1st Edition
Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz
Bringing together distinguished scholars in honor of Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, this volume presents original and innovative research on the critical and uneasy relationship between authority and spectacle in the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, focusing on Spain, the Mediterranean and Latin America.
Cultural scholars such as Professor Ruiz and his colleagues have challenged the notion that authority is elided with high politics, an approach that tends to be monolithic and disregards the uneven application and experience of power by elite and non-elite groups in society by highlighting the significance of spectacle. Taking such forms as ceremonies, rituals, festivals, and customs, spectacle is a medium to project and render visible power, yet it is also an ambiguous and contested setting, where participants exercise the roles of both actor and audience. Chapters in this collection consider topics such as monarchy, wealth and poverty, medieval cuisine and diet and textual and visual sources.
The individual contributions in this volume collectively represent a timely re-examination of authority that brings in the insights of cultural theory, ultimately highlighting the importance of representation and projection, negotiation and ambivalence.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Authority and Spectacle: Teofilo F. Ruiz and the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Europe Yuen-Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodriguez
Part I – Authority in Borders and Conquests
- A Border Policy? Louis IX and the Spanish Connection
- The King, the Coin, and the Word: Imagining and Enacting Castilian Frontiers in the Late Medieval Iberia
An End to Conquests: Expansion and its Limits in the Iberian World, Fifteenth to the Early Seventeenth Centuries
Xavier Gil- ‘All Things to All Men’: Political Messianism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain
- Transmitting Urgency in the Romance: An Example of Strategic Codeswitching in the Crown of Aragon’s Thirteenth-Century Royal Chancery
- The Issues of Fiscal Systems in Castilian Towns from 1369 to 1474
- Authority and Poverty in Late-Medieval Spain
- The Saint at the Gate: Giving Relics a ‘Royal Entry’ in Eleventh to Twelfth-Century France
- Medieval Cuisines and the Seasons of the Year
- Medieval Media and Minorities: Jews and Muslims in the Cantigas de Santa María
- Poor Colors, Rich Colors
William C. Jordan
Claire Gilbert
Bryan Givens
Part II – Authority in Texts, Taxes, and Penury
Antonio Zaldivar
Denis Menjot
Francisco Garcia-Serrano
Part III – Spectacles of Purity in the Body and in the Realm
Kate Craig
Paul Freedman
David Nirenberg
Part IV – Spectacles of Empire and Identity
Biography
Yuen-Gen Liang is Associate Professor of History at National Taiwan University, Taipei. His previous publications include Family and Empire: The Fernández de Córdoba and the Spanish Realm (2011).
Jarbel Rodriguez is Professor of History at San Francisco State University. His previous publications include Captives and their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (2009).