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4 A Medley of Battles (Zaragoza, 1286 –1414) It is another 150 years before we find the next suggestion of a Spanish mock battle between Moors and Christians. Meanwhile, there were other festive combats, including juicy “battles with oranges” between men in galleys that were dragged through the streets on “small wagons.” When such a battle was staged in Zaragoza for the coronation of Alfons III in 1286, “more than fifty cart-loads” of oranges were imported from Valencia, where a similar event had taken place for a royal visit in 1269.1 We will meet citrus fights again in sixteenth-century Mexico, and readers familiar with the annual tomato battle of Buñol (Valencia), during which some fifty-five tons of tomatoes are trucked into town to be dumped in the streets, thrown, and wallowed in by residents and visitors alike, will know that the Spanish still enjoy a festive fruit fight.2 Some Spanish mock battles and tournaments in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries may have adopted a quasi-dramatic frame of Moors and Christians, but none of the accounts say so. The next specific allusion is to the reign of Jaume II, ruler of Aragon-Catalonia from 1291 to 1327, and this, too, depends on the secondary citation of a manuscript now lost. An article in a popular nineteenth-century magazine claimed that, in a sermon preached in the chapel of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza on the feast day of Santiago, 25 July 1616, Justo Armengol had referred to an ancient manuscript, written in Languedocian, that he had read a few days earlier in the library of the monastery of Poblet.3 According to this nineteenth-century summary of Armengol’s sermon, the Poblet manuscript described how, “in order better to entertain Jaume II on the day of Santiago, the Aragonese [nobles] presented to the court their servants, some dressed as Moors and others as Christians.” The entertainment began with “a pitched battle” between the two sides “in the courtyard of the king’s palace.” The account no doubt had in mind the large, rectangular courtyard of the fortified Moorish Aljafería, which had served as a royal residence just outside Zaragoza since the fall of the city to Alfons the Battler (uncle of Peronella) in 1118. Because of its well-documented use for spectacular theatrical festivities later in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the building has been dubbed Spain’s first permanent indoor theater.4 Following the pitched battle, the Moors and Christians “went out to the open country that surrounded” the palace. There, in an artificial “castle mounted on a scaffold,” they inflicted heavy wounds on one another . But, in the midst of the battle, “a captain of the guard dressed as Santiago” appeared , riding “a spirited white horse.” Taking the side of the Christians, he hacked away at the Moors with his sword until they fell to their knees at his feet and surrendered.5 37 Then Santiago’s squire handed him a small banner of white silk, on which was painted, by way of explanation of the Christian victory, a flesh-colored cross and the Constantinian motto “In hoc signo vinces [In this sign you will conquer].”6 Seeing this, the Moors begged to be “received into the company of Christians.” As a token of their conversion, they were dressed in white tunics with a red cross over the chest, drawn up in ranks to watch the burning of their standard, and given, in its place, a large cross. Afterward, they were led to King Jaume himself, who “was present at the festival.” The king placed a kiss of peace on the face of the Moorish captain. This was the signal to begin “a great sport of dancing between the Christians and the converted Moors to the sound of instruments of war.”7 I am more inclined to believe this account than I am that of the Lleida “dance of Moors and Christians.” Although the chain of references back to the Poblet manuscript and thence to the Aragon court of Jaume II is tenuous, the report contains a number of plausible details, and the date of the supposed performance is later. With due caution, therefore, we can venture a conditional appraisal of the entertainment it describes. The “pitched battle” in the palace courtyard would have been smaller in scale than the subsequent assault on the “castle” in “the open country.” The latter would have owed...

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