Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages, Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns, S.J., Volume I: Proceedings from Kalamazoo, ed. by Larry J. Simon

Abstract

Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages, Studies in Honor of Robert L. Burns, SJ, Volume I: Proceedings from Kalamazoo. Edited by Larry J. Simon. [The Medieval Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1453,Volume 4.] (Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1995. Pp. xxvi, 373. $85.75.) Given the impossibility of commenting on all eighteen articles in this volume, it seemed best to concentrate on those of special interest to readers of this review. Thus shall only list the five contained in Part Two,Economy and Society in Iberia and the Mediterranean: Stephen P Bensch,Early Catalan Contacts with Byzantium (pp.133-160); Silvia Orvietani Busch,An Interdisciplinary and Comparative Approach to Northern Tuscan Ports in the Early and High Middle Ages (pp. 161-184); Nina Melechen, Loans, Land, and Jewish-Christian Relations in the Archdiocese of Toledo (pp. 185-215); William C. Stalls, The Relationship between Conquest and Settlement on the Aragonese Frontier of Alfonso I (pp. 216-231); and James Todesca, Means of Exchange: Islamic Coinage in Spain,1000-1200 (pp. 232-258). Six articles are included in Part One,Muslims, Christians and Jews in Iberia: Mark D. Johnston,Ramon Llull and the Compulsory Evangelization of Jews and Muslims (pp. 3-37), in an eminently realistic assessment of Hull's role, shows that terms such as toleranceare anachronistic when applied to any thirteenthcentury figure-though no more, one might add, than the theology of colonization absurdly attributed to Hull by Miquel Barcelo, a view apparently taken seriously by Johnston. This article should be considered together with Pamela Drost Beattie's Pro exalta#one sanctae fidei catholicae: Mission and Crusade in the Writings of Ramon Llull (pp.113-129), who argues successfully that in Llull mission and crusade were complementary rather than contradictory aims. Thomas E. Burman has already discussed Hull's use of Mozarabic arguments. In Christian Kalam in Twelfth-Century Mozarabic Apologetic in Spain (pp. 38-49), he deals with an earlier period of Muslim-Christian intellectual debate and demonstrates the combined influence of Muslim and contemporary nonSpanish Western thought on Mozarabic arguments for the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. John August Bollweg, Sense of Mission: Arnau de Vilanova on the Conversion of Jews and Muslims (pp. 50-71), in an article more limited than its title suggests, argues that Arnau's Allocutio super significatio>ze nominis Thetragrammaton of 1292 is not an anti-Jewish polemic but an exegetical treatise written to defend Arnau's own orthodoxy. Two studies are devoted to the fifteenth century. In his The Sources for Alfonso de Espina's Messianic Argument Against the Jews in the Fortalitium Fidei (pp. 72-95), Steven J. McMichael conveys a partial and somewhat misleading view of Espina, a very different figure from Hull or Arnau but one who conceivably had a greater, though a decidedly negative, influence on his age. Espina is presented here as a typical Franciscan preacher, in the tradition of St. Bernardino. Judged by the Fortalitium, Espina was an unoriginal writer. As McMichael shows, his written sources were all traditional. He is important in that he was the first to propose (in 1464) the introduction of the Inquisition into Castile and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. In order to obtain these ends, he was entirely uncritical, and indeed unscrupulous, in inventing or, at best, accepting anti-Jewish legends. …