Navigating Tolerance: Culture, Religion, and War in Medieval Spain (11-26-12)

    At adult ed, Jeffery Kramer described the structured, if uneasy, relationship between Christians, Jews and Muslims in Medieval Spain and Portugal. On Nov. 18, Kramer began by briefly discussing the political history of the Iberian Peninsula. Muslims traveled from the Middle East to present-day Spain in the early 700s. By 790 A.D., Christians had lost the Peninsula except for a small part of northern Spain in the Muslim conquest. 
    Slowly, Christians began to take back the Iberian Peninsula. By 1300, the reconquista, or re-conquest, was complete. Christians were not initially powerful enough to declare war on the Muslim kings, so they began to work together with the Muslims and paid off Muslim kings to keep the kings from attacking Christian kingdoms. This brought about an attitude of cohabitation between Christians and Muslims. They did not necessarily like one another, but they tolerated one another. As Kramer said, the members of the two religions, as well as Jews, worked together to take down whoever became too powerful, regardless of religion. 
    The Jews present on the Iberian Peninsula found ways to co-exist with Christians and Muslims. Kramer explained that Jews often worked as financiers for Christian kings. The Jews understood that if they belonged to a Christian king and they lived in an anti-Semitic society, the king would protect them. 
    A dichotomy between persecution and toleration existed during this time. Jews could not go about armed, could not move away, but they also had protection. It actually kept Jews alive to be singled out, made to wear special clothing, walk around unarmed, and live in certain areas of a city. 
    Muslims were also differentiated from Christians and not allowed to dress as Christians. Though minorities during this time were not allowed to be the same as Christians, sometimes they did not want to be the same because the members of the three religions, especially their leaders, were interested in orthodoxy.

    Kramer explained that violence was viewed as central to the production and maintenance of the boundaries that were in turn connected to cosmopolitan living. Knowledge of who was Jewish, Muslim, or Christian allowed medieval society to function by maintaining the required boundaries between the religions.

--By Karen Smith