Justina, published in 1605, many may have been of marriageable age, as old as eighteen or twenty.4 As to whether they were all virgins, as was widely claimed, López de Úbeda, through his lead character Justina, expressed jocular skepticism, declaring that it would be medio milagro (a near miracle) if it were true.5 López de Úbeda also paints a graphic description of the sotadera, whom he describes in stark terms as “the oldest and most evil thing that I ever saw in my whole life,” a remark that may have been designed to underline her “otherness” to the beautiful, supposedly virginal Christian cantaderas.6 This contrast may have been further reinforced if, as has been suggested, the role of the sotadera was typically played by a “marginalized” woman, perhaps of Morisco or gypsy stock, or even a former prostitute.7 The sotadera was meant to play the key role of intermediary between Muslims and Christians, but by joining the procession to exalt the Virgin Mary she in fact became instrumental in helping to restore lost honor.8
On 14 August, according to Lobera’s account, the girls proceeded through the city carrying large processional candlesticks to the sound of war drums, which had supposedly been captured on the battlefield of Clavijo, and then entered the cathedral. Lobera provides this earnest description:
And although it is true that their arrival, with so much noise and din, interrupts the music and solemnity of the divine offices, the pious, Christian heart is so moved and touched, bearing in mind what it signifies and the meaning that the happy memory of the freedom of the sad maidens enshrines, represented by these joyful girls, that there is no one so hard-hearted [literally “dry-headed”] who does not shed tears to celebrate the memory of the triumph over that ancient evil…. Everyone present gives thanks to the Almighty for the favor He granted to Spain when He delivered it from such an ignominious tribute.9
The girls then sang and danced in the cathedral to the sound of a psaltery and were blessed by the bishop, before venturing outside once more to continue the celebrations. At nightfall, fireworks were set off, bonfires were lit, and musicians played trumpets. The next morning, which was Assumption Day, there were further processions and more dancing by the cantaderas, a solemn Mass was held, and baskets of pears and plums were offered to the bishop. This was followed by the performance of the first of two plays, which according to Lobera were written by “the best author in Spain.”10 The third and final day of the festival saw the performance of the second play, and another solemn procession took place, during the course of which a dead bull was dragged in a cart by two oxen to the cathedral and offered to an image of the Virgin.11 This was followed by a running of the bulls—presumably “Pamplona-style”—and demonstrations of horsemanship.
The festivities in León today are less extensive and elaborate than they evidently were in the late sixteenth century, but they are no less enthusiastic and heartfelt for all that. Moreover, in their current form they are far from unique. Similar commemorative events take place in other towns and villages across northern Spain, including Betanzos in Galicia, Astorga (just down the road from León), Carrión de los Condes and Simancas in the Castilian Tierra de Campos, Santo Domingo de la Calzada and Sorzano in the Rioja, and as far to the east as Vilaseca and Bagà in Catalonia. Unlike the Leonese festival, however, many of these seem to be of relatively recent invention.12
As it is, the ceremony of Las Cantaderas and others like it take us to the very heart of one of Spain’s most cherished national myths. The victory on the battlefield of Clavijo has traditionally been enveloped in a patriotic mystique and portrayed as a key moment in the progress of the divinely sanctioned Christian Reconquista (Reconquest) of Muslim Iberia. Accordingly, it has been viewed by many as an important step toward the reforging of the Spanish nation, which had supposedly been broken asunder by the Islamic conquest of the Visigothic kingdom in 711. The legend of the tribute of the hundred maidens has held the imagination of Spaniards for the best part of 900 years and has inspired an extraordinarily prolific and diverse outpouring of artistic creativity, including works of narrative history, poetry, drama (including three plays by Lope de Vega), various modern novels, painting, and even a zarzuela (the Spanish opera form) by Francisco Barbieri.13 As we shall see, the legend was also the inspiration for one of the most ambitious and effective forgeries to have been carried out anywhere in the Latin West during the Middle Ages. Yet although the legend remains deeply engrained in Spanish cultural and popular tradition, and the Battle of Clavijo is widely commemorated in the names of streets and schools right across Spain, the origins, propagation, and ideological purpose of this national myth have yet to receive the sustained attention that they undoubtedly deserve.
It is partly in an attempt to explain the historical and cultural importance of the legend of the tribute of the hundred maidens, and others like it, that this book has been written. Yet its aim is even more ambitious than that. The work investigates the diverse political, social, and cultural functions that interfaith marriage alliances and other sexual encounters fulfilled within the overall dynamic of Christian-Muslim relations in the Iberian Peninsula during the medieval period, both within al-Andalus—the term by which the territory under Islamic rule was designated—and the expansionist Christian-dominated polities of the North. This study seeks to elucidate why interfaith sex mattered to such a considerable degree to secular and religious lawgivers in the Peninsula and why it impinged so significantly on the political and cultural discourse of the age. In doing so, the book also explores why the “cultural memory” of such sexual liaisons carried such a powerful resonance within Christian society during the Later Middle Ages and beyond, and considers the part that memory played in reinforcing community identity and defining social and cultural boundaries between the faiths. In pursuing this inquiry, a number of other pressing questions will be addressed. Why, for example, were anxieties about interfaith sexual mixing articulated so extensively by Christians—in law and literature—from the twelfth century on, but seldom before that date? To what extent did such fears feed on traditional Western hostility toward Islam, or conversely were a response to local attitudes and conditions? Were such attitudes the direct product of specific secular processes, such as the progress of the Christian conquest of Muslim territory, or rather did they stem from intellectual impulses emanating from beyond the Pyrenees? In short, through a close examination of the ways in which interfaith sexual relations were conducted, perceived, manipulated, and, above all, controlled, this book seeks to highlight the extent to which sex, power, and identity were closely bound up with one another in the medieval Peninsula.
In undertaking this study, I am conscious that this is not entirely uncharted territory. The extent to which restrictions were placed on interfaith sexual mixing in the medieval Peninsula, and the ways those highly charged boundaries between the faiths were patrolled or transgressed, have been the focus of some significant scholarly scrutiny in recent years. Strongly led by David Nirenberg, some of the most important research has analyzed the extent to which Christian prostitutes in the late medieval Crown of Aragon became the focal point for collective anxiety about sexual mixing with Muslim and Jewish men.14 Other studies have examined the eroticized literary representations of Muslim women, as well as of those thirteenth-century Christian female court entertainers called soldadeiras, whose licentious lifestyle and supposed cross-border sexual encounters with Muslim men made them the target of numerous scurrilous songs.15 The process by which sexual boundaries between the faiths were erected and guarded in al-Andalus has also been subjected to revealing analysis.16 Moreover, when this book was nearing completion, I learned of the publication of Pluralism in the Middle Ages: Hybrid Identities, Conversion, and Mixed Marriages in Medieval Iberia by Norwegian scholar Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati.17 However, my initial fears that I had been pipped at the post and was destined to play the role of Captain Scott to Dr. Zorgati’s Amundsen, so to speak, were swiftly allayed when it became clear that the scope of our respective works, as well as our methodologies, were strikingly different. Zorgati has conducted a useful comparative legal study, focusing principally on issues of conversion and mixed marriages, in which a selection of texts, ranging from Muslim fatwas on the one hand to the thirteenth-century Christian Siete Partidas on the other, are subjected to scrutiny. By exploring, through the framework of postcolonial
