Prologus/epilogus est,non legitur

Donald Shaw and Monroe Z. Hafter have argued that in writing Ramiro, conde de Lucena Rafael Húmara y Salamanca was attempting to reconcile the tension between conflicting political and worldviews that was prevalent in early nineteenth-century Spanish discourse. In this article, I argue that one way in which Húmara explores and contains the tension between the traditional Catholic and the emerging Romantic worldviews, as well as between the conservative and liberal views of the Spanish nation, is through his depiction of Muslim Spain. Throughout the novel, Húmara presents Muslim Spain as a place of unrestrained passion and anarchy that should be avoided because it presents a threat to Christian virtues. Simultaneously, however, Muslim Spain provides a respite from the repressiveness of the Christian world and provides a space where man is governed by an arbitrary destiny instead of a benevolent God, and human love, whatever its consequences, has been elevated to an absolute value. As I hope to demonstrate, although Húmara attempts to draw distinctions between Muslim and Christian Spain, and, in turn, the Romantic and Enlightenment worldview, these distinctions become less clear as the novel progresses.     

Changes and survival: the territory of Lleida (Catalonia) after the twelfth-century conquest

The city of Lleida and its surrounding territory were conquered by the counts of Barcelona and Urgell in late 1149, ending over four centuries of Muslim rule. This territory formed the western frontier of Catalonia with Aragon and Lleida, and would be one of the major cities of what was known as ‘New Catalonia’, the lands conquered to the south and west of the Carolingian ‘Spanish March’ during the twelfth century. The article describes how patterns of settlement, agriculture and fortification changed after the conquest to conform to the needs of a feudal society. It describes continuities such as the importance of irrigation canals, as well as the reorganisation of the population with Christian settlement and transfers and expulsions of the Islamic population and a greater concentration of the population into fortified spaces.     

Maltese ‘gallarija’: a gender and space perspective

In Malta, there are hundreds of balconies, especially in Valletta. However, the most fascinating ones are boxed-balconies known as ‘Gallarijia’ in Maltese. The Knights, an ultra religious Roman Catholic military Order who ruled Malta for over 260 years, adopted covered-balconies designed and used in Muslim countries; in the hope that it would ensure their segregated life style as well as; concealing their illicit sexual activities with Maltese women. The Grand Master de la Cassiere built the first covered-balcony in his palace in Valletta; soon it found affinity with the Maltese well-to-do families who called it their own. Although, cultural and technological transfers between Muslim and Christian worlds have always been a way of life in the Mediterranean region, successfully adopting an innovation from another culture requires suitable social, economic and cultural environment in the host country. The objective of this article is to explain how and why a Christian military order has successfully adopted a Muslim inspired design for their balconies. We suggest the key to understand this phenomenon and the paradox it poses is the status of women in Malta during the Knights' rule.     

Opposing Identity: Muslims,Christians and the Military Orders in Rural Aragon

THIS paper addresses the issue of identity among Christian and Muslim groups in medieval Spain after the Reconquest in the 12th century. A wide variety of archaeological evidence, including artefacts, graffiti, settlement morphology and standing buildings, demonstrates that ethnic and racial divides were etched into material culture and endured until the final expulsion of the Muslim population at the beginning of the 17th century.     

Between court and counts: Carolingian Catalonia and the aprisio grant, 778–897

In the late eighth century, Charlemagne issued a new kind of land grant in Septimania and the Spanish March to refugees fleeing Muslim Spain. This grant, the aprisio , was made from fiscal land in deserted areas and included special rights and immunities. Previous scholars have interpreted the aprisio in economic and military terms as a mechanism to entice settlers to the region in order to make the land productive and to provide warriors to defend the Frankish frontier. This article suggests that political concerns also may have played an important role, arguing that the aprisio grant was an attempt by Carolingian kings to limit the power exercised by very powerful marcher counts.     

The origins of the cult of St James of Compostela

James the Great, son of Zebedee and brother of St John, was one of the three Apostles privileged to accompany Jesus on special occasions like the Transfiguration and the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was beheaded in 42 AD by order of Herod. His connection with Spain is here the subject of critical enquiry, and it is demonstrated that there is virtually no evidence at all to substantiate the belief that his mortal remains lie in Spain, at Santiago de Compostela, which became one of the most important pilgrimage centres of the medieval West; nor indeed that he ever preached in Spain or visited that country. It is only in the ninth century that sources begin to mention the discovery of James' burial-place in Spain, while from the seventh century his preaching in Spain is mentioned. From about 800 the legend of St James in Spain took root in Latin Christian tradition.     

Christian–Muslim Relations in Egypt in the Wake of the Arab Spring

The Arab Spring protests that brought massive and largely unforeseen political change to Egypt included all sectors of society, including the Egyptian Christian population, known as Copts. Copts participated in large numbers in the protests that brought about regime change in February 2011, but the broader implications of the revolution to Copts are unclear. In this essay, I address the changes in Christian–Muslim relations that attended the development of a new republican regime in Egypt as a result of the Arab Spring. While the former regime of President Hosni Mubarak had formed a stable elite partnership with the hierarchy of the Coptic Orthodox Church (a “neo‐millet” system), the 2011 revolution contributed to the erosion of this partnership in favor of a republican and pluralist model of citizenship in which individual Copts represent their own interests. The increasingly assertive public role of lay movements among Copts, coupled with the death of the Coptic Patriarch (pope) and his replacement by a younger successor, points to the continued erosion of the elite partnership in favor of the new model. Time will tell whether or not pluralist representation or a retrenched corporatism that favors the church will dominate Christian–Muslim relations in Egypt into the future.     

‘Those same cursed Saracens’: Charlemagne's campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula as religious warfare

While it is well known that many of Charlemagne's wars had a strong religious element, Frankish campaigns against the Muslims of Spain in his reign have generally been understood as secular exercises in power politics. This article presents evidence contemporary to Charlemagne's reign to argue against this, using a diverse range of sources to conclude that many observers of the Frankish invasions of the Iberian Peninsula understood them as religious wars aimed both at the defending of Christian communities in Francia and protecting and expanding the worship of Christianity in Spain. Further, although the prosecution of these wars was politically opportunistic, the sources suggest that Charlemagne and his court encouraged interpretations of these campaigns in religious terms and that they might be considered examples of religious war.     

Cultural Materiality and Spiritual Alienation

Abstract

This article takes its point of departure in Phillip Blond’s Christian criticism of secular materialisms and the failure of modern thought to appreciate the true materiality of creation. He challenges secular thought and returns to a combination of Greek and Christian Trinitarian thought, in order to reach for a new ground for political theology. Blond’s Christian ontological claims are contested, but an aspect of them is brought into the context of cultural creation and related to questions of the spiritual dimension of cultural arte-facts in a secular setting. Against the background of Friedrich Nietzsche’s struggle with the difficulty of singling out a pure secular culture from the old and (in his view) stifling religious heritage in society and culture, this article suggests that a radical notion of human intentional (but finite) creation, analogous to Blond’s idea of God’s infinite creative intention, may be helpful for a construction of a materialistic critical theory about contingent spiritual obstacles to political change.     

Knowledge of the past and the judgement of history in tenth‐century Trier: Regino of Prüm and the lost manuscript of Bishop Adventius of Metz

Regino of Prüm's chronicle is an invaluable source for ninth‐ and early tenth‐century Frankish history, but also for contemporary perceptions of that history. Though Regino's motivations for writing continue to be discussed, most historians now agree that his account can be read as one of Carolingian rise and fall. This article argues that this interpretative stance should be considered as in part a product of Regino's engagement with the surprisingly limited sources for the ninth century at his disposal. Taken together, these texts suggested a narrative for which Regino could find ample confirmation in the events of his own time.     

From Where Does the Red Tory Speak? Phillip Blond,Theology and Public Discourse

Abstract

This article examines the role of theology in the public discourse of Phillip Blond. For one whose professional and academic training has been in Christian theology, Blond appears surprisingly reluctant to declare the theological roots of his political convictions. It is possible that this is an entirely pragmatic strategy, concerned not to alienate a largely secular audience, although this may be self-defeating if critics suspect some kind of sleight of hand. Yet it also fails to identify the sources of the traditions and practices which will actually inform a renewed political and cultural economy of virtue. Blond's diffidence towards declaring his theological stance contrasts with other traditions such as public theology, which argues that coherent and convincing Christian speech in public must always be prepared to put itself to the test of public scrutiny. Such transparency and accountability implies a respect for, but not necessarily a capitulation to, the insights of secular reason.     

Overlooked Husbands: The Paradox of Unfree Marriage in the Carolingian World

Unfree people in the Roman world could not legally marry, while they could in the Middle Ages. This paper explores the marriage of the unfree in the Carolingian empire (750–900 CE), a society with an intense moral concern about marriage. Carolingian churchmen wrote extensively about marriage, using a strongly gendered discourse focusing on how men should approach marriage and behave as husbands. However, these moral and legal texts rarely discussed unfree marriage, even though the practice was common. It is argued that this silence reflects the persistence of late antique class-based gender models, in which masculinity was reserved for married property holders. Although legal prohibitions on unfree marriages had ended, Carolingian moralists continued to be influenced by patristic assumptions that these were not valid relationships. These assumptions, combined with Frankish social practices that largely excluded unfree men from other key male roles, such as arms-bearing, meant that unfree husbands were not conceptualised as sufficiently ‘manly’ to have their marriages discussed. It is only from the tenth century onwards, when images of masculinity began to fragment more along lines of social status, that authors began explicitly to state that the Christian ideas of marriage applied to all, free and unfree.     

An abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde‐Freinet

In July 972, Muslim raiders from the citadel of Fraxinetum (modern La Garde‐Freinet) abducted Abbot Maiolus of Cluny and his entourage as they crossed the Great Saint Bernard Pass (Mons Iovis) in the western Alps. This article analyses a little‐known letter that Maiolus sent to his Cluniac brethren to secure payment for his release. Interwoven with biblical passages drawn from the Book of Samuel and the Psalter, the abbot's ransom letter provides the rare opportunity to examine how one of the most influential Christian leaders of the tenth century perceived his Muslim captors and their religion.     

The Carolingian response to the revolt of Boso, 879–887

The decade leading up to the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire in 887–8 is traditionally characterised by historians as a period when royal authority was in terminal decline, crippled by the deaths of three great rulers in the mid-870s and by the attempt of the non-Carolingian rebel Boso of Vienne to seize a throne in 879. This article challenges the conventional view, and argues that Boso's revolt actually inspired the four surviving Carolingian kings to enter into a period of successful and effective cooperation. They came to a sworn agreement which sealed a new mutually guaranteed succession plan and resolved several outstanding territorial disputes. The end of the empire was brought about neither by internal conflict nor by loss of faith in the royal house, but rather by the premature deaths of a series of heirless rulers and the failure of the last emperor Charles the Fat to organize his succession in 887.     

The image of the Frankish kings in the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus

The poetry of Venantius Fortunatus is a sadly neglected historical source for sixth-century Gaul. Amongst the literary material that has survived from that age, the works of Gregory of Tours loom large. Since Gregory provides us with the sole narrative history of Gaul for much of this century, we are forced to see Merovingian society through his eyes. Venantius wrote panegyric, and an age such as ours, which values sincerity of expression, finds little that is attractive in that genre. Despite this, Venantius' poetry affords us a vantage point from which to view the Frankish kings. It also provides important evidence for the nature of the cultural fusion of Germanic, Roman and Christian elements that was taking place in the Gaul of Gregory of Tours and King Chilperic. The poems written for the Merovingian monarchs suggest that Venantius sensed a Frankish hankering after the trappings of Roman imperial authority. He wrote, perhaps with didactic intent, to give full exposition to the traditional Roman conception of the just ruler, coupled with the more recent ideal of the orthodox Christian monarch that was still current in the Byzantine Empire. When Venantius Fortunatus journeyed to the courts of the barbarian kings, he brought with him his cultural baggage from Byzantine Ravenna.     

Judd's China: a missionary congressman and US–China policy

Congressman Walter Henry Judd was an active player in Sino–US relations in the twentieth century. Unique for an American Congressman, he served for 10 years as a medical missionary in China. This article examines his motivation for going to China, his perceptions of Chinese culture, society, and politics, and the impact of Chinese culture on him. It demonstrates that cultural influence is not a one‐way process, but reciprocal. Judd's views of China and his ardent Christian beliefs made him in turn a liberal missionary and a conservative anti‐Communist congressman with a significant role in Sino–US relations. His political behavior was profoundly influenced by both ideology and the attitudes and judgments shaped by his 10 years in China.     

Ritual Brotherhood Across Frontiers in the Eastern Adriatic Hinterland,Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Ritual brotherhood, or pobratimstvo, is attested by a range of sources dealing with the Adriatic hinterland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Read one way, pobratimstvo shows us a border society characterized by cohesion and tolerance, where Christian and Muslim frontiersmen find ways to overcome religious and political boundaries, recognizing their common interests and shared values. Read another way, however, the same institution (and sometimes even the same documents) also offers an insight into the persistence of frontier conflict and the pervasiveness of its violence, drawing attention to other, no less bloody divisions between predators and victims. In teasing out some of the possible meanings and uses of ritual sworn brotherhood on this early modern frontier, I attempt to give due weight to the complexities of a specific place and culture. But the problems highlighted by the institution of pobratimstvo are more widespread: the troubling ambiguities of friendship, with its quality of simultaneously including and excluding; the boundaries between affection and interest, or between camaraderie and desire; the obligations (and the potential resentment) conferred by gifts; the moral dilemmas posed by cross-cutting obligations.     

Richard Tawney: Moral Theology and the Social Order

Abstract

After noting the impressive scope of Tawney's contribution as an economic historian, labour theoretician and Christian moralist, attention is given to his three classic socialist texts: The Acquisitive Society, Equality, and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Tawney's critique of capitalism is rooted in his Christian convictions concerning the worth of each human person and also informed by his historical analysis of the evolution of capitalist social relations. His telling exposure of the transitory historical nature of so much of capitalism's vaunted absolutes has lent an authority to his contribution. Wealth, property and the mechanisms of the market are not sacrosanct, and must be subject to measures that will ensure more equitable social objectives. As a social theorist he straddled the Christian and secular humanism that formed the lifeblood of the labour movement, and this remains relevant to our more pluralist society, where agreement upon basic moral norms can help construct a social consensus that will promote a greater justice and human flourishing.     

Contextualizing marriage: conjugality and Christian life in Jonas of Orléans' De institutione laicali

The De institutione laicali by Jonas of Orléans has frequently been examined as a source for conjugal life in the Carolingian period, but rarely analysed in its entirety. In this article I propose an overall reading of the text, based on the version addressed to Count Matfrid before 828, in order to place the chapters about marriage in their context. I will formulate new interpretations of its purposes – arguing that Book II was configured as a speculum comitale – and of Jonas's view of marriage. The De institutione laicali will therefore be shown to have served the needs of Carolingian representations of society and public power.