5. Tamquam domino proprio: The Bishop and His Jews in Medieval Palencia -- Part 3. Jews and Christians in Northern Castile (ca. 1250-ca. 1370) -- 6. The Jews of Castile at the End of the Reconquista (Post-1250): Cultural and Communal Life -- 7. Jews, Christians, and Royal Power in Northern Castile -- 8. "Insolent, Wicked People": The Cortes and Anti-Jewish Discourse in Castile -- Bibliography -- Index

Negative and positive.

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.

Jews and Converts in Late Medieval Castile examines the ways in which Jewish-Christian relations evolved in Castile, taking account of social, cultural, and religious factors that affected the two communities throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The territorial expansion of the Christian kingdoms in Iberia that followed the reconquests of the mid-thirteenth century presented new military and economic challenges. At the same time the fragile balance between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Peninsula was also profoundly affected. Economic and financial pressures were of over-riding importance. Most significant were the large tax revenues that the Iberian Jewish community provided to royal coffers, new evidence for which is provided here. Some in the Jewish community also achieved prominence at court, achieving dizzying success that often ended in dismal failure or death. A particular feature of this study is its reliance upon both Castilian and Hebrew sources of the period to show how mutual perceptions evolved through the long fourteenth century. The study encompasses the remarkable and widespread phenomenon of Jewish conversion, elaborates on its causes, and describes the profound social changes that would culminate in the anti-converso riots of the mid-fifteenth century. This book is valuable reading for academics and students of medieval and of Jewish history. As a study of a unique crucible of social change it also has a wider relevance to multi-cultural societies of any age, including our own.

This work details relations between Jews and Visigoths, polemic and persecution, and between Jews and Muslims, cooperation and conflict, in medieval Spain, including later Christian Spain. New sources and new insights challenge conventional interpretations.

"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.

Review: "Published in conjunction with the exhibition Uneasy Communion: Jews, Christians, and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain, this volume provides a fascinating study of the iconography of altarpieces and the artistic collaboration between Jews and Christians. In the multicultural society of late medieval Spain, Jewish and Christian artists worked together to produce retablos (large multi-paneled altarpieces) as well as Latin and Hebrew religious manuscripts. The authors of this highly illustrated volume explore the methods, imagery, workshops, and shop styles, and the relationship between Christians and Jews at this time, including their portrayal of one another through dress and appearance. The volume also offers a significant investigation into the position of the Jewish community in medieval Spain against the backdrop of rising antisemitism and the growth of the Inquisition." "The essays featured in this volume take us on a journey from the general to the particular, and include a study of Jewish communities within Spanish society of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by Thomas F. Click; a survey of the painting of the period by Carmen Lacarra Ducay; an examination of specific artworks that address the issue of Jewish-Christian relationships by Vivian B. Mann; and a historiography of scholarship on Jewish involvement in the creation of Spanish medieval art by Marcus B. Burke."--BOOK JACKET