Conquerors, Brides and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia

Ann Chamberlin

doi:10.1080/09503110.2017.1327207

Chamberlin, Ann

2017-05-04 00:00:00

188 BOOK REVIEWS systematic and authoritative scholarly guide to one of the most interesting and resilient of Mediterranean cities. T.S. Brown University of Edinburgh T.S.Brown@ed.ac.uk © 2017 T.S. Brown https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2017.1327206 Conquerors, Brides and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia, by Simon Barton, 2015, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 280 pp., ill., £39.00/$59.95 (hardback), ISBN 9780812246759 The puzzle this monograph seeks to unravel begins with the festival known as Las Cantaderas celebrated in the northern Spanish city of León on the Sunday before 5 October, the feast of St Froilán. Originally held on Assumption Day, this feast dates at least as far into the past as the ninth/sixteenth century. Each of the four parishes of León sent twelve girls between the ages of ten and twelve “dressed to the nines in brocades and silks” (p. 2) to this event. An older, “mar- ginalized” woman, perhaps of Morisco or gypsy stock, would intercede for the girls “between Muslims and Christians”, after which they would sing and dance in the cathedral and receive the bishop’s blessing. After nightfall, there would be bonfires and fireworks. This commemora- tive event, repeated with variations in many sites across the peninsula, is meant

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Al-Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean Taylor & Francis

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