Enemies in the Plaza
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Toward the end of the fifteenth century, Spanish Christians near the border of Castile and Muslim-ruled Granada held complex views about religious tolerance. People living in frontier cities bore much of the cost of war against Granada and faced the greatest risk of retaliation, but had to reconcile an ideology of holy war with the genuine admiration many felt for individual members of other religious groups. After a century of near-continuous truces, a series of political transformations in Castile—including those brought about by the civil wars of Enrique IV's reign, the final war with Granada, and Fernando and Isabel's efforts to reestablish royal authority—incited a broad reaction against religious minorities. As Thomas Devaney shows, this active hostility was triggered by public spectacles that emphasized the foreignness of Muslims, Jews, and recent converts to Christianity. Enemies in the Plaza traces the changing attitudes toward religious minorities as manifested in public spectacles ranging from knightly tournaments, to religious processions, to popular festivals. Drawing on contemporary chronicles and municipal records as well as literary and architectural evidence, Devaney explores how public pageantry originally served to dissipate the anxieties fostered by the give-and-take of frontier culture and how this tradition of pageantry ultimately contributed to the rejection of these compromises. Through vivid depictions of frontier personalities, cities, and performances, Enemies in the Plaza provides an account of how public spectacle served to negotiate and articulate the boundaries between communities as well as to help Castilian nobles transform the frontier's religious ambivalence into holy war.
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Enemies in the Plaza
Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor
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The political content of this story is quite explicit. The whole sorry situation could have easily been avoided if only the alcaide of Chincoya had realized that true peace and friendship with Muslims was not possible, that the enemy saw such overtures merely as flaws to be exploited. As the alcaide’s squires warned, “the Moors are treacherous.”28 But Chincoya’s commander trusted his Muslim counterpart anyway. Here we see the ideology of conquest confronting the realities of the frontier: fraternizing with the enemy was an unavoidable aspect of life. Yet the episode did not end in tragedy and this too is central to the political message. The Virgin Mary’s defense of Chincoya left no doubt that this was a religious boundary, and that those on the other side were the enemies of God. Those tasked with defending the frontier must be always wary.
In reality, frontier Christians often found themselves in the alcaide’s shoes. They were told again and again that their religious duty was to view all Muslims and Jews with suspicion and to reject non-Christian religious practices. But these obligations were theoretical and could fade when confronted with living, breathing individuals, people whom they came to know and respect, even love. They found themselves unable to define clear boundaries between members of different religious groups and unable to take decisive action to alter the situation by abandoning either the goal of expelling infidels from Iberia or their regard for non-Christian acquaintances and culture. Nor did they want to be perceived as having “gone native” by their counterparts in more central areas. The interaction of competing social realities—physical insecurity, ideological dissonance, and a sense of being on the periphery—defined late medieval frontier society in Iberia. There was always, despite real tolerance for other groups, a curb on how far frontier Christians were willing to adapt.
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