Figures of thought and figures of flesh: "Jews" and "Judaism" in late-medieval Spanish poetry and politics

Speculum

Volumn 81, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 398-426

  Nirenberg, David ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949840775     PISSN: 00387134     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0038713400002633     Document Type: Article

References (140)

1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York, 1972), p. 186.
2. On Karl Lueger's (1844-1910) political use of the claim see Carl E. Schorske, "Politics in a New Key: An Austrian Trio," in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1979).
3. This particular example is developed in my "The Birth of the Pariah: Jews, Christian Dualism, and Social Science," Social Research 70 (2003), 201-36.
4. See the list of miracles in Archivo Municipal de Valencia, Lletres missives, g3-5, fols. 20v-22v, dated July 14, 1391, published in José Hinojosa Montalvo, The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia: From Persecution to Expulsion, 1391-1492, trans. Stephanie Nakache, Hispania Judaica 9 (Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 332-34, no. 11.
5. On St. Vincent's mission to the Jews see Vicente Beltrán de Heredia, "San Vicente Ferrer, predicador de las sinagogas," Salmanticensis 2 (1955), 670-76
6. repr. in Miscelànea Beltràn de Heredia, 1, Biblioteca de Teólogos Españoles 25/B5 (Salamanca, 1972), pp. 225-33;
7. Antonio C. Floriano, "San Vicente Ferrer y las aljamas turolenses," Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia 84 (1924), 558-80;
8. Juan Torres Fontes, "Moros, judios y conversos en la regencia de Don Fernando de Antequera," Cuadernos de historia de España 31-32 (1960), 60-97;
9. Francisca Vendrell, "La actividad proselitista de San Vicente Ferrer durante el reinado de Fernando I de Aragón," Sefarad 13 (1953), 87-104;
10. eadem, "La politica proselitista del Rey D. Fernando I de Aragón," Sefarad 10 (1950), 349-66;
11. José María Millás Vallicrosa, "En torno a la predicación judaica de San Vicente Ferrer," Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia 147 (1958), 189-98;
12. and especially Pedro M. Cátedra, Sermón, sociedad y literatura en la edad media: San Vicente Ferrer en Castilla (1411-1412) (Salamanca, 1994).
13. Many of these claims were first put forth explicitly in the polemics surrounding a revolt in Toledo in 1449. They are edited in Eloy Benito Ruano, "El memorial contra los conversos del bachiller Marcos García de Mora ('Marquillos de Mazarambroz')," Sefarad 17 (1957), 314-51;
14. and "La SentenciaEstatuto de Pero Sarmiento contra los conversos toledanos," Revista de la Universidad de Madrid, 4th ser., 6 (1957), 277-306. The first of these texts will be discussed further below, p. 422.
15. The quotations are from Américo Castro, The Structure of Spanish History, trans. Edmund L. King (Princeton, N.J., 1954), pp. 542-43 and 569.
16. In a review of the Spanish version of the work (España en su historia) Yakov Malkiel observed that Castro's approach resembled theories of cultural transmission discredited by association with National Socialism. In 1965, on the other hand, Francisco Marquez Villanueva praised these pages as "the most acute and fruitful of [Castro's] oeuvre"; see the revised version of his essay, "El problema de los conversos: Cuatro puntos cardinales," in Hispania Judaica, 1: History, ed. Josep Solà-Solé, Samuel G. Armistead, and Joseph H. Silverman (Barcelona, 1982), pp. 51-75, here p. 69.
17. Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, España: Un enigma histórico, 4th ed. (Barcelona, 1973), p. 284: "Lo judio contribuyó a la forja de lo hispano no por caminos de luz, sino por sendas tenebrosas . . . , y ningún crêdito puede alegar contra nosotros, a tal punto nos legó deformaciones y desdichas y dan̄ó nuestro despliegue potencial y nuestro crédito histórico."
18. The passage is also cited in José Luis Abellán, "Función cultural de la presencia judia en España," in Angel Alcalá, ed., Judios, sefarditas, conversos: La expulsión de 1492 y sus consecuencias (Valladolid, 1995), pp. 395-407.
19. In the same work Sanchez-Albornoz endorsed Castro's theory on the Jewishness of the Inquisition. On this convergence of opinion see also B. Netanyahu, Toward the Inquisition: Essays on Jewish and Converso History in Late Medieval Spain (Ithaca, N.Y., 1997), chaps. 1 and 5.
20. Early critical voices include Peter E. Russell, "La historia de España, túnica de Neso," in Temas de La Celestina y otros estudios, del Cid al Quijote, Letras e Ideas, Maior, 14 (Barcelona, 1978), pp. 481-91;
21. Nicasio Salvador Miguel, "El presunto judaismo de La Celestina," in The Age of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474-1516: Literary Studies in Memory of Keith Whinnom, ed. Alan Deyermond and Ian Macpherson (Liverpool, 1989), pp. 162-77;
22. and Paul Julian Smith, Representing the Other: "Race," Text, and Gender in Spanish and Spanish American Narrative (Oxford, 1992), here p. 29.
23. More recent is the "Critical Cluster" of articles under the rubric "Inflecting the Converso Voice" gathered in La corónica 25 (1996), together with a "forum" of responses in La corónica 26 (1997) and a further flurry of debate in La corónica 28 (1999).
24. See also Gregory B. Kaplan, The Evolution of Converso Literature: The Writings of the Converted Jews of Medieval Spain (Gainesville, Fla., 2002), which elaborates a specific converso "code" and "semiotics" produced by the "unhomeliness" (the term is borrowed from Freud via Homi Bhabha) of "the boundaries of a marginal condition imposed by an oppressive majority" (p. 33).
25. Henri de Vocht, "Rodrigo Manrique's Letter to Vives," in Monumenta humanistica Lovaniensia: Texts and Studies about Louvain Humanists in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century, Humanistica Lovaniensia 4 (Louvain, 1934), pp. 427-58, here p. 435.
26. See also Enrique González Gonzalez, "Vives: Un humanista judeoconverso en el exilio de Flandes," in The Expulsion of the Jews and Their Emigration to the Southern Low Countries (15th-16th C.), ed. Luc Dequeker and Werner Verbeke, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia 1/26 (Leuven, 1998), pp. 35-81, here p. 77.
27. All references are from the Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena, ed. Brian Dutton and Joaquín González Cuenca (Madrid, 1993), henceforth Cancionero, and are cited by poem and page numbers, with line numbers where needed.
28. Poems from cancioneros other than that of Baena are cited according to the numbering system in Brian Dutton's El cancionero del siglo XV, c. 1360-1520, Biblioteca Española del Siglo XV, serie maior, 1-7 (Salamanca, 1990-91), henceforth Dutton; see vol. 7 for an index of the poems.
29. On the dating of Baena's life and composition, see Alberto Blecua, " 'Perdiose un quaderno . . .': Sobre los cancioneros de Baena," Anuario de estudios medievales 9 (1974-79), 229-66;
30. Manuel Nieto Cumplido, "Aportación histórica al Cancionero de Baena," Historia, instituciones, documentos 6 (1979), 197-218;
31. and idem, "Juan Alfonso de Baena y su Cancionero: Nueva aportacion historica," Boletin de la Real Academia de Córdoba 52 (1982), 35-57.
32. Two recent collections may serve as a starting point for the vast bibliography on the Cancionero: Poetry at Court in Trastamaran Spain: From the Cancionero de Baena to the Cancionero general, ed. E. Michael Gerli and Julian Weiss, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 181 (Tempe, Ariz., 1998);
33. Those interested in attitudes toward Jews and converts in the Cancionero may begin with (in addition to the works cited below) Stanley Rose, "Anti-Semitism in the 'Cancioneros' of the Fifteenth Century: The Accusation of Sexual Indiscretions," Hispanofila 26 (1983), 1-11;
34. idem, "Poesía antijudía y anticonversa en la poesía artistica del siglo XV en España" (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1975);
35. and Gregory S. Hutcheson, "Marginality and Empowerment in Baena's Cancionero" (Ph.D dissertation, Harvard University, 1993).
36. The reference to adefyna is by Juan de Guzmán (no. 404, p. 676)
37. For allusions to Juan Alfonso de Baena's sexual encounters with Jewesses, see inter alia the poem by Juan Garçia: "Con judía Aben Xuxena / o Cohena / bien me plaze que burledes . . ." (no. 386, pp. 656-57, lines 10-12).
38. Allusions to interfaith sexual dalliance are very common in the Cancionero. Thus Juan Alfonso de Baena asks Gonçalo de Quadros: "nunca nombrastes la vuestra señora, / sy era cristiana, judía nin mora . . ." (no. 449, p. 704, lines 14-15).
39. For the debate over "indino"/"judino," see the commentary in José María Azáceta, Cancionero, Clásicos Hispánicos 2/10, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1966), 1:v, 4, and accompanying notes.
40. Gregory S. Hutcheson surprisingly takes "judino" for granted in "'Pinning Him to the Wall': The Poetics of Self-Destruction in the Court of Juan II," Disputatio 5 (2002), 87-102, at p. 92.
41. Juan Bautista Avalle Arce considered the possibility of a morisco as well as a converso background for Juan Alfonso in "Sobre Juan Alfonso de Baena," Revista de filología hispánica 8 (1946), 141-47.
42. Dutton and Gonzalez Cuenca begin by accepting such poetic evidence of Baena's converso status only "provisionalmente" but end by treating it as certainty: Cancionero, pp. xv and xviii.
43. Examples of this underlying logic are legion. In addition to the works already cited see Francisco Cantera Burgos, "El Cancionero de Baena: Judios y conversos en él," Sefarad 27 (1967), 71-111;
44. Julio Rodríguez-Puértolas, Poesía de protesta en la edad media castellana, Biblioteca Romdnica Hispánica 6/25 (Madrid, 1968), pp. 216-24;
45. and Cristina Arbós, "Los cancioneros castellanos del siglo xv como fuente para la historia de los judios españoles," in Yosef Kaplan ed., Jews and Conversos: Studies in Society and the Inquisition (Jerusalem, 1985), pp. 77-78.
46. The quotation is from Théodore de Puymaigre, La cour littéraire de don Juan II, roi de Castille (Paris, 1871), p. 131.
47. Cf. José Amador de los Ríos, Estudios históricos, politicos y literarios sobre los judíos de España (Madrid, 1848), pp. 425-27. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century this ethnic judgment usually coincided with the aesthetic one that the poems were unrefined, vulgar, and unworthy of literary analysis (see below, n. 46).
48. See, for example, the work of Charles F. Fraker, Jr., Studies on the Cancionero de Baena, University of North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 61 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966), pp. 9-62, "Judaism in the Cancionero de Baena";
49. Hutcheson, "Marginality and Empowerment," p. 141 ("highly sophisticated blending of moralism and irony . . . points to possible Jewish ancestry");
50. See also the pages dedicated to Baena in Kaplan, The Evolution of Converso Literature.
51. John Cummins, "The Survival in the Spanish Cancioneros of the Form and Themes of Provençal and Old French Poetic Debates," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 42 (1965), 9-17;
52. idem, "Methods and Conventions in the 15th Century Poetic Debate," Hispanic Review 31 (1963), 307-23;
53. Kenneth Scholberg, Sátira e invectiva en la España medieval (Madrid, 1971);
54. and Julio Rodriguez Puértolas, Poesía crítica y satirica del siglo XV (Madrid, 1981).
55. On these poems see Benjamin Liu, "'Affined to Love the Moor': Sexual Misalliance and Cultural Mixing in the Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer," in Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson (Durham, N.C., 1999), pp. 48-72, here p. 61.
56. Villasandino's attack against Alfonso Ferrández Semuel in no. 141 (p. 165, lines 1-2) provides an early and lapidary example: "Alfonso, capón corrido, / tajarte quiero un vestido." The association of items of clothing with circumcision recurs constantly in the cancionero genre, with terms like "capirote" (little cape) becoming key words. Perhaps the wittiest example is the much later ditty by Juan Poeta in the Cancionero general, written upon receiving the gift of a small cape from a nobleman: "Vos no soys sayo ni saya / tajo frances ni morisco / ni soys funda dazagaya / ni ropa de san francisco / Soys beca de capirote / no se como soys cortada / soys embiada por mote / pese atal que no soys nada" (Dutton, ID6768, 11CG-996).
57. For a dictionary of clothing vocabulary in the Cancionero see Alicia Puigvert Ocal, "El léxico de la indumentaria en el Cancionero de Baena," Boletin de la Real Academia Espańola 67 (1987), 171-206.
58. See especially the study of Julian Weiss, The Poet's Art: Literary Theory in Castile c. 1400-60, Medium Aevum Monographs, n.s., 14 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 25-40.
59. On Philo's (and later Origen's) Neoplatonic use of the analogy of body and soul for text and meaning I have found especially helpful David Dawson, "Plato's Soul and the Body of the Text in Philo and Origen," in Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period, ed. Jon Whitman, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 101 (Leiden, 2000), pp. 89-107.
60. I do not mean to imply here that this "spiritualization" of the word is in its origins a Greek phenomenon. It has deep roots as well in Hebrew biblical traditions and for Ernst Cassirer was even a fundamental characteristic of "all great cultural religions": Language and Myth, trans. Susanne K. Langer (New York, 1946), pp. 45-46.
61. Most notable among them, for my purposes, is Erich Auerbach, "Figura," in Neue Dantestudien, Istanbuler Schriften 5 (Istanbul, 1944), pp. 11-71;
62. See A. J. M. Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology against Its Graeco-Roman Background, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 44 (Tübingen, 1987), esp. p. 127.
63. As with all things related to the New Testament, the dating of its books is much debated, but there is a scholarly consensus at which all revisions aim. (For the consensus, see, for example, Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, trans. Howard Clark Kee, rev. ed. [Nashville, Tenn., 1975].)
64. That consensus has long placed the genuine writings of Paul first, circa 45-60 C.E.. (For a revised dating of the letters see Gerd Luedemann, Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles: Studies in Chronology [Philadelphia, 1984].)
65. The Gospel of Mark is thought to be the earliest Gospel, written shortly before or after the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., followed by Matthew later in the first century. (William R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis [Dillsboro, N.C., 1976], however, argues for reversing these two, since he sees Mark as an abridgment of Matthew.)
66. Luke is often treated as contemporaneous with Matthew but is probably later, since Acts, written by the same author, is generally dated to circa 100 C.E. John has almost universally been treated as coming last and latest, though recent revisionists argue instead for its priority (see, for example, John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament [London, 1976]).
67. Gilbert Dagron, "Le traité de Grégoire de Nicée sur le baptème des juifs," Travaux et mémoires 11 (1991), 314-57.
68. On Origen I have especially depended on Gerard E. Caspary, Politics and Exegesis: Origen and the Two Swords (Berkeley, Calif., 1979);
69. Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton, N.J., 1992);
70. and Karen Jo Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen's Exegesis, Patristische Texte und Studien 28 (Berlin, 1985).
71. On Augustine's aesthetics see recently Joachim Küpper, "'Uti' und 'frui' bei Augustinus und die Problematik des Genießens in der ästhetischen Theorie des Okzidents," in Wolfgang Klein and Ernst Müller, eds., Genuß und Egoismus: Zur Kritik ihrer geschichtlichen Verknüpfung (Berlin, 2002), pp. 3-29
72. Closer to the period of the poets discussed here, see Thomas Aquinas's assertion, in his Quodlibetal Questions, that "poetic fictions have no purpose except to signify; and such signification does not go beyond the literal sense" (7.6.16).
73. On these themes see especially Karl Kohut, "Zur Vorgeschichte der Diskussion um das Verhältnis von Christentum und antiker Kultur im spanischen Humanismus: Die Rolle des Decretum Gratiani in der Übermittlung patristischen Gedankengutes," Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 55 (1973), 80-106;
74. his "Der Beitrag der Theologie zum Literaturbegriff in der Zeit Juans II von Kastilien: Alonso de Cartagena (1384-1456) und Alonso de Madrigal, genannt el Tostado (1400?-1455)," Romanische Forschungen 89 (1977), 183-226;
75. On St. Vincent Ferrer, and on responses by cancionero poets to his preaching in Castile, see Cátedra, Sermon y literatura, pp. 251-68.
76. For Ferrer's Thomistic opposition to the allegorization of poetry, see Cátedra's "La predicación castellana de San Vicente Ferrer," Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 39 (1983-84), 235-309, esp. p. 278, citing Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, MS 9433, fols. 33r-43r.
77. Lactantius, Epitome Divinarum institutionum 11 and 12;
78. See esp. the work attributed to Bernard Sylvester, Commentary on the First Six Books of Virgil's Aeneid, trans. Earl G. Schreiber and Thomas E. Maresca (Lincoln, Neb., 1979).
79. Dante's poetics is articulated not only in his poetry but also in treatises such as the "Letter to Cangrande della Scala" (in Dante Alighieri, Tutte le opere, ed. Luigi Blasucci, 2nd ed. [Florence, 1965], pp. 341-52), where Dante draws a parallel between the multiple levels of meaning of biblical and nonbiblical poetry. (The example Dante uses is that of Ps. 113.1-2.: "Qui modus tractandi, ut melius pateat, potest considerari in hiis versibus: 'In exitu Israel de Egipto, domus Iacob de populo barbaro, facta est Iudea sanctificatio eius, Israel potestas eius
80. On these issues see August Buck, Italienische Dichtungslehren vom Mittelalter bis zum Ausgang der Renaissance, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 94 (Tübingen, 1952), pp. 33-53;
81. Petrarch's Invective contra medicum (ed. Antonietta Bufano, in Opere latine di Francesco Petrarca, 2, Classici Italiani 4 [Turin, 1975])
82. Familiares 10.4, "de proportione inter theologiam et poetriam" (ed. Vittorio Rossi, Le familiari, 2, Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Francesco Petrarca 11 [Florence, 1934], pp. 301-10)
83. and Collatio laureationis (ed. Carlo Godi, "La Collatio laureationis del Petrarca nelle due redazioni," Studi petrarcheschi, n.s., 5 [1988], 1-58).
84. On the relationship between these defenses of poetry, see A. J. Minnis's introduction to the chapter "The Transformation of Critical Tradition: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio," in Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, c. 1000-c. 1375: The Commentary-Tradition, ed. A.J. Minnis and A. B. Scott, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 373-94;
85. On the Castilian career of these texts see inter alia Jules Piccus, "El traductor español de De genealogia deorum," in Homenaje a Rodríguez-Moñino, 2 (Madrid, 1966), pp. 59-75;
86. and Hernando de Talavera, "Invectivas contra el médico rudo e parlero," ed. Pedro M. Cátedra, in Petrarca: Obras, 1: Prosa, ed. Francisco Rico et al., Clásicos Alfaguara 12 (Madrid, 1978), pp. 369-410.
87. An influential master narrative of this struggle was penned by Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), "Poesie und Theologie," pp. 219-32.
88. For revisions to it see the works of Minnis and Küpper cited in the previous note, as well as The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, 2: The Middle Ages, ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge, Eng., 2005).
89. So far as I know the only work to treat the Cancionero de Baena in this context is that of Karl Kohut, "La teoría de la poesía cortesana en el prologo de Juan Alfonso de Baena," in Actasdel coloquio hispano-alemán Ramón Menéndez Pidal (Madrid, 1982), pp. 120-37, here p. 131, n. 27;
90. and WolfDieter Lange, El fraile trobador: Zeit, Leben, und Werk des Diego Valencia de León, Analecta Romanica 28 (Frankfurt, 1971), pp. 101-2.
91. The rubric is discussed in a number of poems, most notably by Baena (no. 359, p. 639, lines 9-10)
92. and Manuel de Lando (no. 253, pp. 451-52, lines 17-24; and no. 257, pp. 456-58, lines 81-88).
93. For a good summary and revision of the scholarly debates over the meaning of this theme of gracia in the Cancionero see Weiss, Poet's Art, pp. 25-40.
94. "Nunca vi secretos de Dios en ditar / nin al tal saber non somos tenudos. / Los fechos divinos son a nos escudos / que non alcançó el flaco armador, / gentil nin judío nin arrendador, / que tiene tristeza con gestos çejudos. // Él faze los ossos con cueros lanudos / e al que poco sabe ser grant sabidor; / pocos son los sabios de sabio valor / que tengan los pechos e lomos peludos" (no. 273, pp. 473-74, lines 27-35). Ferrán responds in no. 274 (pp. 474-75). Friar Lope attacks Villasandino on similar grounds in no. 117 (pp. 150-52, line 9), criticizing "Quien troba parlando, non seyendo letrado." The poem is an attack on political as well as poetic falsity, ending with a curse on those "hypocrites" who sow discord among the magnates and with the exhortation that princes "abhor Jews" and "honor good men" (lines 89-96). Even here Maestro Lope may be taking aim at the poets, whose inflammatory role in royal courts seems already a literary commonplace. See, for example, the first lines of Diego de Valencia's poem no. 227 (pp. 266-75) on the birth of Juan II (1405), regarding the "contiendas, roidos e dario muy farto" (line 6) that arise every day over the interpretation of figurative poetry. From a somewhat earlier period, see Alfonso X's condemnation of the violence occasioned by poetry in his Siete partidas, 2.9.30, and Ramon Llull's complaint in his Libre de contemplació en Deu, ed. Mn. Antoni Ma. Alcover, 3 (Palma de Mallorca, 1910), p. 98: "Los malvats juglars veem, Sènyer, esser maldígols e malmescladors enfre un príncep e altre, e enfre un baro e altre; e per la mala fama que sembren los juglars, e per loy e la mala volentat que engenren enfrels alts barons, per so veem destruir emperis e regnats e comdats e terres, viles e castells."
95. Vincent Ferrer's messianic inspiration is well known. On apocalyptic currents in the peninsula see José Guadalajara Medina, Las profecías del anticristo en la edad media (Madrid, 1996), pp. 232-47;
96. José María Pou y Martí, Visionarios, beguinos, y fraticelos catalanes (siglos XIII-XV) (Madrid, 1991);
97. and most recently Robert E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia, 2001), especially chap. 7, on 1391 and Francesc Eiximenis's millenarian ideas.
98. Lando to Baena, no. 360, pp. 639-40, here lines 6-8: "que yo nunca tenga la novia muy presta, / si a vuestra amiga non punço en la cresta / fasta que la madre se le molifique." Baena to Lando, no. 363, pp. 641-42, lines 1-8: "Ferrand Manuel, boz mala vos gique / diz' que vos dexó en la culcassilla / un chato pastor toda rezmilla / e fuese fuyendo al campo d'Orique. / Por ende . . . / . . . medio puto vos queda el taxbique." Note Baena's assertion in this poem that insult specifically enables good poetry: "Fernand Manuel, por que versefique / donaires mi lengua sin raça e polilla, / sabed que vos mando de mula pardilla / dozena de festes en el quadruplique" (lines 9-12; festes 'horse turdlets'). The use of the word raça (race) to signify (poetic) defect deserves comment. See my "'Race' and 'Racism' in Late Medieval Spain," in Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, ed. W. Mignolo, M. Quilligan, and M. Greer, forthcoming, University of Chicago Press.
99. See, for example, Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología de poetas líricos castellanos, 1, ed. Enrique Sánchez Reyes, Edición Nacional de las Obras Completas de Menéndez Pelayo 17 (Santander, 1944), pp. 372-73: "En el Cancionero de Baena, como en todos los de su clase, hay muchos versos y muy poca poesía. . . . [N]i una sola vez vienen a refrescarnos en las áridas y monôtonas páginas del Cancionero de Baena, aquellas ráfagas de poesía que nos sorprenden en las cantigas de amigo o en las de ledino." Even Azáceta (above, n. 13), who dedicated himself to an edition of Baena, was upset by the poetry: ". . . la bella forma de sus estrofas y el buen acabado de sus versos, a veces sirven para envolver pensamientos burdos, insultos groseros, palabras chabacanas. El Baena de los 'debates' resulta pendenciero, burlón y de baja calidad humana, y hasta presume la facilidad de su lengua para el mal hablar" (p. ix).
100. No. 140, pp. 164-65, lines 31-32, Alfonso Álvarez de Villasandino against Alfonso Ferrández Semuel: "nunca serviste Amor / nin fuste en su conpañía." For a suggestive study on the place of love in the production of poetry and nobility in Castile during this period see Julian Weiss, "Alvaro de Luna, Juan de Mena and the Power of Courtly Love," Modern Language Notes 106 (1991), 241-56.
101. No. 501, p. 343. Cantera Burgos is among those who move from vocabulary to sociology: "Ya adelantamos que se ignora la ascendencia de Fray Diego y desde luego soprende en él el amplio conocimiento que del vocabulario hebreo hace gala. Nada nos chocari"́a, pues, que. . .poseyera amplios contactos judaicos, quizá inclusos familiares" ("El Cancionero de Baena" [above, n. 14], p. 103).
102. Fraker's phrasing and conclusion are almost identical: Studies on the Cancionero, pp. 9-10, n. 2.
103. No. 511, pp. 355-56, lines 13-16: "ca vuestra palabra jamás non se muda/. . ./Éstas son señales de omne fidalgo: / dezir e fazer las cosas sin dubda." Of course the possibility of an ironic allusion to Jewish "literal" understanding should not be dismissed here. Cf., however, the Marqués de Santillana's comment on the writings of Rabbi Shem Tov de Carrion: "No vale el açor menos / por nasçer en víl nío, / ni los exemplos buenos / por los dezir iudío": "Proemio," in Obras completas, ed. Ángel Gómez Moreno and Maximilian P. A. M. Kerkhof (Barcelona, 1988), p. 451.
104. I do not mean to minimize the anxieties produced by the mass conversions or the social and cultural transformations they occasioned, which I have written about elsewhere: see my "Conversion, Sex, and Segregation: Jews and Christians in Medieval Spain," American Historical Review 107 (2002), 1065-93
105. and "Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain," Past and Present 174 (Feb. 2002), 3-41.
106. The "Jewishness" of bad governance is a topos in the Cancionero de Baena as in Castilian literature both earlier and later. For a partial substantiation of this argument, see my "Alfonso VIII and the Jewess of Toledo: A Political Affair," in Studies in Honor of Denab Lida, ed. Mary G. Berg and Lanin A. Gyurko, Scripta Humanistica 153 (Potomac, Md., 2005), pp. 27-43.
107. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho, ed. Michael Gerli, Letras Hispánicas 92, 4th ed. (Madrid, 1992), pp. 108-9.
108. On the shift described here, and on the debates that accompanied it, see my "Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities." The events of 1434 and 1437 are discussed on pp. 23-25.
109. See, for example, the many works on this topic by Francisco Marquez Villanueva, beginning with his "Conversos y cargos concejiles en el siglo XV," Revista de archivos, bibliotecas, y museos 63 ( 1957), 503-40.
110. Politics 1252b, 30.
111. See also Politics 1278b, 23-31; and 1252a, 26-35.
112. and Lester K. Field, Jr., Liberty, Dominion, and the Two Swords: On the Origins of Western Political Theology (180-398), Publications in Medieval Studies 28 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1998), to clarify the issues treated in the paragraphs that follow.
113. See Caspary, Politics and Exegesis, pp. 142-43, and the bibliography cited there.
114. Sancti Ambrosi Opera, ed. Michaela Zelzer, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 82/3 (Vienna, 1982), letters 40 and 41, pp. 145-77; letter 40.23: "Nil boni huic imminet, rex iste Iudaeus factus est" (p. 173).
115. For an example of this process see William Chester Jordan, "Jews, Regalian Rights, and the Constitution in Medieval France," AJS Review 23 (1998), 1-16.
116. On the accusations made by Castilian bishops against Alfonso X before Pope Nicholas III, see Peter Linehan, "The Spanish Church Revisited: The Episcopal Gravamina of 1279," in Authority and Power: Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter Ullmann on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Brian Tierney and Peter Linehan (Cambridge, Eng., 1980), pp. 127-47;
117. and idem, The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 3rd ser, 4 (Cambridge, Eng., 1971), pp. 176 and 219.
118. On Henry's IVs difficulties, see inter alia Ana Echevarria Arsuaga, "La conversion des chevaliers musulmans dans la Castille du XVe siècle," in Conversions islamiques: Identités religieuses en Islam méditerranéen, ed. Mercedes García-Arenal (Paris, 2001), pp. 119-40;
119. and Barbara Weissberger, "'¡A tierra, puto!': Alfonso de Palencia's Discourse of Effeminacy," in Queer Iberia (above, n. 17), pp. 291-324.
120. On Isabel as "protector of the Jews and daughter of a Jewess" see the account of the Polish traveler Nicolas Popplau, in Javier Liske, Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal en los siglos XV, XVI, y XVII: Colección (Madrid, [1879]).
121. On Ferdinand, see Maurice Kriegel, "Histoire sociale et ragots: Sur l''ascendance juive' de Ferdinand le Catholique," in Movimientos migratorios y expulsiones en la diáspora occidental, ed. Fermín Miranda García (Pamplona, 2000), pp. 95-100.
122. Text in Benito Ruano, "El memorial" (above, n. 5), pp. 320-21.
123. On the work accomplished by these treatises and the vocabulary of natural science that they utilize, see my "'Race' and 'Racism' in Late Medieval Spain."
124. See, for example, Haim Beinart's discussion of Ciudad Real in Conversos on Trial (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 55-58.
125. to Queen Isabel: ID1933, MP2-81. In ID0181, PN10-33, Montoro deploys the "killers of Christ motif" in order to threaten the Corregidor of Córdoba: "Ca el linaje que es ya visto / de grandeza y de valor / que pudo con ihesu xpisto / Podra con corregidor." On converso self-mockery see inter alia Francisco Marquez Villanueva, "Jewish 'Fools' of the Spanish Fifteenth Century," Hispanic Review 50 (1982), 385-409.
126. On Montoro's poem to Isabel see most recently Barbara F. Weissberger's "'Deceitful Sects': The Debate about Women in the Age of Isabel the Catholic," in Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. Thelma S. Fenster and Clare A. Lees (New York, 2002), pp. 207-35, here pp. 214-19.
127. See also the valuable review essay of E. Michael Gerli, "Anton de Montoro and the Wages of Eloquence: Poverty, Patronage, and Poetry in 15th-C. Castile," Romance Philology 48 (1994-95), 265-76 .
128. "Epicureanism and Scepticism in the Early Seventeenth Century," in Philomathes: Studies and Essays in the Humanities in Memory of Philip Merlan, ed. Robert B. Palmer and Robert HamertonKelly (The Hague, 1971), pp. 346-57.
129. José Faur, In the Shadow of History: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity (Albany, N.Y., 1992), here p. 142.
130. Cf. Yirmiyahu Yovel on the "special hybrid phenomenon - perhaps even sui generis," of the Marranos: Spinoza and Other Heretics, 1: The Marrano of Reason (Princeton, N.J., 1989), p. 23.
131. Much more discreet are Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi's arguments about the nonnormative nature of Marrano Judaism in From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso. A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marranism and Jewish Apologetics, Columbia Univesity Studies in Jewish History, Culture, and Institutions 1 (New York, 1971), e.g., p. 44.
132. On the "Jewishness" of Spinoza see, more generally, Manfred Walther, "Spinoza und das Problem einer jüdischen Philosophie," in Die philosophische Aktualität der jüdischen Tradition, ed. Werner Stegmaier, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 1499 (Frankfurt, 2000), pp. 281-330;
133. and most recently Willi Goetschel, Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (Madison, Wis., 2004).
134. See, for example, the special issue of Pardes 29 (1999): "Le juif caché." For other arguments that find the origin and transmission of modern subjectivities in Marrano lineages see, for example, Jean-Pierre Winter, Les errants de le chair: Études sur l'hystérie masculine (Paris, 1998);
135. and Elaine Marks, Marrano as Metaphor: The Jewish Presence in French Writing (New York, 1996).
136. A different juxtaposition of converts and modernity, although equally problematic, is Geoffrey Gait Harpham's "So . . . What Is Enlightenment? An Inquisition into Modernity," Critical Inquiry 20 (1994), 524-56.
137. See, for example, Coloquio entre un cristiano y un judio, ed. Aitor García Moreno, Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar 40 (London, 2003), pp. 148-49, on the Jews as rationalist skeptics; 154-55, on the Jews as a hybrid people; and 85, on the Talmud as an ironic joke by the rabbis that the Jews later confused with truth. All of these polemical topoi occur in other Christian sources, but this one (first produced ca. 1370 and copied in the mid-fifteenth century) spans the period that concerns me here.
138. Arguments for the philosophical importance of converso hybridity in the development of modernity also have a distinguished scholarly pedigree. Carl Gebhardt provides an early example: "Wenn wir der Geschichte der Marranen einen Sinn geben wollen, so kann er nicht darin gefunden werden, daß sie in einer im ganzen wenig eigenartigen Weise fremde Religion reproducierten. Ihr Erlebnis war, ihre Einmaligkeit in der Geschichte, daß sie zwischen den Welten, zwischen den Glauben standen, in der Spaltung ihres Bewußtseins die ersten Menschen ohne eingeborene Kategorien": Die Schriften des Uriel da Costa, Bibliotheca Spinozana 2 (Amsterdam, 1922), p. xxxix (my thanks to Benjamin Lazier for the reference).
139. For a contemporary example, see Klaus W. Hempfer's discussion of "Ambiguität," "Hybridität," and "Komplexitätspotenzierung" in Möglichkeiten des Dialogs: Struktur und Funktion einer literarischen Gattung zwischen Mittelalter und Renaissance in Italien, Text und Kontext 15 (Stuttgart, 2002), pp. 1-38.
140. Karl Marx, "Zur Judenfrage," in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke, 1 (Berlin, 1957;