Coexistence in Medieval Spain

Convivencia (Co-Existence) in Medieval Spain:
Exploring Spains Identity and

History Through the Work of Amrico Castro

Roger L. Martinez-Davila

2001

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Roger L. Martinez-Davila, 2001. Special use permission granted to Coursera.org. Page 1 of 22
Convivencia (Co-Existence) in Medieval Spain:
Exploring Spains Identity and
History Through the Work of Amrico Castro

Introduction
The formulation of a regional and cultural identity is a dynamic and constantly
evolving process. As with all definitional experiences, there are historical events that
lend themselves to easy integration and interpretation and there are those that cause
discomfort and disagreement. Historically, the Spanish have grappled with their
definitional experiences through the myth of one, eternal Spain. During his lifetime,
Amrico Castro challenged this myth and proposed a radical new interpretation of
Spanish history. Through his novel exploration of Spanish identity, Amrico Castro
succeeded not only at illuminating Spains medieval period, but also in creating a new
and compelling myth of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim co-existence.
Although the scholar J. N. Hillgarth claimed that Spanish history itself is
influenced, oversimplified, and distorted by the power of certain myths, that does not
undermine myths ability to provide meaningfully explanations of identity.
1
Myths can
provide an ordering framework and rationale for cultural beliefs and can be powerful
tools in helping social groups understand their modes of existence. It is within this
mythic Spanish tradition that Castro is the storyteller. As he himself notes:
To write history demands a historian willing (and able) to enter into the
living consciousness of others through the door of his own life and
consciousnessthat is to say, he must dedicate his sense of life (and of
being alive) to the lives of others.
2

1
J. N. Hillgarth, Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality, History and Theory, volume 24,
issue 1 (February 1985): 23.
2
Stephen Gillman and Edmund L. King, An Idea of History: Selected Essays of Amrico Castro,
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977) 305.
Through his recounting of the cross-fertilization of culture and his construction of the
convivencia (co-existence) myth, Castro bridges peoples and time to reveal a Spanish
identity that offers repentance for some and acceptance for others.
A Brief Biography of Amrico Castro
To understand Amrico Castros approach to historiography and his vision of
convivencia one must begin with his biographical metamorphosisit commences with a
familial ancestry that panders to the one, eternal Spain myth and concludes with
Castros lifelong commitment to reconciling Spains true cultural identity.
The origins of the Castro family lie in the jumbled peoples of Granada, the last
portion of the Iberian Peninsula that the Christians were to retake from the Muslims.
Granadas inhabitants, who lived under Islamic rule for over 800 years, were a mix of
ethnicities, customs, and religions. It is from this ancestry the Castro family, like so many
Spanish families, failed to acknowledge its mixed lineage and claimed that it had clean
blood. Further, his family maintained that it was of exemplary religious distinction and
was no less than descended from a Granadan Catholic archbishop.
3
For centuries the
Castro family lived within the cultural confines of the one, eternal Spain myth and
professed their Spanishness with their ancestral Christian vestments. Yet, here lies
the cultural contradiction for most Spaniards. The Castro family is a noteworthy one,
such much so, that in the Espasa encyclopedia they are recorded as cristianos
nuevosrecent converts to Christianitywhich implies at one time they, as so many
other Spaniards, were not Christians.
4
Like a book with a mislabeled cover, the Castro
identity was not what it seemed and Castro would come to recognize this as he came of
age.

3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
Born on May 4, 1885, Amrico Castro started life as an expatriate in the small
town of Cantagalo, Brazil.
5
It seems fitting that Castro entered the world physically
outside of Spain since he spent his lifetime trying to penetrate its inner cultural identity.
His parents, both Spanish merchants who had moved to Brazil to open a general store,
were Antonio Castro of Granada and Carmen Quesada of Alhama.
6
Not much is
recorded of Castros childhood years in Brazil, rather biographers whisk the reader with
Castro, at four years of age, back to Spain.
7
It is not until Castro reaches young
adulthood that one can begin to trace the outlines of his intellectual formation. Castro
began his academic career at the University of Granada where he earned a degree in
arts and letter in 1904, and continued his preparations in 1905 through 1908 at the
Sorbonne in Paris.
8
Here the scholar Ronald Surtz and others begin to reveal that
Castro will grow into much more than a nativist academic under the influence of the
one, eternal Spain myth and that his mind will be pried open by more cosmopolitan
views. At the Sorbonne, Castro studied literature and philosophy and, according to
Surtz, garnered a splendid command of French, both written and spoken, with a
correctness of accent not commonly found among Spaniards.
9
Castros studies at the
Sorbonne may have marked the beginning of his intellectual transformationone
characterized by his willingness to expand his horizons beyond his native tongue and
ironclad parochial thought.

5
Ronald E. Surtz, Jaime Ferrn, and Daniel P. Testa, eds. Amrico Castro: The Impact of His
Thought: Essays to Mark the Centenary of His Birth (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of
Medieval Studies, Ltd, 1988), ix.
6
Ibid.
7
Jos Rubia Barcia,m ed. Amrico Castro and the Meaning of Spanish Civilization (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976), 7.
8
Surtz, 7; Barcia, x.
9
Ibid.
After 1908, Castro returned to Spain to fulfill his obligatory military service, and
did so in Madrid, in a ministerial office.
10
Once he completed his military obligations, the
young man became connected with the Institutin Libre de Enseanza where he would
meet his mentor, Ramn Menndez Pidal.
11
It is at this critical juncture in his life that
Castro may have found the right confluence of people, place, and thought that would
allow him to burst from his chrysalis to actively confront Spanish identity.
Castros first significant confrontation with his and Spains identity occurred when
began to interact with two important Spanish thinkersFrancisco Giner de los Ros and
Ramn Menndez Pidal.
Ros impact was both personal and intellectual. On a personal level Castro was
deeply changed by the elder Ros when he chastised Castros persistence use of the
Andalusian dialect of Granada in his spoken Spanish.
12
Castro clearly demonstrated his
self-consciousness regarding his identity in how he responded to this criticism. Shaken
by this event and what it may have said about his Spanishness, Castro retired to his
room for several days to master the preferred Madrillean Castilian Spanish.
13
Here,
perhaps still too young to find his own inner strength, Castro succumbed one last time to
Spains jealous monotheistic grip on his identity. Oddly, Castro was also spurred by
Ros to confront and take sides in the Spanish identity battle that was then taking shape
at this time period. Castros cogitations were perfectly timed with a new intellectual
movement spearheaded by none other than Ros. The movements goals included:
[A] critical appraisal of the past and present, the destruction of old myths,
the updating of Spanish history and life, and the acquisition of a sense of
possible moral and intellectual equality, if not superiority, in relation to the
most industrially advanced European nations.
14

10
Surtz, x.
11
Surtz, xi; Barcia, 7.
12
Surtz, x
13
Ibid.
14
Barcia, 8
Within the new freedoms offered by this movement, Castro found the necessary footing
to challenge his own preconceptions of Spanish identity.
Similarly, as early as 1910, Castro became quite intellectually involved with Pidal
when he helped the elder academic co-found the Centro de Estudios Histricos. Castro
was deeply influenced by Pidals own efforts to understand the Spanish psyche, as well
as by Pidals initial tinkering with the concept of convivencia.
In sum, the combination of people, thought, and place allowed Castro and his
contemporaries the opportunity to emerge from their complete immersion in the Catholic
faith and explore new ideas.
15
Barcia elaborates:
For the first time in modern Spanish history some Spaniards were going
to be educated in their own country, in a completely laical manner,
respectful of every religion but free of legal or moral obligation to follow
any religion in particular, and especially the official Roman Catholicism.
16

The intellectual flowering of Castro and the Spanish intelligentsia only enjoyed a
short spring with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Castro and more than
half a million of his intellectual compatriots, left the country, which itself would be in ruins
by 1939 and in the hands of Francos despicable tyranny.
17
Castro, like many other
writers, intellectuals, and artists, relocated to the United States so that he could continue
his efforts to pull Spanish thought forward, abet in exile. First he was invited to teach at
the University of Wisconsin (1937-1939), and afterwards at the University of Texas at
Austin (1939-1940), Princeton University (1940-1953), University of Houston (1955), and
the University of California at La Jolla (1964-1968).
18

It is during Castros self-imposed exile in 1948 that his historical endeavors would
reach their zenith and he would fully define his convivencia myth with the publishing of
Espana en su historia (Spain and Its History). Although Castro published many other

15
Ibid., 7.
16
Ibid., 7-8.
17
Ibid., 10
18
Ibid.
works during his academic travels through 1968, this work more than any other would
thrust Castro and his ideas into the center of the confrontation between mono-cultural
Spaniards and advocates of convivencia. Castro finally returned to Spain in 1969, but
never as the universally-welcomed returning son. Rather, he spent his remaining days
challenging his fellow Spaniardshis cultural siblingsto understand their past so that
they could realize a better future. Amrico Castro passed away on the 25
th
of July, 1972.
Castros Historical Approach
As is the case with all historians, Castro approaches his task with his own
personal blend of ideology and process. He very clearly informs Spaniards and scholars
alike that he fuses himself with the object of his study. Although some historians may
consider this approach as too personalized and more telling of the historians views than
the subjects content, it is an honest appraisal of the historical analysis process. Under
Castros ideology, the historian and history cannot be separated from each other.
Furthermore, his process involves reliving and communing with the subject matter. This
approach should not be understood as a form of self-serving mysticism, but rather an
attempt to place oneself in the shoes of another. This method, accompanied by
comprehensive research, can derive substantive historical theories and findings.
Castro began his historical endeavors with the initial myth of the one, eternal
Spain. Like other historians of his time, such as his mentor Ramn Menndez Pidal,
this was the only mythical explanation of Spanish identity.
Although Castro initially attempted to apply an ethnically cleansed approach to
his study of Cervantes, he very early on encountered the limitations of this European
model. As Gillman states:
Castros major studies of Spanish history grew out of his dissatisfaction
(he was, indeed, constitutionally dissatisfied) with his own efforts to
understand Cervantes in European termsor perhaps we should say, out
of Cervantes resistance to Castros intellectually European overtures.
19

Castro discovered Cervantes could not be understood purely on European terms
because of the impact of Islamic and Jewish literary thought on Spanish Golden Age
literature. In fact, the scholar Casey argues that it was Castros recognition of the
limitations of the European model that makes his approach so unique. As noted by
Casey:
His [Castros] seminal idea was that of the distinctness of Spanish
civilization, which had to be understood and studied on its own terms, and
not as some pale carbon copy or second rate re-run of ideas and
movements played out on the European stage.
20

It is from this point of departure that Castros ideology and approach unfoldan
approach that clearly propels the historian into the subject. Castro acknowledges in The
Meaning of Spanish Civilization that this historic construction is never objective like
rational science, but this does not mean that historical science consists in relativism or
psychological arbitrariness.
21
This willingness of Castro to acknowledge his underlying
assumptions regarding his historical approach is refreshing, and ultimately helpful to
those applying a critical eye. Castro is telling the reader not to penalize him for his
honesty, but rather to recognize his own presumptions as he has done. Castro is at his
most eloquent on this point when he states:
The evidence that historical judgment may furnish depends on how we
integrate our own lives with the historical life we are trying to understand;
!it means that the understanding of history presupposes a vital
projection of the historian within the historical fact.
22

His statements are further elucidated in Description, Narration, and History, where he
notes:

19
Gillman, viii.
20
James Casey, review of Amrico Castro and the Meaning of Spanish Civilization, edited by
Jos Rubia Barcia, in Journal of European Studies (December 1979): 299.
21
Gillman, 143.
22
Ibid.
Human phenomena do not of their own accord find their proper places in
the past. Rather, they are situated by the observer along a temporal
perspective that begins at the yesterday of his personal existence and
stretches back into the depths of time.
23

Left rather dumbfounded by the implications of Castros statement, one can only nod his
head in agreement, even if it is a forced recognition and nod. In essence, Castro is
arguing that history is only meaningful in how it relates to the principal investigator, who
has his own approach, ideas, and preferences. This is not to say that Castro proposes
ransacking historical fact for the purposes of creating a personalized and tailored
historical fiction; rather he concedes that each observer is captured by his own times
and point of view. What is still unclear from Castros writing is whether he was ultimately
successful in preventing his own personal values from overtaking the historical record.
This is still a matter of dispute between the supporters of Castros convivencia and those
that rebuff it with the concept of the one, eternal Spain.
Another fascinating aspect of Castros approach to historiography is his belief
that the historian should intermingle his own experiences with those of his subjects.
Castro describes this process as actually a form of conversation, a living
companionship with those who in one way or another have left behind them a living
expression of their lives.
24
Interestingly, Castro demonstrates with these words that he
is acutely aware of his role in continuing the conversation with future generations.
History occurs not only in the past, but also unfolds in both the present and the future
through the successive lives of historians.
In determining the focus of his study, Castro seeks issues that relate back to
human meaning, purpose, and identity. For instance, in The Spaniards, Castro states:
When we contemplate any expression of the life of a human being (or a
community), we experience almost immediately something that we might

23
Ibid., 279.
24
Ibid., 304.
call its human qualityits value or insignificance. We experience its
promise or lack of it.
25

Castro pursues the fleshy substance of lifeits significanceand in so doing looks for
that which may provide the most value to the interpretation of the past, as well as the
present.
Another critical element of Castros approach is his belief that a people and their
histories are intertwined like the strings of a rope. In the words of Castro in his essay,
The Historical WE he states:
People cannot be sundered from their histories; they are not in any way
they and their history. The profile of a peoples existence is delineated
by the horizon of its civilization and by what has been done to augment,
conserve, or annihilate it. But a peoples personality is inseparable from
its consciousness as possessor of all that it has done either to its own
benefit or to its detriment. Peoples find their being in their living histories,
in the same sense that their histories live in their collective life.
26

This is an important point since his description prevents the historian and reader from
taking historical events and subjects out of context. A rope is made of many strands,
each one vital to its integrity and strength. Castros approach, specifically his use of
literary analysis, is not without fault and limitation. According to Gillman, this is an
abiding problem in general of literary analysis. As he notes in An Idea of History:
Selected Essays of Amrico Castro:
When Amrico Castro came to the United States in 1937, that problem
was well on its way toward a definition whose terms, if they no longer
confront us, still haunt us!Too much concerned with textual history,
sources, analogues, influences, biography, and the like, he had come to
neglect paying due attention to that on which such exegetical researches
should centerthe literary work, the work of art taken in and for itself.
27

Gillman appears to have a valid point, as Castro seems a bit infatuated with the process
of extracting findings from the context surrounding the historical record and literary
sources. However, if one can distance himself from his apprehension with his approach,

25
Ibid., 8.
26
Ibid., 6-7.
27
Ibid., 3.
he might acknowledge that in spite of its intensity it nonetheless presents a reasonably
accurate portrait of Spain and her people. Specifically, convivencia is a reasonable
explanation for the interactions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in medieval Spain. And
is if almost cognizant about this concern from his grave, Castro provides in Description,
Narration and History a response that is both enlightening and frustrating. He states:
Historical judgmentit must be emphasized over and over againis at
best plausible but not scientifically demonstrable. Moreover, it becomes
increasingly insecure and exposed to all the risks of personal preference
as we go from the levels of description and narration into the higher
values of history.
28

His explanation is enlightening because it reminds the reader that historical judgment
involves judgment, a best attempt at explaining why events occurred. His explanation is
equally frustrating, since the reader has difficulty separating Castro from his subject
where are the boundaries of the two and where does fact end and fiction begin? This
question and its many possible answers continue to drive the efforts of historians to
unlock the nuances of Castros historical approach.
A Brief Exposition of Spanish History
Castro targeted his historical efforts on his native landSpainbut his aim was
clearly focused on the intense cultural interaction of Christians, Jews, and Muslims
during the period of 711 to 1492. This epoch is of vital interest to the Spanish people
and Castro because its cultural impact still reverberates some five hundred years later.
To understand this time period properly, it must be framed with the bookends of the
Spain before 711 and after 1492. Before this era, Spain did not have its own identity
and afterwards it violently cleansed its identity.
Prior to 711, Spain was not in any sense a separate and unique political and
cultural entity. It began as a battleground for two other peoples. The Iberian Peninsula,

28
Ibid., 307.
the geographic location of present day Spain and Portugal, entered the world stage
during the vicissitudes of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage during the
third century B.C.E.
29
To counter Romes victories in Sicily, the Carthaginians adapted
the Iberian Peninsula into a strategic base of operations, forever thrusting the Iberians
into the cauldron of the Mediterranean world.
30
After Romes counterattack against
Hannibals campaign in Italy, Rome took the Iberian Peninsula (133 B.C.E.) as its own
and exported to the peninsula its complex mentalitya blend of Aegean and Latin
cultures.
31
After a period of pacification of the native Iberian peoples, Rome made the
peninsula a provinceHispaniaand would dominate its people, land, customs, and
technology for the next several hundred years.
32
Although Christianity was seeded in
Hispania early on, it was not until the Edict of Milan in 313 that it began to take on official
importance in the peninsula.
33
Further, Roman administration of Hispania did not create
the foundations of a unifying element for the peninsula. Rather, as the scholar Jaime
Vicens Vives states:
Neither the Emperors, nor the Senate, nor minor Roman administrative
officials ever viewed Hispanic problems as a separate matter, nor did they
encourage any tendency in that direction.
34

The Iberian Peninsula felt its second wave of change in 409 when the Germanic
peoplesthe Visigothsbegan their successful effort to push the Romans into retreat.
35

Without the protection of the Romans, the Visigoths established their political hegemony
over the Hispanic province during the fifth and sixth centuries.
36
While adopting many of
the customs and culture of the Hispani, the Visigothic monarchy pursued its own path as

29
Jaime Vicens Vives, Approaches to the History of Spain, trans. Joan Connelly Ullman
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 14.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid., 14-15.
32
Ibid, 15.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., 22
36
Ibid., 24
well, adopting Catholicism, closing its political ranks, and forming a closed oligarchy to
the native peoples.
37
In fact, during the seventh century, the connection of the monarchy
to the people was tenuous at best, the only bridge between these two groups being the
Catholic Church.
38

After the rapid fall of the Visigothic monarchy, Spain entered a new period,
opening with the Muslim invasion directed by the Caliphate of Damascus. With no more
than a party of 7,000 Berber troops under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad, the Muslims
began their invasion of the peninsula at the Rock of Gibraltar on or about April 28, 711.
39

By July, the peninsulas future was sealed in a battle on the banks of the Guadalete
River where the Muslims engaged the Visigothic king, Roderick, routing his army of
100,000 men and killing him in the battle.
40
The Muslims would reside in Spain for the
next eight centuries.
The nascent elements of a Spanish identity did not have time to gain hold during
the Roman era, and only began to show its face during the Visigothic period.
Additionally, the face underwent a radical change under an Islamic master. The Arab
state began forming only five years after Tariq ibn Ziyads entry into the peninsula and it
inhabited over two-thirds of the peninsulas land mass. According to Thomas Glick,
Islamic political formation in Spain, known as Al-Andalus, is marked by two distinct
periods. The first period (715 to the mid-ninth century) was one of adjustment and
provincial political formation under the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus. This was
followed by a period (mid-ninth century to early eleventh century) of consolidation

37
Ibid, 24-25
38
Ibid., 26-27
39
Thomas F. Glick. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979), 32.
40
Ibid.
characterized by growing power and wealth and the establishment of the Caliphate of
Cordoba by Abd al-Rahman III in 929.
41

It is during Abd al-Rahman IIIs reign (912-961) that Spanish Islam flowers with
dramatic literary, philosophical, artistic, and technological achievements. Under Muslim
religious law, Christians and Jews are protected minorities, the dhimmi, and they coexist
and flourish in Al-Andalus.
After their humiliation in 711, the remnants of the Visigothic monarchy retreated
into the independent and newly forming Spanish Christian kingdoms in the north.
According to Castro, the kingdoms that formed after the invasion of the Muslims were
truly political and culturally separate entitiesGalicians, Portuguese, Leonese,
Castilians, Navarrase, Aragonese, and Cataloniansall competing with each other.
42

This is an important finding since it plays into Castros conflict with the myth of the one,
eternal Spain, and later provides him footing to challenge it. From these population
centers in the Christian-controlled portion of Spain would emerge the seeds of the
medieval Spanish kingdoms individual identities and their inconsistent struggle with
Islam.
43

From the late tenth to the fourteenth century, the Iberian Peninsula enters into a
complex pattern of cooperation and conflictnot just between Christians and Muslims,
but also inside of these two religious groups. Fragmentation in the Islamic political unit
begins between 1000-1010, when the Caliphate of Cordoba disintegrates into multiple
smaller Islamic states known as Party Kingdoms. These Party Kingdoms will never
again re-amalgamate to govern Al-Andalus and will eventually be ousted by 1492.
Similarly, many of these Islamic entities will align with Christian kingdoms over these five
centuries, battling each other for political control.

41
Vives, 36; Glick, 35-36.
42
Gillman, 191-192.
43
Ibid., 192.
In contrast to the Muslims, the Christians start at the point of fragmentation and
slowly coalesce into the single political dynasty of the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castile in
the late-fifteenth century under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Nonetheless,
during this five hundred year period, the Christian kingdoms fight each other for political
controlsome finding themselves strange bedfellows with the Islamic Party Kingdoms
during their Reconquest of the peninsula. As Castro highlights in The Spanish People:
[H]istorians miss the import of the so-called Reconquest in failing to see it
as simultaneously an Anti-Reconquest." It is hardly proper to
characterize as civil the quarrels among the Christians: these were wars
between independent states, each interested in prospering at the
expense of its neighbors. Thus, Sancho the Great of Navarre attacked
Vermudo III, king of Leon, and left large portions of Galicia utterly
desolate (1029-30). King Vermudo was forced to take refuge in the
mountains of the north much as the Christians had done three hundred
years before in the face of Moorish onslaught. Castilians and Navarrese
fought furiously at Atapuerca (1054). Castilians and Leonese hated each
other for centuries without respite. !Rivalry between Castilians and
Aragonese in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries kept them from driving
the Moors out of their last stronghold, the Kingdom of Granada. Not until
the end of the fifteenth century did Spaniards manage to unite around the
persons of the Catholic monarchs.
44

Thus, for Castro and the reader, Spain and Al-Andalus medieval history can only hold
itself together as a complex web of human relationships that cross religious boundaries.
It is here that the fabric of the myth of one, eternal Spain begins to show holes because
of these internal conflicts.
45
Further, Castros alternate myth of convivenciaof the
productive tension of Muslims, Christians, and Jewsgains credibility from these
historical facts. And as one explores further, they come to recognize convivencia was
not limited to cross-religious political alignments, but rather was a thicker garment
composed of people and their daily interactions.
While Spain may have held little sense of self before the Islamic invasion, she
certainly exited the fifteenth century with one. With the fall of the last Muslim Kingdom of

44
Ibid., 192-193
45
Ibid.
Granada at the southernmost tip of the peninsula and the royal decree mandating the
expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Spain became focused on the limpieza de sangrethe
cleansing of its Christian blood.
46
The Spanish Inquisition, which sought out Christian
heretics, especially recent Jewish converts, was in full force by 1492. Shortly thereafter,
in 1502, Muslims in reconquered Spain also ceased to be a protected minority and were
ordered to convert to Christianity or to leave the country.
47
Spains identity was rapidly
anchored to ensure there would only be one, eternal Christian Spain that had rid itself of
the Jewish heresy and the Muslim infidels. Convivencias opposing myth was now fully
formed.
Castros Convivencia
The origins of the word convivencia can be traced back to Ramn Menndez
Pidal, the philologist and historian, whose historical work on the Spanish language
Orgenes del espaol (Origins of Spanish) used the term convivencia de normas
(coexistent of norms) to characterize the contemporaneous existence of variant forms in
the early Romance languages of the peninsula.
48
Castro, an academic apprentice to
Pidal, built his foundation of the coexistence of peoples using this framework. What is
quite fascinating is that Castros convivencia could not have come into existence without
an external actor. The Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula provided for rare
interplay!of the three civilizations of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
49

46
Vives, 92-93.
47
Ibid.
48
Thomas F. Glick, Convivencia: An Introductory Note, in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and
Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds
(New York: The Jewish Museum, 1992), 1.
49
Benjamin R. Gampel, Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia: Convivencia through
the Eyes of Sephardic Jews, in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain,
ed. Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds (New York: The Jewish Museum,
1992), 14.
Castros convivencia, his myth, is an attempt to explain the nature of intercultural
life in medieval Spain and Al-Andalus. For Castro it meant more than the physical
coexistence of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, it meant the productive tension,
cooperation, and conflict produced by their interaction.
50
In Thomas Glicks estimation of
Castros idea, he describes convivencia as loosely defined as coexistence, but carries
connotations of mutual interpenetration and creative influence, even as it also embraces
the phenomena of mutual friction, rivalry, and suspicion.
51

What may be the most intriguing portion of Castros definition of convivencia is
the conscious role he assigns to the ethnic groups that act out the interactions. He states
that they must be self aware of this coexistence and must value becoming something
in the transformative process.
52
Put simply, Castro requires his historical subjects to be
cognizant of the events unfolding around them. Further, convivencia becomes a part of
each groups consciousness. Thomas Glick elaborates:
The cultural group must attain the ability to express this self-awareness in
some form of high culture that becomes, thereby, the moving force of
society. Within this idealist construct it therefore follows that the
Christians struggle with Jews and Muslims takes place within the
consciousness of Christians; and the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for
the other two castes. It is here that convivencia attains its special
meaning: it is the coexistence of the three groups, but only as registered
collectively and consciously in the culture of any one of them.
53

Another critical element of Castros convivencia is that it allows Jews, Muslims,
and Christians to step out of their pre-defined ethnic roles and to interact in new
manners with other ethnic groups. The ability to step out of these roles during the

50
Hillgarth, 33.
51
Thomas F. Glick, Convivencia: An Introductory Note, in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and
Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. Vivian B. Mann, Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds
(New York: The Jewish Museum, 1992), 1.
52
Ibid., 2
53
Ibid.
medieval period was extremely difficult due to sharply structured ethnic and religious
ascriptions, as well as social class delineations.
54

The Historical Record of Convivencia in Islamic Al-Andalus and Christian Spain
The formation of convivencia first occurred in the Iberian Peninsula when the
Muslims overpowered the Visigothic Christians and Jews in 711. On the contrary,
convivencia in Christian Spain did not occur until the military successes of the Christian
Reconquest began to reclaim lands and peoples.
In what may be the strongest rationale for why convivencia was possible in both
Christian- and Islamic-ruled areas was the simple economic need for itit was
economically impractical to isolate other minorities.
55
While it may have been in the
ruling partys interest to box in other religious groups, it could jeopardize the stability of
society without all parties participating in the economy. Although this inevitably created
ethnic tension between competing groups of people, it also offered opportunities for
cultural interchange in the ethnically disinterested market place.
56
In essence, in the
world of the trade of goods and services it does not matter who one worships. This
thought may not sit easily with Castro since it lacks his focus on broader group values
and identity, but it is not necessarily incongruent. This is the case because Castros
convivencia allows for variations in what is valued by the cognizant partiesif economic
interaction is the most valuable belief in an ethnically mixed society, then let it be so.
Convivencia in Islamic Al-Andalus is first observed in the tenth century under the
auspices of Abd al-Rahman III and his Caliphate of Cordoba. Abd al-Rahman III, like his
father before him, pursued an ethnically and religiously inclusive policy dedicated to the

54
Ibid., 4.
55
Mark D. Meyerson. The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: between
Coexistence and Crusade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 216.
56
Glick 1992, 5.
pacification and unification! [of] al-Andalus.
57
Abd al-Rahman III showered support on
the arts and sciences and sparked a general cultural efflorescence.
58
In addition, he
encouraged minorities to pursue their own intellectual interests by providing them with a
model of how to proceed.
59

Fortunate for Abd al-Rahman III and his brethren, Islam was uniquely positioned
to incorporate Christians and Jews into its societal structure due to their shared religious
history. According to the theological constructs of Islam, Jews and Christians were
dhimmi (People of the Book) and thus a protected minority. These dhimmi were to be
tolerated, although they did not enjoy the same society benefits as Muslims.
60
Within the
Koran, the Muslim god Allah commands:
When We made the covenant with the prophets, and with you [Muslims],
as with Noah and Abraham, Moses and Jesus son of Mary, a binding
covenant, It was so that God may ask the truthful of their sincerity.
61

With Islamic civilization in Al-Andalus living these religious values, the dhimmi
were protected from injury to their persons and property; were offered freedom to pursue
any occupation provided it did not involve authority over Muslims; were allowed freedom
of movement; and were allowed freedom of religion that included the right to manage the
affairs of their own faith-community.
62
When one reads through this rather exhaustive
list of privileges, one can only imagine that Castro used Koranic inspiration to pen his
concept of convivencia.
As the Iberian Muslims were forced in retreat, the Christian kingdoms had their
own opportunity to govern Muslims and Jews, but also Arabized Christians in the
southern and eastern portions of the Iberian Peninsula.

57
Gampel 1992, 15.
58
W. Montgomery Watt. A History of Islamic Spain (Edinburgh: University Press, 1965), 61-78.
59
Gampel 1992, 15.
60
Glick 1979, 168.
61
Al-Quran, trans. Ahmed Ali (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 355.
62
Gampel 1992, 14.
Christians used the fundamentals of the Muslim dhimmi religious contract to form
the basis of its ideals relating to inter-ethnic cooperation and coexistence, although
Christians were not religiously bound by it.
63
However, in his book, The Spanish People,
Castro states that the protection offered by the Christian kings was codified so that it
would officially sanction what was already local custom. Alfonso the Learneds legal
code, the Partidas, is an example of this codification.
64
Further, kings like Alfonso the
Learned believed they could divinely rule Jews and Muslims since the Christian god was
the vertex of a triangle in which Christians, Moors, and Jews were united.
65
Thus it is
clear that Christian kings were also taking into consideration their shared religious
tradition with the Jews and Muslims.
Castro states that the circumstances for Jews living in the reconquered territories
up until the fifteenth century was one of enviable position,
For the Jews, Spain was a new kind of Zion. At one point they had more
than a hundred synagogues, and their power, under the protection of the
kings and great lords, was at times quite considerable. They were rich,
and they cultivated the arts neglected by the Christians. They controlled
the administration of finance, and they milked the humble to fill the kings
treasury.
Of course, Castro also noted that the Christian kingdoms desperately needed the
help of its Muslim and Jewish subjects to compete with the Islamic Caliphate, and later,
the Islamic Party Kings. Out of necessity, Castro states,
The Christian states!had to keep themselves ready for war at all times...
To subsist, a civil society must have something more than booty. Warfare
may bring wealth, but it teaches nothing about how to create it. That is
why the Christian population had to turn to using the labor and skill of the
Moors and Mozrabes (Arabized Christians from the south.) And it was
not long before the Jews likewise became indispensableas bearers of
Arabic culture, as artisans and administrators, and as diplomatic or fiscal
agents. For the first three hundred years of the Reconquestindeed, until

63
Ibid., 7.
64
Gillman, 196.
65
Ibid.
the end of the fourteenth centuryChristians, Moors, and Jews were
compelled to share a common life.
66

There were limits to the cooperation among the three castes under the rule of the
Christian kingdoms. According to Christian teachings, Jews were to be kept in a
debased status because of their refusal to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, and
Gods rejection of them as his chosen people.
67
Latent tensions almost always
manifested themselves in rebellions, some as late as 1568 in the uprising of the
Moriscos [Muslims living under Christian rule] of Granada, seventy-six years after the
Christians conquered that kingdom.
68

The historical record of convivencia is a mixed one, but it accurately portrays the
key elements of Castros vision. Cooperation and conflict among the three religious
groups created a fruitful tension.
What was produced from the presses of convivencia was a fusion of life
elements in the subtlest and most intimate manners. Vocabularies, techniques,
manners of speech, dress, and diets were all involved in the joint acculturation
process.
69
The extent to which Jews, Christians, and Muslims were sharing knowledge
and cultural space is evident from the types of activities that occurred. For example,
Muslim physicians from independent Cordoba sought the advice of Catholic monks on
the treatment of disease, Mudejars studied medicine in the Christian medical system,
and Jews learned Latin scholastic medicine and philosophy from Christians.
70
However,
it is important to note that although Thomas Glick assumes that the transmission of
medical knowledge was equal among all groups, in reality information was not always
transmitted in equal quantities. The historical record reveals that most scientific,

66
Gillman, 193-194.
67
Gampel 1992, 13.
68
Gillman, 197.
69
Glick 1992, 5.
70
Glick 1992, 6.
medical, philosophical, and architectural knowledge was initially transmitted from Muslim
and Jewish scholars to their Christian brethren.
71

Nonetheless, it is Castro that reminds the reader that these and other
achievements could not have occurred without the interaction of the three castes. In
The Spanish People he states:
Pride, prejudice, and a confused sense of values have prevented
historians from realizing that Spaniards are not a completely Occidental
people. But it is precisely this that enabled themCastilians,
Portuguese, and Cataloniansto realize their great works. Their
language is Latin in character, and their connections are with the West;
but their mode of existence came about as a result of the intermingling of
Christians, Moors, and Jews from the eighth century to the end of the
fifteenth.
72

Conclusions
Amrico Castro reminds Spaniards that, Peoples arrive at the high plateau of
historical life only after long and hesitant experimentationa process that is difficult to
perceive, let alone understand.
73
The myth of one, eternal Spain must now be seen as
a part of that experimentation process for the Spanish because it does not accurately
account for eight hundred years of Spains existence. It is a story than can no longer
support giving undue weight to works like El libro de las cinco excelencias del espaol
(The Book of the Five Excellencies of the Spanish People), which praised the five
Spanish excellenciespassionate zeal for religion, military glory, purity of lineage, the
monarchy, and extreme generosity.
74
As expertly noted by Hillgarth, From the point of
view of most non-Spaniards and even of some contemporaries inside Spain these
virtues appear as fanaticism, one-sided pride, lust for dominion, rodomontade, and

71
Robert Hillenbrand, The Ornament of the World: Medieval Cordoba as a Cultural Centre,
in The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), 122.
72
Gillman, 188.
73
Gillman, 308.
74
Hillgarth, 24.
vulgar ostentation.
75
Spain can no longer clutch this myth as the historical truth of its
identity.
In contrast to the outdated and historical inaccurate myth of one, eternal Spain,
Castros convivencia myth is a more compelling explanation of the complex cultural
interaction between Spains three civilizations.
76
He strikes the word influence from the
storytellers lexicon and replaces it with co-exist. Although Castros approach to
convivencia still retains some limitations, including what Thomas Glick calls its labored
idealist notions, nonetheless:
Castros convivencia survives. What we add to it is the admission that
cultural interaction inevitably reflects a concrete and very complex social
dynamic. What we retain of it is the understanding that acculturation
implies a process of internalization of the other that is the mechanism by
which we make foreign cultural traits our own
77

Spanish identity has forever been changed by Castros convivencia because it has
allowed contemporary Spain to embrace its true religious and cultural roots. Spains
sangre mezcladaits mixed bloodwas and continues to be a critical source of its
cultural identity.

75
Hillgarth, 24.
76
Gampel 1992, 15.
77
Glick 1992, 2, 7.
Bibliography

Al-Quran. Translated by Ahmed Ali. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Barcia, Jos Rubia. Barcia, ed. Amrico Castro and the Meaning of Spanish Civilization.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Blanks, David R., and Michael Frassetto. Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe: Preception of Order. New York: St. Martins Press, 1999.

Casey, James. Review of Amrico Castro and the Meaning of Spanish Civilization, edited by Jos
Rubia Barcia. In Journal of European Studies (December 1979): 299-302.

Castro, Amrico. The Spaniards. Translated by Willard F. King and Selma Margaretten.

Esposito, John L. Islam: The Straight Path. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Gillman, Stephen, and Edmund L. King. An Idea of History: Selected Essays of Amrico Castro.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977.

Glick, Thomas F. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1979.

Hillgarth, J. N. Hillgarth. Spanish Historiography and Iberian Reality, History and Theory,
volume 24, issue 1 (February 1985): 23-43.

Jayyusi, Salma Khadra, ed. The Legacy of Muslim Spain, ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992.

Mann, Vivian B., Thomas F. Glick, and Jerrilynn D. Dodds, eds. Convivencia: Jews, Muslims,
and Christians in Medieval Spain. New York: The Jewish Museum, 1992.

Meyerson, Mark D. The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: between
Coexistence and Crusade. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Surtz, Ronald E., Jaime Ferrn, and Daniel P. Testa, eds. Amrico Castro: The Impact of His
Thought: Essays to Mark the Centenary of His Birth. Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of
Medieval Studies, Ltd, 1988.

Vives, Jaime Vicens. Approaches to the History of Spain. Translated by Joan Connelly Ullman.

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Coexistence in Medieval Spain

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Convivencia (Co-Existence) in Medieval Spain:

Exploring Spains Identity and

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