Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

Notes

not e s introduction 1. Baer, A History, 1:329. 2. Prince, “Surveying Narratology,” 3; Abbott, Cambridge Introduction, 19, emphasis in original. In Genette’s terminology, I am focusing not on the histoire (translated as story, “what really happened”) but rather on the récit (narrative , i.e., the representation of true or fictive events) and, to a lesser extent, the narration (narration, the act of turning the histoire into a récit) (Narrative, 26–27). 3. Alter, Art, 11. Cf. Onega and García Landa, introduction, 3. 4. Arnobius, Arnobii, 34. 5. This summary is taken from Minnis, Medieval Theory, 15–16. 6. On this section’s title, see Conversion, 39. 7. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam, 33–34. 8. Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó, C 220 12v–13r (citation from 12v): Expositum suppliciter extitit coram nobis pro parte Sibilie pauperis et miserabilis persone uxore Bernardi Nathalis quod . . . accidit quod dictus Bernardus faciendo viagium versus partes Bugie et Barbarie diabolico ductus spiritu abnegando nominem domini sectam Mahometicam proelegit postea pater dicti Bernardi sciens hoc accedens versus dictas partes invento dicto eius filio . . . secum duxit ad civitatem Dertuse et eum tradidit Episcopo Dertuse qui dictum Bernardum correxit et reconciliavit et pro delicto penitenciam tribuit quodque mortuo patre dicti Bernardi procurator fiscalis seu vos quantitatem peccunie ascendentem summam . . . pertinentem dicto Bernardo ratione successionis . . . penes vos recepistis asserendo tam dictam quantitatem quam alia bona Notes to Introduction 230 dicti Bernardi ratione criminis supradicti nostre curie pertinere unde cum asseratur quod dictus Bernardus derelicta uxore sua cum multitudine librorum sine aliqua provisione in remotis partibus degat. Et propterea fuerit pro parte dicte Sibilie nobis humiliter supplicatum ut intuitu elemosine et pietatis pro nutriendo et educando . . . eius filios dignaremur dictam quantitatem ei facere liberari. See Nirenberg, Communities, 128 n. 4. I am grateful to Dr. Nirenberg for sharing his transcription (which I have altered here) and to Abigail Krasner Balbale for helping me get a copy of it. 9. Within the rubrics introducing the poems beginning with 555, we are introduced to “Garci Ferrandes de Jerena who because of his sins and his great misfortune fell in love with a jongleuresse [una juglara] who had been a moor. Thinking that she had great treasure and also because she was good-looking [vistosa], he asked for her as his wife from the king” (Juan Alfonso de Baena, Cancionero, 3:1117). In a later rubric, we read, “He went to Granada with his wife and children and turned Muslim [se tornó moro] and denied [rrenegó] the faith of Jesus Christ and said many bad things against it” (3:1130). The conversion and migration of singers were not uncommon. In the fourteenth-century Routes toward Insight into Capital Empires (Masālik al-Abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār) of Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī, the conversion of various Maghribī or Andalusī musicians is mentioned, including that of one Ḥiṣn [sic] bin ʿAbd bin Zayiah, who seems to have converted to Christianity, relocated to the north, and then returned to al-Andalus (and, it seems, to Islam) after he failed to make a living as a court musician (10:390–91). I am grateful to Dwight Reynolds for sharing this reference with me. 10. Proudfoot, Religious Experience, xiii. 11. Baer, History, 1: 327–8; Nirenberg, Communities, 128 n. 4. 12. Archivo municipal de Burgos, Libro de actas, 1481, f. 51, discussed by López Mata, “Morería,” 351–52, who calls it “la conversión más o menos forzada de un moro joven.” Similar cases of child converts are found in Fernández Félix, “Children”; Marín and El Hour, “Captives”; and Zorgati, Pluralism, 48–74. For a study of archival evidence of Jewish conversion and apostasy in Aragon, see Tartakoff, Between Christian and Jew. 13. This discussion draws freely from Cusack, Conversion, 1–29. I have found that Lipsett, Desiring, 6–9, which I read only after writing this introduction , offers a very similar overview. 14. Peters, Mutilating God, 3. 15. James, Writings, 177, 34. 16. Nock, Conversion, 12. 17. In his essay “L’éducation morale,” Durkheim explains, “Conversion, as effectively understood in Christianity, is not the adhesion to certain particular conceptions, to certain specific articles of faith. True conversion is a profound transformation whereby the soul in its entirety, through Notes to Introduction 231 turning in a completely new direction, changes its position or standpoint, and consequently alters...