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

In Enemies in the Plaza, Thomas Devaney uses the lens of urban spectacle to study the evolution of Christian attitudes toward Muslims and Jews on the Castile-Granada frontier in the second half of the fifteenth century. These spectacles, he argues, served to articulate and work though often contradictory attitudes toward religious others, a dissonant outlook he calls “amiable enmity.” Ultimately however, urban spectacle, shaped by governing elites and other influences from outside the border zone, worked to displace the “amiable enmity” of the late medieval frontier, promoting instead a more exclusive vision of Christian society.

Enemies in the Plaza is situated within a number of venerable historio-graphical traditions. Most notable are the study of Iberian frontier culture, the relationship between religious groups in Medieval Iberia, and in more general terms the study of spectacle, ceremony, and display as a way to articulate and to influence political and cultural values. Devaney displays extensive knowledge of this existing work through a thorough introduction, supported by an extensive bibliography.

The core of the book is arranged in two main parts. The first part consists of two chapters devoted to urban spectacle and civic space, respectively. The second part, in which Devaney develops his principal argument, contains three chapters each devoted to a case study of urban spectacle.

In part one, Devaney lays the groundwork for the next section’s case studies. He explains how spectacles “function” both on audiences and within the space of the city. These chapters offer very readable interpretations of what could have been a very dense body of theory, and would be useful to those with an interest in urban spectacle and urban space generally, even without a specific interest in Castile. In chapter 1 Devaney gives special attention to the issue of audience reactions to spectacle, considering how or even whether a sense of them can be gained from surviving sources. He proposes an approach combining “contemporary discourses on the social functions of spectacle” with insights from modern spectacles, to understand audience reactions that were “individual but constrained” (36). In practice however, he most often follows the general rule that although the spectacles were on the whole designed by elites, these elites also had to consider and try to anticipate audience reaction in making their arrangements. They wanted to persuade, not offend. Chapter 2, meanwhile, describes how these spectacles operated within urban spaces imbued with meaning, divided into districts, and crisscrossed by boundaries. This physical setting, and the meanings attached to it, were a key part of any spectacle. Yet they were not immutable, and Devaney describes the potential for spectacle to confirm and transform those meanings.

Part two consists of three chapters, one for each of the urban spectacle case studies, informed by the insights of part one. He builds these cases from a variety of sources, most prominently chronicle accounts and municipal records, and also, as suggested by his concern with space, with reference to architecture and the urban landscape.

The first case study looks at a series of spectacles organized by Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, a Castilian nobleman who took up the governorship of the frontier city of Jaen in 1460 looking to gain prestige though war against Muslim Granada. Gaining local support for this measure was not an easy matter however. Religious differences may have encouraged hostility, or at least a certain coldness, toward religious others. But more mundane concerns, from aesthetic to economic, undermined boundaries between the groups and added ambiguity to these attitudes. According to Devaney, Iranzo’s festivities were designed to work through these dissonant views. In one pageant held in 1462, shortly after Christmas, Muslims (in reality elaborately costumed Christians), overcome by Castilian prowess, converted and became part of Christian society. Otherwise, they remained untouched. This, Devaney argues, was an attempt to rally the support of the people of Jaen for Iranzo’s military projects while soothing...