Abstract:

The diplomatic and exploratory enterprises by Portugal and Castile during the fifteenth century coincided with substantial social changes towards religious alterity in both kingdoms. This article studies the projection of those new attitudes to distant spaces of the medieval worldview in two books from the period. I propose that these works attempt to reinforce the prevailing values among the Castilian nobility, relying on the idea of a global confrontation between Christianity and Islam. Encounters with religious converts across the Mediterranean evidence the instable negotiation between religious identity, “nature,” and belonging to the Castilian nation.