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Beyond the Reconquista . New directions in the History of Medieval Iberia (711–1085). Edited by SimonBarton † and RobertPortass. Leiden: Brill. 2020. xii + 289 pp. €99. ISBN 978 90 04 31513 6.

2022; Wiley; Volume: 30; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/emed.12581

1468-0254

Álvaro Carvajal Castro,

Archaeological and Historical Studies

The Reconquista is a lure. It is a narrative of a historical past forged by centuries of scholarly contributions, a model of historical change that distorts the reality it purports to explain, a theory of a people’s destiny recurrently actualized to fit and project specific concerns in different contexts: on all of this, Martín Ríos Soloma’s books provide excellent guidance. As such, the Reconquista has long been under assault. Yet too narrow a critique may lead to a more fundamental danger going unnoticed. The Reconquista is part of a web of related concepts. This web is the real trap, for escape the Reconquista and you may still be caught by its theoretical biases and methodological constraints. In Beyond the Reconquista. New Directions in the History of Iberia (711–1085), the late Simon Barton and Robert Portass have put together a volume that brings that web to light. The papers collected in the book illuminate many of the notions that have continued to influence the interpretation of the evidence from, and to inform historiographical accounts about, early medieval Iberia, even long after the Reconquista paradigm began to be challenged. The book begins with two contributions that have a direct bearing on the ideological foundations of the Reconquista. The first is Julio Escalona and Iñaki Martín Viso’s head-on approach to the theory of the ‘depopulation’ and ‘repopulation’ of the Duero basin, one of the pillars that sustained the most influential incarnation of the Reconquista paradigm in contemporary times, that of Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz. Their focus on the ideological dimension of Sánchez-Albornoz’s ‘depopulation’ thesis and their contextualization of its acceptance in Spain – as opposed to Portugal, where it did not triumph – succeeds in presenting it as a historical artefact that should no longer haunt current work on the sources. Graham Barrett’s paper, for his part, de-essentializes the very concept of Hispania. By tracing its different meanings from Roman to early medieval times, he reconstructs the different, even competing intellectual projects that shaped it over time, thus forcing us to reflect on the political aims it epitomized at different times for different groups both north and south in Iberia. Like Barrett’s, other contributions cut across the boundaries of early medieval Iberian polities, challenging the historiographical frontier established by the Reconquista paradigm, but also by regional historiographies. Eduardo Manzano Moreno and Alberto Canto argue that most of northern Iberia fell within the sphere of influence of the Andalusi monetary system. They approach the Kingdom of Asturias-León and Catalonia comparatively, enhancing our appreciation of the complexity of the socio-economic and cultural exchanges between al-Andalus and the northern polities. In the case of north-western Iberia, the system was adopted sooner in León than in Galicia or Castile. This difference could be worth pursuing, as it is one among a series of peculiarities – for example, certain scribal practices, as Wendy Davies has revealed in her Windows on Justice (2016) – that may help us better understand what the situation was in an area that was once thought to be deserted, but whose ties with al-Andalus may have been more complex and subtle than the Reconquista paradigm allows. Jeffrey Bowman follows the steps of four tenth- and eleventh-century lay elite women from Galicia to Catalonia, contrasting what we know about them from contemporary sources and from later narrative portrayals. He argues that in the tenth and early eleventh centuries, property, political fragmentation and the relevance of interpersonal ties in the construction of power relationships allowed elite women to enjoy a wide-ranging political agency. Later narrative sources from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries distorted or silenced their accomplishments to fit specific political aims. Importantly, two of the factors he regards as conditioning the power of elite women, partible inheritance and parity among male and female heirs, also applied to non-elite women, who have received much less attention in the historiography, and whose study could benefit from approaches like this. Bowman’s paper dialogues most directly with two others in the volume. On the one hand, it is a warning against back-projecting later portrayals of gender relationships onto the tenth and early eleventh centuries. This applies not only to twelfth- and thirteenth-century narratives but also to modern historiographical constructs, including the Reconquista. Traditionally, the latter has been presented mainly as a manly affair, but what kind of masculinity does it portray? The question is posed for al-Andalus by Nicola Clark, who introduces gender theory, and more specifically the concept of hegemonic masculinity, to analyse the normative and spatial dimension of relationships between men. In so doing, she demonstrates the potential of such an approach for the analysis of social hierarchies in al-Andalus. On the other hand, Bowman emphasizes that in the tenth and eleventh century the relationships upon which political power was founded were more fluid than in later periods. Such is also the conclusion of Wendy Davies’s paper on counts in ninth- and tenth-century Iberia. Her review of the evidence enables her to define more precisely what counts were and did at the time, showing that rather than office-holders they were prominent individuals among the aristocracy. Royal power was more limited, and political power more fluid, than old institutionalist accounts would allow, and thus the idea of a Reconqusita led by kings delegating authority to officials is untenable. It is interesting that references to counts are more numerous in charters from the second half of the tenth century, when kings were not at their strongest, but also when features suggesting an increasing formalization of the monarchy are also apparent, which may open a further line of enquiry Like Davies, Jonathan Jarrett furthers our understanding of what early medieval sources can tell us about early medieval societies in Iberia. He challenges the assumption that narratives in charters are essentially veracious and enquires into the logics that guided their composition. For all their detail, charter narratives connected the peculiar circumstances of a given situation with broader, shared frames of reference that served to legitimize landholding and enabled new actions. Jarrett’s chapter is an invitation to go beyond the descriptive character of such accounts and delve into the notions and discourses to which they appealed and sought to materialize in actual social practice – a fine analogy of how the book overall works with regards to the Reconquista. In this, Lucy Pick’s reading of the Chronicle of 754 and Beatus of Liébana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse is most suggestive. At the beginning of the paper, Pick is explicit about how the Reconquista paradigm has impoverished and narrowed our understanding of the intellectual and spiritual side of religious life. In her paper, she addresses this concern by approaching two of the most significant eighth-century works, which are remarkable, among other things, for the surprising absence of references to the religion of the Arab conquerors. After contextualizing both texts in the historical-theological tradition of late antiquity, she argues that they respond to the same concern, which is to prompt their audience to reflect on their historical context and make ethical judgements about the times they were living in. In this, Pick’s own text prompts reflection about the hidden discourses of the Reconquista and how they may have informed, and continue to inform, ethical judgements not only about the past, but also about the present. Together, these papers represent a fine portrayal of current work on early medieval Iberia. If there is anything to be regretted, it is the absence of any paper on archaeology, a thriving field of research that has radically altered our understanding of early medieval societies. In any case, the book is a remarkable contribution – an example of how old paradigms should be challenged and the limits of traditional historiographical boundaries overcome, while advancing innovative approaches to the sources and suggesting lines for further enquiry and discussion. Ultimately, while not a festschrift, it represents a fine tribute to the late Simon Barton, who so meaningfully contributed to cast new light on Iberia’s past.