The Fortress of Faith: The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain.

• Author: MORONY, MICHAEL G.
• Position: Review

The Fortress of Faith: The Attitude towards Muslims in Fifteenth Century Spain. By ANA ECHEVARRIA. Medieval Iberian Peninsula, Texts and Studies, vol. 12. Leiden: BRILL, 1999. Pp. viii + 254. NIg. 175.OO/US $103.

In slightly more than a decade, from 1450 to 1461, Christian Iberian authors produced a minor spate of works about Muslims and Islam. Ana Echevarria has subjected these works and their authors to a detailed analysis along with a widely ranging exposition of the political, military, intellectual, religious, and social circumstances in which these works were produced. She suggests that theologians composed them (with one exception) to induce the Christian rulers of Iberia to fight the Muslims instead of each other. But she also puts Iberia in a larger European context and includes the contemporary works of Nicholas of Cusa and Jean Germain for comparison. In Iberia itself there were at least three competing trends in the fifteenth century: Islamophilia, peaceful conversion to assimilate Muslims, and warfare to defeat them.

The book begins with a review of the political situation from 1430 to 1470 in which it is argued that historical events between 1450 and 1461 influenced the revival of polemic against Islam. Chief among them was the Ottoman advance in eastern Europe and the events surrounding the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. These developments revived crusading interest all over Europe. They thus provided a new context for the desire to eliminate Muslim Granada, while Castilian and Portuguese designs on North Africa were conceived as crusade. Internally Islamophile acculturation at the court of Enrique IV of Castile (Mudejar arts and Muslim customs) provoked the reaction that ended the toleration of Muslims in Castile at the Sentence of Medina del Campo in 1465.

Echevarria then introduces the reader to the four authors of the works in question. Pedro de la Cavalleria, the only layman among them, was a lawyer from a converso family in Saragossa. His Tractatus zelus Christi conta iudaeos, sarracenos et infideles, finished in 1450, was primarily directed against Judaism. Juan de Segovia, who was educated and taught at the University of Salamanca, was both a scholar and diplomat-cardinal and belonged to the conciliarist faction in papal politics. He was also somewhat exceptional for this period, because he favored the peaceful conversion of Muslims and because of his fruitful collaboration with [Isa.sup.[subset]] ibn...