Deciphering Secrets: Unlocking the Manuscripts of Medieval Spain

Deciphering Secrets: Unlocking the Manuscripts of Medieval Spain 

ChallengingAssumptions

Our modern, global world is oftenpresented as an unprecedented era of exceptional religious, political, andcultural enlightenment. Certainly we continue to experience tumultuous eventsand problematic relations, but many of us believe our world exists along a trajectory of human progress.  Thiscourse is about doubt, questioning, and complications. It opens with theproposition that our present-day world is neither exceptional nor special, butrather is the beneficiary and the slave of history.

Aboutthis Course: The Challenges of Co-Existence

Serving as citizen-scholars, students willlearn about the positive and negative elements of inter-religious co-existencein Plasencia, Spain, and more importantly, contribute to an internationalscholarly effort known as the RevealingCooperation and Conflict Project.

Together, we turn to a historical era thatstumbled through the challenges of cultural and religious intermixing andco-existence. From the saved memories of Catholic churchmen, Jewish noble andmerchant families, as well as medieval lords and knight clans, students willstudy and contribute to an effort to revive long lost interactive andcooperative networks of people in Plasencia, Spain. And among the most textured, fascinating elements of our investigation is the history of Spain's Jewish community, or the Sepharad.

For example, students will evaluate the Spanishanti-Jewish pogroms of 1391 that ledto the large scale conversion of Jews to Christianity (forced and voluntary). Bydocumenting such incidents and the interaction of noteworthy families,religious organizations, political networks, and economic partnerships, we willreconstruct the quintessential cultural dynamics that underlay the foundationof the Castilian world and impacted the broader European continent.

Within the documents that studentstranscribe, we will encounter historical persons such as Zanfines Capa, the Jewishchainmail maker, who was a close associate of the Carvajal family of knights.In this specific case, the Catholic Carvajal clan and their compatriots in thecathedral, the Santa Maria clan (formerly the Jewish Ha-Levis), leasedchurch-owned properties to Jewish families (like the chainmail makers) at the expense oftheir political competitors, the Catholic Estuñiga family (the Counts ofPlasencia and Bejar). In this event, competing and overlapping political andreligious jurisdictions are revealed as well as vibrant Catholic-Jewishalliances that sought to expel interloping secular lords.

In sum, we will evaluate the lives ofJews, Christians, and Muslims, in a vibrant fifteenth century Spanish communityon the edge of incredible events – the consolidation of Spain under QueenIsabel and King Ferdinand, the encounter with the New World, and the defeat ofthe Islamic Kingdom of Granada Spain and the expulsion of the Jews from Iberia.

TheCourse Work 

Inthis specific course, students will: (1) study the history of medieval Spain and the community of Plasencia,(2) explore the world of medieval manuscripts and texts, (3) learn to readhistorical documents, and (4) transcribe and evaluate these documents. 

The primary source that students will betranscribing in this course is Book Five (1499-1513) of the Capitulary Acts ofthe Cathedral of Plasencia, which isa census-like accounting document that details the activities and businesstransactions of the cathedral. Most students will work with the 19thcentury transcription of the original 15th century text. Students who wish to challenge themselves will be granted the opportunity to work withthe original late fourteenth/fifteenth century text.

View the high resolution promotional video -- with English and Spanish subtitles.