Religious Frontiers and Overlapping Cultural Borders: The Power of Personal and Political Exchanges in the Works of Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284)

Abstract

Religious beliefs and creeds have contributed to define identities and a sense of belonging for both individuals and entire communities over the centuries, generating in some cases unsurpassable social barriers. This also applied to the situation of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages: a melting pot within which Muslims, Christians and Jews interacted, not always without animosity and friction. The questions which I endeavour to answer in this study are how did Christian powers consider and interact with Muslim rulers and subjects? What were the motivations behind the agreement of such relationships? To what extent were they morally and officially accepted? What were the differences, if any, from the customary vassal bonds? These are the main objects of scrutiny of my analysis which will focus on the fragile borders which existed between personal and political inter-faith relationships, examined through the perspective of the historiographical and poetic production attributed to the scriptorium of Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284).