A Peninsula in Flames: War and Emotions in the Cantigas de Santa MarÃ­a

Simon R. Doubleday

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Chapter 2 A Peninsula in Flames: War and Emotions in the Cantigas de Santa MarÃa

In: A Plural Peninsula: Studies in Honour of Professor Simon Barton

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Simon R. Doubleday

Simon R. Doubleday
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 70â94

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004683754_004

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Abstract

In articles such as âTraitors to the Faithâ, Simon Barton underscored the permeability of the Iberian frontier with al-Andalus and the limitations of the appeal of the idea of âCrusadeâ, which had been gradually implanted in Iberia in the twelfth century. Other recent scholarship has further suggested that medieval European attitudes to war and violence were, in general, surprisingly ambivalent. Evidence from thirteenth-century Castile provides new perspectives on this issue. In one of his Songs to Holy Maryâ Cantiga de Santa MarÃa 345âAlfonso X of Castile-LeÃ³n (whose admiration for Arabic culture was matched by relative reluctance to engage in holy war) relates a nightmare in which he saw the Virgin Mary, crying out in anguish in the castle chapel of Jerez, which his forces had recently conquered. Mary was carrying a small child, and running desperately to the chapel door, for the chapel was on fire. She cries out in terror, calling on him to save the child from the flames, but he cannot fulfil what we might read as his conventionally masculine responsibility to rescue the mother and son. In the cantiga, his traumatic experience remains unresolved. This article will suggest that Alfonsoâs personal response to a culture of crusade was conflicted, contradictory and divided. If this was a âsociety built for warâ, as Elena Lourie famously observed, one significant facet of this social architecture was the construction of emotional foundations that could support constant military activity. One of these foundations was the forging of martial masculinity, subsumed into a culture of chivalric heroism, and an accompanying emphasis on emotional restraint. Yet this structure could never fully contain, or restrain, the full range of psychological responses to violence and bloodshed.

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A Plural Peninsula: Studies in Honour of Professor Simon Barton

Series:Â The Medieval Mediterranean, Volume: 138

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004683754

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 17 Oct 2023

Subjects

Front Matter

Part 1 Emotional Narratives: Pragmatism, Symbolism and Performance

Part 2 Reassessing Historical and Historiographical Narratives

Part 3 Exchanges, Tradition and Cross-Fertilisation: Change and Continuity

Part 4 Managing Conflict: Social, Physical and Imagined Boundaries

Part 5 Authority, Leadership, Gender and Power Management

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Chapter 2 A Peninsula in Flames: War and Emotions in the Cantigas de Santa MarÃ­a

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A Plural Peninsula: Studies in Honour of Professor Simon Barton

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Chapter 2 A Peninsula in Flames: War and Emotions in the Cantigas de Santa MarÃa