Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain

Abstract

The Mozarabs, long-neglected in the historiography of medieval Spain, have been the subject of considerable scholarly attention of late. No episode in their obscure history is more compelling that of the “voluntary martyrs” of Córdoba: the fortyeight Christian men and women who were put to death between 236/850 and 245/859 on charges of deliberate blasphemy or technical apostasy, and the two figures at the centre of the movement: St Eulogius of Córdoba (who was among the martyrs), and Paul Alvar, his layman friend and memorialist (who chose life). Long held by Catholic and nationalist historians to be emblematic of a broad Spanish, Christian resistance in the face of the Islamic domination of Hispania, the movement has been the subject of well-deserved revisions from the perspective of intellectual and social history, notably by Kenneth Baxter Wolf and Jessica Coope. Meanwhile, others, particularly Thomas Burman, have been subjecting the religious writings and intellectual culture of later period Mozarabs (post-1050) to careful analysis. Tieszen’s Christian Identity fills a space between these two approaches to the martyrs and the Mozarabs, by focusing primarily on the ninth century, but taking a Burman-like turn, subjecting the polemical and theological works of Alvar and his contemporaries to a much-overdue reexamination. Indeed, it is Tieszen’s intention not to use the polemics to plumbMuslim–Christian relations, but rather to explore these “authors’ Christian identity in the light of Islam”