since at least the start of the year, with the first orders (on 3 January) coinciding with the beginning of the available records.45 Nor did the vigilance end with the Granadan incursion. In 1479, the concejo maintained ten permanent night watchmen on the city gates as well as an unspecified number of others at the various towers around the city at a cost of ninety mrs. each per month. In that same year, corregidor Francisco de Bobadilla personally inspected each of the cavalry mounts and arranged numerous troop reviews to insure that the militia was ready to fight.46 Despite their determination to rigidly observe its terms, local authorities had scant confidence that the signing of a royal truce would bring real stability. Indeed, stability was not in everyone’s interests, as demonstrated by the case of Francisco Sánchez de Baeza. This man, a stonemason, was contracted in May 1476 to repair the parapets of Pegalajar, a key point in Jaén’s outer defenses that directly abutted the Muslim lands near Cambil. But he never did the work and defended his inaction by pointing out that he was unable to do it alone and his son Antonio, who was to have assisted him, had instead left to pursue the more profitable business of raiding the Muslims.47
Such constant anxiety could be creative and dynamic. In stirringly romantic terms Juan de Mata Carriazo described how the risks and rewards of frontier skirmishing brought people to action and led to “a singular elevation of individual virtues, a natural selection of frontier populations, with its automatic elimination of the weak and its exaltation of the strong, the bold, and the undaunted.” The frontier provided opportunities for glory in abundance and here, in song and in deed, the Castilian knighthood found its pinnacle of fame while the lawless and rebellious, welcome nowhere else, sought atonement in “this unquiet and heroic world of the Granadan frontier.” To his credit, Carriazo saw the other side of the coin as well, noting that the frontier offered only peril and frustration for the peasantry on both sides. Raiding stripped the land of its bounty, killed its keepers, and stymied attempts to improve its productivity.48
And for what? Perhaps the most vexing aspect of the fifteenth-century frontier was the continuity of organized violence despite a dearth of concrete accomplishments. Neither of the most obvious motives for warfare—financial gain or religious animosity—fit well with the pattern of conflict. The economic repercussions included lost trade, burnt crops, ransoms for captives, and the expense of maintaining standing armies, all of which far outweighed the lucre brought in by raiding parties. Those adversely affected included the wealthiest and most powerful members of society and so we should expect to see their voices raised against actions that undermined their interests. And indeed, it was Jaén’s elites who ensured that the city did its utmost to uphold the truces of 1475 and 1476. Yet the collective power of the elite nearly always failed to prevent disruptive raiding in times of truce.
Part of the problem was the mountainous and underpopulated Andalucían terrain, difficult to police even under ideal circumstances. But much of the marauding took place with the approval, or at least the benign indifference, of frontier authorities. If this reluctance to enforce a true peace stemmed from the idea that there should not be pacific relations with the enemies of God, why did the fighting remain localized and limited? Only on rare occasions was conquest or conversion the goal (let alone the achievement) of an attack. With the exception of Fernando de Antequera’s campaigns early in the century, attempts to reassert the crusading drive lacked sufficient support to accomplish much of anything. Holy war was no longer a unifying message and would not be so again until well into the reign of the Catholic Monarchs.
It was the interaction of competing realities—an ideology of holy war, a tradition of convivencia, and a lack of physical security—that defined the amiable enmity so prominent in what we might call the frontier mentality. The fundamental characteristic of this mind-set was not, as Carriazo would have it, a creative tension or a drive to heroism. Rather it was indecision that prevented the elite from pushing too vigorously for stability while also confounding the ambitions of those who sought a return to general warfare. Holy war was central to the self-image of many Castilians and especially the frontier nobility, offering purpose and rationalization as well as dreams of glory. But the realization of its objective, the expulsion of Muslims from Iberia, posed a very real danger to their raison d’être. And so the raids continued, judges, ransomers, and city councils kept a modicum of order, knights made their reputations in savage battle, and kings negotiated truce after truce. All the while, the farmers, herders, and merchants on both sides endured, working shared lands, trading when they could, smuggling when they could not, and engaging daily in a thousand little interactions with their “enemies.”
My purpose is, in part, to describe how fifteenth-century frontier Christians coped with the anxieties resulting from the gap between ideology and reality. Unrestrained violence against members of certain religious groups served as one form of release. The rejection of fixed religious identities was another. But these were both modes of extreme behavior, which, if left unchecked, bore the risk of even greater insecurity. More successful were the urban spectacles that offered a means of publicly addressing the contradictions inherent in intricate ideas of conflict and coexistence. That the dialectic between urban spectacle and attitudes toward members of different religious communities took place in frontier cities is therefore relevant. It is ironic, then, that this tradition of pageantry ultimately contributed to the rejection of frontier compromises and to the redefinition of Castilian society as exclusively Christian.
This book is divided into two parts. The first of these outlines the various contexts for late medieval Castilian frontier spectacles to clarify their presentation, reception, and functions. These performances often built on familiar and ritualized forms, such as those of a tournament or a religious procession, while overtly or subtly manipulating their content. Interpreting these events presents multiple difficulties. We only know of medieval spectacles through written representations that generally offer only the perspectives of the elites who sponsored the events. Even this is retrospective and highly mediated, reflecting not only the personal biases of the author but often also a conscious attempt to control the spectacle’s meaning.49 In interpreting these pageants, I therefore focus extensively on their social, political, and physical contexts, arguing that ritualized performances bear multiple and situated meanings that only become clear when considered in this manner.50 Chapter 1 therefore explores the relations between enacted performances and written descriptions in order both to permit multiple readings of a pageant and, when possible, to best identify the perceived intent behind a particular presentation.
Spectacles could succeed only through the complicity and participation of audiences. This was especially true of political theater, a point I demonstrate using the 1465 “Farce of Ávila as an example. Without the audience’s perspective, we can have only a warped understanding of what a particular event meant. Spectators, however, generally did not record their experiences or responses. I therefore examine the discourses current in Castilian society about the nature and character of public performances, highlighting the disparate perspectives of the nobility, the clergy, and the commoners. This allows us to move beyond the mediated presentation of the goals of elite sponsors and offers a range within which the responses of most spectators were likely limited.
In Chapter 2, I argue that civic spaces bore meanings to local residents that could contribute to or define the overall experience of a spectacle. Siting, decoration, size, and even the choice of materials for buildings were often consciously chosen to convey a message or establish a mood. The particular conditions of the Iberian frontier had long provided rulers with both the need for effective modes of expressing their readings of social, political, and religious issues and an abundance of themes with which to do so, making the region a crucible of “rhetorical architecture.”51 In exploring the various physical contexts for spectacle, I pay particular attention to ephemeral architecture, temporary structures tailor made for specific events. These could range from viewing stands and barricades to whimsical wooden castles and palaces. All served to repurpose quotidian spaces, transforming them in various ways. As with the spectacles themselves, however, civic spaces could have multiple meanings and could be