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Beyond Convivencia: Critical Reflections on the Historiography of Interfaith Relations in Christian Spain

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Beyond Convivencia: Critical Reflections on the Historiography of Interfaith Relations in Christian Spain Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies ISSN: 1754-6559 (Print) 1754-6567 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ribs20 Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain Maya Soifer To cite this article: Maya Soifer (2009) Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 1:1, 19-35, DOI: 10.1080/17546550802700335 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17546550802700335 Published online: 27 Feb 2009. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 3761 Citing articles: 14 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ribs20 Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2009, 19–35 Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain Maya Soifer* Introduction to the Humanities, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA TaylorRIBS_A_370203.sgm10.1080/17546550802700335Journal1754-6559Original20091000000JanuaryMayaSoifermsoifer@stanford.edu and& of Article Francis Medieval (print)/1754-6567Francis 2009 Ltd Iberian Studies (online) While Américo Castro’s convivencia remains an influential concept in medieval Iberian studies, its sway over the field has been lessening in recent years. Despite scholars’ best efforts to rethink and redefine the concept, it has resisted all attempts to transform it into a workable analytical tool. The article explores the malaise affecting convivencia, and suggests that the idea has become more of an impediment than a help to medieval Iberian studies. It argues that convivencia retains some of its former influence because scholars insist on understanding it as a distinctly Ibero-Islamic phenomenon. However, this article suggests that the evidence for Islamic influence on interfaith coexistence in Christian Spain is scarce. Instead of continuing to embrace the nationalist myth of Spain’s unique status in medieval Europe, scholars need to acknowledge the basic similarities in the Christian treatment of religious minorities north and south of the Pyrenees. The article also explores other aspects of convivencia’s problematic legacy: polarization of the field between “tolerance” and “persecution,” and the inattention to the nuances of social and political power relations that affected Jewish–Christian–Muslim coexistence in Christian Iberia. Keywords: convivencia; toleration; Américo Castro; Jews; interfaith relations; Islamic influence on medieval Europe As Robert I. Burns once remarked, the frontier – “a heroic place to take one’s stand” – is to any progressively minded person a Good Thing.1 So, one might presume, is medieval convivencia, the putative “living together” of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Ever since Américo Castro put the concept into wide circulation in 1948, it has been exerting steady influence on the field of medieval Iberian studies.2 It is easy to see why. Like S.D. Goitein, who felt “quite at home” in the free-trade Mediterranean world of the Geniza collection, professional and lay historians alike were often capti- vated by the notion of medieval Spain’s religious toleration, which they often painted in broad strokes as a prefiguration of the modern western ideal of inter-religious *Email: [email protected] 1Burns, “The Significance of the Frontier,” 307. 2Originally published as España en su historia. Cristianos, moros y judíos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1948), it has been revised and reprinted numerous times. I use the 1971 English edition, The Spaniards: An Introduction to Their History, translated by W. King and S. Margaretten (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), as well as a 2001 reprint of the 1983 Spanish edition published by Editorial Crítica (Barcelona). ISSN 1754-6559 print/ISSN 1754-6567 online © 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17546550802700335 http://www.informaworld.com 20 M. Soifer harmony.3 Convivencia has frequently seemed an attractive prospect – to medievalists caught in the perennial battle against the libelous label of the “Dark Ages;” to Hispan- ists who could administer it as an antidote for the scourge of Spain’s “Black Legend;” and to some Jewish historians who visualized a “Golden Age” of Jewish culture in medieval Sepharad.4 In addition to these redemptive uses, convivencia was of unques- tionable utility in counteracting the historiographic approach critically described by some historians as the “Castilianist” perspective on Spanish history. In this somber and minimalist vision, most often associated with the towering figure of Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, Castile, uncontaminated by the Islamic invasion and by centuries of interaction with the Jews, led Spain through the centuries-long Reconquista toward the fulfillment of its manifest destiny of “reunification.” By postulating the existence of a cultural symbiosis in medieval Iberia, convivencia problematized the pristine image of homo hispanus and provided a much-needed corrective to the mythological construct of “eternal Spain.”5 With convivencia appearing like a Good Thing to so many, why, in recent years, did the concept become the source of growing unease among the historians of medi- eval Spain? This article will explore the malaise affecting convivencia and suggest that the idea has become more of an impediment than a help to the field of medieval Iberian studies. Indeed, convivencia’s continued popularity with some historians and the general public notwithstanding, many scholars today treat it like a once sought- after guest who has overstayed her welcome. David Nirenberg’s assertion, still cutting edge in the early 1990s, that “convivencia is a central issue in the historiography of religious minorities in the Iberian Peninsula” no longer holds true.6 Much more in tune with the current trends in historiography is Robert I. Burns’ observation that “Américo Castro’s convivencia … is not so often heard in the land.”7 As Thomas F. Glick has pointed out in his insightful attempt to breathe new life into the concept, some of the blame lay with the original definition. Castro’s convivencia was an ideal- ist construct that aspired to describe mental processes taking place in the collective consciousness of the three cultures, but was never meant to be tested against the social and political realities of Jewish–Christian–Muslim interaction.8 Paradoxically, the quotidian experience of living was missing from the concept usually translated into English as “living together.” Detached from the conflict-prone affairs of the real 3“We do not wear turbans here; but, while reading many a Geniza document, one feels quite at home” (Goitein, Mediterranean Society, ix). Recent attempts to draw moral and political lessons from the medieval Spanish experience include Menocal, Ornament of the World, and Lowney, Vanished World. See also Doubleday and Coleman, In the Light of Medieval Spain. 4On la leyenda negra, see, for example, Peters, Inquisition. A good example of a Jewish historian embracing convivencia is Norman Roth. See his Jews, Visigoths, and Muslims. 5Sánchez-Albornoz, España: un enigma histórico; Pastor, “Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz,” 121–7. For a penetrating analysis of the competing visions of Spanish history, see Hillgarth, “Spanish Historiography;” on the role of Reconquista in shaping Spanish historiography see Tolan, “Using the Middle Ages.” Historians of Aragon-Catalonia are particularly irked by Castilian-centered interpretations of Spanish history. Like J.N. Hillgarth, who takes issue with Joseph O’Callaghan’s characterization of medieval Hispanic history as a “quest for unity,” David Abulafia decries “modern Castilian triumphalism.” See his “‘Nam iudei servi regis sunt,’” 99. 6David Nirenberg argued this in 1994, but his article “Religious and Sexual Boundaries in the Medieval Crown of Aragon,” originally a conference paper presented at the University of Notre Dame, did not appear until 2000. 7Burns, “Mudejar Parallel Societies,” 108. 8Glick and Pi-Sunyer, Islamic and Christian Spain, 347; “Convivencia,” 2. Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 21 world, convivencia’s transition from an idealist to an idealizing notion was only too logical. Whether it could ever be a useful category of scholarly analysis is another ques- tion. Thomas F. Glick has answered in the affirmative. All that convivencia needs to acquire a new lease on life, he argues, is to be stripped of Castro’s obscurantist, ideal- ist language and be placed in the framework of modern anthropological theory. Castro’s findings on the existence of cultural symbiosis in medieval Spain are essen- tially correct, he argues, but have to be re-moored to the study of mechanisms that regulate cultural contact and acculturation. In Glick’s view, historians need to turn their attention to investigating the factors – social, demographic, political, ecological – that facilitated and, conversely, impeded the diffusion and adoption of ideas and customs among Spain’s three religious groups, all the while retaining the concept of Castro’s convivencia as the fundamental principle behind this complex social and cultural dynamic.9 “Castro’s convivencia survives,” Glick asserts in his most recent assessment of the legendary scholar’s legacy.10 Judging from historians’ mixed reaction to Glick’s resuscitation efforts, convivencia survives, but it remains on life support. Some have declared themselves unable
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