)

This inventory of sexually charged body parts reinserts into the medieval narrative of seduction an erotic discourse every bit in evi-

of moderation or modesty. The comparisons Sir Love evokes support this reading: Once a gambler has lost his sense of shame at the gaming table, if he wagers his cloak he will wager his codpiece; once a singing girl has sung her rst song, her feet keep on always jigging and [it is] hard on the tambourine (st. 470). 15 The intermediary in medieval Latin comedy characteristically brings about the complete subversion of the laws of courtly love and violates the sacred codes of discretion, honesty, and loyalty. The character also transgresses against Christian morality . . . (Rouhi 93). 16 Rouhi points to a talent for prevarication as perhaps the central feature of the go-between in medieval Latin comedy (86).

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dence in Ovid.17 What begins to emerge as prime directive is the pursuit of reciprocal desirenot the rote gratication of male desire at the expense of female honor, but rather an erotic transaction that hinges on full female complicity. While Sir Loves discourse on the physical attributes of the lady (totaling twelve stanzas) certainly exposes her body to the male gaze, it also reveals her as desirous in turn, not just the object of the male gaze but the engine of desires that turn a far more critical gaze back on her suitors: In bed really wild, around the house very sensible, dont lose track of such a woman, but keep her constantly in mind (st. 446 ab). Sir Love borrows from the French fabliaux tradition to drive this point home, recounting the woes of Pitas Payas, the Breton painter who is cuckolded by his wife when he abandons her for two years time (st. 47484). The moral lesson to be derived from this tale is not that of the fabliaux, that women are inherently treacherous, but rather that of a vital insight into the workings of desire: a woman, a mill, and an orchard require constant use (st. 472 b). Ovid notes as much in his Ars amatoria when he defends Helen of Troys dalliance with Paris in the absence of her husband Menelaus: Oh, Helen wins my acquittal, the blames her husbands: / All she did was take advantage of a mans / Human complaisance (2: 37173).18

Sex in the scriptorium Sir Loves broad-minded counsel probably owes less to Ovid, however, than it does to scholasticisms increasing attention to the matter of sex as of the late-twelfth century. Constantine the African, a native
17 Compare to Baudry de Bourgueil, whose descriptio pulchritudinis feminae stops discreetly at the neckline: For the sake of brevity about the makeup of your body I shall say it is such as corresponds to your face (Burkard 24). The thirteenth-century Ovidian-styled De vetula does indeed indulge in explicit detailsnot, however, of the 16-year old girl being pursued, but rather of the go-between who contrives to replace the girl in bed: Her tough breast of stretched leather was not really a breast but a shepherds bag, empty and slack. Her stomach had been furrowed by a plow, her buttocks were dry and lean, her legs were coarse, her swollen knees were as hard as a diamond . . . (Burkard 180). Seldom if ever in the medieval Ovidian corpus is the female body both free of censure and fully invested with erotic potential. 18 Gybbon-Monypenny was the rst to note this parallel between Ovid and the Pitas Payas episode (Libro de buen amor, footnote to st. 474484).

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of Tunis and convert from Islam to Christianity, had composed as early as the late-eleventh century a highly inuential synthesis of medical knowledge introducing Arabic-language commentaries into the scholastic canon and addressing for the rst time in LatinChristendom matters such as male sexual disorders and the production of male semen. Subsequent translations into the Latin of works such as Avicennas Canon of Medicine (second half of the twelfth century) and Aristotles De generatione (early-thirteenth century) broadened the inquiry to include the respective contributions of male and female to reproduction and the degree of pleasure enjoyed by each in the act of copulation.19 But such eorts towards an objective sexology in a pre-scientic age remain isolated to medical discourse, and even here they are brought decidedly into the service of both Catholicisms reproductive imperative and an institutionalized misogyny. For example, Albertus Magnus construes female sexual desire in terms that thoroughly undermine its legitimacy as physiological function:
Matter is said to seek form and woman man not because woman should desire intercourse with man. Rather, this is the meaning: that everything imperfect naturally desires to be perfected. And woman is an imperfect human in comparison to man; thus every woman desires to exist under [the form of] manliness. (as translated in Cadden 160)

In De secretis mulierum, a late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century treatise composed most likely by a disciple of Albertuss, female sexual agency spins o into the monstrous:
[W]omen are so full of venom in the time of their menstruation that they poison animals by their glance; they infect children in the cradle; they spot the cleanest mirror; and whenever men have sexual intercourse with them they are made leprous and sometimes cancerous. (Pseudo-Albertus Magnus 60)

Under the heavy hand of the Churchs moralistic teachings, vernacular culture could not help but produce similar monsters, whether the adulterous wives of the fabliaux or repentant harlots such as Mary

19 Cadden 10506. For comprehensive discussions of scholasticisms treatment of sex and pleasure, see Cadden, chapter 3 (Academic questions: Female and male in scholastic medicine and natural philosophy); Jacquart and Thomasset, chapter 3 (Medicine and the Art of Love).

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of Egypt, whose tremendous sexual appetite nds relief only in a comparable degree of disguring bodily mortication.20 Mara Eugenia Lacarra argues that as a general rule medieval Castilian texts treating of female sexuality subscribe to this same normative stance of control/condemnation (24). Remarkable, however, are the exceptions to the rule, those moments when the sexualized female body not only emerges, but emerges in the vernacular without exploding into visions of oversexed temptresses or wild-eyed penitents. The matter of sex in general nds far more ready accommodation south of the Pyrenees, where Latins displacement in the thirteenth century as exclusive purveyor of knowledge resulted in greater permeability between the intellectual domain of scholasticism and vernacular cultural production.21 Arab-speaking al-Andalus not only served as a ready-made model for Romance-speaking Iberias early vernacularization, it also provided the raw materials for the creation of a vibrant intellectual culture that refused to conne serious talk of the sexual to the scholastic scriptorium. The encyclopedic project initiated by Alfonso X in the mid-thirteenth century draws heavily on Andalus libraries as it renders in Castilian rather than Latin the broad range of historical, juridical, and scientic knowledge of the day, including a lapidary in which topics such as aphrodisiacs and contraception are cannily explored.22 Also from the thirteenth century is the Historia de la donzella Teodor, a sentential work in which the title character, a female slave, is quizzed on matters of social custom, science, and medicine by three scholars in the employ of the king of Babylonia. When asked about the marks of a womans beauty, Teodor replies with a categorical list of 18 attributes that foreground female sexual potency.23 More striking is the Speculum al

20 Notes Thomasset: Ribald literature, particularly the fabliaux, made the most of this troubling female power. The fear that rst found expression as ridicule later metamorphosed into contempt (Nature 62). The tale of Mary of Egypt, a xture in the medieval lives of saints, advocates for self-contempt as the surest path to female holiness: the harlot-cum-penitent is redeemed only after decades of fasting and exposure of her body to the harsh elements of the Jordanian desert. 21 On the rise of vernacular culture in Spain, see Mrquez Villanueva, El concepto cultural alfons (pp. 3542). 22 See Mrquez Villanuevas La magia ertica del Lapidario alfons. 23 According to Teodor, the ideal woman should be long (luenga) in three [respects]: she should be tall in stature, and should have a long neck and long ngers; white (blanca) in three: a white body, white teeth, and the whites of her eyes should be white; black ( prieta) in three: black hair, the blacks of her eyes black, and her eye-

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foderi, a fourteenth-century sex manual composed in Catalan that gives explicit instructions for stimulating female pleasure and describes no fewer than 24 positions for sexual intercourse.24 Such eruptions of serious-minded interest in sexual agency demonstrate less anity with the likes of Albertus Magnus than they do with classical Islams long-standing erotological tradition, rst given comprehensive consideration by Abdelwahab Bouhdiba in La sexualit en Islam (1975). Bouhdiba argues that eroticism is so inextricably bound up with the cultural life of the Arabo-Muslim societies that annotations, passages, even whole chapters are to be found interpolated in any work of literature, law, history, etc. (155). Until well into the seventeenth century, poets, jurists, and historians alike recycled in increasingly complex forms and in various registers the material of authorities such as al-Ji (d. 868/9 CE) and Ibn D"d (d. 910 CE), focusing now on the origins of love, now on the nature of desire, now on the means for producing sexual pleasure.25 While

brows black; red (bermeja) in three: red cheeks, red lips, and red gums; small ( pequea) in three: small mouth, small nose, and small feet; wide (ancha) in three: wide in the hips, wide shoulders, and a wide forehead; and she should be very agreeable ( plazentera) to her husband and very supportive (ayudadera), and she should be of young age (Rivera and Rogers 1415; translation mine). What should be evident are the immediate parallels with Sir Loves portrait of the ideal woman, parallels Joset exploits to suggest that we need not look beyond Christian Spain for sources (note to st. 431). What Joset fails to consider is the Donzella Teodors derivation from the Arabic Abul-Husn and his Slave-Girl Tawaddud, a tale that circulated broadly in the Islamic world as early as the ninth century (Rivera and Rogers vixii). 24 Translating the title literally as A Mirror for Fuckers, Jacquart and Thomasset say of the Speculum al foderi: [Its] originality . . . consists in its presenting, as early as the fourteenth century and in a Western language, a carnal technique; it thus joins a genre that later enjoyed particular favor in the Italy of the Renaissance (137). See Solomons The Mirror of Coitus for a complete edition and translation. Lacarra adduces a further example of carnal technique in the Donzella Teodor, Teodors explicit instructions for bringing a woman to orgasm: he should take his time with her, playing with her breasts and squeezing them, placing his hand from time to time on her privates ( papagayo), lying now with her on top, now with her underneath, and this so that the two of them achieve orgasm at the same time (2829; translation mine). However, this passage is an early sixteenth-century addition to the work, a regurgitation of material that had become common currency throughout Europe by the late fteenth century (Rivera 42526). 25 Al-Jis highly inuential Rislat al-Qiyn (Treatise on Singing Girls) constitutes the rst sustained defense in Islamic letters of the licitness of profane love (Gien 4). Ibn D"ds Kitb az-Zahra (Book of the Flower), although more literary in register, serves to x the thematic arrangement of subsequent discourses on love and desire (Bell 9). The moralist al-Ghazl (d. 1111 CE) dispenses practical advice for the bedroom in his book on the etiquette of marriage, while the Shaikh Nafzw (. 1400 CE) covers topics ranging from aphrodisiacs to sodomy in what is in

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some scholars warn against taking into too little account those counterforces that work against Islams ready accommodation of sexual pleasure (Rosenthal 5), what seems to remain constant throughout the classical period is the legitimacy accorded to the language of sex. When al-Ji defends explicit sexual terms as an integral part of the Arabic language and traces their usage to the Prophet himself, he enables the full voicing of the contested space of sexuality, even when that space is pulled into orthodox elds of interpretation.26 The Shaikh Nafzws fteenth-century The Perfumed Garden, considered by some to be the culmination of Arabo-Islamic erotic literature, can therefore open unapologetically with the following paean to the (hetero)sexual act:
Praise be given to God, who has placed mans greatest pleasure in the natural parts of a woman, and has destined the natural parts of a man to aord the greatest enjoyment to woman. . . . Hence the mutual operation. There takes place between the two actors wrestlings, intertwinings, a kind of animated conict. Owing to the contact of the lower parts of the two bellies, the enjoyment soon comes to pass. The man is at work as with a pestle, while the woman seconds him by lascivious movements; nally comes the ejaculation. (72)

Most striking in such passages is the privileging of sexual desire over those social categories (e.g., husband, wife, master, slave, concubine) that generally serve to inscribe the act of copulation.27 Here the erotic impulse plays itself out in absolute indierence to legitimacy or to the Aristotelian/orthodox preoccupation with fertility and procreation.28 All the more signicant for our purposes is the explicit
essence an encyclopedia of sex. Best known in the Andalus context is, of course, Ibn azm (d. 1046 CE), whose awq al-amma (The Ring of the Dove in Arberrys translation) eschews purely physical gratication in favor of a union of souls. 26 See Rosenthal (18). Rosenthal himself notes: Islam always took care to admit that sexuality existed as a problematic element in the relationship of individuals and society and never hesitated to leave room for the discussion of approval or disapproval (4). Thomasset points out that in Latin Christendom, by contrast, the conditions for a true dialogue, an erotic art, did not exist (62). 27 Rosenthal notes the same in Arabo-Islamic love poetry, which since 'Abbsid times paid little heed to prescribed moral codes (11). 28 Even an authority as conservative as al-Ghazl is careful to acknowledge the wifes right to sexual gratication: Once the husband has attained his fulllment, let him tarry until his wife also attains hers. Her orgasm may be delayed, thus exciting her desire. . . . Congruence in attaining climax is more gratifying to her because the man is not preoccupied with his own pleasure, but rather with hers; for it is likely that the woman might be shy. (Farah 107)

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emphasis placed on the mutuality of lovemaking, on the womans active investment in sexual gratication. Al-Ji cites a hadith that gives frank voice to female desire by registering a womans complaint to the Prophet about her husbands modest sexual endowment:
She said: O Messenger of God! I had been married to Rif'a and he divorced me and then I married Abdarramn az-Zubair, but, by God, he does not have more than this fringe! And she showed a fringe of her trousers. . . . [T]he Messenger of God just smiled and said to her: You would like to return to Rif'a, wouldnt you, that you may taste his sweet honey and he may taste your sweet honey again? (Brgel 82)

Hadiths such as this one not only authorize Islamic societys accommodation of female sexual desire, but they invite critical scrutiny of both the female and the male body in any consideration of the sexual act. Nafzws chapter on praiseworthy women is preceded by a chapter on praiseworthy men that foregrounds both sexual function and the capacity for satisfying female desire:
Such a man ought to be broad in the chest, and heavy in the crupper; he should know how to regulate his emission, and be ready as to erection; his member should reach to the end of the canal of the female, and completely ll the same in all its parts. Such an one will be well beloved by women. . . . (77)

Even those arguments made against unnatural couplings serve to confer not only voice but agency to the broadest possible range of bodies. Nafzw opens a chapter on same-sex desire between women with an account of one womans eorts to seduce the alluring Hind:
[She] would not let her be, but kept on putting wrong ideas into her head and extolling the virtues of Lesbianism to her, saying that in a Lesbian union there was to be experienced a delight such as had never been know between a man and a woman. . . . And so at last they came together in sexual union, and Hind found a delight in it far beyond what she had been led to expect from her companion. (The Glory of the Perfumed Garden 1920)29
Al-Ghazl adds that men with four wives should have intimate relations with each wife at least once every four nights, for to satisfy her is his duty. 29 The Glory of the Perfumed Garden is not a separate work, but rather material that had been suppressed in Sir Richard Burtons late nineteenth-century translation. This material (including discussions of same-sex desire, non-vaginal sex, and pimps and procuration) was recovered, translated, and published under strange and very dangerous circumstances, or so the book jacket tells us, in 1975.

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Nafzws condemnation, while implied by the context, is utterly eclipsed not only by the voice given to same-sex desire, but also, primarily, by the female bodys unequivocal ownership of its sexual agency.

Lo feo de la estoria An essential rst step to positioning the LBA within a more decidedly multicultural erotic tradition has to be the production of critical editions of works on both sides of the linguistic divide (Latin/Romance vs. Arabic/Hebrew) and a methodical survey of those sources that authorize the writing of desire in medieval Iberia.30 But even the most meticulous philological scrutiny stands to give us only the partial story. Since his 1965 essay on the meaning and origins of buen amor, Francisco Mrquez Villanueva has advocated for moving beyond the purely textual eld, for taking into account the full corpus of practical applications and vital traditions that constitute the complex cultural matrix of medieval Iberia. He develops this line of inquiry most recently in a study of the go-between, a gure so central not only to the LBA, but to Fernando de Rojass Celestina in the following century. Amrico Castro had steered himself into a critical deadend by focusing on high culturein particular Ibn azms eleventh-century The Ring of the Dove as the route through which Juan Ruiz had notice of the alcahueta.31 Mrquez Villanueva defends
30 The Escorial library conserves dozens of Arabic-language treatises in manuscript form bearing titles such as A Description of the Burning Lover, The [Female] Slave Market, and The Inlaid Girdle: On the Benets of Sexual Intercourse compelling evidence that Spain had direct access to original sources not yet distilled by the moral-theological mandates of Latin-Christian scholasticism. (Titles cited by Mrquez Villanueva [Orgenes 38 n. 70], translated by Eisenberg [255].) Manuela Marns Marriage and Sexuality in Al-Andalus is only the latest call for a more systematic study of Iberian, and in particular Andalus, sexuality. While she advocates for monographs analyzing what documentation has been preserved in concrete periods and regions, she warns that Andalus texts give only a rareed view of sexual mores in AlAndalus, representing as they do the practices and proclivities of an urban elite. Moreover, they are predominantly texts written by men for men (5). 31 Critics, including noted Arabists, blasted Castro for his obsessive tapping of Ibn azm as the source for the LBA. Notes Emilio Garca Gmez in the introduction to his edition of The Ring of the Dove, I must say that, even after reading with delight the hundred or so engaging and suggestive pages Castro devotes to a comparison of The Ring of the Dove and the Book of Good Love, both works remain in my estimation entirely distinct (52; translation mine).

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Castros intuition, if not the particulars of his argument, by proposing Ibn azms work as only a single example of a rich body of erotic lore familiar to both Romance and Arabic speakers of the Iberian peninsula, transmitted over centuries not only in learned texts, but also as folk wisdom, social rituals, even street culture (Para el encuadre 169). In the nal analysis, Juan Ruizs appropriation of the Latin-Christian canon (including the Pamphilus) cannot help but enter into vigorous dialogue with both the complexity of his intellectual formation and the specicity of his sociocultural environment. He may well have appropriated the go-between from the medieval Ovidian tradition, but this gure he accommodates to a social type long familiar to Christian Spain, already known generically by the Arabic loanword alcahueta.32 So too does Sir Love speak with Ovids authority, but in the voice of al-Ji or Ibn azm. At play here is less a rote hybridization of literary and social types, a sort of negotiation at the border between cultures, than the emergence of new types from out of the interpenetration of cultures and the conuence of meanings and experiences. Margaret Jolly and Lenore Manderson detect just such generative processes at play in Asia and the Pacic during a century of European colonialism, the production of sites of desire out of cross-cultural exchanges in sexualitiesexchanges of meanings and fantasies as well as the erotic liaison of bodies (1). I propose reading the LBA as just such a site of desire, the locus of conuence and exchange, of erotic imaginings created between cultures, and so relentlessly enigmatic if read up against the histories of sexuality that have been written to date, whether for Latin Christendom or for the Islamic world.33

32 For a sociological survey of the alcahueta (Ar. al-qawdt) in the Iberian context, see Mrquez Villanueva (Orgenes 111 .). Rouhi gives comprehensive treatment to the go-between in both Latin-Christian and Near Eastern traditions, concluding that Trotaconventos is sui generis: The shape and nature of her organic links with othersleft largely untouched by other Eastern and Western writers are, indeed, fully explored by Juan Ruiz (256). 33 Jolly and Manderson aim less to historicize sites of desire than they do to problematize the lingering imperialism in our presumption of adjudging sameness and dierence from the West, our unstated premise about the centrality of sex, its dissociation from reproduction, and its concentration in the private interiority of a sexed subject (25). Just such presumptions are inherent in our reading (our colonizing?) of medieval sexualities and certainly need to be addressed far more critically than I do in the present study.

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In what ways, then, does Sir Loves counsel, fully consistent with the operations of the LBA as a site of desire, begin to inect our reading of the Endrina episode? That Sir Love (or the erotic code he embodies) had some impact on Juan Ruizs adaptation of the Pamphilus is readily apparent in the gure of the female protagonist, no longer the rosy-cheeked adolescent Galathea, but rather the urbane, and presumably sexually experienced, Endrina: a widow, . . . still a young girl, and well-mannered (582 bc).34 As the episode unfolds, Endrina discloses in increasingly candid ways her own desire, mitigated only by her sense of propriety as a widow and very practical concerns about the handling of her estate. By her second interview with Trotaconventos she leaves all pretense aside, exploding in a t of passion: My great love is killing me, and its ever constant ame; although it does not compel me, it impels me strongly; fear and embarrassment keep me from a dalliance: for my great anguish I can nd no remedy (st. 839). Although her words are lifted almost verbatim from the Pamphilus,35 they cannot help but be inected by the context of their utterance and the transformed identity of the speaker: we need only bear in mind that Endrina, unlike Galathea, has rst-hand knowledge of the pleasures of copulation. Endrinas sexual agency is revealed in other subtle ways, for example, in those name changes (Galathea to Endrina, Pamphilus to Melon) that begin to inject newly equivocal meanings into the Pamphilus plotline. Endrina is the sloe-berry, a downy, dark-skinned fruit representing for some readers the fragility of Endrinas honor, for others the black of her widows weeds, for still others her Moorish descent.36 We should not discount, however, the ready correlation between appetite and sexual desire in evidence throughout the LBA, nowhere more explicitly than in Juan Ruizs invocation of Aristotle early in the work: As Aristotle says, and a true thing it is, the whole world exerts itself for two things: the rst is to nd sustenance, the other

See Vasvri, who makes a compelling case for reading Endrinas widowhood as far more than windowdressing, but rather as derivative of a transcultural literary tradition. 35 Cf. Venus the cruel oppresses me with burning thoughts; doing me violence, she continually orders me to love. Yet modesty and fear bid me to be chaste. With such compelling arguments on both sides I dont know what to do (Pamphilus vv. 57377). 36 On the sloe-berry as metaphor for honor, see Lida de Malkiel (39); on Endrina as Mooress, see Dagenais.

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thing is to couple with a pleasant female (st. 71). The act of eating is never innocent in the LBA, whether in the Cruz Cruzada episode, where Juan Ruiz aspires to taste the sweetest bread (el pan ms duz), or throughout the epic battle between Lord Flesh and Lady Lent, an allegorical representation of the Christian everymans struggle to control both gastric and sexual appetites. Through similar metonymic processes, bodies become foodstus and foodstus bodies: women are rendered as pears, waiting to be plucked (st. 154, 160),37 Galathea as the plump and juicy sloe-berry, and Pamphilus as a melon, ripening in the garden that serves as his patronymic (he is Don Meln de la Huerta). So it is that when Trotaconventos invites Endrina to her house for a little recreation, the terms of her invitation, lifted again almost verbatim from the Pamphilus, cannot help but assume a more explicitly erotic meaning: My stall is never without fruit for lively girls, plenty of pears and peaches; what citrons and what apples! what chestnuts, what pine-nuts! what quantities of hazelnuts! The ones you like best will do you the most good (st. 862).38 Of course, Trotaconventos intends to serve up melons and sloeberries in what should constituteat least in Sir Loves reckoning a mutual delectation. Indeed, many readers choose to hang onto this notion throughout the scenes that follow, minimizing the very real victimization of Endrina and buying wholesale into the summary conclusion: Lady [Endrina] and Sir Melon have now been joined together . . .; their guests made merry at the feast, quite rightly (891 ab).39 For such readers, Juan Ruiz congures the Pamphilus as a testing ground for Sir Loves seductive art, while the hastily arranged marriage provides a neat conclusion to the episode as a whole. And yet Endrinas crying foul at her victimization emerges in absolute
37 It bears mentioning that pears, and the roots of the pear-tree in particular, were thought to have contraceptive properties, and so became the topical site in both the Latin and Romance traditions for amorous frolics, especially if they were illicit ( Jacquart and Thomasset 91). 38 Cf. Pamphilus: See, Galathea, at my house there are apples and nuts for you. My garden is hardly ever without fruit; look, you can enjoy whatever you wish (vv. 64850). 39 Notes Lida de Malkiel: everything ends in peace and rejoicing (53; translation mine). Joset suggests that Juan Ruiz dallies in the Endrina episode (a full 20% of the total work) precisely because of its happy ending: a story ending happily in marriage should take more time in the telling (xix; translation mine). Burkard, on the other had, points to the implausibility of the episodes close, reading it as an appendage construed to aord the episode as a whole greater immunity to moral censure (113).

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dissonance with this paradigmatic happy ending; her words are not only lifted from the Pamphilus, but explode into one of the most pathos-driven speeches of the work:
If birds could only truly know and understand how many snares are set for them, they could not be caught; when they nally do see the snare, they are already being taken to be sold: they perish for a small bit of bait, they cannot protect themselves. By the time the sh of the sea discern the hook, the sherman has already caught them and is dragging them on the ground; a woman becomes aware of the injury to her only when she has been abandoned to her grief; she is no longer loved by relatives, father, mother, or grandfather. He who has dishonored her forsakes her and does not support her; she goes out into the world to lead a life of shame, for she has no other recourse; her body and soul are destroyed: this happens to many a girl; since I have no other recourse I must do the same. (st. 88385)40

Juan Ruiz is far too sophisticated a reader not to have recognized the disjuncture between Latin-Christian sexual economies (as exemplied by the Pamphilus plotline) and indigenous modes of seduction, far too sophisticated an author not to have anticipated the trainwreck of Endrinas nal encounter with Melon. Indeed, I think the trainwreck is precisely the point. While Melon and Trotaconventos are compelled by the lessons of Sir Love, the author is compelled by his source material, and pursues the telling of the tale in full knowledge that the tension between the two cannot help but reach a breaking point.41 Small wonder that he opts at tales end to extri-

Cf. in Pamphilus: Too late the sh, already caught, feels the hook; Too late the bird, already caught, sees the snare. But now, what am I to do? Am I to ee through the world, already caught. My parents will be right to close the door on me. I shall wander the earth, searching, But nowhere shall I nd happiness, Poor betrayed wretch that I am. (vv. 76368) Signicantly, Juan Ruiz places far greater emphasis on economic impact, suggesting disinheritance as the likely consequence and prostitution as the sole means left to the dishonored woman to earn a living. 41 Castro already suggests such a reading when he ponders the LBAs basic unresolved disharmony: The Archpriest could and did intuit freely the circumstances around personal existence, as well as the motives that make this existence possible. But he could not take literary characters out of the frames in which they were tra-

40

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cate himself from the mess by laying blame squarely on his predecessors: If I have said anything oensive, please let me have your pardon, since what is unseemly in the story (lo feo de la estoria) was told by Pamphilus and Ovid (st. 891 cd).

What women want. . . . Curiously, few if any critics have thought to plumb Juan Ruizs meaning here: lo feo de la estoria is understood by default as something akin to the dirty bits, perhaps those very folios that are unaccountably missing in the extant manuscripts.42 I would argue, however, that meaning is to be had only in hindsight, after reading the Garoza episode, which emerges 2000 lines later as a sort of counterweight to Endrinas cautionary tale. To recap, the narrator (now denitively Juan Ruiz) is once again enamored of a woman, this one the nun Garoza, whom Trotaconventos herself has recommended as the ideal partner. Trotaconventos serves again as gobetween, engaging in a battle of wits with Garoza in order to eect the seduction, but the exchange is more sophisticated this time around, less encumbered by social constraints. Indeed, at the episodes outset marriage is discounted either as an obstacle to the tryst or as an obligatory endpoint: take some nun as a sweetheart, Trotaconventos tells Juan Ruiz at the outset, she wont get married right away, nor display herself in public; you will have a love aair of extraordinary duration (st. 1332). Honor as well, so paralyzing a discourse in the Endrina episode, ends up as little more than background noise in the Garoza episode, where the nuns initial protestations (anchored

ditionally encased, and individualize them within a system of impulses that were not traditional (The Structure of Spanish History 401). Elliott implies the same for the Pamphilus, which she reads as an attempt to apply Ovids precepts . . . to real people and to see what happens (xxix). The result, concludes Elliott, perhaps a bit too hastily, is a deliberate disjuncture between word (Ovidian rhetoric) and deed (the physical violation of Galathea) that reveals an interest in feminine psychology and a sensitivity worthy of Ovid himself, and which are close to unique in medieval Latin literature. 42 Of the three nearly complete manuscripts in existence, none conserves the details of Endinas rape, recounted probably on two folios in S, up to three in G. Common consensus (lately being contested) is that these folios were deliberately torn out for reasons of propriety.

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in the status of nun as bride of Christ) yield to increasingly pointed references to that vibrant culture of desire that conceals itself behind convent walls.43 Garozas sexual agency, always sublimated in canny ways during her two-day battle of wits with Trotaconventos, comes spectacularly to the fore when she turns her gaze onto the body of her suitor: tell me what the Archpriest looks like; just as he is, tell me his entire appearance (st. 1484 bc). Her request for a physical description responds almost exactly to Sir Loves earlier counsel to Juan Ruiz to ascertain as much as possible about prospective partners bodies: (inquire about her whole gure, so that you can be more sure [st. 444 cd]). Moreover, it again requires a shift in the function of the go-between from mediator to voyeur, a role Trotaconventos readily lls as she now describes the eroticized male body:
Lady, said the old woman, I see him frequently: he has a body of quite good size, with long limbs, and muscular; his head is not small; he is hairy, thick-necked; his throat is not very long; he is black-haired and big-eared; his eyebrows stand apart, black as coal; his walk erect, much like a peacocks; his step tranquil and well-measured; his nose is long, this spoils his looks; his gums, red; and his voice like a trumpet; his mouth not small; his lips average, rather thick than thin, red as coral; his shoulders good and big; his wrists the same; he has small

43 Food and sex once again enter into dialogue throughout this episode. Nuns, according to Trotaconventos, provide their suitors with endless sweet confections (st. 1333d). So too are they as eager to have news of their suitor as gluttonous friars are to dive into a platter of food (st. 1399). Signicantly, Garoza never directly contradicts Trotaconventoss irreverent depictions of conventual life, leaving open the possibility that her self-portrait as an ascetic eater of sardines (st. 1385) is mere posturing. Peter Linehans archival work on the sexual commerce of a convent of Dominican nuns in thirteenth-century Zamora suggests that a sexualized reading of Garoza occupies the realm of the plausible in late-medieval Spain. Especially revealing is this account penned by the prioress herself: But, my lord, the nuns being thus bound, friars of the Order of Preachers took to coming here, more and more frequently, almost every day, and every day from rst thing till siesta-time and from siesta-time till night. And often they would spend the night here. And sometimes there were as many as twenty of them here at a time. And they came right into the convent and created great disorder, entering the enclosure with the young nuns and behaving with them disgracefully, embracing them and making free with them and saying such things to them as men of their cloth ought not to say; and even stripping themselves of their garments, and parading around the place naked as the day they were born, and dressing up in the sisters clothes and dressing the sisters up in theirs, and also doing other wicked things which we cannot bring ourselves to describe. (57)

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eyes; he is a trie dark-skinned; his chest protruding; his arm wellmuscled; his legs well-turned; his foot a little thing: lady, I saw no more of him: for the sake of his love, I embrace you. (st. 14851488)

Peter Dunn has argued for reading in this portrait the deliberate production of a body temperamentally ill-equipped for lovemaking, an unstable combination of virility (prominent nose and ears) and eeminacy (small feet) that only reinforces the narrators propensity for failure. Such a reading suggests not only Trotaconventoss recklessness as alcahueta but Garozas lack of sophistication as reader of erotic signs, neither of which is borne out in the episodes denouement. Moreover, here is where Juan Ruiz scores his most notable victory. What strikes us in his self-portrait is the emphasis on color (black hair and eyebrows, red lips and gums), on musculature (chest, back, arms), and on size (head, ears, nose), all details that correspond readily to a popular erotology that would have been the common currency of Juan Ruizs audience. The nose in particular is made the deliberate focal point, occupying as it does the center of the portrait and calling attention to itself by throwing the entire face out of balance: his nose is long, this spoils his looks (la su nariz es luenga, esto le descompn [st. 1486d]). This almost parodic self-caricaturizing lays bare the narrators sexual potency by tapping into an erotic commonplace in broad circulation throughout the Mediterranean: the ready correlation between the size of the nose and the size of the penis.44 All the more striking is the verbalization of this portrait by a woman (Trotaconventos) for the benet of a female audience (both Garoza and a presumptive female readership), a fact that legitimizes not only the female gaze, but also, implicitly, female experience of pleasure beyond the immediate purposes of procreation.45 While Lady
44 As evidence, Kane cites the Latin proverb Si vis cognoscere fusum, aspice nasum (If its the cock youre interested in, check out the nose). Size matters in the Arabic context as wellthis we have on the authority of Tunisian author al-Tfash (d. 1253 CE), who recounts an exchange between a slave merchant and a customer who is in the market for a young man with a nice face and a really big cock. The slave merchant inquires how it is that he should judge the size of the cock. By the size of his nose, comes the reply (213). Dunn prefers to see the nose as ambiguous sign, citing as authority Vincent de Beauvaiss correlation of large nose and unstable temperament in the Speculum naturale (85). 45 Classical Islamic society acknowledged the female gaze to be as powerfully disruptive as the male gaze, or so the following hadith suggests: The Prophet forbade two of his wives to look at Ibn Umm Maktum. To this, the women said: is

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Endrina focuses on Sir Melons virtues as stock courtly lover or model husband, Garozas gaze wanders below the belt in eorts to guarantee sexual compatibility between partners. Hers is a gaze that irts with the heretical in Latin Christendom, where female xation on the penis could only mean congress with the devil or, at the very least, unbounded and unnatural lust. It is a gaze that, heedless to doctrinal stricture, assumes full ownership of female sexual agency, transcending even Ovid, who is not beyond counseling women to fake it if need be in the interest of male sexual satisfaction.46 Here is the implied eroticizing of the penis as a requisite tool of female sexual satisfaction, a topic that enjoys broad treatment in the classical Islamic worldwitness Nafzws anatomically explicit paean to the praiseworthy maneven as Latin Christendom conspires to keep it rmly under wraps.47 In the Garoza episode, both female and male bodies enter into a free-owing commerce of desire that countermands the rote gender prerogative of Pamphiluss, Sir Melons, and even the narrative Juan Ruizs bid to couple with a pleasant female. Not only does Trotaconventoss portrait expose Juan Ruiz as the object of female desire, a stud fully equipped to satisfy desires, it emerges in full complementarity to Sir Loves commodication of the female body a thousand stanzas earlier. Just as the ideal womenrobust, broadhipped, sweating at the armpitscannot be found in just any marketplace (tal muger non la fallan en todos los mercados [st. 445 d]), so too are studs like Juan Ruiz a prize commodity: such a man [as this] is not to be found in every eld (tal omne como este non es en todas eras [st. 1489 d]). This shift toward the reciprocal is explicitly reinnot he blind? But the Prophet retorted: and you, are you blind? (Marn 10). Ibn azm is critical of both male and female excesses in his chapters on Falling in Love Through a Description and Falling in Love at First Sight, although he considers veiled ladies in guarded palaces to be especially susceptible (48). He gives the example of a woman held in strict seclusion who, spying a young man from her window, resorts to such ruses and subterfuge as I am certain would have confounded the shrewdest and astonished the most intelligent of men (54). 46 Cf. Ars amatoria: Keep up a ow of seductive whispered endearments,/Use sexy taboo words while youre making love,/And if natures denied you the gift of achieving climax,/Moan as though you were coming, put on an act! (3: 7958). 47 It bears mentioning that a number of Christian authors such as Constantine the African and his thirteenth-century commentator Peter of Spain expound at length on methods for increasing male potency. They do so, however, in the strict interest of procreation, never in the interest of heightening female pleasure for its own sake (Friedman 4748).

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forced by the introductory sermon Juan Ruizs appends to the second version of his LBA, ostensibly in eorts to bolster more orthodox readings. Addressing himself to both men and women, he characterizes his work as a pastiche of the ways and tricks and deceitful wiles of the mad and heedless love of this world, which some people employ to commit sin. And if these be read or heard by any man or woman of good understanding, who wishes to be saved, [he/she]48 will make a choice and carry it into eect (pp. 8, 10; emphasis mine). Even here, however, in what becomes the most expressly didactic moment of his work (punctuated by the psalmists verse: I will give thee understanding [Intellectum tibi dabo]), Juan Ruiz cannily leaves open the escape valve for desire:
However, since to sin is a human thing, if any should choosewhich I do not advise them to doto indulge in mad and heedless love, they will nd here some ways for this. And so this book of mine, to every man and woman, to the wise and the unwise, to whomsoever may desire mad and heedless love on the road which [he/she] walks along, to each one I can truly say: I will give thee understanding. (p. 10; emphasis mine)

What strikes us here is Juan Ruizs deliberate inclusion of his female audience, primarily in his refusal to subsume woman under the category of man (to every man and woman), but no less signicantly in the acknowledgment of oral modes of transmission of his work (if these be read or heard), betraying his intention to reach beyond the bounds of a lettered (and predominantly male) audience.49 Just as both men and women are fully implicated in the capacity to sin, so too are both men and women fully imbued with the capacity to experience desire. In the nal analysis, every argument launched by Garoza in virtues defense is rendered meaningless by the sudden corporeal presence of Juan Ruiz in the text and Garozas suddenly absolute subscription to this overarching commerce of desire. She hedges no more
48 While Willis employs only the masculine subject pronoun in his translation, in the original text the subject is understood to refer to the antecedent omne o muger. 49 Jorge Guzmn also envisages a female readership, but understands the authors purpose to be invariably moral: most if not all the LBAs episodes serve in some degree to instruct women on the wiles of men (139; translation mine). Needless to say, Guzmns eorts to accommodate Trotaconventoss portrait of Juan Ruiz within this didactic framework (8688) are less than convincing.

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in her negotiations with Trotaconventos, acquiescing rst to a conditional meeting with the Archpriest and nally to an erotic contract whose reciprocity could not be more lyrically expressed. Says Juan Ruiz: I went to the lady, she spoke to me and I to her; the nun captured my heart and I captured hers (Fuime para la duea, fablme e fablla:/enamorme la monja e yo enamorla [st. 1502 cd]). Here, nally, is the world as Sir Love intends it, a world where socially constructed honor has no part, where the potential gains and losses of a dalliance are doled out in equal portions to both man and woman, where each has quite literally nothing to lose but their immortal souls. And even these, Juan Ruiz gives us to understand, are never at stake:
The lady accepted me as her true paramour; I was ever her obedient and loyal lover; many a good thing did she do for me, with Gods help, in unsullied love (limpio amor); as long as she lived God was my guide. With many a supplication she prayed to God for me; by her abstinence she aided me greatly; her immaculate life found delight in God; she never busied herself with the mad sensuality of this world. (st. 15031504)

I prefer not to rehearse here the arguments for and against reading sex into the limpio amor of this passage. Suce it to say that for some Garozas love for Juan Ruiz is platonic, comprised of prayers, fasting, and at most chaste companionship, while for others it is the most sophisticated and carnal [love] of all (Willis xxixxxx). Mrquez Villanueva eschews the extremes by exploring the complex relationship between morality and human sexuality as it plays itself out in the nal stanzas leading, nally, to Garozas untimely death. For him Garoza and Juan Ruiz, in absolute complicity, yield to and resist the immediacy of desire, making plain the implicit function of the episode as a plaint against celibacy (Juan Ruiz y el celibato eclesistico).50 Whatever the interpretation, what cannot be denied is that the point of origin of this limpio amor is a desire governed
50 Compare this to Andreas Capellanuss censure of the love of nuns (directed in large part against their inherent treachery), or the following lines from the contemporaneous Pseudo-Ars amatoria: Nobody should indulge in a terrible form of baseness and tempt a nun; she has held self-seeking in contempt and become allied to God; she is joined to Him like a married woman to her husband. To put a stain on her is rightly deemed and evil (Burkard 167). In both cases the nun is inserted into a moralistic discourse that serves to denaturalize her body and inhibit the functions of desire.

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neither by morality nor social strictures, but rather by life itself just that commerce of desire preached by the likes of Ibn azm, Al-Andaluss resident expert on matters of the heart, when he speaks of the delights of union: One of the signicant aspects of Love is Union. This is a lofty fortune, an exalted rank, a sublime degree, a lucky star; nay more, it is life renewed, pleasure supreme, joy everlasting, and a grand mercy from Allah (118). The Andalus connection is reinforced by Garozas very name, derived from the Arabic al-'arsa, or betrothed, for some indicative of Garozas status as the bride of Christ.51 I would argue, however, that meaning explodes through the telling of the episode, making Garoza at once the forbidden fruit of an Andreas Capellanus and the ideal sexual companion. While Endrina is bound by those sexual economies that dictate courtship, marriage, and the role of women in Latin Christendom, Garoza gazes on bodies and loves fully, oblivious to the directives of Church and society. Her experience of desire is enabled by Sir Love, or rather, by Juan Ruizs occupation of an Iberian site of desire that allows for the emergence of female sexual agency at a level safely beyond the reach of moral discourse and social strictures. I admittedly neglect in this reading the problem of male voicing of female desirethe projection of desire onto female bodies in ways that continue to serve the male prerogative. But such problems are transcended by the absolute unboundedness of buen amor as it leaves bodies and begins to approach desire in the abstract. Such is the impulse of Islamic erotology, to privilege the experience of desire over the social, cultural, and gender boundedness of those bodies it brings into contact. So too does Juan Ruiz refuse to gender desire in ways that plug readily into the misogynist discourse of Latin Christendom (or in ways that are even internally consistent). Moreover, Garozas gaze invites other gazesof a male audience onto male bodies, of a female audience onto female bodiesjust as it implies the authors auto-eroticization. Such multidirectionality disorients us, decenters those sexual and gender normativities we have accepted as the default, and makes of Garoza perhaps the most paradigmatic inhabitant of that site of desire Juan Ruiz creates in his Libro de buen amor.

51 Asn Palacios was the rst to suggest the Arabic derivation of Garoa in a 1950 study.

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Asn Palacios, Jaime. Historia y prehistoria del castellano alaroza (novedades sobre el Libro de buen amor). Boletn de la Real Academia Espaola 30 (1950): 389421. Bell, Joseph Norment. Love Theory in Later anbalite Islam. Albany: State University of New York P, 1979. Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab. Sexuality in Islam. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. Trans. of La sexualit en Islam: Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1975. Brgel, J. C. Love, Lust, and Longing: Eroticism in Early Islam as Reected in Literary Sources. Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam. Proc. of the Sixth Giorgio Levi Della Vida Biennial Conference. Ed. Afaf Lut al-Sayyid-Marsot. Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1979. 81117. Burkard, Richard. The Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: A Study of the Ovidian Background of the Libro de buen amor. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1999. Cadden, Joan. Meanings of Sex Dierence in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Castro, Amrico. The Structure of Spanish History. Trans. Edmund L. King. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1954. Dagenais, John. Mulberries, Sloe Berries: Or, Was Doa Endrina a Mora? Modern Language Notes 107.2 (March 1992): 396405. Dunn, Peter N. De las guras del aripreste. Libro de buen amor Studies. Ed. G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny. London: Tamesis, 1970. 7993. Eisenberg, Daniel. Juan Ruizs Heterosexual Good Love. Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1999. 25074. Elliott, Alison Goddard, trans. Seven Medieval Latin Comedies. New York: Garland, 1984. Farah, Madelain. Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation of al-Ghazls Book on the Etiquette of Marriage from the Iy". Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 1984. Friedman, David M. A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis. New York: The Free Press, 2001. Garca Gmez, Emilio. Introduction, El collar de la paloma. By Ibn azm. Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1952. Gien, Lois Anita. Theory of Profane Love among the Arabs: The Development of the Genre. New York: New York University P, 1971. Guzmn, Jorge. Una constante didctico-moral del Libro de buen amor. Mxico, DF, 1963. Gybbon-Monypenny, G. B. Dixe la por te dar ensienpro: Juan Ruizs Adaptation of the Pamphilus. Libro de buen amor Studies. Ed. G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny. London: Tamesis, 1970. 12347. , ed. Libro de buen amor. By Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita. Madrid: Castalia, 1988. Ibn azm. The Ring of the Dove. Trans. A. J. Arberry. London: Luzac & Company Ltd., 1953. Jacquart, Danielle, and Claude Thomasset. Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages. Trans. Matthew Adamson. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. Trans. of Sexualit et savoir mdical au Moyen ge. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1985. Jolly, Margaret and Lenore Manderson, eds. Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Joset, Jacques, ed. Libro de buen amor. By Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita. 2 vol. 1974. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1981.

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WITHOUT

THE MONGOL IN THE TEXT Benjamin Liu diary of his rst voyage, as compiled is the imagined encounter with the serves as the primary motivating or interrupted expedition to the East:

In the prologue to Columbuss by Bartolom de las Casas, it Gran Can [Great Khan] that justifying factor in Columbuss

por la informacin que yo haba dado a Vuestras Altezas de las tierras de India y de un prncipe que es llamado Gran Can, que quiere decir en nuestro romance Rey de los Reyes, como muchas veces l y sus antecesores haban enviado a Roma a pedir doctores en nuestra santa fe porque le enseasen en ella . . . pensaron de enviarme a m, Cristbal Coln, a las dichas partidas de India para ver los dichos prncipes, y los pueblos y tierras y la disposicin de ellas y de todo y la manera que se pudiera tener para la conversin de ellas a nuestra santa fe.1

This brief mention of prior diplomatic missions sent over successive generations by and to the Mongol Khans of Central Asia, Yuandynasty China and the Ilkhanate of Persiaand of the possibility of their conversionis framed and no doubt overshadowed by the triumphalist memories of the taking of Granada and the edict of expulsion of the Jews, crucial moments of the Catholic Monarchs territorial and ideological domination over Spains internal populations. The turn toward the tierras de India and the cibdad de Catay2 in the imagined East, along with Columbuss own readerly obsessive preoccupation with the Mongol Khans,3 signal a readiness to map those practiced intra-Peninsular modes of domination outward and Eastward onto conquerable territories and convertible populations beyond the known sphere of Mediterranean realms.

1 Cristbal Coln, Los cuatro viajes del Almirante y su testamento, ed. Ignacio B. Anzotegui (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1991), 1617. 2 Juan Gil, ed., El libro de Marco Polo anotado por Cristbal Coln. El libro de Marco Polo: versin de Rodrigo de Santaella (Madrid: Alianza, 198788), viii. 3 Charles Verlinden, Cristbal Coln y el descubrimiento de Amrica, trans. Florentino Prez-Embid (Madrid: RIALP, 1967), 47.

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Indeed, as Luis Weckmann has shown, the America of the earliest European contacts was imagined and interpreted not as American, Caribbean, or Occidental, but rather as an Asian archipelago4 following the lead of such writers as Marco Polo or John of Mandeville, who describe and invent the exotic imaginary of Eastern travels for such avid readers as Columbus himself, an owner and copious annotator of a personal copy of the 1485 Latin printed edition of Marco Polo as well a known reader of Mandevilles Travels.5 As Weckmann writes, Columbus jams supo que haba puesto pie en un mundo nuevo,6 believing the islands he encountered to lie on the coasts of Asia, duly delivering the Spanish monarchs letter addressed to the Gran Can, and calling himself on occasion the virrey de Asia.7 A decade later in his 1503 letter from Jamaica, where he was had been shipwrecked by a storm, Columbus directly compares the tribulations of the West Indies with Kubilai Khans disastrous expedition against Cipango ( Japan), also destroyed at sea. In the margins of that same letter, his brother Bartholomew sketched a map in which he too labelled the new American continent Asia.8 The long-standing controversies over the authenticity of the Vinland Maps silhouetted American shore have long overshadowed the maps manuscript collocation with two narratives that relate journeys eastward to communicate with the Mongols. One is a portion of Vincent de Beauvaiss encyclopedic Speculum historiale that draws upon two rst-hand sources: John of Plano Carpinis report of his papal embassy to the Mongols in 1245, the Historia Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus [Description of the Mongols whom we call Tartars], as well as the relation of a contemporary Dominican mission headed by Friar Ascelin, the Historia Tartarorum written by Simon de SaintQuentin.9 Another is the similarly titled Historia Tartarorum written
4 Luis Weckmann, La primera imagen de la Nueva Espaa: un archipilago asitico, in La herencia medieval de Mxico, 2nd ed. (Mxico: Fondo de Cultura Econmica, 1983), 3247 at 3237. 5 Gil, viixi; Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 2627, 156n1. 6 Weckmann, 33. 7 Weckmann, 36. 8 Gil, ix; Weckmann, 32n1. 9 George D. Painter, ed. and trans., The Tartar Relation, in The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation by R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965, new ed. 1995), 19106 at 2223, 23n6; Jean Richard, ed., Histoire des Tartares, by Simon de Saint-Quentin (Documents Relatifs lHistoire des Croisades Publis par lAcadmie des Inscriptions et

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by a Franciscan named C. de Bridia based on the rst-hand account of Plano Carpinis travelling companion, Benedict the Pole.10 Whatever the maps ultimate provenance, its geography of exploration and even its declared purposeto illustrate Vincent de Beauvaiss Speculum historiale remain inextricably associated with the travels of messengers bearing letters to and from the Mongol East.11 Indeed, medieval Europe since the 13th century had hadsince the time of John of Plano Carpinis journey to Mongolia in 1245 and William of Rubrucks in 1253both real and imaginary relations with the Mongols and their descendants, through diplomatic embassies in both directions, undertaken for reasons of political expediency and religious mission, commerce and perhaps simple curiosity.12 Besides the best known accounts of John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck and Marco Polo, there are numerous other records of European contacts with Mongols, from the numerous letters received and sent by kings and Popes to Mongol correspondents to travellers such as Andrew of Longjumeau, Friar Ascelin and the Dominican mission chronicled by Simon de Saint-Quentin, John of Montecorvino, or Odoric of Pordenone.13 From the Iberian Peninsula, too, there are chronicles of diplomatic embassies such as those of the Catalan Jacme dAlarich in 1267 or that of the Castilian Ruy Gonzlez de Clavijo in 1403, as well as other accounts by travellers such as the Catalan Jordan of Svrac and Pero Tafur (143539). This chapter explores the presence of Mongols in medieval Spain, in the esh as well as in the imagination. In the context of Christian military expansion into al-Andalus, and Dominican and Franciscan

Belles-Lettres, 8, Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1965), 7; Gregory G. Guzman, The Encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais and His Mongol Extracts from John of Plano Carpini and Simon of Saint-Quentin, Speculum 49 (1974), 287307 at 28892. 10 Painter, 21. 11 R. A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1965, new ed. 1995), 243; I. de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 20708. 12 Jonathan D. Spence, The Chans Great Continent: China in Western Minds (New York: Norton, 1998), 118. 13 Richard, Histoire des Tartares; Painter, 23n6; Christopher Dawson, ed., The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 22431; Odoric of Pordenone, The Travels of Friar Odoric, trans. Henry Yule (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans, 2002).

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missionary eorts to convert Muslims and Jews, the Mongol as a distant other assumes a spectrum of possible meanings: as Antichrist, appearing ex tartaris, a sign of apocalypse; as Prester John, a distant ally against Islam; as unlettered pagan, an object of missionary zeal and travel ad tartaros. Israel Burshatin, Miri Rubin, and Sara Lipton have separately argued, in very dierent contexts, that visual and literary images, narratives and metaphors of Muslims and Jews have served to mask, silence or legitimize the actual persecutions and suerings of these minority populations under Christian rule. I will propose that the Mongols, as a more remote other, far from the naturalized relations with other peoples of the book, are interpreted as a cipher with unstable signications within the ideological and political struggles for power between Christians, Muslims and Jews in medieval Spain. The Mongol of the imagination poses a particular challenge to the notion of Muslim-Christian political coexistence, as an unpredictable factor that could denitively sway the balance of power in either direction. Moreover, the distant threat or promise presented by the Tartar in the Christian imagination masks a much more mundane, but real presence of Tartar slaves in the markets and shops of the kingdom of Aragon from the mid-fourteenth century on. Other European sources, in reaction to the Mongol invasion of Russia and Hungary from 123742, recoil in terror at the horric ferocity of the invading horde, whose numbers are also often greatly exaggerated. The Hungarian Chronicon pictum describes the onslaught of 1241 in terms at once laconic and hyperbolic: Magali sive Tartari cum quinquies centeni milibus armatorum regnum Hungarie invaserunt [The Mongols or Tartars invaded the kingdom of Hungary with 500,000 armed men].14 The better known Chronica majora of Matthew Paris likewise chronicles in words and images the most gruesomely inhumane behaviors ascribed to the Tartars, from the cannibalism of these nephandi tartari [unspeakable Tartars], who are depicted roasting and eating dismembered Christian bodies, to their impalement of unarmed Christians as part of the general formidabile exterminiu tartarorum15 [the Tartars brutal massacres].
14 Z. J. Kosztolnyik, Hungary in the Thirteenth Century (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs; New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 151. 15 Richard Vaughan, ed. and trans., The Illustrated Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Observations of Thirteeth-Century Life (Dover, NH: Alan Sutton, 1993), 14, 78; John

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Simon de Saint Quentin, part of a Dominican mission to the Mongols around 1247, will repeat these outlandish claims, aording them an eyewitnesss credibility: Carnes autem humanas devorant ut leones16 [like lions they devour human esh], while a crusader will write from Damiette around 1249 or 1250 that Nihil certum . . . de tartaris audivimus, nec speramus dem in perdis, humanitatem in inhumanis17 [we have heard nothing certain about the Tartars, nor do we hope for faith in the faithless, nor humanity in the inhuman]. The crusader, despite acknowledging the lack of reliable information about the Mongols, is nevertheless sure of their essential perdy and inhumanity. In the Iberian Peninsula, however, the situation is somewhat dierent. Far from the somber tones of northern sources, the Mongol invasions can even furnish a source of humor. Joan Sorez Coelho, a Portuguese troubadour of the mid-13th century, writes a cantiga descarnho, or song of mockery, against a certain Joan Fernndez:
Joan Fernndez, o mund torvado e, de pran, cuidamos que quer ir: veemo-lo Emperador levantado contra Roma e Trtaros viir, e ar veemos aqui don pedir Joan Fernndez, o mouro cruzado.18 [ Joan Fernndez, the world is troubled, and frankly we believe it is about to end. We see the Emperor risen up against Rome, the Tartars are coming, and here we see Joan Fernndez, the Crusader Moor, asking for gifts.]

Here the arrival in Eastern Europe of the Mongols is but one of a sequence of signs that describe the prophesied apocalyptic end of the world: the Antichrist is born (o Antecristo nado), the world is
Andrew Boyle, The Mongols and Europe, in History Today 9 (1959), 33643, reprinted in The Mongol World Empire, 12061370 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1977), V, 33739. 16 Richard, Histoire des Tartares, 41. 17 Jean Richard, La politique orientale de saint Louis: la croisade de 1248, in Septime centenaire de saint Louis. Actes des colloques de Royaumont et de Paris (2127 mai 1970) (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1976), 197207, reprinted in Les relations entre lOrient et lOccident au Moyen Age: Etudes et documents (London: Variorum Reprints, 1977), IX, 202n6. 18 Manuel Rodrigues Lapa, ed., Cantigas dEscarnho e de Mal Dizer dos Cancioneiros Medievais Galego-Portugueses, 2nd ed. (Vigo: Galaxia, 1970, reprinted Vigo: Ir Indo; Lisboa: Joo S d Costa, 1995), number 230.

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turned upside down (o mundo . . . mizcrado), Frederick IIs ongoing conicts with the Papacy continue, and the Mongols are coming. For Joan Sorez Coelho, these background events of world history pale before the local contradictions of Muslim-Christian conict and conversion. The Christian project of military conquest in al-Andalus, the dream of overseas crusade, the diculties of administering subject Mudjar populations in conquered territories; these are the pressing local conundrums that the mocking troubadour addresses in poking fun at the hybrid and paradoxical condition of Joan Fernndez, who appears to be a Muslim convert to Christianity. The Tartars remain only a distant menace of rumors and reports that lack the immediacy and timeliness of events and issues closer to home. What little evidence is oered by the pictorial tradition also corroborates this dierence in treatment from such Northern European illustrators as Matthew Paris, who depicts misshapen Mongols with deformed heads and monstrous expressions. The images of Alfonso X of Castiles Libro del ajedrez, dados y tablas [Book of chess, dice and backgammon], also known as the Libro de los juegos [Book of games], depict a number of chess problems, illustrated with players who constitute a veritable catlogo de tipos humanos y de su modo de vestir.19 The players vary almost mathematically in their studied combinations of dress, headgear, gender, age, religion, rank, social condition, poses, gestures, accoutrements and even architectural backdrops. In one illumination from the El Escorial ms. T.I.6 (folio 21v), two pairs of men stand across a chessboard from each other. Gonzalo Menndez Pidal reports D. S. Rices identication of these men as Mongols, based principally on their distinctive headwear in the shape of an owl, totemic in Mongol religion.20 The men wear mustaches and slender beards and appear to have distinctly Asian features. Above all, they are seen in repose and reection, at a moment of studied and civilized leisure that could not be further from the frenzied barbarities represented in the Chronica majora. In terms of Christian relations with Muslims in the Peninsula, the subsequent Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258 resonates with recent Christian conquests of important Muslim cities in al-Andalus in the 1230s and 1240s, and the fearsome but unknown Mongol

19 Gonzalo Menndez Pidal, La Espaa del siglo XIII leda en imgenes (Madrid: Real Academia de Historia, 1986), 19. 20 Gonzalo Menndez Pidal, 103.

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force of those decades becomes a potentially powerful ally to Spanish Christian armies in their move against the dr al-Islm. The fearful resonances of Mongol and Christian conquests are likewise heard loudly within the Muslim world, whose Eastern and Western capitals fell to the echoes of similar laments, such as that of Sli. alRund over the fall of Seville in 1248 to Fernando III of Castile, or those over the fall of Baghdad in 1258 to the Ilkhan Mongol Hulagu in Muslim chronicles and in odes like that of Sa'd Shrz.21 Under the gaze of Christian Reconquista, then, the very ferocity of the Mongol remained an ambivalent prospect, holding out on one hand a potential new enemy, but on the other the promise of a potential new ally in a pincer attack against Islam. As Lilian Herlands Hornstein writes: Throughout the second half of the thirteenth century reports of Tartar cruelties alternated with those dealing with the baptism of Tartar rulers. Tales of the secret conversion of great Eastern potentates became common.22 In terms of Christian-Jewish controversies, Ramon Llulls Liber super Psalmum Quicumque vult [Book on the Psalm Quicumque vult] (also known as the Llibre del Tartar [Book of the Tartar]) and possibly some of his other apologetic works may respond to Yehuda haLevis earlier Kitb al-Khazar [Book of the Khazar] in proposing rationalist debate to sway a pagans religious aliation through arguments that appeal to the intellect.23 Llull imagines pagan conversion as a kind of competitive forum for logical disputation between monotheistic religions; as he will later put it in the Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni: Iste liber factus fuit hac intentione, videlicet, ut Christianus et Saracenus per Rationes, non per Authoritates, ad invicem disputarent24 [this book was written with the
21 James T. Monroe, ed. and trans. Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 33237; M. M. Sharif, ed., A History of Muslim Philosophy, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 196366), 2: 79495. 22 Lilian Herlands Hornstein, The Historical Background of the King of Tars, Speculum 16 (1941), 404414 at 407. 23 A. Bonner, Notes de bibliograa i cronologia lul.lianes, Estudios lulianos 24 (1980), 7186 at 78n28; Jos Mara Mills Vallicrosa, El Liber predicationis contra judeos de Ramon Lull (Madrid and Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientcas, Instituto Arias Montano, 1957), 2324; Harvey J. Hames, The Art of Conversion: Christianity and Kabbalah in the Thirteenth Century (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000), 96n55. Hames also proposes an indirect link between Llull and the Kitb alKhazar through the anonymous Hispano-Jewish Sefer ha-Yashar [Book of the Righteous], highly inuenced by Yehuda ha-Levis work and a probable source for Llull on Jewish philosophy (141, 144). 24 Ramon Llull, Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni, in Raymundi

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intention that a Christian and a Muslim could mutually debate through reason rather than authorities]. Both Llull and Yehuda haLevi coincide in imagining far-o Eastern peoplesthe Khazars or the Mongolsas potential political allies, but also as potential converts to Judaism or Christianity through the arts of persuasion and disputation. In both of these thirteenth-century visions, of conquest and conversion, the image of the Mongol responds to political and religious desires that increasingly extend out beyond the borders of Spanish Christendom, whether in plans for large-scale conversion or in dreams of Spanish empire overseas (Ultramar) in North Africa and Palestine. The prospect of widespread conversion to Christianity drives both a political and a religious endeavor, undertaking to redeem souls and reconquer territory. In both endeavors, the gure of the distant Mongol is a wild card that allows for much in the way of speculation and imagination, but little in the way of concrete information and experience.

Mongols in the Flesh: Not Conquerors but Slaves Despite the familiar images of Mongols as powerful and ruthless warriors, it is not as conquerors, but rather as slaves that Tartars make their appearance in greatest number on the medieval Spanish scene; though it is the former gure that continues to prevail in the imagination. Charles Verlinden documents at least 50 historical cases of Tartar slaves between 1367 and 1445 in the kingdom of Aragon, part of the active Mediterranean trac in slaves that Verlinden identies as the direct precursor of the slavery which would be imposed by the colonial economy in the Americas.25 Because this type of personal slavery (the word most commonly used is sclavus, though servus and captivus are also employed as synonyms) found part of its justication in the non-Christian collective origin of the slave,26 the records of transaction are careful to note

Lulli operum, 8 vols. (Moguntiae: Ocina Typographica Mayeriana, per Joannes Georgium Haner, 1729), vol. 4, 147 at 46. 25 Charles Verlinden, Lesclavage dans lEurope mdivale, 2 vols. (Brugge: De Tempel, 1955), vol. 1, 17. 26 Verlinden, Lesclavage, 89.

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her (or his, though the great majority are women) geographical or ethnic provenance. These records compactly record the contracts of sale between sellers and buyers in markets in Barcelona, Mallorca, Marseille, Venice and colonies, Genoa and other principal ports. Tartar is in this usage a specic ethnic designation, presumably for Mongols from the Golden Horde, that is carefully distinguished from other categories, not only general ones such as Moor or black, but also ones as particular as Russian, Greek, Turk, Balkan, Circassian, Crimean, Armenian, Bulgar, and so on. What Verlinden calls this bigarrure ethnique begins in the 14th century, principally through slave trading, as opposed to the quintessentially Muslim slave of the 13th century, enslaved through war in the Christian conquests in al-Andalus.27 That Tartar is considered an inherited ethnic designation is clear from the frequent designations de genere Tartarie or de progenie Tartarorum and by the fact these are sometimes combined with an additional geographical qualier such as de Rossia, as opposed to the also found de partibus Thartari.28 Skin color is occasionally mentioned as a personal, rather than collective, characteristic, as in the case of the fair-skinned Marta, described in 1371 as an esclava blanca trtara y bautizada.29 One visitor to and participant in the slave markets of Tartary provides an extraordinary eyewitness testimony to the buying and selling of Tartar and other slaves. Pero Tafur, a resident of Crdoba who chronicles his Eastern travels from 1435 to 1439, describes his visit to the Crimean city of Kaa (now Feodosia) on the Black Sea, a bustling and diverse port city as large or larger than Seville, que es en el imperio de Tartaria, pero la ibdat es de ginoveses, que ellos avieron licenia de poblar aquel lugar30 [which lies within the

27 Verlinden, Lesclavage, 798; Joaqun Miret y Sans, La esclavitud en Catalua en los ltimos tiempos de la Edad Media, Revue hispanique 41 (1917), 1109 at 17. 28 Verlinden, Lesclavage, 34347. 29 Miret y Sans, 18. This personal usage seems quite dierent from the collective white Tartars mentioned by Clavijo: una generacin de gentes que llaman trtalos blancos e estos eran naturales de una tierra que es entre la Turqua e la Suria who had been massacred by Timur; Francisco Lpez Estrada, ed., Embajada a Tamorln by Ruy Gonzlez de Clavijo (Madrid: Castalia, 1999), 219220, 18384. 30 Pero Tafur, Andanas e viajes de Pero Tafur por diversas partes del mundo avidos (14351439), ed. Marcos Jimnez de la Espada, 2 vols. (Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1874), vol. 1, 16061. Clavijo, writing three decades earlier, similarly describes Cafa, una ciudat de genoeses que conna con Tartalia [Kaa, a city inhabited by Genoese that borders Tartary] (Lpez Estrada, 322).

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Tartar empire, although the city is made up of Genoese, who had permission to settle in that area]. Tafur describes both the Christian rationale for enslaving ethnically identied slaves, as well as the practical customs of their purchase and sale:
Los xpianos tienen bulla del Papa para comprar tenerlos perptuamente por cativos los xpianos de tantas naiones, porque non acampen en mano de moros renieguen la f; stos son roxos, migrelos, abogasos, cercaxos, brgaros, armenios, otras diversas naiones de xpianos; all compr yo dos esclavas un esclavo, los quales oy tengo en Crdova generaion dellos; tinese esta manera: los que los venden fzenlos desnudar en cueros tanbien al macho como fenbra, pnenlos unos gavanes enima de eltro, fzese el preio, despues de fecho, trangelos de enima quedan desnudos fzenlos pasear, esto por ver si ay algunt defecto de mienbro, despues oblgase el vendedor, que si dentro en sesenta dias muriese de pestilenia, que sea tenido tornar el dinero que resibe; quando quiera que destas naiones se venden, si entre ellos ay trtaro fembra macho vale un tercio ms que los otros, porque se falla de ierto que nunca trtaro zo trayion a su seor.31 [Christians have a Papal bull to purchase and hold as slaves in perpetuity other Christians from dierent peoples, in order that they not fall under the sway of Moors and so give up the faith. These include Russians, Mingrelians, Abkhazians, Circassians, Bulgars, Armenians, and other diverse Christian peoples. I bought there two female slaves and one male, whom I have to this day in Crdoba, along with their ospring. The custom is as follows: the sellers make them undress completely, both males and females, and put felt tunics on them. The price is set, and once that is done they pull the tunics o of them so that they are completely naked; then they make them walk about to see if they have any defect in their limbs. The seller is obliged, should the slave die of disease within 60 days, to refund the money that he received. Whenever any of these peoples are sold, if there is a Tartar among them, female or male, he or she is worth one third more than the others, because it is found to be true that no Tartar has ever betrayed his master.]

By far the greatest number of the Tartar slaves documented by Verlinden are young women, and most are referred to by a rather reduced set of Christian names indicative, like the term neophitam, of their relatively recent converted status: Margarita, Christina, Lucia, Lucieta (the slave daughter of a Lucia),32 Catherina, Maria,
31 32

Tafur, 162. Verlinden, Lesclavage, 470.

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Dominyca, Madeleine, Constance, Guillemette. Others, however, seem never to have received baptism, to judge by such clear references as indelem de genere Tartarie and by such names as Balada, Tholo, Carra, Alena or Melgatini. Male Tartar slaves are also encountered, though in lesser numbers. Most of them have Christian names Johannes, Michel, Antonio, Jorgi, Martin, Jordialthough at least one, named Thanatar, does not. In any case, as Verlinden notes, conversion does not imply manumission: le baptme naranchit pas.33 Children born to Tartar slaves, whether baptized or not, still remain slaves and remain ethnic Tartars, as also conrmed by Pero Tafurs phrase e generaion dellos34 [and their ospring]. In one ethnically complex case, the slave child is identied as being born to a Tartar father and Muslim slave mother.35 Indeed, the use of Tartar as an ethnic category is not always straightforward, and sometimes seems little more than a pretext for enslavement. In one case, the accuracy of this designation was questioned by a certain Johannes, sold into slavery as a Tartar when he was in fact an Armenian Catholic.36 The bishop of Mallorca, informed of this claim, overturned his enslavement and freed him. What this unusual casebeing mistaken for a Tartar suggests is that both factors of ethnic and religious origin interacted to legitimize the act of enslavement, as Verlinden argues37 and Pero Tafurs comments conrm, but that religious conversion alone was insucient to reverse slave status once acquired. From this logic it seems to follow that ethnic identication alone may stand as a marker for a certain potential for or susceptibility to enslavement, with conversion to Christianity (as opposed to Islam) considered a justifying and benecial consequence of slavery. The spare language of the documents rarely permits the further elaboration of personal slave narratives. A few suggestive clues, however, may be teased out from the archive. Some of the records speak to a high degree of acculturation among some Tartar slaves, especially in the 15th century. For example, a young Tartar slave named Jordia common Christian name for male slaveswas said to speak

33 34 35 36 37

Verlinden, Lesclavage, Tafur, 162. Verlinden, Lesclavage, Verlinden, Lesclavage, Verlinden, Lesclavage,

456. 446. 426. 89.

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excellent Catalan.38 Llus Borrass, a well known painter in Barcelona, bought in 1392 un sclau appellat Luch, de linatge de tartres39 [a slave named Luke, of Tartar lineage] to assist in his busy studio. Borrass would later buy at least two more slaves, a 25-year-old black man named Jorge in 1411 and a 35-year-old Tartar woman named Mara in 1424. Lluch, eighteen years old at the time of purchase, learned the craft of painting as Llus Borrasss apprentice and, by 1419, now a freedman and bearing the adopted surname of Borrass, continued to collaborate with his former master until resettling in Mallorca upon the latters death in 1426.40 Linguistic and cultural assimilation, however, should not be confused with acceptance of the condition of slavery. Lluch Borrasss mastery of international Gothic painting, for example, did not prevent him from twice attempting unsuccessfully to escape, in 1401 and 1415, after nearly 8 and 22 years, respectively, of servitude. On the second attempt, he managed to leave the house using a false key and did so, according to a document led by Llus Borrasss solicitor, with the counsel and aid of a certain friar de nassi de grechs41 [of Greek origin]. Another Tartar slave, again named Jordi after the patron saint of Catalunya, contradicts with his actions Pero Tafurs assertion that Tartar slaves were unfailingly loyal to their masters. Jordi made repeated attempts at escape that ended unsuccessfully on at least four occasions with the fugitive slaves apprehension and return, but he nally managed to nd refuge from bondage in Toulouse, described by Miret y Sans as the punto de reunin y amparo de todos los fugitivos de Catalua.42 Bulletins for the return of other escaped Tartar slaves provide some of the few visual cues as to the physical appearance of Tartars enslaved in the kingdom of Aragon. One such escapee is described as follows:
es de naci de tartres, de edat de xxv anys, aporta vestedura una gonella borella e un jup blanch ab lo collar blau, e es hom de mige talla, aporta un ferro en la cama esquerra, e stivals e un barret blanch.43

Verlinden, Lesclavage, 34347; Miret y Sans, 22. Jos Gudiol Ricart, Borrass (Barcelona: Instituto Amatller de Arte Hispnico, 1953), 18, 29, 86. 40 Gudiol Ricart, 80, 86, 135, 146, 152. 41 Gudiol Ricart, 20, 29, 86. 42 Verlinden, Lesclavage, 817; Miret y Sans, 5354. 43 Miret y Sans, 46.
39

38

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[He is of Tartar origin, 25 years old, wearing a burlap robe and a white tunic with a blue collar. He is of average stature, and has a leg iron on his left leg, boots and a white cap.]

Other documents of the sale or return of Tartar slaves refer to customary guarantees, such as those mentioned by Pero Tafur, against certain physical or behavioral vicii defects, symptoms of disease, trauma or mental illness that are dicult if not impossible to diagnose further. One 26-year-old Tartar woman for sale is described as healthy, though with the disclosure salvo in vicio caducho et orinando in lecto.44 The former condition refers to epileptic seizures, known as the mal caduco, while one can only speculate as to the possible human causes of the slaves bedwetting. Another twenty-yearold Tartar slave, named Catherina, appears to have developed some form of mental illness after her purchase by a royal doctor, Guillermus a Garriga, who describes her in one document as quasi stulta et modicum furiosa45 [as if a fool and moderately mad]. Although the doctors credentials lend a certain air of medical authority to the diagnosis, the documents legal language remains curiously hesitant in its use of words like quasi and modicum. In other cases even less is known of the specic human circumstances of slave maladies. In the case of a thirteen-year-old Tartar slave baptized under the name Dominyca, her contract of sale is rescinded by the purchaser, citing unfullled warranties as to her health.46 Some Tartar slaves were able to procure their freedom under a variety of circumstances. Jordi, mentioned above, managed to ee northward to Toulouse, and other cases of successful male fugitives are recorded.47 Manumission, however, was the more frequent path to freed status, as in the case of Lluch Borrass. Most often, slaves purchased their freedom under contracts of indenture or lease, with stipulations of six years of continued service, or a xed sum to be paid either in hand or in monthly installments, or an arrangement of lease ( pro medio loquerio) rather than outright ownership.48 The language in such contracts is typically one of unfettered generosity: aranquivit Catherinam, sclavam suam de partibus Tartarie, ab

44 45 46 47 48

Verlinden, Verlinden, Verlinden, Verlinden, Verlinden,

Lesclavage, Lesclavage, Lesclavage, Lesclavage, Lesclavage,

794. 47576, 87073. 456. 512. 51719, 524, 81920, 897.

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omni servitute et sclavitate . . . de sua liberalitate gratuita et spontanea voluntate et motu suo proprio et deliberato proposito49 [he freed Catherine, his slave from the lands of Tartaria, from all servitude and slavery . . . of his own free generosity, spontaneous will and of his own deliberate initiative and accord]. However, the real conditions are often anything but free, stipulating lease contracts that if broken devolve the freed slave back into slavery; or subjecting the freed slave to circumstances that though not legal slavery, are a form of captivity greatly resembling it.50 Sometimes special circumstances apply, such as a virtue clause in one manumission that stipulates that drinking, stealing or ghting will revert the Tartar freedman back to slavery.51 There are some special circumstances as well that impel manumission, such as that of Catherina, a Tartar slave who was freed by her owner after giving birth to his grandson, fathered by his son Monnetus.52 There are also a few manumissions, especially posthumous ones, that appear to be genuinely unfettered, such as the testament of Elvira Perpia, which declares: manumitto et francham, liberam et alforram facio et voco, Catherinam, servam et captivam mean, neottam, que fuit de genere Tartarorum53 [I hereby release and make and declare free my baptized slave Catherine who was of the lineage of the Tartars]. Here Germanic (francham), Latin (liberam) and Arabic (alforram) synonyms for freedwoman align to reinforce the new status, valid under all legal regimes, of this newly freed Tartar slave after her conversion and manumission by her deceased owner. As a new convert and freedwoman, even her ethnic designation as a Tartar seems to lapse into the preterite tense: fuit de genere Tartarorum.

Mongols, Conversion and Crusade Conversion, while not alone sucient for manumission, appears to be a necessary condition for it. Indeed, the general conversion of Tartars, slaves and otherwise, becomes an issue of considerable

49 50 51 52 53

Verlinden, Verlinden, Verlinden, Verlinden, Verlinden,

Lesclavage, Lesclavage, Lesclavage, Lesclavage, Lesclavage,

897. 528, 897. 519. 897900. 51819 and note.

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signicance, especially in the late 13th and 14th centuries. The earliest European contacts with Mongols were ambiguous regarding the potential for Mongol conversion. In favor of such a possibility were the old legends of Prester John, Plano Carpinis report on the Mongols fundamental monotheism, the presence of Nestorian Christians, and Rubrucks descriptions of religious disputations at the court of Mngke in Karakorum; against it stood the accounts of the Mongols inhuman savagery, Plano Carpinis report that despite believing in one god, they had no organized practice of religion; the Roman Catholic suspicion of Nestorian beliefs, and William of Rubrucks own skepticism regarding Mongol interest in ties to the West and the Church.54 More concrete and apparently more promising proposals came from the Ilkhans of Persia, beginning with missives to Popes and kings from Hulagu in 1264, followed by similar advances from Abaqa in the later 1260s and 1270s, as well as from Arghun in 1287, though in at least one early case communications were obstructed by the inability to translate messages from the Khans written in Mongolian.55 In 1274, two Tartar envoys to the Council of Lyon, presided by Pope Gregory IX, accepted baptism.56 One of the ve Dominican friars assigned around 1281 to study Oriental languages in Valencia under John of Puigvents for the purposes of predication is named Fr. Petrus de Tarteriis, an onomastic that clearly indicates his Tartar origin and suggests that he may be a convert who has joined the order.57 The Dominican strategy of language training and subsequent

54 Dominique Urvoy, Penser lIslam: les prsupposs islamiques de lArt de Lull (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1980), 20813; Albert Hauf, ed., La or de les histries dOrient, by Ait de Gorigos (Col.leci de Textos Medievals Breus, 9, Barcelona: Centre dEstudis Medievals de Catalunya, 1989), 533; Painter, 88; Paul Pelliot, Mongols et Papes au XIII e et au XIV e sicles (Paris: Institut de France, 1922), 115; Hornstein, 40608. 55 John Andrew Boyle, The Il-Khans of Persia and the Christian West, History Today 23 (1973), 55463, reprinted in The Mongol World Empire, 12061370 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1977), XIII, 55657; Jean Richard, Le dbut des relations entre la papaut et les Mongols, Journal Asiatique 237 (1949), 291297, reprinted in Les relations entre lOrient et lOccident au Moyen Age: Etudes et documents (London: Variorum Reprints, 1977), XIV, 29197, 297n2. 56 Bonner, 7476; Hornstein, 407; Hauf, 27; Albert Soler i Llopart, El Liber super Psalmum Quicumque de Ramon Llull i lopci pels Trtars Studia Lullistica 32 (1992), 319 at 3n3; Jos Tarr, Los cdices lulianos de la Biblioteca Nacional de Pars, Analecta Sacra Tarraconenis 14 (1941), 155182 at 157. 57 Jos Mara Coll, Escuelas de lenguas orientales en los siglos XIII y XIV, Analecta Sacra Tarraconensis 18 (1945), 5989 at 62; Antoine Dondaine, Ricoldiana: notes sur les oeuvres de Ricoldo da Montecroce, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 37

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mission focussed mainly on Arabic and Hebrew; but it seems highly likely that other languages were also involved in this endeavor. Ramon Llull, in fact, by the early 1280s had already suggested precisely this strategy of Tartar conversion through language education and mission in his Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna (127683):
fo fet de part de lapostoli al bisbe que precurs tots anys cinquanta tartres e deu frares que lapostoli trametia en aquell bisbat per o que els tartres mostrassen llur lenguatge als frares, e los frares lo llur als tartres.58 [On behalf of the Pope (Blanquerna), it was arranged that the bishop would take charge every year of fty Tartars and ten friars whom the Pope would assign to that bishopric, so that the Tartars would teach the friars their language, and vice versa.]

In 1287, a remarkable visit by the Nestorian monk Rabban Sauma in representation of the Ilkhan Arghun to Rome, Genoa and Paris, complete with explicit proposals for political, military and potentially spiritual alliances, caused a considerable stir in European courts, though it would ultimately give rise to few practical consequences.59 The repeated expressions of interest in conversion to Christianity and in political alliances with European kings against Islam were, coming from the recent conquerors of Baghdad and Syria, naturally received with equal measures of suspicion and enthusiasm. James I of Aragon describes rst-hand this mixed reaction in his personal chronicle, the Llibre dels Feyts, in which he and his son-in-law, Alfonso X of Castile, express their very dierent appreciations of Mongol overtures. The occasion is the bon messatge sent back to Toledo by Jacme dAlarich, James Is messenger to the king of the Tartars, returning in the company of two Tartars described as men of standing (honrats hmens). Alfonsos reaction is described by James as follows:
E dixem-ho al rei de Castella, e el rei tenc la cosa per gran, e per esquiva e fort meravellosa, e dix-nos que aquella gent era molt falsa,

(1967), 119179 at 167; Robert I. Burns, Christian-Islamic Confrontation in the West: The Thirteenth-Century Dream of Conversion, The American Historical Review 76 (1971), 13861434 at 1404. 58 Ramon Llull, Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna, ed. Maria Josepa Gallofr (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1987), chap. 80, p. 220. 59 Soler i Llopart, 59; Bonner, 7576; Lola Badia and Anthony Bonner, Ramn Llull: vida, pensamiento y obra literaria (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 1993), 2627.

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per qu havia temor que, quan ns fssem lla, que ells no en complissen aquelles paraules que ens enviaven a dir. . . .60 [I told this to the king of Castile, who thought it an important matter, though tricky and quite astonishing. He said to me that those people were very deceitful, and that he was therefore worried that when I went over there, they would not fulll the promises they had conveyed to me.]

Jacme dAlarich had been sent in response to a prior communication, a letter of friendship (de gran amor) received unexpectedly from the king of the Tartars, described by king James as being del pus alt rei del mn61 [from the greatest king in the world]. James I of Aragon considered himself moreover to have been particularly distinguished by being the only Christian kingas opposed to the Popes, long in contact with Mongol rulerssingled out for such communication with the Mongols, perhaps unaware that Louis IX of France (then also readying an overseas crusade) had likewise corresponded with Mongol rulers almost twenty years earlier:62
negun rei qui fos de mar no hac paria ne amor ab aquells tartres: la una que de poc temps a en era comenat lo llur poder, laltra que anc ells no enviaren messatges a negun rei de crestians que haguessen llur amor de ns enfora: e pus a ns havien enviat messatge senyaladament entre los altres, semblava obra de Du que ell volia a comanar a ns que ns ho fassem. . . .63 [No king this side of the sea has had the Tartars as allies or friends: on the one hand because their power began not long ago, and on the other hand because they have never sent messages of friendship to any Christian king except me. Since they have sent a message to me specically among other kings, it seemed to be the work of God wishing in this way to command me to carry it out. . . .]

When Jacme dAlarich nally meets up with the king in Valencia, the outlines of James Is divinely sanctioned plan become clear: as had previous advocates of a Mongol alliance, he envisions a joint crusade between Christians and Mongols for the reconquest of Jerusalem:
60 Jaume I, Crnica o Llibre dels Feits, ed. Ferran Soldevila, 4th ed. (Barcelona: Edicins 62, 2000), chap. 475, pp. 37374; Joseph F. OCallaghan, A History of Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 370. 61 Jaume I, chap. 457, p. 364. 62 Richard, La politique, 201. 63 Jaume I, chap. 476, p. 374.

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dixeren-nos de part del gran Ca, qui era rei dels tartres, que ell havia cor e volentat dajudar-nos, e que vengussem a Alais o en altre lloc e que ell eixiria a ns, e per sa terra trobariem o que mester haurem e aix porem ab ells ensems conquerir lo Sepulcre. E dea que ell nos bastaria de genys, e ens bastaria de conduit.64 [(the messengers) told us on behalf of the Great Khan, the king of the Tartars, that he had the desire and will to help us, and that we should proceed to Als or some other place where he would meet up with us, and that we would nd in his lands whatever we should require and that thus together we could conquer the Holy Sepulchre. He also said that he would supply us with men and provisions.]

The kings own account of the motivation and plan for his failed attempt at crusade in 1269 thus includes as a constitutive element (troops and provisions) the promise of direct collaboration from the Ilkhan Mongols. That promise, of course, would ultimately prove as ephemeral as Jamess own expedition of 1269, thrown o course by a Mediterranean storm, and as Louis IXs subsequent failed crusade the following year, cut short by the French kings illness and death. Jamess dream of overseas crusade rested on the revisited fantasies of Prester John and the wishful geopolitical thinking that the enemy of my enemy is my friend,65 embodied in the far-o image of the powerful potential Mongol ally, and recorded in their ambiguous messages, received as if out of nowhere and interpreted as if they were ciphers, subject mainly to the wishes and fears of their willing readers.

Ramon Llull and Mongol Mission The promise of political alliance with the Mongols for a crusade against the common enemy, Islam, also manifested itself as a missionary desire for the Mongols conversion to Christianity, both on its own merits and as a step toward the ultimate conversion of Muslims. James I of Aragon himself was present at the Council of Lyon in 1274, where two Tartar messengers were publicly baptized. Given the increasing resources devoted to conversion eorts directed at Muslims and Jews by the Dominican and Franciscan orders from

64 65

Jaume I, chap. 481, pp. 37677. Hornstein, 406.

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the mid-thirteenth century on, under the early supervision of Ramon de Penyafort, it is hardly surprising that similar ambitions were advocated for Mongol conversion, most ardently and most often by Ramon Llull (ca. 12321316). This self-described insuciens procurator indelium66 [unworthy minister of indels] employed both his tireless energies and political connections with Aragonese royalty for the task of converting Muslims, Jews, Mongols and other pagans, heretics and schismatics to Roman Catholicism. The Mongol question is a recurrent theme in Llulls extensive writings, to which he returns repeatedly over the course of nearly four decades. Despite the evolving contexts of his worksand correspondingly dierent emphases, now abstractly theoretical, now political, now proposing persuasion through disputation, now crusadethe abstract gure of the Tartar that he imagines remains surprisingly stable. The Tartar for Llull remains the quintessential pagan, inherently susceptible or even predisposed to conversion; Ramn Sugranyes de Franch refers to cette sort dtat plastique o se trouvaient les Mongols, du point de vue rligieux.67 The Tartar soul is thus a spiritual blank slates ripe for the work of Christian mission as well as an open territory for contest and controversy against Islam and Judaism. The Tartar is not the only such Gentile, of course, a class that includes a number of miscellaneous categoriesmogols, trtins, blgars, ongres dOngria la menor, comans, nestorins, rosos, ginovins e molts daltres sn gentils e sn homens qui no han ley68 [Mongols, Tartars, Bulgars, Hungarians from lesser Hungary, Comanians, Nestorians, Russians, ginovins (perhaps those from the 13th-century Genoese colonies in Crimea) and many others are Gentiles, who are people without religion]along with other assorted heretics, idolaters and animists who are all considered not to belong to the organized monotheistic religions: Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The denition of the Gentile in
66 Ramon Llull, Disputatio delis et indelis, in Raymundi Lulli operum, 8 vols. (Moguntiae: Ocina Typographica Mayeriana, per Joannes Georgium Haner, 1729), vol. 4, 153 at 1. 67 Ramn Sugranyes de Franch, Ramn Llull: docteur des missions, Extracto del vol. V de Studia Monographica et Recensiones (Palma de Mallorca: Schola Lullistica, 1951), 1516. 68 Ramon Llull, Doctrina pueril, ed. Gret Schib, Els Nostres Clssics, A104 (Barcelona: Barcino, 1987), 16667 and note; Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna, chap. 61, p. 160.

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Llulls early Doctrina pueril (127476) emphasizes their pristine ignorance of faith: Gentils sn gents senes lig e qui no han conexena de Du69 [Gentiles are peoples without religion and who have no knowledge of God]. Their very ignorance of course makes them prime candidates for evangelization, if only there were more missionaries, like Llull, to make the case for Christianity to them: a penes s neg qui sia lur procurador ne qui.ls ajut a demostrar via perdurable70 [there is hardly anyone to minister to them nor to help them by demonstrating the everlasting path]. It is this spiritually blank Gentile who provides the frame situation in Llulls Llibre del gentil e dels tres savis (127476) for a demonstration of his rationalist methods and who serves as the innocent interlocutor of three wise menone Christian, one Muslim, one Jewishwho seek to persuade him of the rightness of their beliefs. Though very learned in philosophy (un gentil molt savi en philosophia), he has absolutely no experience of faith: Aquell gentil no avia conexenssa de Deu, ni creya en resurecci, ni aprs sa mort no creya esser nulla cosa71 [That Gentile had no knowledge of God, nor did he believe in resurrection, and thought that after his death he would be nothing]. It is the Tartar, however, who promptly becomes for Llull the representative par excellence of this sort of Gentile as blank slate ready for evangelization. In his Quomodo Terra Sancta recuperari potest (1292) [How the Holy Land can be Recovered], also known as the Llibre del passatge [Book of the Crusade], Llull writes: ad dem catholici Tartari leviter acquiri possunt quia sine lege existunt72 [The Tartars can be easily won over to the Catholic faith, because they exist with no religion]. The rst book of his Liber de ne (1305) concerns apologetic debate (de disputatione indelium),73 and is divided into sections according to the relevant objects of mission: contra Sarracenos, contra Iudaeos, contra Schismaticos, contra Tartaros seu Paganos74

Llull, Doctrina pueril, 166. Llull, Doctrina pueril, 167. 71 Ramon Llull, Llibre del Gentil e dels tres savis ed. Antoni Bonner, 2nd ed., Nova Edici de les Obres de Ramon Llull (Palma: Patronat Ramon Llull, 2001), 6. 72 Raimundus Lullus, Quomodo Terra Sancta recuperari potest/Tractatus de modo convertendi indeles, ed. Jacqueline Rambaud-Buhot, Raimundi Lulli Opera Latina, fasc. III (Mallorca: Schola Lullistica, Studiorum Mediterraneorum, 1954), 96. 73 Raymundus Lullus, Libellus de ne (Palma: Typis Raphaelis Moya, 1665, reprinted in facsimile, Petra, Mallorca: Col.legials de la Sapincia, 1986), 6. 74 Lullus, Libellus de ne, 7.
70

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[against Muslims, against Jews, against Schismatics, against Tartars or pagans]. Here Tartar has come to stand for all non-monotheists, called pagans or Gentiles: Tartari, & sic de aliis gentilibus non habent scientiam, neque legem75 [The Tartarsand it is also thus for other Gentileshave neither knowledge nor religion.] In the earlier Blanquerna, too, the long list of dierent kinds of Gentile peoples in the Doctrina pueril is frequently reduced simply to Tartars; in this way the list of indels is shortened in several places to sarrans, jueus, tartres, e a tots los infeels76 [Muslims, Jews, Tartars and all indels]. In the episode from Blanquerna mentioned above, in which language schools are imagined at the monastery of Miramar for the purpose of sending linguistically competent missionaries per totes les nacions des infeels77 [throughout all the indel peoples], the preeminent example of Blanquernas (and Llulls) plan is the Tartar option. In this scenario, thirty of the fty Tartars are converted to Christianity, and ve of the ten friars successfully learn the llenguatge tartaresc78 [Tartar language]; all together, they travel to meet the Gran Ca [Great Khan] and successfully convince him to adopt the Christian faith. The idealized Tartar similarly represents the quintessential Gentile in Llulls Liber super Psalmum Quicumque vult (ca. 1288), also known as the Llibre del Tartar, which begins, very much like the Llibre del gentil e dels tres savis, as a series of conversations that a Tartar (ego sum Tartarus79 [I am a Tartar]), as rational pagan or Gentile, holds in succession with a Jew, a Muslim, an ignorant Christian hermit, and nally with the hermit Blanquerna, Llulls double. The Tartar will later acknowledge that he had been nothing more that a blank slate: quando veni ad te, eram tamquam vas vacuum, nihil habens veritatis, eram plenus nihilo80 [When I came to you (Blanquerna), I was just like an empty vessel, possessing nothing of the truth; I was full of nothing]. The Tartar remains equally unconvinced and unfullled by the Jews historical arguments, by the Muslims explications of
Lullus, Libellus de ne, 50. Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna, chap. 86, p. 244; chap. 75, p. 200. 77 Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna, chap. 80, p. 218. 78 Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna, chap. 80, p. 222. 79 Ramon Llull, Liber super Psalmum Quicunque vult sive Liber Tartari et Christiani, in Raymundi Lulli operum, 8 vols. (Moguntiae: Ocina Typographica Mayeriana, per Joannes Georgium Haner, 1729), vol. 4, 130 at 4, 29. 80 Llull, Liber super Psalmum Quicunque vult, 28.
75 76

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the Qur"n, and by the Christian eremita ignorans.81 Only the hermit Blanquerna is able to sway him through a verse by verse philosophical explication of the psalm of the works title.82 Ultimately, the Tartar converts, is baptized by the Pope, adopting the name Largus, and announces his intention to set o homeward to preach to his compatriots:
paratus sum ire in nes Tartarorum, & ita rogo vos suppliciter sancte Pater, ut ad Regem eorum destineris vestras literas, ego ero delis nuntius ad protestandum veritatem dei.83 [I am ready to go to the lands of the Tartars, and thus I beseech you, Holy Father, that you send your missives to their king; I will be a faithful messenger in testifying to the truth of the faith.]

Especially in the early writings, Llull betrays a lack of knowledge or perhaps lack of interest in empirical evidence, even at second hand, about actual Mongols: for example, the reports of Plano Carpini and Rubruck about Mongol religious beliefs and practices. Dominique Urvoy describes this early view of Mongol paganism as very vague and a pure construction de lesprit,84 which will be subsequently modulated only after Llulls travels to Cyprus and Armenia in 1302. Of course, the author of the Ars inveniendi particularia in universalibus [Art of discovering particulars in universals] could hardly be considered an empiricist, but rather a universalist, so it is not that surprising that he repeatedly chooses to identify Mongols as Gentiles in their pure state of nature, writing in 1292 that Tartari sunt homines rudes85 [Tartars are savage men]; and again in 1309 that Tartari sive gentiles sunt homines rudes et non habent legem86 [Tartars or Gentiles are savage men who have no religion]; they are blank slates awaiting the writing of conversion. Even in later works, which after the Christian defeat at Acre in 1291, include much more political writings,87 Llull continues to repeat the blanket identication of Mongols as Gentiles without religion or understanding, although it is quite clear from his description of the

81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Llull, Liber super Psalmum Quicunque vult, 24. Hames, 9697; Soler i Llopart, 1416. Llull, Liber super Psalmum Quicunque vult, 29. Urvoy, 21314; Soler i Llopart, 4. Lullus, Quomodo Terra Sancta recuperari potest, 105. Urvoy, 214; Llibre de la conquesta de Terra Santa, 15. Badia and Bonner, 3031.

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tripartite Mongol empire in the epilogue to the Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni (1308) that by this time he has access to accurate information regarding their geographical and political situations.88 It seems, in fact, that Llull really proposes two convergent arguments concerning the need for Mongol mission: on one hand, such a mission is desirable in its own right, for spiritual ends, to minister to all indels; and on the other hand, mission is desirable for political ends, to convert Mongols as needed allies in the ongoing and intensifying struggle against Islam. In this latter, more worldly view, the Tartar option or program for Mongol conversion is very much a pragmatic rather than utopian project.89 Llull himself describes a two-pronged approach to the Mongols as a combination of coordinated spiritual and bodily swords and riches:
Nam septuaginta anni sunt elapsi, quod Tartari de montibus descenderunt, & habent plus de dominio in hoc mundo, quam Sarraceni, & omnes Christiani. Et ideo Ecclesia quare dormis, & non laboris postquam tantus thesaurus est tibi commendatus per spiritualem gladium, & etiam per corporalem?90 [Seventy years have now passed since that Tartars descended from the mountains and they possess more power in this world than the Muslims and all Christians. Therefore, why, O Church, do you sleep when so much wealth is entrusted to you, rather than take action with the spiritual sword as well as the bodily one?]

The spiritual sword, as Llull explains in his petition to the transitory Pope Celestine V in 1294 (as well in a number of successive petitions to the papacy between 1292 and 1311), mobilizes, in a battle for non-Christian hearts, minds and souls, the Churchs trezor spiritual [spiritual wealth], namely the intellectual capital represented by
sants hmens religiozes e seglares, qui . . . aprezessen diuerses lengatges que anassen prehicar los euuangelis per tot lo mn . . . e que dass fossen estudis fets en les terres del crestians e dels tartres; e que l senyor cardenal qui aquest oci auria fes la mesci dels estudis e dels estudians, e ass contnuamen entr que tot lo mn fos de crestians.91
88 Llull, Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni, 4647; Bonner, 67n18. 89 Bonner, 76; Soler i Llopart, 34. 90 Lullus, Libellus de ne, 58; Llull, Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni, 46. 91 Josep Perarnau i Espelt, Un text catal de Ramon Llull: la Petici de Ramon al Papa Celest V per a la conversi dels indels: edici i estudi, Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 1 (1982), 946 at 33.

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[holy men, both clergy and laymen who would learn diverse languages and go preach the Gospels throughout the world . . . and that thus schools would be established in Christian lands and in Tartar lands; and that the cardinal who held this post would undertake the mission of the schools and students, and so on continually until the whole world would be made up of Christians.]

Mentioned elsewhere by Llull as part of this trezor spiritual is the writing of books qui boni essent ad conuertendum Tartaros, & paganos92 [which are good for converting Tartars and pagans], and for which the model may be Llulls own Liber super Psalmum Quicumque vult, which the converted Tartar Largus recommends, in translation, as an appropriate vademecum for missionaries. This program is precisely what Llull had been advocating since at least the 1270s, and which is vividly depicted in the passage quoted earlier from Blanquerna on Tartar language schools. The bodily sword correspondingly mobilizes the trezor corporall [bodily treasure], the Churchs accumulated political and economic capital by which to promulgate crusade a conquerre les terres dels infeels e la sancta terra doltramar. E ass per forsa darmes [to conquer the lands of indels and the holy land overseas by force of arms]. Moreover, the economic capital represented by the Churchs tithe should be assigned to fund both these complementary tasks in perpetuity.93 Llull elaborates more fully on these dual projects in later works such as the Liber de ne (1305) and the epilogue to the Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni (1308).94 His three recommendations remain, however, remarkably consistent throughout. First, found and fund missionary schools for languages at home and abroad, in perpetuity, especially for the conversion of the Mongols, who are militarily powerful and easily convertible due to their lack of religion. Second, promulgate crusade all along the fronteria (seu conniis) contra Saracenos [the frontier or border against the Muslims], beginning with Granada, because it is nearby and holds great treasure, then moving on to North Africa and nally to the Holy Land. Third, fund these endeavors by dedicating indenitely the Churchs tithe toward the goal of crusade.
Lullus, Libellus de ne, 57. Perarnau i Espelt, Un text catal, 3435. Llull, Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni, 4647.

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The increasing urgency of Llulls political writing responds to an evolving political context, of course, but it also underlines a crucial fear behind the Llullian project. If the Tartar soul is a tabula rasa, easily converted by its very nature to Christianity, then it is also possible for them to convert to Islam. The danger that such a MuslimTartar alliance would represent to all of Christianity is for Llull incalculable, as he describes in the Desconhort (1295) [Poem of Disconsolation]:
que si el fait tost no es pren que j es ordenat per sarrans que els tartres a el son girat, e ja nhan convertits una gran quantitat; e els tartes convertits en sarranitat lleu poran destruit quaix totat cristiantat en tant que no ser cristi qui haja regnat.95 [that if this crusade is not undertaken soon, the Muslims have arranged for the Tartars to come to Zion, of whom they have already converted many; and the Tartars, once converted to Islam can easily defeat nearly all of Christianity, so that no Christian kingdom will be left].

Moreover, time is running out in the contest between Islam and Christianity for Tartar souls, since already in the Llibre del passatge (1292) Llull had warned of active and ecacious Muslim eorts to convert Mongols through marriage with their sisters and daughters, with riches and delights; and that there was even a danger of Jewish proselytism.96 A further complication noted by Llull lies in the multiple divisions among Christians, who in order to meet this external threat should arrange to debate and resolve their internal dierences. While this really amounts to a eort to convert schismaticos97 Greek Orthodox, Nestorians and Jacobitesto Roman Catholicism,98 it is presented in the Disputacin de cinc savis (1295) as an amicable encounter between at least ve wise men: a lat, a grech, a nestor, and a jacopn, along with a Muslim knowledgeable in philosophy and toward the end a Jewish wise man.99 The rationale for this push for
95 Ramon Llull, Poesies, ed. Ramon dAls-Moner, 2nd ed. (Barcelona: Els Nostres Clssics, 1928, reprinted in facsimile, Barcelona: Barcin, 1980), p. 102, ll. 74954). 96 Lullus, Quomodo Terra Santa recuperari potest, 105, 96; Soler i Llopart, 11. 97 Lullus, Libellus de ne, 2728. 98 Soler i Llopart, 1719. 99 Josep Perarnau i Espelt, La Disputaci de cinc savis de Ramon Llull: estudi i edici del text catal, Arxiu de Textos Catalans Antics 5 (1986), 7229 at 2324, 98.

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Christian unity is precisely the danger of the Muslim-Tartar alliance bemoaned elsewhere. As one of the wise men argues: Com crestianisme sia en tan gran peril, per qu tots los crestians del mn no n vnitat? . . . Car, si sunien, leugeramn purien uensre et destruir tots los sarans del mn e, aprs, los tartres e.ls altres pagans purien subiugar a la sancta fe crestiana100 [With Christianity in such great peril, why do not all the Christians in the world unite? . . . For were they to unite, they could easily defeat all the Muslims in the world and then reduce the Tartars and other pagans to Christianity]. In this call for Christian unity, Llull may be echoing in a theological key a similar military recommendation made by John of Plano Carpini, who called for Christian military and political unity in the face of a possible Mongol attack on the West.101 Events, however, would once again prove Llull a Cassandra, since in 1295 the Ilkhan Ghazan in fact converted to Islam in sympathy with his largely Muslim subjects.102 For Llull, this turn of events represents a monumental lost opportunity to form an alliance with the Ilkhans of Persia, who in the past had sent so many communications to popes and Christian kings. It is a bitter setback to his Mongol project and, to believe his rhetoric elsewhere, a potentially grave danger to all of Christendom:
Ego vere fui in partibus ultra marinis, & audiui, quod Cassanus Imperator Tartarorum pluries dicebat, quod volebat de de Christianorum esse certus, quoniam si de ipsa haberet certitudinem, ipse se faceret Christanum, & faceret, quod tota sua militia esset omnimode baptizata, & quia certitudinem non habuit, factus fuit cum tota sua militia Sarracenus.103 [I have travelled abroad, where I heard that Cassanus (Ghazan), the emperor of the Tartars, would often say that he wanted to be certain of the Christian faith because, if he could have certainty about it, he would become Christian and would likewise have his entire army baptized; but because he was not certain, he became a Muslim, along with his entire army.]

Curiously enough, even Ghazans conversion becomes a point of ambiguity concerning the Mongols, since a highly popular legend

100 101 102 103

Perarnau i Espelt, La Disputaci, 2425. Boyle, The Mongols and Europe, 34243. Hornstein, 40809. Lullus, Libellus de ne, 52.

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circulates throughout Europe after 1299 that has Ghazan instead converting to Christianity. He is referred to by name as Cassanus in most versions of the legend of the king of Tars, who was commonly, and correctly, associated with the King of the Tartars.104 The legend relates how this Tartar king converts to Christianity after witnessing ecacious miracles, thus again invoking the persistent desire for a Tartar alliance in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Llull species, however, that his information, though at second hand, was obtained during his travels abroad, and hence closer to the source, especially taking into account his linguistic access to Arabic materials.

Looking for Mongols Inward and Beyond Despite the relevance of the Tartar question to a number of the political and apologetical concerns in Llulls extensive writings, the historical outcomes of the project for Mongol conversion were much less grandiose than those he had envisioned with such conviction and consistency over the years. One early fourteenth-century case of a Tartar convert to Christianity in Aragon was indeed celebrated at the highest levels of royal and ecclesiastical authority. Ramn Menndez Pidal pointed out the noteworthy conversion of a Tartar entertainer in 1320 (only some four years after Llulls death), as recorded in the Aragonese royal archives. When this convert jongleur (joculator . . . a ritu tartarorum ad christianorum dem [an entertainer . . . from the rite of the Tartars to the faith of the Christians]) was baptized under the Christian name Lorenzo by the bishop of Tarazona, none other than King James II of Aragon himself served as his godfather,105 thereby lending both his personal and ocial support to the legacy of the thirteenth-century dream of conversion.106 Apart from his direct and often rst-hand awareness of much of Llulls project, James II also had specic knowledge of the popular but false legend of the Christian conversion of Cassanus (Ghazan), the King of Tars, as related to him in a letter from between ca. 13001307.107 If Llulls

Hornstein, 40308. Ramn Menndez Pidal, Poesa juglaresca y juglares: orgenes de las literaturas romnicas, 9th ed. Austral, 159 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1991), 138 and note. 106 Burns, 138687, 1434. 107 Hornstein 404n3.
105

104

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vision for Mongol mission was global in its vast geopolitical scope, James II instead participates in a highly publicized ceremony that remains entirely local in its celebration of a specic Tartars baptism. Its strictly symbolic importance is more relevant to conversion eorts aimed at Aragonese minority populations than to those of faro Muslims and Mongols in North Africa, Palestine, Persia, Tartary and beyond. Even later missionary eorts, no doubt inuenced by Llulls writings, are similarly much scaled down from his universal project for worldwide conversion to the humbler enterprise of preaching to and converting Tartar slaves already residing within the Iberian Peninsula, a captive audience in the most literal sense. One such eort around 1382 involves two Armenian Dominicans in Barcelona who saben aptamente lenguatge de Tarteria, de Grecia e daltres nacions, los quales axi per preycacions e confessions que continuen de fer als esclaus tartres e daltres desta ciutat, instruexen molt les dits esclaus a la fe catholica108 [are conversant in the languages of Tartary, of Greece and of other nations, and who thus, through constant preaching and confession, induce many Tartar and other slaves in this city into the Catholic faith]. The rationale for directing preaching at Tartar slaves in particular is explained by a general fear that they might instead convert to Judaism when owned by Jewish masters.109 Whereas on the geopolitical stage Islam was always perceived as the main competitor for pagan convertsalthough Llull, perhaps responding to Yehuda ha-Levis Kitb al-Khazar, had also allowed for the theoretical possibility of Tartar conversion to Judaismat the level of local interfaith coexistence and control the greater threat was now imagined to be active proselytism by Jewish slaveholders. A royal disposition signed by Pere IV of Aragon in 1369 makes this fear explicit by prohibiting Jews from holding or buying Tartar slaves in Barcelona: ordinamus quod nullus judeus terre nostre . . . emat nec emere vel tenere audeat seu presumat aliquem ex predictis servis tartaris110 [we order that no Jew in our lands . . . should purchase nor dare to purchase nor hold any of the aforesaid Tartar slaves]. The order, with impeccable Llullian logic, further explains that Tartar slaves are by their nature particularly susceptible to conversion of
108 109 110

Verlinden, Lesclavage, 534n1004. Verlinden, Lesclavage, 534. Miret y Sans, 22.

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any kind and if owned by Christian rather than Jewish masters they should therefore be more easily converted to Catholicism.111 Laws of this sort, despite their distinctly Llullian resonances, seem much less attuned to his vast vision of Tartar conversion in the larger world for Christian spiritual and political dominance abroad, and much more in keeping with the rising anti-Jewish sentiment and legislation within the Iberian Peninsula during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Strong evidence for the notion that this is a legislative strategy directed more against Jews than on behalf of Tartars is provided by a derivative Castilian ordinance, published in 1380 by Juan I of Castile, which prevents Jewish proselytism of Muslims and, notably, of Tartars, despite that fact that the Tartar population in Castile was negligible if not nonexistent: Otrosy nos cieron entender que los judios a algunos, asy moros como tartallos e de otras setas, tornan judios circumcidandolos112 [We have been informed that Jews convert some Moors, as well as Tartars and members of other sects, to Judaism by circumcising them]. Another manuscript reads bautisandolos [by baptizing them], emphasizing even more the theological incongruity of this edict. Clearly based on Aragonese legislative models, the Castilian document shows that such laws as these concern themselves much more with exerting control over internal Jewish populations than with actually converting the Tartar slaves that they may or may not have owned. These later endeavors in predication and legislation concerning Tartar slaves within the Peninsula attest to the modest but persistent interest in Mongol matters. This interest may well be due in part to the continuing inuence of Llulls writings, though his lofty missionary and political goals are dicult to recognize in such humble local enterprises as these, hardly the stu of dreams of world domination, the geopolitics of Muslim, Christian and Mongol alliances, and the coming clash of civilizations. Mongols and world aairs, however, again insistently intrude into the Iberian scene with the rise of an imminent threat from outside, the Turks, and a new and distant Mongol interlocutor, Timur or Tamerlane. The growing power of the Ottoman Turks under Bayezid, made dangerously evident after the Turkish victories over Christian armies at Kosovo in 1389 and at Nicopolis in 1396, was itself
111 112

Verlinden, Lesclavage, 343n379. Verlinden, Lesclavage, 605n231.

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overshadowed by the unexpected appearance of yet another unknown Tartar from the East,113 the Mongol emperor Timur, who defeated and killed Bayezid at the battle of Ankara in 1402.114 Enrique III of Castile had previously dispatched two ambassadors, Payo Gmez de Soutomayor and Ferrn Snchez de Palazuelos to Bayezid in 1401; when they arrived, they witnessed and may have participated in Timurs battle against the Turk, after which they redirected their embassy from Bayezid to his conquering foe.115 Once again, a Mongol who appears as if out of nowhere (as do, too, the abstract and philosophical Tartars of Llulls disputations) raises hopes of a ChristianMongol alliance with a potential ally of apparently overwhelming power. As Adam Knobler writes:
The appearance of a Tartar king who successfully vanquished an enemy of Christendom was an event with which the West had some experience. Timur is thus established, in his own lifetime, as part of a longer, historical continuum of eastern crusading allies, stretching from Prester John to the Il-Khans of Iran, in whom the Latin courts had placed the hopes of a crusading alliance. Such earlier alliances had followed upon just such a series of events (crusader defeat, followed by a vanquishing of the Muslim victors by a previously unknown force) and, for many interpreters, the explanation was the same. Timur was, in truth, a Christian who shared Latin animosity toward Islam and its rulers.116

The return of these original ambassadors, along with a representative from Timurs court, Mahomad Alcagi,117 is cause for some excitement, not least of which is generated by Timurs gift ofor trac inwomen: three princesses who had been Bayezids captives. The exotic beauty and nobility of Angelina de Grecia is especially noted, as recorded in several songs included in the Cancionero de Baena.118 In response, Enrique III sends a party led by Ruy Gonzlez de Clavijo
113 Adam Knobler, Timur the (Terrible/Tartar) Trope: A Case of Repositioning in Popular Literature and History, Medieval Encounters 7 (2001), 101112 at 102. 114 Angel Barrios, La embajada de Clavijo (14031406), Historia 16 4.41 (1979), 3136 at 3132; Lpez Estrada, 2526; Knobler, 102. 115 Jos Filgueira Valverde, Payo Gmez de Soutomayor: mariscal de Castilla: embajador de Enrique III al gran Tamerln (Pontevedra: Gobierno Civil, Diputacin Provincial, Ayuntamiento de Pontevedra, 1976), x; Lpez Estrada, 2627, 78. 116 Knobler, 103. 117 Lpez Estrada, 79. 118 Mara Rosa Lida de Malkiel and Rene Toole Kahane, Doa Angelina de Grecia, in Estudios sobre la literatura espaola del siglo XV by Mara Rosa Lida de Malkiel (Madrid: Porra, 1977), 339353.

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and including a Dominican friar, Alfonso Pez de Santa Mara, maestro en Tehologa119 to accompany Alcagi back to Timurs court at Samarkand, a journey recorded in detail in Clavijos extensive report. Clavijos report stands out for its unagging interest in chronicling the history, politics, places, peoples and customs of the lands through which he travels, and it demonstrates a keen curiosity for concrete information both on his part and on the part of his Castilian audience, presumably Enrique and his courtiers. In this sense, it seems diametrically opposite Ramon Llulls penchant for abstraction concerning the Mongols and the East; although in some places it does betray similar preoccupations about the politics of Mongol religion. In recounting the history and situation of the Crimean Tartars, for example, Clavijo describes how an ally of Timurs was converting the Tartars of the Golden Horde to Islam: E este Hedegui a tornado e torna de cada da a la fe de Mahomad los trtalos, que fasta poco tiempo ha no eran creyentes, bien en una fee ni en otra, fasta agora, que tomaron la seta de Mahomad120 [And this Hedegui has converted and is still converting to the faith of Muammad many Tartars who until recently were not believers in either religion, until now that they have opted for the sect of Muammad.] Despite the persistent Christian hopes for a potential Christian-Mongol alliance, the evidence of ongoing Mongol conversion to Islam, along with Timurs own aliation to that religion, also rekindled the counterposed fear of an unholy alliance between Mongol power and Muslim enmity against Christian kingdoms. In strictly diplomatic terms, Clavijos embassy to Samarkand bore little fruit. Despite Timurs words of lavish praise and friendship for Enrique III, whom he reportedly calls mi jo, el rey dEspaa, que es el mayor Rey que es en los francos que son en cabo del mundo, e son muy grand gente!121 [my son, the king of Spain, who is the greatest king among the Franks (Europeans), who are at the (Western) end of the world, though they are very numerous], he does not again receive Clavijos party, due to illness, and they are forced to leave without a letter of reply to the king of Castile.122 In any event, Timur
119 120 121 122

Lpez Lpez Lpez Lpez

Estrada, Estrada, Estrada, Estrada,

3738, 79. 323. 260. 307310.

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subsequently dies in 1405, prior even to the return of Clavijos party to Castile in the following year. Clavijos report thus becomes a chronicle of travel in the past, to be heard (as Pero Tafurs Andanas e viajes will also be) for the exotic and novel pleasure of the sights and experiences it records, but with little diplomatic bearing on the immediate political landscape. Enrique III, nonetheless, will be remembered by later chronicles in large part for this expedition to Toboymeque, or Timurprecisely for his interest and attention to the greater world beyond Iberian shores. Diego Rodrguez de Almelas Compendio historial de las crnicas de Espaa, completed in 1491that is, immediately before the capitulation of Granada and the subsequent events of the following yearinterprets Enrique IIIs diplomatic activity as proceeding from a general curiosity toward and desire for knowledge about the larger world. He further links the kings personal grandeza de corazn [greatness of heart] with the expansive disposition of his monarchic power:
fue tanto deseoso de saber las cosas estranas que inbiaba cavalleros de su casa no solamente a los Reyes xristianos y al preste Iuan de las Indias, ms aun al gran Soldn de Babilonia y de Egipto y al Toboymeque, que quiere dezir en nuestra lengua castellana senor del erro e al Morate, que es el Gran Turco, e a los Reyes de Tnez y de Fez y de Marruecos y a otros grandes Reyes y Senores moros por aver informacin de sus tierras y estados y costunbres en que hizo grandes espensas, lo que sin duda proceda de grandeza de coran, que mucho conbiene a los grandes prncipes saber de los semejantes.123

The following year will bring, of course, new but already anticipated results sprung from this inner desire for information about Mongol and Muslim lands. Nearby Granada will fall, wielding up its considerable treasures, just as Ramon Llull had already foreseen by 1308; Jews, again under suspicion of proselytism (now to conversos rather than to Mongol slaves), will again face extreme pressure to convert; and Columbus, like Clavijo, will set out for the East bearing missives from a Castilian monarch, once again in hopes of encountering the far-o and elusive Gran Can of the Mongols.

123

Filgueira Valverde, ix; Lpez Estrada, 26 and note.

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GENERAL INDEX
'Abd al Malik ibn Hishm 137, 143 'Abd Allh ibn Mas'd 142 Abraham (Prophet) 140 Abraham bar Hiyya (translator) 151 Abraham ibn Wacar of Toledo (translator and interpreter) 133, 135, 14547, 150 Ab al-Hasan al-Ash'ar 137, 149 Abu Bakr b. al-'Arabi 50 Abulhagag (interpreter) 150 Acre, fall of 312 Adoptionism 57 Aguilera, M. 177, 195 Aigremont, Dr. 184, 195 'ajouz (also Celestina, vieja and alcahueta) 199 et passim, esp. 20711 al-Andalus 137, 270, 274 n. 30, 285, 293, 296, 299 Alarich, Jacme d 293, 306308 Albertus Magnus 269, 271 al-Burq 149 Alcagi, Mohamad 320 alcahueta (go-between) 267, 27475, 275 n. 32, 28081 Alfonsi, Petrus 237 Alfonso VI of Castile 45, 51, 57 Alfonso VII of Castile 64 Alfonso X 11314, 11617, 124, 127, 133, 135, 139, 14346, 15051, 231, 24041, 247, 250, 25255, 270 Algeciras 54 Algeria 45 al-Ghazl, Ab mid 271 n. 25, 272 n. 28 Algiers 45 'Ali b. Yusuf b. Tashun 50 al-Ji, Ab 'Uthmn 'Amr 27172, 271 n. 25, 273, 275 aljuba 112, 122 Almohads 45, 49 Almoravids 50 al-Nafzw, Umar Ibn Muammad 271 n. 25, 27274, 273 n. 29, 282 Alonso de Espina 137 Alonso Hernndez, Luis 177, 195 al-Rund, Sli 297 al-Tfash, Amad 281 n. 44

Alvaro (translator) 151 Amades, Joan 182, 195 ambassadors. See Alarich, Alcagi, Clavijo, Palazuelos, Plano Carpini, Sauma, Soutomayor America 292, 298 Andaluca 46, 143 Andreas Capellanus 284 n. 50, 285 Angelina de Grecia 320 Ansrez, Pedro 153, 15657, 15963 Arabic language 26970, 272, 274 n. 30 Arabic 47, 5152 Aragon 138 Aragon, kings of Fernando I, and Isabel of Castile 29192, 322 James I, 306308 James II, 31718 Peter IV, 318 Aragonese 45, 6263 Archpriest of Hita 173 et passim Aristotle 269, 272, 27677 Ascelin, Dominican friar 29293 Asia 29193, 296, 305, 321 Asn Palacios, Jaime 285 n. 51 Asn Palacios, Miguel 133 Astruc Bonsenyor (interpreter) 150 autobiography, pseudo- 173 Avicenna (Ibn Sin) 269 Azarquiel 145 Baghdad 29697, 306 Bahye Alconstantin (interpreter) 150 Bakhtin, Michail 173 n. 1, 175, 185, 195 Barcelona 151, 299, 318 Barrick, Mac E. 174, 195 Bayezid 31920 Beauvais, Vincent of 292 Bdier, Joseph 231, 255 Benedict the Pole 293 Bernaldo the Arabian (translator) 145 Bernard of Sdirac 57 Bizzarri, Hugo 174, 176, 19596 Blecua, Alberto 187, 196 Boccaccio 231

328

general index
Colonization 45 Combet, Louis 174, 181, 196 Concilium 6263 Conquest 45, 64 Constantine the African 26869, 282 n. 47 Conversion 48, 65 convivencia 101, 103 n. 5, 106, 110 Corbacho (Arcipreste de Talavera) 248 Crdoba 4748, 50, 6465 Corredor 192 Cosa 186 Courtly (love, literature) 202, 205206, 208, 210, 212218 crusade 29596, 307308, 31215 cuaderna va 17374, 178 Curtius, Ernst 189 n. 15, 196 Dante Allighieri 133 De secretis mulierum 269 De vetula 268 n. 17 Debate, between Muslims and Christians (see also disputation) 23, 2931 Deleuze, Gilles 4142 Delvau, Alfred 184 denotative meaning 175, 180 Depopulation 55 Dhu" l-Nunids 47 dialogic discourse 174 dialogism 195 diegesis 175, 178 diplomacy. See ambassadors Dire et Faire 186 Disputation 24, 30 Dominicans 29394, 305306, 308309, 318 See also Ascelin; Penyafort; Puigvents; Saint-Quentin; Santa Mara; Tarteriis Don Juan Manuel 12526 Doval, Gregorio 184, 196 Dunn, Peter 281, 281 n. 44 cija 48, 52, 65 Egidio de Tebaldis (translator) 151 El Cantar del Mo Cid 126 El Conde Lucanor 12526 Eleazar, Jacob ben 232, 23955 Elipando, archbishop of Toledo 57 Elliott, Alison Goddard 263 n. 3, 265 n. 9, 279 n. 41 Endrina 18183 erotization 180

bodies female 26768, 268 n. 17, 270 n. 23, 27374 male 28082, 281 n. 44 Bodleian Library 134 Bonaventure of Siena (translator) 135, 14547, 151 Bondavid Bonsenyor (interpreter) 150 Borrass, Luch, slave of Llus Borrass 302 Bouhdiba, Abdelwahab 271 Bowdlerization 181 brial 130 Bridia, C. de 293 Buen amor 187, 19091, 194 Burkard, Richard 264 n. 6, 266 n. 12, 277 n. 39 Burman, Thomas 137 Burton, Sir Richard 273 n. 29 Cadden, Joan 269 n. 19 ag (Isaac) ben Wacar 145 Calila e Dimna (Alfonsine version) 23132, 239 n. 29, 240 n. 30, 244 n. 37, 246, 25253 Cancionero de Baena 320 Canellada, Mara Josefa 176, 196 Cantar caurro 184 Cantarino, Vicente 192, 196 Carnivalization 174 Cassanus. See Ilkhans Castile 5758 Castile, kings of Alfonso X of Castile 306307 Libro de ajedrez, dado y tablas 296 Enrique III 32022 Fernando III of Castile 297 Isabel I, and Fernando of Aragon 29192, 322 Juan I 318 Castilians 4548, 51, 54, 6263 Castro, Amrico 233, 262, 27475, 274 n. 31, 278 n. 41 Catalan language 27071, 271 n. 24 Cheikho, L. 240, 242, 244, 246, 250 Clavijo, Ruy Gonzlez de 293, 32022 Cluny 65 Cobertor 192 Cock 180 Coelho, Joan Sorez 29596 Co-existence 21, 30, 39 Collacin 48, 5355, 6364 Colombus, Christopher 29192

general index
erotology Arabo-Islamic 27174, 271 n. 25, 272 n. 26, 28485 Ibero-Romance 27071, 271 n. 24 Latin-Christian 26870 Europe 151 Expulsion 47 extradiegesis 175, 178 fabliaux 231, 255, 26869, 270 n. 20 Fez, lvar 15355, 15765, 167, 16970 See also kinship Fernn Ruiz de Castro 145 Fernando III 113, 117 n. 50, 119 n. 5354, 12021 Fernando III of Castile and Len 54 Ferrand Garca, archdeacon of Niebla 55 Franciscans 293, 294, 308309 See also Benedict the Pole; Bridia; Llull; Plano Carpini; Rubruck Frederick II, emperor 29596 French 4546 Fuero 47, 63 Gabriel 148 Galms de Fuentes, A. 242 Garci Prez de Toledo, alcalde (Seville) 55 Garca Gmez, Emilio 274 n. 31 Garden(s) 206, 20814, 226 . Gella Iturriaga, Jos 177, 179, 196 Genoa 59, 299300, 306, 309 Georoy de Vinsauf 178 Ghazan. See Ilkhans go-between as literary character 23639 See also alcahueta God 148 Goddard, R. N. B. 177 Goitein. S. 233 Goldberg, Harriet 176, 17879, 180 n. 9, 195 Goytisolo, Juan 233 Granada 65, 113, 291, 314, 322 Gregory VII, pope 5657, 107385 Greimas, A. J. 176, 196 Griese, Sabine 1, 188 Guattari, Flix 4142 Guzmn, Jorge 283 n. 49 Gybbon-Monypenny, G. B. 264 n. 4, 266 n. 13, 268 n. 18

329

hadiths 273, 281 n. 45 ha-Levi, Yehuda 29798, 318 Haywood, Louise 173 n. 1 Henri de Suse, bishop 59 Heraclius (Bizantine emperor) 144 Heteroglossia 174 Historia de la donzella Teodor 270, 270 n. 23, 271 n. 24 homosexuality (female-female) 27374 honor (female) 26468, 266 n. 14 Horozco, Sebastin de 193 Huber, Gisela 182, 196 Hulagu. See Ilkhans Hungary 61 Hyatte, Reginald 144 Iberian Peninsula 13435, 152 Ibn 'Abbs 13839 Ibn al-'Attar 50 Ibn al-Haytham 145 Ibn al-Muqaa', Ab Muammad 231, 23947, 25053, 256 Ibn D"d, Muammad 271, 271 n. 25 Ibn Ishq 137, 142 Ibn Khaldun 111 Ibn azm, Ab Muammad 'Al 272 n. 25, 27475, 274 n. 31, 282 n. 45, 285 Idel, Moshe 256 Ilkhans of Persia 291, 305308, 320 Ghazan (Cassanus) 31617 Hulagu 297, 305 Infante Don Alfonso de Castilla 123, 125 See also Alfonso X Infante Don Felipe 11314 Intertextuality 178, 181, 195 Invective 185 Ishaq ibn Sadoc (Don ag de la Maleha) 150 Jacquart, Danielle 269 n. 19, 271 n. 24, 277 n. 37 Jews 47, 5152 conversion of 308309 expulsion of 291 proselytism by 29798, 315, 31819, 322 Jolles, Andr 174, 176, 196 Jolly, Margaret 275, 275 n. 33 Joset, Jacques 271 n. 23, 277 n. 39 Juan de Segovia 23 et passim Julian, Mozarab abbot of Sahagn 57

330

general index
Llibre del qentil e dels tres savis 31011, 315 Quomodo Terra Sancta recuperari potest [Llibre del passatge] 310, 312, 315 London 60 Longjumeau, Andrew of 293 Loomis, C. Grant 174 Lorenzo, Tartar jonglur 31718 Louis IX of France 307308 Lovesickness 206, 210, 215216 Madrid 6465 Majlis 205, 208, 21011, 21314, 216, 223 Majnn (Qays) 213, 21718, 22829 Mala bestia 192, 192 n. 18 Mala ropa 192 male prerogative 26465 Mallorca 5152, 299, 302 Manderson, Lenore 275, 275 n. 33 Mandeville, John of 292 Mann, Jesse D. 23, 2931 Maqmt 203204, 209 Maqn (Qays) 213, 21718, 22829 Marcolf 195 Marn, Manuela 274 n. 30 Marinids (Banu Marin) 54 Mariquita 181 Mrquez Villanueva, Francisco 233, 264 n. 4, 270 nn. 2122, 27475, 275 n. 32, 284 Mary of Egypt 26970, 270 n. 20 Matheu de Vendme 178 Maurice de Sully, bishop 60 McGrady, Donald 192, 196 Mediator/Mediation 20611 Meja, Alma 177 Meln 18183 Mester de clereca 175, 190 Micro-discourse 17879 Minaret 48 misogyny 26970, 270 n. 20 Mnemonic device 177 Moler 180 Molino 180 Monasterio de Santa Mara La Real de Huelgas (also Las Huelgas) 107108, 117 Mongols appearance of 29496, 299300, 302303 as slaves 294, 298304 acculturation of 301302 ethnicity of 299

Kaa (Feodosia, in Crimea) 299 Kalilah wa-Dimnah (Ibn Muqaas Arabic version) 25157 kinship of lvar Fez to Pedro Ansrez 15758, 16061, 163 of lvar Fez to the Cid 154 of the Infantes de Carrin to Pedro Ansrez 156 Kosovo, battle of 319 La Vetula 18384 Lacarra, Mara Eugenia 270, 271 n. 24 Las Casas, Bartolom de 291 Latin language 26970 Len 57 Leonese historiography 15354, 16567, 16970 Libro de Alexandre 12629 Libro de buen amor 26168, 27485 didacticism 264, 264 n. 4 Endrina episode 26366, 27679, 285 Garoza episode 26162, 27985 manuscripts 261, 279 n. 42 Pitas Payas 268, 268 n. 18 Ruiz, Juan (author) 26162, 261 n. 2, 27479, 28285 Sir Love (Don Amor) 26668, 266 n. 14, 27576, 278, 280, 282, 284 Trotaconventos 26263, 265 n. 10, 27677, 27981 Libro de los Castigos 124 Libro de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor e de Patronio ( Juan Manuel) 163 Lida de Malkiel, Mara Rosa 276 n. 36, 277 n. 39 Linehan, Peter 280 n. 43 Llull, Ramon 233, 29798, 30818, 32122 Ars inveniendi particularia in universalibus 312 Desconhort 315 Disputatio delis et indelis 309 Disputatio Raymundi Christiani & Hamar Saraceni 297, 31314 Doctrina pueril 30911 Liber de ne 31011, 31316 Liber super Psalmum Quicumque vult [Llibre del Tartar] 297, 31112, 314 Llibre dEvast e Blanquerna 306, 309, 311, 314

general index
fugitives 302303 manumission of 301, 303304 names of 300301 trading of 299300, 303 as unknown 294, 298, 308 conversion of 291, 297, 300301, 304306, 308309, 31118, 321 invasion of Europe 29496 Khans 29192, 297, 305308, 31114, 322 religion of 296, 305, 30910, 312 reputation for cruelty 29497, 305 See also Ilkhans Montecorvino, John of 293 Morawski, Joseph 177, 197 moriscos 122 Morreale, Margherita 192, 197 Mosque 4551, 53, 58, 6465 Mozarabs 47, 5152, 5758 Mudjar 46 n. 4, 104106, 108109, 112 n. 34, 118 mudejarismo 104105, 108, 23233, 262 Muslim historiography 164 Muslims 48, 52, 58, 6162 conversion of 294, 29698, 308309 proselytism by 315316, 321 Nasrid 113 Nestorians 305306, 309, 315 See also Sauma Nicopolis, battle of 319 Nuees 184 OKane, Eleonore 179, 197 Oaths 52, 55 Obelkevich, James 175, 187, 197 Olla 182, 19293 One Thousand and One Nights 237 Orality 174 Ottomans 46 Ovid 26468, 264 n. 6, 279, 282 Palabra 18789 Palazuelos, Ferrn Snchez de 319 Pamphilus 181 Pamphilus de amore 26365, 263 n. 3, 265 n. 9, 27579, 282 Pan 178 Pandero 178 Paris 60 Paris, Matthew 294, 296

331

Parish churches El Salvador (collegiate church, Seville) 48 Omnium Sanctorum (Seville) 49 San Gil (Seville) 49 San Juan (cija) 48 San Julin (Seville) 49 San Lorenzo (Seville) 49 San Martn (Seville) 49 San Nicols (Madrid) 64 Santa Ana (Seville) 49 Santa Brbara (cija) 48 Santa Catalina (Seville) 53 Santa Cruz (cija) 48 Santa Luca (Seville) 49 Santa Mara (cija) 48 Santa Marina (Seville) 49 Parishes 4550, 53, 5658, 60, 63 Parochial 4647, 59, 6465 Parody 179, 195 pellote 117 Penyafort, Ramon de 308309 Perbosc, Antonio 193, 197 perverb 173 et passim Peter of Spain 282 n. 47 Petronius 182 Plano Carpini, John of 29293, 305, 312, 316 Poema de Almera 163, 167 Poema de mio Cid (Anonymous) 15365, 16770 Polo, Marco 29293 Poly-functionality 17677 Polyphony 174 Polysemy 180, 191 Popes 293, 29596, 300, 305307, 31213 Pordenone, Odoric of 293 Prester John, legend of 294, 305, 308, 320 Proverb 173 et passim Proverb, invisible 182 Proverb, perverted 189, 195 Proverb, pseudo- 187 Proverb, recipe 182, 193 Proverb, joke 178 Pseudo-Ars amatoria 266 n. 12, 284 n. 50 Puigvents, John of 305 Qasam 52 Qibla 52 Quitart, Pierre-Marie 178, 197 Qur"an, translation of 2526, 29, 36

332

general index
sexuality (in Iberia) 26263, 27475, 274 n. 30 Siete Partidas 11418, 124, 12627 Singer, Samuel 177, 197 Slaves/Slavegirls 20410, 21314, 216, 22324, 22829 Soria 61 Soutomayor, Payo Gmez de 319 Speculum al foderi 27071, 271 n. 24 Stith-Thompson 236 Tafur, Pero 293, 299, 322 Tartars. See Mongols Tarteriis, Petrus de 305 Taylor, Barry 17677, 197 Textualization 174 the Escorial 274 n. 30 Thomasset, Claude 269 n. 19, 270 n. 20, 271 n. 24, 272 n. 26, 277 n. 37 Threshold story 188 Timur (Tamerlane) 31922 tiraz 107 Toledo Cathedral 123 Toledo 45, 4748, 51, 58, 6365 Toledo, r. Asher of 254 Trabar 184 translation 26970 Turks 31920 Urban II, pope 58 Urbanism 4546, 54, 57, 64 Urraca 190 Van Thiel, Helmut 176, 197 Vasvri, Louise 173 nn. 1, 3, 174, 180 n. 9, 181, 183 n. 10, 190 n. 16, 193, 19798, 276 n. 34 Veinticuatros 63 Vinland Map 292 Visigoths 58 Wakkar, Judah ibn 254 Widow of Ephesus 181 Wiegers, Gerart 2425, 2728, 3435 Willis, Raymond S. 187, 198 xamet 120 n. 56, 130 Ya Gidelli 23 et passim Yndurain, Francisco 178, 198

Ragot, Musarde et Babille 186 Raimundo de Biterris 232 rape 265, 265 n. 9, 27779 Razn de Amor 12930 Relexicalization 175, 177, 184 Repartimiento 4749, 5255, 63 Libros de los habices 65 Libros de repartimiento 5152 Restauration virginitatis 195 rhymed prose (saj ") 24243, 25354 Rivera, Isidro 271 nn. 2324 Robert, Cluniac abbot of Sahagn 57 Rodrigo Jimnez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo 5758, 11922, 125, 127 Rodrguez de Almela, Diego 322 Rogers, Donna M. 271 n. 23 Rome 59, 65 Rosenthal, Franz 27172, 272 nn. 2627 Rouhi, Leyla 264 n. 4, 265 n. 7, 267 nn. 1516, 275 n. 32 Rubruck, William of 293, 305, 312 Ruiz, Juan 173 et passim Sa'd Shrz 297 Sahagn (Len) 57 Saint-Quentin, Simon de 29293, 295 Salamanca 61 Sancho IV de Castilla 12325, 127 Sancho IV, Infante de Aragn and Archbishop of Toledo 119 n. 53, 120 Santa Mara, Alfono Pez de 321 Santiago, pilgrimage road 62 Santillana, Marqus de 191 Satyrica 182 Sauma, Rabban 306 Schindler, Kurt 184, 197 Schotter, Anne Howland 265 n. 9 Schulze Busacker, Elisabeth 179, 197 Segalen, Martine 181, 184, 197 Segovia 54 Seidenspinner-Nez, Dayle 264 n. 4 Sendebar 237 Svrac, Jordan of 293 Seville 4750, 55, 65, 279, 299 sexual desire 26668, 28285 female 26466, 265 n. 7, 268, 27071, 271 n. 24, 27274, 272 n. 28, 28085 male 26365, 26768

THE

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD


Editors: Larry J. Simon (Western Michigan University),

Isidro J. Rivera (University of Kansas), Donna M. Rogers (Middlebury College), Arie Schippers (University of Amsterdam), Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen) AS MEDIEVAL IBERIAN PENINSULA. 1. Le calendrier de Cordoue. Publi par R. Dozy. Nouvelle dition, accompagne dune traduction franaise annote par Ch. Pellat. 1961. ISBN 90 04 00486 6 2. Imamuddin, S.M. Muslim Spain 711-1492 A.D. A Sociological Study. 2nd edition 1981. ISBN 90 04 06131 2 3. Monroe, J.T. Islam and the Arabs in Spanish Scholarship (Sixteenth Century to the Present). 1970. Out of print. 4. Gallego Blanco, E. The Rule of the Spanish Military Order of St. James 1170-1493. Latin and Spanish Texts, edited with apparatus criticus, English translation and a preliminary study by Enrique Gallego Blanco. 1971. ISBN 90 04 02665 7 -n. Memoirs of {Abd Allh b. Buluggn, Last 5. Tibi, A.T. (ed.). The Tibya Zrid Amr of Granada. Translated from the Emended Arabic Text and Provided with Introduction, Notes and Comments by Amin T. Tibi. 1986. ISBN 90 04 07669 7 6. Ari, R. tudes sur la civilisation de lEspagne musulmane. 1990. ISBN 90 04 091165 7. Schippers, A. Spanish Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition. Arabic Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09869 0 8. Wiegers, G. Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado. Ya of Segovia (fl. 1450), His Antecedents and Successors. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09936 0 9. Scales, P.C. The Fall of the Caliphate of Crdoba. Berbers and Andalusis in Conflict. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09868 2 10. Roth, N. Jews, Visigoths and Muslims in Medieval Spain. Cooperation and Conflict. 1994. ISBN 90 04 09971 9 11. Zwartjes, O. Love Songs from al-Andalus. History, Structure and Meaning of the Kharja. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10694 4 12. Echevarria, A. The Fortress of Faith. The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11232 4 13. Macpherson, I. & MacKay, A. Love, Religion and Politics in Fifteenth Century Spain. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10810 6 14. Girn-Negrn, L.M. Alfonso de la Torres Visin Deleytable. Philosophical Rationalism and the Religious Imagination in 15th Century Spain. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11957 4

AS MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD. 15. Robinson, C. In Praise of Song. The Making of Courtly Culture in alAndalus and Provence, 1005-1134 A.D. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12453 5 16. Larsson, G. Ibn Garcas Shu{biyya Letter. Ethnic and Theological Tensions in Medieval al-Andalus. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12740 2 17. Ljamai, A. Ibn azm et la polmique islamo-chrtienne dans lhistoire de lislam. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12844 1 18. Lucas, J.S. Astrology and Numerology in Medieval and Early Modern Catalonia. The Tractat de prenostication de la vida natural dels hmens. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13242 2 19. Kogman-Appel, K. Jewish Book Art Between Islam and Christianity. The Decoration of Hebrew Bibles in Medieval Spain. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13789 0 20. Meyerson, M.D. Jews in An Iberian Frontier Kingdom. Society, Economy, and Politics in Morvedre, 1248-1391. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13739 4 21. Heijkoop, H. & Zwartjes, O. Muwaa, Zajal, Kharja. Bibliography of Strophic Poetry and Music from al-Andalus and Their Influence in East and West. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13822 6 22. Robinson, C. & Rouhi, L. (eds.). Under the Influence. Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile. 2005. ISBN 90 04 13999 0

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