sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 12

Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo (ed.): A Plural Peninsula

This collection of essays in appreciation of Simon Barton makes a significant contribution to the history and historiography of medieval Iberia and the Mediterranean. In an introduction and sixteen fine studies, leading scholars productively engage with the breadth of questions raised by Professor Barton's prodigious scholarship while remembering his care and enthusiasm as a colleague, teacher and friend. The collection moves through and with Barton's legacy into new scholarly territory.

The introduction, "Simon Barton's Scholarly Legacy: Challenging Historiographical Narratives in Medieval Mediterranean and Iberian Studies," by the volume's editor, Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo, does much more than serve as a guide to the volume's contents. It looks back at the rich contributions of one scholar by showing how his successors have taken his work as the starting place for their own. Barton participated in reconsiderations of Convivencia and Reconquista, both among the most controversial historiographical paradigms in the historiography of medieval Spain. He also advocated a reassessment of Iberia's exceptionalism by eschewing disciplinary rigidity and looking beyond Eurocentric perspectives and periodizations. In the pages of this collection, the contributors normalize and extend his arguments. Liuzzo Scorpo organizes their papers into five parts: 1) Emotional Narratives: Pragmatism, Symbolism and Performance; 2) Reassessing Historical and Historiographical Narratives; 3) Exchanges, Traditions and Cross-Fertilization: Change and Continuity; 4) Managing Conflict: Social, Physical and Imagined Boundaries; and 5) Authority, Leadership, Gender and Power Management.

Amy Remensnyder opens part one with "The Restless Sea: Storm, Shipwreck and the Mediterranean, c. 1000-1700." The sea's shaping of history diminishes our typical historical chronologies. Its effects shaped law and ritual in ways that altered normative barriers between religious groups, economic interests, and polities. Simon Doubleday's "A Peninsula in Flames: War and Emotions in the Cantigas de Santa Maria" presents stories from the Cantigas that show concern for the costs of systematic violence upon society's most vulnerable. Doubleday leads us to ponder whether King Alfonso X (d. 1284), perhaps having failed to repress his own horrors of war on the frontier with al-Andalus, lived with trauma and guilt after the deaths of innocents. In Chapter 3, Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo's "'Emotional Diplomacy': Trust and Political Communication in Thirteenth-Century Iberia," explores the Book of Deeds of King James I of Aragon (d. 1276) for its blend of rational, emotional and performative language that influenced political and diplomatic exchanges. The language of trust, an especially poignant nexus, takes on multiple meanings and values, interpretations, and uses that change with social, cultural, and economic structures.

Part two opens with Fernando Luis Corral's presentation of a case in which modern values subverted history. It begins with a 2009 meeting of the City Council of Zamora engaging in an act of historical revisionism to rename one of the city's gates. The presentation opens new avenues of enquiry about the uses of false or distorted historical discourses to legitimize political positions and win voters. Teresa Witcombe's entry concerning 'Praying for Conquest' is a wonder as much in its focus on oft-ignored liturgical sources as in its demonstration of the evolution of a liturgical 'clamour' from its pre-crusade Iberian context, into and through the activity of Holy Land crusading, and back again into the standard repertoire of thirteenth-century Iberian Christian encounters with the Islamic south. Teresa Tinsley looks back at Hernando de Baeza, an Arabic-speaking converso, who around 1510 wrote an account of the fall of Nasrid Granada. The account of this Andalusian frontiersman avoids the then-standard elements of Reconquista ideology, replacing the typical victor and vanquished dichotomy with a view of the natural meeting of neighbors.

The four chapters in part three concern a variety of junctures. Jamie Wood's "The view from the Edge: Gallaecia and the Byzantine Mediterranean in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries," combines written sources and archeological evidence to show Vigo's prominence as a port linked to the long-distance trade in prestige goods, with Mediterranean connections articulated and managed especially by ecclesiastical elites. Jerrilynn Dodds recounts the narrative efforts, arguably unsuccessful, of Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo from 1208 to 1247, to explain the integrative aspects of building a cathedral inside Cordoba's mosque. Maribel Fierro's entry begins with a fourteenth-century story - of an attempt in the late twelfth century by two Iberian Christians to steal the body of Mohammed from its tomb in Medina. The story opens onto an exploration of, among other matters, the literary presentation by writers in Islam's geographic center of Muslims and Christians in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. Maya Sofer Irish completes part three with a study of Jewish officials at royal courts in al-Andalus and Castile. Among the continuities among Jews in service is the possession of administrative-financial skills desired by royal employers. Skills as treasurers and tax collectors came as disjunctions to other aspects of self-perception among high-ranking Jews but could also become ingredients in the building of their own refined cultural sensibilities.

The papers in part four concern the management of conflict. Iñaki Martín Viso's entry "Sex, Theft, and Violence: Conflict and Local Society in the Mountains of León around the Year 1000," examines 43 records of legal cases and settlements dated from 998 to 1039. It considers a range of sources of conflict, efforts at resolution, and forms of representation that included means of cheating the local lord. Sonia Vital Fernandez examines the Chronica Adelfonsi Imperatoris to discern relations between Alfonso VII, King of Castile and León (d. 1157) and a diverse but powerful aristocracy that could find various reasons to rebel against, negotiate with, and confirm the king's authority. Alun Williams studies the Poem of Almería, one of the three parts of the Chronica Adelfonsi Imperatoris, for evidence of the representation of animals in conflict. While biblical and classical sources for animal imagery and metaphor offer a range of possible meanings, in campaigns against Muslim foes, dogs and lions serve as symbolic demonstration of the powers of Christian protagonists.

Part five, "Authority, Leadership, Gender and Power Management," begins with Therese Martín's study of the coinage of Queen Urraca of Leon-Castile (d. 1126) as an evolving demonstration of her power, one sensitive to its range of users/readers. It also considers what her seal, if indeed one existed, might have looked like and how it might have been used. Ana Echevarria Arsuaga compares the position of Berenguela of Castile (d. 1246) as queen regent with that of Beatrice of Swabia (d. 1235) as queen consort, both of whom wielded great power during the reign of Fernando III of Castile (d. 1252). In "Speaking Truth to Power: Authority, Social Status and Gender in Thirteenth-Century Castilian Witness Testimony," Janna Bianchini suggests that the simplest questions by investigators, for instance about the age of a female witness, how she came to know something about a case, or what resolution she favored, might be turned by the witness to her own personal advantage.

The collection opens with notes on the contributors and is completed by a thorough and useful index. It is an endeavor by specialist scholars for specialist peers, although it should serve well for student examination.

Such a bare summary as the foregoing, which offers little critical analysis, might be forgiven on two grounds. First, the high quality of the offerings goes far in assuaging overarching concerns. Moreover, as the "plural" in the title confirms, a comprehension of the diversity of subjects, methodological approaches, and findings in this collection deserves a full reading rather than partial and scattered criticisms. Still, it remains to offer one critical exception: the diversity of peoples and interests in Iberian history, already well-established before Simon Barton extended its range and quality in his own scholarship, might appear here magnified to an nth degree; perhaps the book's permission of ever-expanding pluralities further emphasizes Iberian exceptionalism or, alternatively, it may suggest furtherance of a recent trend toward disjointed grab-bag approaches to historical discovery.