Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile II: Sufi and Jewish Influence and Responses (A Panel Discussion)

Cynthia Robinson’s 2013 publication, Imagining the Passion in a Multiconfessional Castile: The Virgin, Christ, Devotions, and Images in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Penn State Press), is being hailed as a “frame-breaking” work that radically challenges current assumptions that Castilian Christianity paralleled European trends before 1492. Rethinking Christian spirituality from within Iberia, however, not only calls for reconsidering the devotional art and texts in relation to Christian theology, but also calls for greater attention to Spain’s multiconfessional circumstances. Robinson suggests that the elevation of Christ and Mary as glorious rather than suffering was intrinsically related to the pluri-religious contexts of medieval Iberia; images of Christ and Mary were not meant for private Christian meditation alone, but for the conversion of the religious ‘other.’ Not only does the conversion context shift any assessment of images, but Robinson is the first to propose direct influence from Sufi devotional practices such as dhikr chant on Christian spirituality. Her argument thus addresses a long-problematic gap between the popularity of 13th century Muslim mystical texts and their apparent influence on sixteenth century Christian writers such as John of the Cross by discerning the parallels between late medieval Muslim and Christian devotion on the peninsula. Participants in this panel discussion are invited to propose papers concerning the ways in which fifteenth century Jewish and/or Muslim devotion influenced or responded to a Castilian Passion spirituality that emphasized divinity rather than humanity, or that use Robinson’s model as a basis for reconsidering other types of relationships and exchanges between the different faiths in late medieval Iberia.Jessica A. Boon