have devoted much effort to understanding both the nature and the significance of frontier communities, seeing them both as windows into myriad aspects of past societies and as engines of historical change. The Granadan frontier has been a particularly popular subject for inquiry. It has been seen, at one time or another, as a region of free land, an arena for the expansion of Latin Christendom, a militarized border zone, or a site for cultural contact and exchange.18
Early generations of historians hewed closely to Turner’s original argument, contending that the freedoms and risks of the Granadan frontier spurred the development of a particular set of Iberian cultural values quite different from those of the rest of western Europe, even romanticizing it as a “miniature wild west.”19 Later medievalists, while retaining an emphasis on frontier-driven cultural change, linked the transformation to cultural contact and exchange, noting the ways in which populations on either side of the frontier intermingled to the point where they bore more similarities with each other than their nominal home cultures. Acculturation, however, was not an all-or-nothing proposition that led either to cultural immersion or strictly controlled interactions. People living in contact with other societies were able to adapt, borrow, or reject particular aspects of those societies as they saw fit, leading to highly localized modes of cultural exchange.20 More recent scholarship has focused on the frontier as a “borderland,” drawing on theoretical work such as that of Homi Bhabha, who defines borderlands as a “third space,” or realm of negotiation, translation, and remaking. The third space, for Bhabha, is not simply an amalgam of its two constituent cultural groups but is instead a true hybrid, a new society that has the potential for fresh understandings of each of its predecessors. From this perspective, frontiers were arenas for mostly friendly competition, with acculturation triumphing over conflict.21
But the Granadan frontier does not fit easily into any broad definition. It was a region that provided freedoms not readily available elsewhere, but which exacted a heavy price in terms of taxes and military service. It was the site of Christian settlement. But newcomers arrived in a land of long-standing patterns of habitation into which they had to fit, at least initially. It was a fortified boundary between two civilizations, but a boundary that was neither defined nor linear. Nor, despite its many fortifications, was it closed; the movement of people and ideas never ceased and even the religious identities that defined it were not fixed. It was indeed a cultural melting pot, but one over which religious intolerance proved ultimately dominant.
In this book, I understand the Granadan frontier as a borderland region in which multiple religious, linguistic, and cultural groups maintained close contacts.22 It was not, however, simply a composite society. It was defined by insecurities, which stemmed both from the constant threat of physical attack and an awareness that there was a significant gap between ideologies of Christian dominance and the reality of acculturation. These anxieties effectively prevented the creation of what Bhabha calls a third space. A long-standing pattern of semibelligerency in which leaders had been unwilling to take decisive action regarding Granada, for either peace or war, created an equilibrium in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews could interact daily with each other but without true cultural hybridity. Many Christians living on the medieval frontier were caught between a sincere ideology of holy war against Islam and Christian dominance but also held an equally sincere respect and understanding not only for individual Muslims but also for many aspects of Islamic culture. This esteem went far beyond what Américo Castro called the “chance symbiosis of beliefs” and resulted in a conflicted attitude that we may best describe as an “amiable enmity.”23
How could people reconcile ideas as contradictory as holy war and peaceful cooperation? Peter Linehan has offered one solution, pointing out that an either/or understanding of the frontier supposes a social homogeneity that we would not expect in our own times. As he puts it, “In theory, the very idea of frontier convivencia is inconceivable. Crusade and co-existence comprise a confessional oxymoron if ever there was one. But in fact people aren’t like that.”24 Linehan goes on to suggest that this contradiction is unworthy of further discussion, as it was no more than a predictable outcome of human nature. But how did people cope with these all-too-human inconsistencies? For if, as the evidence suggests, there is no reason to suspect that medieval Castilians were unaware of the incongruities that lay at the core of their understanding of the world, the resulting tensions and general mood of uncertainty they created hold the key to understanding the medieval Granadan frontier.
Many of the songs and poems in the Cantigas de Santa María, a thirteenth-century collection gathered by or at the direction of Alfonso X, directly engaged such issues. Cantiga 185, for instance, described the great friendship between the Christian alcaide, or garrison commander, of Chincoya, a fortress near Jaén, and his Muslim counterpart in Bélmez.25 The Muslim capitalized on their association by enticing his friend to leave the castle’s safety. The ruse worked and he seized the hapless Christian, forcing him to reveal Chincoya’s weaknesses. With this information in hand, a Muslim army soon attacked the castle. Fearing for their lives, Chincoya’s defenders “took the statue of the Mother of the Savior which was in the chapel and put it … on the battlements, saying, ‘If you are the Mother of God, defend this castle and us, who are your servants, and protect your chapel so that the infidel Moors will not capture it and burn your statue.’ They left it there, saying: ‘ We shall see what you will do.’ ”26
The Muslims at once retreated, and three attackers who had managed to enter Chincoya were tossed from the walls, leading the king of Granada to confess that “I would consider myself foolish to go against Mary, who defends Her own.”27 This was no metaphorical protection; the illumination that accompanied this cantiga depicts Mary’s image as physically mounted atop the castle and fitting neatly into the scheme of the battlements, almost as it were a natural extension of the stone walls.
The political content of this story is quite explicit. The whole sorry situation could have easily been avoided if only the alcaide of Chincoya had realized that true peace and friendship with Muslims was not possible, that the enemy saw such overtures merely as flaws to be exploited. As the alcaide’s squires warned, “the Moors are treacherous.”28 But Chincoya’s commander trusted his Muslim counterpart anyway. Here we see the ideology of conquest confronting the realities of the frontier: fraternizing with the enemy was an unavoidable aspect of life. Yet the episode did not end in tragedy and this too is central to the political message. The Virgin Mary’s defense of Chincoya left no doubt that this was a religious boundary, and that those on the other side were the enemies of God. Those tasked with defending the frontier must be always wary.
In reality, frontier Christians often found themselves in the alcaide’s shoes. They were told again and again that their religious duty was to view all Muslims and Jews with suspicion and to reject non-Christian religious practices. But these obligations were theoretical and could fade when confronted with living, breathing individuals, people whom they came to know and respect, even love. They found themselves unable to define clear boundaries between members of different religious groups and unable to take decisive action to alter the situation by abandoning either the goal of expelling infidels from Iberia or their regard for non-Christian acquaintances and culture. Nor did they want to be perceived as having “gone native” by their counterparts in more central areas. The interaction of competing social realities—physical insecurity, ideological dissonance, and a sense of being on the periphery—defined late medieval frontier society in Iberia. There was always, despite real tolerance for other groups, a curb on how far frontier Christians were willing to adapt.
FIGURE 2. Image of the Virgin defends the tower of Chincoya. Alfonso X el Sabio, Cantigas de Santa María: Edición facsímil del Códice T.I.1 de la Biblioteca de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, fol. 247r. In this detail from the illustration for cantiga 185, Granadan soldiers are retreating while the defenders of Chincoya Castle pray in the direction of the statue of the Virgin Mary,
