Were God's People Destined to be Ruled by a Mortal King? A Judeo-Converso- Christian Tradition (original) (raw)
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Studies in Honour of Ora Limor, 2014
I n an ongoing effort to de-essentialize identity, current historiography is insisting on hybridism as a major means to understanding Iberian converso idiosyncrasies. This recent shift has contributed to a re-evaluation of fervent Christians of converso origin, like Alonso de Cartagena, Bishop of Burgos (1384-1456). Instead of regarding them, as in past scholarship, as 'renegades' or as 'suspected Judaizers' , hybridism enables us to analyse these cases as coherent, albeit sui generis byproducts of a sincere Christian faith coupled with a strong sense of belonging to Jewish notions of peoplehood. However, what began as a salutatory response to past conceptual and ideological rigidities was rapidly transformed into over-subjective and simplistic narrations of the converso phenomenon: as if converso complexity was a mere matter of inner Judeo-Christian dualities. Against this tendency, I endorse a more politicized perception of converso hybridism. This will help us to better understand why and how so many sincere Christian conversos, like Alonso de Cartagena, chose to elaborate on a major Christian theological-political concept: that of the 'mystical body'. Let us remember that, according to Ernest kantorowicz, the concept of a mystical body (corpus mysticum) was a major element in the process of building
A Philosophical History: Unity and Diversity in Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s Historia de rebus Hispanie
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Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas, 2019
This essay explores a range of works by Alonso de Cartagena, bishop of Burgos from 1435-1456, and places them within the context of fifteenth-century debates about Conversos, nobility, and Castilian and Spanish national identities. Through careful attention to the role of Jews and Judaism within Cartagena’s thought, it shows that the bishop worked to forge a Judeo-Christian identity for Spain in which Conversos were not simply included or tolerated but required, precisely because of their Jewish lineage, for the Church Militant and the Spanish “nation” to fulfill their divinely-ordained missions. To counter the developing racial logic of opponents to Conversos’ integration, Cartagena distinguished between the relative roles of lineage and will in the Jews’ fall from theological nobility. However, the logic of this approach entailed the exclusion of observant Jews, along with “pagans” and Muslims, from the civil and religious community that Cartagena envisioned.
This paper gives an overview of the national and international research on the biblical tradition of the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and twelfth centuries. It describes and analyzes the status quaestionis from various perspectives, seeking to broaden the dominant Spanish-centred research, which widely neglected the Hispanic peripheries, such as Catalonia or Portugal, and focused on single outstanding manuscripts without situating important features of Iberian Bible production within the wider European context. The paper crosses mental, geographic and scientific barriers to pioneer new methods of refining our understanding of the biblical landscape of the medieval Iberian Peninsula. It assesses the heuristic dimensions of research on underestimated or even neglected Bible fragments and highlights the role of Andalusian Arabic Bible translations within the panorama of the Iberian biblical tradition. In addition, it draws attention to the rich, but hitherto neglected study of glossed Bibles of the new French type, and finally underlines the historical, exegetical and transcultural evidence of non-biblical texts transmitted in the context of Iberian Bible manuscripts. Este artigo apresenta uma visão geral da investigação nacional e internacional sobre a tradição bíblica da Península Ibérica entre os séculos VIII e XII. Descreve-se e analisa-se sob várias perspetivas o status quaestionis, procurando-se ampliar a pesquisa dominante, centrada no espanhol, que descurou amplamente as periferias hispânicas, como a Catalunha ou Portugal, e se concentrou em manuscritos únicos, sem situar características importantes da produção da Bíblia Ibérica no contexto europeu. O documento atravessa barreiras mentais, geográficas e científicas para propor novos métodos que melhorem a nossa compreensão da paisagem bíblica da Península Ibérica medieval. O texto avalia ainda as dimensões heurísticas da pesquisa em fragmentos bíblicos subestimados ou até negligenciados e destaca o papel das traduções da Bíblia arábica andaluza no panorama da tradição bíblica ibérica. Além disso, chama a atenção para o estudo rico, mas até agora negligenciado, de Bíblias glosadas do novo tipo francês e, finalmente, sublinha a evidência histórica, exegética e transcultural dos textos não-bíblicos transmitidos no contexto dos manuscritos bíblicos ibéricos.
El poder y lo sagrado: intereses políticos y religiosos en la canonización de Vicente Ferrer
Anuario de Estudios Medievales
El presente artículo examina algunas cuestiones políticas y religiosas relacionadas con la canonización de San Vicente Ferrer, a través de una atenta y a menudo compleja lectura de los materiales de la canonización, de cartas y de hagiografía contemporánea. Los más fervientes promotores de su canonización fueron los Montfort, Duques de Bretaña, donde el santo fue enterrado; ellos utilizaron su buena relación con el dominico para afirmar la sagrada legitimidad de su dinastía, que había llegado al poder después de una sangrienta guerra civil y que adoptó una imagen casi real, similar a la de la monarquía francesa. En su Aragón natal, la situación era más complicada. El dominico había aupado a los Trastámara al poder en 1412, pero su protagonismo en el anuncio de la sustracción de la Corona de Aragón a la obediencia del papa Benedicto XIII disminuyó su importancia simbólica en su propia tierra. Solo después de la conquista del Reino de Nápoles por Alfonso V empezaron los Trastámara a i...