The Muslim/Mudejar in the Cantigas of Alfonso X, el Sabio
By Rhona Zaid
Sharq Al-Andalus. N. 4 (1987)
Introduction: A great deal of current interest has been sparked regarding Alfonso X’s attitudes towards the various minorities which comprised his dominions. An excellent place to begin any serious re-assesment of alfonsine ideas of tolerance and intolerance is provided by the Cantigas of Santa María, the king’s greatest contribution to medieval art and letters.
Castilian society, as a whole under Alfonso, at this time was marked by a degree of religious identification of an intensity unknown in the rest of Europe. At first the Reconquest may have been largely a political and military enterprise to recover what had been Hispano-Christian territory. But the ensuing acceptance of a degree of “toleration” did not imply relativism or equality, for Castilian Christians were firmly convinced of the religious inferiority as well as the legal inferiority of the Muslims and Jews.
The Muslim/Mudejar in the Cantigas of Alfonso X, el Sabio
By Rhona Zaid
Sharq Al-Andalus. N. 4 (1987)
Introduction: A great deal of current interest has been sparked regarding Alfonso X’s attitudes towards the various minorities which comprised his dominions. An excellent place to begin any serious re-assesment of alfonsine ideas of tolerance and intolerance is provided by the Cantigas of Santa María, the king’s greatest contribution to medieval art and letters.
Castilian society, as a whole under Alfonso, at this time was marked by a degree of religious identification of an intensity unknown in the rest of Europe. At first the Reconquest may have been largely a political and military enterprise to recover what had been Hispano-Christian territory. But the ensuing acceptance of a degree of “toleration” did not imply relativism or equality, for Castilian Christians were firmly convinced of the religious inferiority as well as the legal inferiority of the Muslims and Jews.
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