by rulers.
Part II substantiates the framework established in the initial chapters by looking at specific performances from Jaén, Córdoba, and Murcia. Through these examples, I trace evolving understandings of Christian society and the place of Muslims and Jews within it from the 1460s to the 1490s, a period when well-established traditions of frontier life were challenged by a growing intolerance and a renewed push for holy war. Chapter 3 tells the story of Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, the frontier magnate who, hoping to reap material rewards and fame, rallied a reluctant populace to support his plans for intensified frontier warfare in the 1460s. Appreciating the importance of strong commercial and personal ties between Andalucía and Granada, he did so with vivid theatrics that pointed to the benefits of Christian victory while ensuring the people that such a triumph would not destroy those transfrontier relationships. This was, at best, an uncertain vision of convivencia, one that required Christian victory and Muslim submission, but it did acknowledge the cultural contributions of non-Christians. The enemy was to be converted and embraced, not expelled or eradicated.
But Muslims were not the only minority religious community in Andaluceía cities. Jews and recent converts were also alternately, or even simultaneously, viewed with welcome and suspicion. When a wave of anti-convert riots swept through Andalucía in 1473, the catalyst was a Marian procession in Córdoba interrupted by inadvertent insult to the Virgin by a young convert girl. In the ensuing riot, the Passion story was dramatically retold through the death of a blacksmith who called on all to avenge his death at the hands of the converts. Chapter 4 places these events in the context of noble factional politics, arguing that the procession and ensuing violence were a deliberate provocation meant to release previously suppressed popular resentment of converts’ social and economic success. By linking anticonvert sentiment to the Virgin Mary and the Passion story, the procession and the blacksmith’s stylized death released a wave of violence that far surpassed the expectations of both nobles and commoners.
War with Granada, which had previously consisted primarily of frontier skirmishing, began in earnest soon after Fernando and Isabel took the throne in 1474. This newly confident and aggressive pose toward the Muslims of Granada inspired fresh approaches to representing ideal relations between members of different religious groups. Muslims and Jews were no longer seen as economically relevant groups. Instead, they were remnants of the past and symbols of the defeated. They were unwelcome but yet not enemies. Irrelevant but still the focus of much attention. Chapter 5 examines how this diminished social role was dramatized in Murcia through triumphal renditions of the city’s Corpus Christi celebration organized to commemorate the conquests of Málaga and Granada. Forced to wear their finest clothes and participate in the Christians’ triumph, Murcian Jews and Muslims were relegated to the rear of the processions, a position often occupied by prisoners of war. There were no incitements to violence, no overt rejections. Instead the revelries expressed that non-Christians were no longer part of society. Instead, they were defeated enemies, reminders to all of Christian triumph. With the end of the frontier would come an end to frontier accommodations.
I close the book by briefly considering the long-term implications of the disintegration of traditional modes of frontier life, touching upon the expulsions of Jews and later Muslims from Iberia, the Inquisition, and the transference of particular attitudes toward religious others to the New World. I also place the events in fifteenth-century Castilian history in the context of the broader Mediterranean encounter between Christians and Muslims and of continuing uncertainties about the role of Muslims and Jews in Iberian history.
PART I
CHAPTER 1
The Anatomy of a Spectacle: Sponsors, Critics, and Onlookers
On 5 June 1465, about sixty years after Fernando de Antequera took up his holy sword, a group of rebellious nobles ritually deposed an effigy of King Enrique IV and crowned his half brother Alfonso king. As with the earlier event, the so-called Farce of Ávila was consciously intended to make a political statement by invoking symbolic powers and was meant to be seen by as many people as possible. The conspirators took great care to conduct it in an accessible location and to ensure that the stage was visible from every angle. The essential elements of the ritual were straightforward. Having placed a dummy adorned with the symbols of monarchy (including crown, sword, and scepter) on a stage, they read out a series of accusations against Enrique and proclaimed their sentence of dethronement. The rebels then removed the emblems of kingship and cast the effigy to the ground with a shouted curse. As described in contemporary chronicles, the effigy’s fall to the ground was the ritual’s central moment, leading to a great cry of lamentation from the massed spectators. Moments later, with the king symbolically dethroned, Alfonso strode on stage, took up the royal accouterments, and was acclaimed king by all present.1
Spectators at this event were not, it seems, expected to remain passive or silent. Their reactions were important enough, in fact, that they were worth recording. And that tells us that these responses were also significant to the organizers of the spectacle, significant enough, perhaps, that it led them to present their performance in a manner calculated to achieve precisely that result. The ways the crowd’s behavior was recorded, however, suggest that everyone watching acted unanimously, raising several questions. How did people of the time experience an event like this or, for that matter, a tournament, a procession, or a festival? Were they seen as simple entertainments without deeper meaning or were they understood to be social or political statements? Did people view them from an innocent or a cynical perspective? Most important, how can we, several centuries later, even attempt to answer such questions when there are relatively few contemporary records that address them?
These questions matter because, as we will see, the success of the Farce of Ávila depended on the responses of the audience. People watching the event were more than onlookers, they played a role as important as those on stage. In this regard, the Farce was akin to most other urban spectacles. Processions, festivals, tournaments, political theater—all were moments that brought together people from all social classes to engage in dialogues, sometimes overt but more often subtle, about the nature of society and its priorities and values. Access to the necessary financing, expertise, and social capital permitted municipal councils, cathedral chapters, and nobles to determine the content of most public performances. Their control, however, was not absolute. Other privileged members of the community, such as merchants and artisans, sought and often obtained influence over civic spectacles, particularly annual events such as Corpus Christi. More generally, elites had to present messages that the urban population would accept; spectacles that failed to accord with popular expectations or sentiments were worse than useless, creating unrest or leaving the sponsor open to public ridicule.
This was especially relevant in frontier cities where powerful and contradictory impulses meant that a wrong step could have severe repercussions. Elites there had to tread carefully indeed if they wanted to direct public sentiment, especially regarding religious minorities, in particular directions.
Audience participation was a common feature of public pageants that permitted spectators to directly and immediately signal their approval or displeasure. The meanings of spectacles were therefore created by both sponsors and audiences. Each group or social class, even each individual, brought a set of expectations and values to a performance and created an ensemble of associations through which to interpret it. But spectacles were not, as some have suggested, blank tapestries on which the viewer could inscribe what he or she wished.2 Most spectacles bore dominant meanings intended by their sponsors to produce conditioned responses from both participants and observers. This meant that there was a relatively limited range of probable reactions.
To consider one common