Brian A. Catlos. Kingdoms of Faith

While it is rare that medieval historians can make a claim for the immediate political or social relevance of their work, the September 11th attacks and the United States’ ongoing “War on Terror” have generated an enduring interest in how Christian and Muslim societies balanced military confrontation with cultural coexistence in medieval Iberia. Américo Castro’s argument that Spanish culture was shaped and defined by convivencia (coexistence, or the productive if sometimes fraught relations between Christians, Jews, and Muslims) gained a strong interdisciplinary following among literary scholars and historians alike. Castro’s approach to explaining the unique qualities of Spanish history and culture appealed to the mid- and late twentieth-century affirmation that a Spanish culture emerged from a medieval melting pot phenomenon, whereby in the process of assimilating to cultural and social norms, minority populations also had a discernable impact on the mores, aesthetic, values, and artistic expression of the dominant society.

Archaeology · Argument (complex analysis) · Faith · Islam · Kingdom · Mores · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · African Studies and Geopolitics · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies