Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean: Essays in Memory of Olivia Remie Constable

387 Pages·2021·8.914 MB·English

by  Sarah Davis-Secord (editor), Belen Vicens (editor), Robin Vose (editor)

MEDITERRANEAN PERSPECTIVES
Interfaith Relationships
and Perceptions of the Other in
the Medieval Mediterranean
Essays in Memory of
Olivia Remie Constable
Edited by Sarah Davis-Secord
Belen Vicens · Robin Vose
Mediterranean Perspectives
Series Editors
Brian Catlos
University of Colorado - Boulder
Boulder, CO, USA
Sharon Kinoshita
University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA, USA
As a region whose history of connectivity can be documented over at least
two and a half millennia, the Mediterranean has in recent years become
the focus of innovative scholarship in a number of disciplines. In shifting
focus away from histories of the origins and developments of phenomena
predefined by national or religious borders, Mediterranean Studies opens
vistas onto histories of contact, circulation and exchange in all their
complexity while encouraging the reconceptualization of inter- and
intra- disciplinary scholarship, making it one of the most exciting and
dynamic fields in the humanities. Mediterranean Perspectives interprets
the Mediterranean in the widest sense: the sea and the lands around it, as
well as the European, Asian and African hinterlands connected to it by
networks of culture, trade, politics, and religion. This series publishes
monographs and edited collections that explore these new fields, from the
span of Late Antiquity through Early Modernity to the contemporary.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15161
Sarah Davis-Secord • Belen Vicens
Robin Vose
Editors
Interfaith
Relationships and
Perceptions of the
Other in the Medieval
Mediterranean
Essays in Memory of Olivia Remie Constable
Editors
Sarah Davis-Secord Belen Vicens
University of New Mexico Salisbury University
Albuquerque, NM, USA Salisbury, MD, USA
Robin Vose
St. Thomas University
Fredericton, NB, Canada
ISSN 2731-5592 ISSN 2731-5606 (electronic)
Mediterranean Perspectives
ISBN 978-3-030-83996-3 ISBN 978-3-030-83997-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83997-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Praise for Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions
of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean
“This volume brings together eleven innovative and important essays on the
Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean world from the ninth to eighteenth cen-
turies. They form an eloquent homage to Olivia Remie Constable, whose work has
inspired in her colleagues and students a rigorous attention to sources (their pro-
duction, their contextualization, their vocabulary) and an appreciation of the intri-
cacies of commercial, legal, and scholarly networks. The Mediterranean here
appears as a region in constant movement, a zone of shifting and overlapping
frontiers constantly redrawn through commerce, intellectual exchange, and con-
flict. It is a book that Remie Constable would have enjoyed reading.”
—John Tolan, Université de Nantes, and author of Faces of Muhammad: Western
Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today
“Every essay in this volume will become required reading for anyone interested in
how Christianity, Islam, and Judaism were formed and transformed by their
encounters with each other on the waves and shores of the Mediterranean. Both
the production of difference and the possibilities of pluralism are illuminated in its
pages. This is a collection worthy of the great historian to whom it is dedicated.”
—David Nirenberg, University of Chicago, and author of Neighboring Faiths:
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today
“This jewel of a book is so much more than a scholarly homage to the intellectual
legacy of Olivia Remie Constable. Focusing on interfaith relations and cross-cul-
tural exchange, the case studies collected in the volume question the relevance of
geographic, temporal, linguistic, and most importantly, disciplinary boundaries,
making a compelling case for the continuing vitality of Mediterranean Studies and
its capacity to transform the entire field of medieval history.”
—Maya Soifer Irish, Rice University, and author of Jews and Christians in
Medieval Castile: Tradition, Coexistence, and Change
C
ontents
Introduction 1
Sarah Davis-Secord, Belen Vicens, and Robin Vose
Part I Perceiving the Other 13
The Four Seas of Medieval Mediterranean Intellectual History 15
Thomas E. Burman
Coronidis Loco: On the Meaning of Elephants, from Baghdad
to Aachen 49
Paul M. Cobb
Martial and Spiritual at San Baudelio de Berlanga 79
Jerrilynn D. Dodds
Seeing the Substance: Rhetorical Muslims and Christian Holy
Objects in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries 125
Ryan Szpiech
The Perception of the Religious Other in Alonso de Espina’s
Fortalitium Fidei: A Tool for Inquisitors? 161
Ana Echevarria
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part II Interfaith Relationships 197
A Global “Infection” of Judaizing: Investigations of
Portuguese New Jews and New Christians in the 1630s and
1640s 199
Gretchen Starr-LeBeau
Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Late Medieval Society: The
Case of Ávila 227
Teofilo F. Ruiz
Sex, Lies, and Alleged Rape: Scandal and Corruption in
Fourteenth-Century Mudéjar Lleida 255
Brian A. Catlos
A Tunisian Jurist’s Perspective on Jihād in the Age of the
Fondaco 283
Janina M. Safran
The Significance of Morisco Feuding in the Kingdom of
Valencia 305
Mark D. Meyerson
An Incident at Damietta: 1733 331
Molly Greene
Afterword 363
William C. Jordan
Publications of Olivia Remie Constable 369
Index 373
n C
otes on ontributors
Thomas E. Burman is the Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval
Institute and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame in
2017. He is the author of Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of
the Mozarabs, c. 1050–1200 (1994), Reading the Qur’an in Latin
Christendom, 1140–1560 (2007), and, with Brian Catlos and Mark
D. Meyerson, The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World 650–1650,
(forthcoming).
Brian A. Catlos is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Colorado and research associate in Humanities at the University of
California Santa Cruz. He studies ethno-religious identity, Christian-
Muslim- Jewish relations, and the history of the Mediterranean from the
seventh to the seventeenth centuries. He is co-founder and co-director of
the Mediterranean Seminar. He is the author of Muslims of Latin
Christendom (2014), which was awarded the Albert Hourani Book
Prize by the Middle East Studies Association, Infidel Kings and Unholy
Warriors (2014), and The Victors and the Vanquished (2004), which
won two prizes from the AHA.
Paul M. Cobb is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
at the University of Pennsylvania. His areas of interest include the history
of memory, historiography, Islamic relations with the West, and travel
and exploration. He is, in particular, a recognized authority on the
history of the medieval Levant and of the crusades in their Islamic
context. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including
White Banners: Contention in ‘Abbasid Syria, 750–880 (2001); Usama ibn
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of Crusades (2005); The Book of
Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (2008), a translation of the
“memoirs” and other works of Usama ibn Munqidh; and The Race for
Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (2014).
Sarah Davis-Secord is Associate Professor of History at the University of
New Mexico. She is a historian of the early and central Middle Ages and is
particularly interested in inter-cultural and inter-religious relations within
the Mediterranean Sea region. Her Where Three Worlds Met: Sicily in the
Early Medieval Mediterranean (2017) was awarded the 2019 Dionisius
A. Agius Prize from the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean.
Jerrilynn D. Dodds is Harlequin Adair Dammann Professor at Sarah
Lawrence College. Her work has centered on transculturation and how
groups form identities through art and architecture. Her publications
include Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain (1990); Arts of
Intimacy: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture
(with co-authors Maria Menocal and Abigail Balbale) (2008);
Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (editor) (1992); The Art of Medieval
Spain 500–1200 (co-editor, with Charles Little, Serafín Moralejo and
John Williams, 1993), and New York Masjid (2002).
Ana  Echevarria is Professor of Medieval History at the UNED
(Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) in Spain. Her work cen-
ters on relations between Islam and Christianity, particularly interreligious
polemics, Castilian mudéjares, conversion, and the crusades. She is also
interested in the Trastamaran monarchy in Castile and Queen Catalina of
Lancaster and medieval mining. She is the author of The Fortress of the
Faith (1999), Catalina de Lancaster, reina regente de Castilla (2002),
Caballeros en la frontera. La guardia morisca de los reyes de Castilla
(1410–1467) (2013), The City of the Three Mosques (2011), and Almanzor,
un califa en la sombra (2011).
Molly Greene is Professor of History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton
University. She studies the history of the Mediterranean Basin, the
Ottoman Empire, and the Greek world. Her interests include the social
and economic history of the Ottoman Empire, the experience of Greeks
under Ottoman rule, Mediterranean piracy, and the institution of the
market. Her first book, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the
Early Modern Mediterranean (2000), examines the transition from