Enemies in the Plaza: Urban Spectacle and the End of Spanish Frontier Culture, 1460–1492 by Thomas Devaney (review)

Informing readers that 'public spectacles are, by their nature, ambiguous' (p.5), Thomas Devaney's self-imposed task of examining the interrelationships and cultural resonances of spectacles and frontier culture in medieval Spain seems methodologically difficult, but is met with success. One of his key concerns is 'the anxieties resulting from the gap between ideology and reality' (p. 21). He proposes that an 'amiable enmity' (p. 9) was exhibited by many frontier spectacles, which can help historians explore various frontier tensions like that between warring ideologies and trading realities, elite projections and popular receptions of spectacles, urban and rural sympathies and tendencies, and the various cultural and social phenomena related to sizable ethno-religious minorities in frontier cultures.

In the first part of the book, Devaney establishes the wider context of medieval spectacles and frontiers. Courtly tournaments and religious processions alike populate this discussion, raising questions about the diverse contemporary meanings attached to such events. From here, Devaney contextualises the particular settings of Spanish frontier towns, and explores the ideological and pragmatic tensions inherent in experiences of civic identity and notions of civic space.

In the second part of the book, Devaney turns to particular case studies of spectacle in action. Jaén serves as an entry into 'the interplay between sponsor and audience' and the 'paradoxical attitudes' evident in a mid-fifteenth-century frontier town (p. 83), from where Devaney surveys an interesting interplay between notions of military heritage, contemporary and future ethnic difference, and the potential for and limits of cultural compromise. Devaney identifies a similar 'amiable enmity' in Córdoba a little later in the fifteenth century, even while illustrating how spectacle plays a significant and specific role in the flaring of anti-converso violence. Finally, Devaney shows the role of spectacle in Murcia in affirming the power of Christianity in a post-frontier situation by examining the significations of particular Corpus Christi processions.

Devaney concludes that the 'amiable enmity' expressed and experienced through late medieval frontier spectacles was 'a source of stability' (p. 169). This book offers an interesting survey of struggles between ideologies and lived realities, illustrates the insights that nuanced investigation of medieval spectacles can bring to the historiography, highlights a potential source of modern 'anxieties and ambivalent attitudes' (p. 175), and may have wider import for the cultural enmities and public spectacles of today.