THIS BOOK OFFERS a ground-breaking perspective on Judeo-Christian coexistence in medieval Spain, in particular on the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James), one of the most important pilgrimage routes in Europe. The concept of peaceful, parallel religious societies in medieval Spain was first described by the Spanish historian Américo Castro. Castro envisioned a utopian period of cultural interchanges, but did not make an adequate case that an interconfessional Utopia surfaced in the writings of the period. In reaction to this overarching depiction of coexistence, David Nirenberg “questions the very existence of an age of peaceful and idyllic” relations by arguing that anti-Semitic violence “was a central and systemic aspect of the coexistence of majority and minorities in medieval Spain.” Similarly, Mark Cohen writes of “the gloomy position” of Castilian Jews during the Middle Ages. While the historical records examined by Nirenberg and Mark Cohen expose the non-monolithic character of abutting belief communities, these scholars fail to take into account literary testimony of cooperation between Christians and Jews. In this book, I uncover new evidence of Judeo-Christian cooperation in Castilian monasteries on the Camino de Santiago. My book reveals that a collaborative climate endured in these monasteries as demonstrated by the transmission of cuaderna vía poetry from Christians to Jews.

I focus on poems written by Jews in Castilian (Spanish) during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that illustrate a progressive mastery of cuaderna vía poetry. This metrical form began to take shape within twelfth-century French monastic circles as an outgrowth of a renewed appreciation for Classical Antiquity. Much attention was paid to the Greek ruler Alexander the Great (b. 356–d. 32 BCE), whose life was recounted by clerics from the order of Cluny in narrative poems which comprised dodecasyllabic alexandrine verses. During the early thirteenth century, Castilian cuaderna vía poetry was created by clerics working at Castilian monasteries on the Camino de Santiago, who were influenced by French Cluniac monks invited to teach at their monastic schools. The Castilian monasteries that received Cluniac monks sought integration within Catholic Christendom by practising customs popularized by Cluny, such as the versification of liturgical hymns. Castilian clerics also had an economic motivation for adapting French metrics, namely, the familiarity of alexandrine verses to French pilgrims travelling along the Camino de Santiago might encourage them to make donations.

SEM TOB'S PROVERBIOS MORALES was preserved in five fifteenth-century manu-scripts. One of these manuscripts, housed today by the Cambridge University Library as Ms. Add. 3355, contains a fragment in Hebrew aljamiado of the so-called “Coplas de Yoçef,” which is a fourteenth-century example of an aljamiado tradition that began in the thirteenth century with works such as “Cuando el rey Nimrod al campo saldriya.” Like this poem, “Coplas de Yoçef” also centres on an Old Testament Patriarch, Joseph, whose life is narrated in forty-two quatrains of what was originally a much longer work. The versification employed in “Coplas de Yoçef” finds parallels with works composed by anonymous thirteenth-century Jewish cuaderna vía poets, including the manipulation of the zéjel strophic form through the construction of quatrains with estribillos that vary greatly, but that always end with the name “Yoçef” (Joseph), as in the following examples:

As is evident in González Llubera's transcription into Castilian of the Hebrew aljamiado, the composer of “Coplas de Yoçef” utilized consonant rhyme (-ado, -era, -ath) to distinguish the initial three verses in each quatrain as in “Cuando el rey Nimrod al campo saldriya” and “Cuando a Yerušaláyim vide en tanta fatiga.”

THE JEWISH POET who assimilated Christian norms with the greatest precision was Sem Tob Ibn Ardutiel ben Isaac—better known as Sem Tob de Carrión—who composed his only Castilian cuaderna vía poem, Proverbios morales (Moral Proverbs), in the early 1350s. Sem Tob offers a wealth of guidance in Proverbios morales, whose 725 stanzas comprise almost entirely two fourteen-syllable alexandrine verses divided into two seven-syllable hemistiches. Sem Tob lived in the town of Carrión de los Condes, whose ten thousand inhabitants during the fourteenth century included between three hundred and six hundred Jewish families. Jews had been granted the right to reside in Carrión de los Condes in a royal charter issued during the late eleventh century, and documents reveal that Jews lived in communities situated next to several pilgrimage churches in Carrión de los Condes, including the Benedictine monastery of San Zoilo.

This monastery acquired its advocation in the eleventh century after securing the relics of Zoilus (Zoilo), a Cordovan martyr executed at the beginning of the fourth century. The arrival of these relics to the monastery that adopted his name contributed to its growth as a pilgrimage centre for pilgrims travelling on the Camino de Santiago, which was a common phenomenon as I explain elsewhere with respect to the arrival of the relics of Millán to San Millán de la Cogolla. The possession of objects linked to venerated figures enhanced the status of the monasteries where those objects were housed and increased the chances that pilgrims would choose to visit and leave donations. As such, the procurement of relics was a monastic activity that, like the recitation of cuaderna vía poetry, was conducted with the aim of producing economic benefits. San Zoilo also acquired assets after officially becoming a Cluniac daughter monastery in 1076, when it began to receive royal donations, including properties in several surrounding villages.

In 1220, in gratitude for services rendered to San Zoilo, King Fernando III granted an exemption from an annual royal tax of one hundred maravedís to Christian, Jewish, and Muslim residents of the “barrio Sancti Zoili” (San Zoilo neighbourhood).

Cuaderna vía poetry was a high-culture literary by-product of the French monastic school, an academic institution that evolved over the course of the Middle Ages. The earliest French monastic schools were established in the fifth century, and their proliferation was encouraged by legislation issued by Charlemagne (b. 742–d. 814), which mandated a standardized curriculum in monastic schools. A surge in monastic foundations during the tenth century contributed to an amplification of monastic educational programs. The most important was the Benedictine monastery of Cluny in central France, which was established around 910 by William I (b. 875–d. 918), the Duque of Aquitaine. The fact that Cluny declared exclusive allegiance to the papacy helped to extend its influence internationally, well beyond that of other French monasteries. With papal support, Cluniac traditions were popularized by monks who travelled to other monasteries that were, on many occasions, officially annexed to Cluny. On other occasions, the influence of Cluny was extended indirectly. One example is St. Martin of Tournai, which traces its origins to the seventh century but which was refounded in the eleventh century as one of a number of monasteries that functioned according to a “Cluniac system […] for the proper administration of the monastery.” The association between Tournai and Cluny reflected a growing tendency toward adopting Cluniac norms, which encouraged the development within monasteries of intellectual pursuits. For example, among the monasteries that became Cluniac daughter houses, Saint-Bénigne, in Dijon, became a “widely influential center of monastic spirituality and education.” This was the historical moment when Cluniac education became normalized and centred on the practice of reading.

The availability of manuscripts enabled greater numbers of monks to participate in daily reading exercises that were required at Cluny according to Benedictine norms:

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS in this book describe the process by which Jewish writers adopted a Christian poetic mode that was popularized by clerics. One issue that merits consideration is the reception by these Jewish writers of anti-Semitic Christian cuaderna vía discourse. For example, it is interesting to ponder how Jews of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries might have reacted to hearing anti-Semitic episodes from Milagros, which may have occurred if Berceo's work was used as a model for instruction. Whether or not there was some reluctance among Jews to imitate a type of poetry that exploited anti-Semitic libels, this did not dissuade them as the works considered in this book testify. Moreover, any trepidation felt by these Jews did not discourage them from entering monasteries and studying with Christian clerics. Jews undoubtedly placed a value on learning cuaderna vía poetry for its capacity to disseminate information through a metrical form whose rhyme facilitated memorization.

The incorporation of cuaderna vía poems into the Jewish liturgy indicates that they enjoyed a widespread appeal, and it would be logical to conclude that these poems were used as such because of their performative character. The Jewish liturgy involves numerous hymns and prayers that are sung aloud by congregants and their spiritual leaders (rabbis or cantors), and the tendency for Christian clerical cuaderna vía poetry to be publicly performed may have encouraged Jews to imitate both its metrical structure and mode of dissemination. Additionally, the requirement for Jews to engage in communal worship may also have played a pivotal role in the popularization of Jewish cuaderna vía liturgical poems. According to the Talmud, Jews are obligated to pray aloud in a quorum of ten adults on certain occasions, including when reading from the Torah and when reciting prayers such as the Amidah. In light of this obligation, it is easy to envision how cuaderna vía poems, which Christian clerics also read aloud in group settings, were assimilated into the Jewish liturgy.

DURING THE THIRTEENTH century, contact between Christians and Jews was encouraged by the fact that monasteries could at times be public spaces. One space that functioned as such was the cloister, where academic lessons were typically imparted and which also functioned as a central meeting place. Such was the case at St. Martin of Tournai, where, in addition to the “activities of the cathedral school”:

As mentioned in chapter 1, at Cluny the cloister functioned as a place where monks engaged in reading, and it would be logical to conclude that this is where they read (and perhaps heard readings of) manuscripts from which they learned the techniques of cuaderna vía poetry. Public recitation of cuaderna vía poems outside of monasteries enhanced the possibility for contact between Christian clerics and Jews because Jewish communities were located nearby important Castilian pilgrimage monasteries and at times under their control. For example, in 1221 King Fernando III (r. 1217–1252) decreed that Jews living on lands in Burgos controlled by Santa María de las Huelgas were to be vassals of that monastery. Other monasteries situated close to Jewish communities include San Zoilo in Carrión de los Condes, which will be discussed in the following chapter, and the monastery in Frómista (which included the Church of San Martín) annexed to San Zoilo.

Interaction between Jews and Christian clerics was also an offshoot of the fact that commercial transactions between monasteries and Jews were a part of daily life on the Camino de Santiago.