Conclusion: The Meaning of Conquest

Abstract

The idea of conquest and reconquest that encodes and abbreviates the historical trajectory of medieval Spain has been shown in this study to encapsulate a number of different perspectives that challenge the application of this historical diptych to the literary context of medieval Castile without a large degree of caution. It is a lesson in separating theory from practice, and avoiding the temptation to look for uniformity, that is well exemplified in Peter Linehan’s description of the situation at the Islamic frontier more broadly: “In theory, the very idea of frontier convivencia is inconceivable. Crusade and co-existence comprise a confessional oxymoron if ever there was one. But in fact, people aren’t like that” (2003, 53). Here he follows Norman Housley’s scepticism about historians’ approaches to the medieval frontier: “Perhaps, seeing the high premium which was placed on uniformity in the Middle Ages, they have assumed that it corresponded to reality. But in practice the inconsistencies of human behaviour and belief were probably as deep as in any age” (1996, 115).