Conclusion

Abstract

Rémi Brague’s provocative assertion that the only traditions that contributed to the formation of contemporary Europe are Western ones reflects contemporary critical views of European identity and history.¹ The Iberian Peninsula, as both birthplace of the authors whose works we have examined in this book and as imaginary locus of those same authors’ identities, was the “home” to which these intellectuals longed to return, or against which they sought to redefine themselves, be it the culture of the secular court, or the physical spaces of the cities in whose streets and palaces they spent their youth. This Iberia is a part of a different historical Europe than that conceived of today and reveals moments and loci in which the urge to define European identity, and more specifically Iberian identity, was constructed upon Arab secular, rational ideals, and an Arabo-Andalusi imaginary. The Andalusi go-between narrative, whose death is announced in the LBA, is one of the lost constructions of identity—one of the possible models of identity subsequent Europeans did not take up. As medieval readers and authors cleansed the go-between of her Arabo-Andalusi origins and incorporated her into the Roman/Greek/Christian construction of identity being formulated by medieval scholastics (discussed in chapters 4 and 5), the go-between passed from the Andalusi into the Roman/Greek/Christian construction of European identity. In this book we have explored the Arab/Andalusi/Jewish behind the Roman/Greek/Christian and also investigated why Iberian courtiers and intellectuals chose to return repeatedly to the Andalusi version of the go-between.

Three ingredients, then, are necessary to make Europe: Rome, Greece and Christianity

—Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture