Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain - (Notre Dame Conferences in Medieval Studies)

About the Book

The essays in this interdisciplinary volume examine the social and cultural interaction of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Spain during the medieval and early modern periods. Together, the essays provide a unique comparative perspective on compelling problems of ethnoreligious relations.

Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain considers how certain social and political conditions fostered fruitful cultural interchange, while others promoted mutual hostility and aversion. The volume examines the factors that enabled one religious minority to maintain its cultural integrity and identity more effectively than another in the same sociopolitical setting.

This volume provides an enriched understanding of how Christians, Muslims, and Jews encountered ideological antagonism and negotiated the theological and social boundaries that separated them.

Book Synopsis

The essays in this interdisciplinary volume examine the social and cultural interaction of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Spain during the medieval and early modern periods. Together, the essays provide a unique comparative perspective on compelling problems of ethnoreligious relations.

Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain considers how certain social and political conditions fostered fruitful cultural interchange, while others promoted mutual hostility and aversion. The volume examines the factors that enabled one religious minority to maintain its cultural integrity and identity more effectively than another in the same sociopolitical setting.

This volume provides an enriched understanding of how Christians, Muslims, and Jews encountered ideological antagonism and negotiated the theological and social boundaries that separated them.

Review Quotes

"[A]ll the essays in this book make important contributions to their specific research fields. [D]elightful reading." --The Sixteenth Century Journal

"The fifteen papers published in this book with an introduction by Mark Meyerson and an epilogue by Jocelyn Hillgarth were originally presented at a conference held at the University of Notre Dame early in 1994. One of the objects was to cover as wide a period as possible in order to avoid 'artificial' boundaries such as the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1474 or the fall of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews and the conquest of America in 1492. The subjects treated consequently range from the ninth to the seventeenth century." --Heythrop Journal

"The scholarship is impressive, and the volume as a whole makes it abundantly clear that the study of cultural interaction in the Iberian peninsula is thriving." --Islam and Christian Muslim Relations

"These essays build on recent scholarship and this volume will be read with profit by a wide range of scholars in diverse fields of study." --Religious Studies Review

"This is an excellent book for scholars interested in . . . the interaction between different groups in medieval multicultural societies, particularly on the subtle issue of how identities and religion work and the images and attitudes that communities create for their own and others' consumption." --Al-Masaq

About the Author

Mark D. Meyerson is professor of history at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (1991), Jews in An Iberian Frontier Kingdom (2004), and A Jewish Renaissance in Fifteenth-Century Spain (2004).

Edward D. English is executive director of the medieval studies program and adjunct associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Reading and Wisdom: The De Doctrina Christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).