1 therefore explores the relations between enacted performances and written descriptions in order both to permit multiple readings of a pageant and, when possible, to best identify the perceived intent behind a particular presentation.
Spectacles could succeed only through the complicity and participation of audiences. This was especially true of political theater, a point I demonstrate using the 1465 “Farce of Ávila as an example. Without the audience’s perspective, we can have only a warped understanding of what a particular event meant. Spectators, however, generally did not record their experiences or responses. I therefore examine the discourses current in Castilian society about the nature and character of public performances, highlighting the disparate perspectives of the nobility, the clergy, and the commoners. This allows us to move beyond the mediated presentation of the goals of elite sponsors and offers a range within which the responses of most spectators were likely limited.
In Chapter 2, I argue that civic spaces bore meanings to local residents that could contribute to or define the overall experience of a spectacle. Siting, decoration, size, and even the choice of materials for buildings were often consciously chosen to convey a message or establish a mood. The particular conditions of the Iberian frontier had long provided rulers with both the need for effective modes of expressing their readings of social, political, and religious issues and an abundance of themes with which to do so, making the region a crucible of “rhetorical architecture.”51 In exploring the various physical contexts for spectacle, I pay particular attention to ephemeral architecture, temporary structures tailor made for specific events. These could range from viewing stands and barricades to whimsical wooden castles and palaces. All served to repurpose quotidian spaces, transforming them in various ways. As with the spectacles themselves, however, civic spaces could have multiple meanings and could be understood in ways unanticipated 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
