Alfonso XI, king of Castile (1312-1350) toured his kingdom shortly after becoming an adult, with the intention to restore royal authority after the turbulent years at the beginning of his reign.1 Ruiz (2012, chapter III: “Royal Entries, Princely Visits, Triumphal Celebrations in Spain, c. 1327-1640”, pp. 68-112) describes in detail the entry of Alfonso XI in Seville following the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, vol. 1, pp. 339-340. As stated in the so-called Gran Crónica de Alfonso XIGran Crónica de Alfonso XI (1976) Catalán, D., (ed.), 2 vols. Madrid: Editorial Gredos., written by chancellor Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid some years before the death of the king, Alfonso XI entered the city of Seville in the spring of 1327, having just turned sixteen years of age. The reception of the king was likely conceived as a performance of the return of good governance to the town, a street theatre play enacted by nobles and citizens, similar to the contemporary French ritual, especially in its combination of sacred and profane elements.2 Linehan, 1993, p. 635. Seville was one of the most important cities in Castile. It had been under Christian rule for barely one hundred years and was the de facto capital of the kingdom during the reign of his great-grandfather Alfonso X (1252-1284), buried next to his father Fernando III (1217-1252), the conqueror of the city in 1248, in the Royal Chapel of the cathedral. In these circumstances, it will be expected that a large symbolism related to the Muslim-Christian entanglement and the Christian victory over the Muslims was added to the political burden. However, and contrary to what had happened a century before, the memory of the Islamic heritage of the city was not included in the discourse displayed by royal power on this occasion. During the first decades of the 14th century Seville no longer sought the exaltation of the Christianization process of al-Andalus through the reminiscence of the Islamic buildings. Quite the contrary, such a selective memory shows that it was a strategically important city for the Castilian monarchy at the time, despite its past, and was as such reflected in the celebration of the royal adventus and in the planning of the public ceremony.
Alfonso XI’s chronicle halts briefly to describe the king’s entry into Seville in 1327. This succinct account involves an unusual amount of details about the ritual, which results in a description very different from those reported on royal celebrations for previous reigns. Fernán Sánchez de Valladolid was very interested in highlighting that both the ricos hombres and the urban community had actively partaken in the preparations and in the performance of the royal entry into Seville. The king was welcomed into the city with much joy, festivals and dances, escorted by knights carrying spears and shields; by nobles and citizens playing war games, surrounded by animal sculptures that “seemed to be alive” whilst in the Guadalquivir River a naval battle was simulated; all accompanied by the sound of trumpets, drums and other instruments.3 Ruiz, 2012, p. 69. Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, vol. 1, p. 339.
During the reception, women and men danced along with minstrels de boca y de peñola; there were also many sculptures of strange beasts that gave the impression of being alive; many knights walked around carrying their lances and shields and others played board games; and down the river boats pretended to fight against each other accompanied by very loud trumpets, drums and other musical instruments.4“E en este rresçebemiento ovo muchas danças de omes e de mujeres, con muchos joglares de boca y de peñola que trayan cada unos dellos; e otrosi avia ay muchos juegos fechos por manos de omes con figuras de alimanias estrañas que paresçian biuas; e muchos caualleros que andaban bofordando a lança e escudo, e otros que echauan a tablado, e otros que jugauan a las cañas; e por el rrio de Guadalquivir avia muchas varcas que andauan jugando armadas e fazian muestra que peleavan, e avia con ellas muchas trompetas e atabales e otros muchos instrumentos que fazien grandes rruydos.” My own translation to English.
The procession started at the gates of the city. Knights and citizens escorted the king under a rich cloth,5 Ruiz, 2009. the poles of which were borne by some of the most prominent nobles in Seville. The streets were richly decorated with gold and silver fabrics and the houses of the attending knights were also as embellished as they could be, being the only architectonic references in the description of the entry into Seville of King Alfonso. The Guadalquivir River and the city streets were the fundamental geographic points of the procession, which started outside of the city walls where Alfonso XI was received by Sevillian noblemen and Muslim knights-the only explicit concession to the town’s Islamic past-accompanied by someone nicknamed “Abrahen the drunk:”
And before the king entered the city, the finest men, nobles, knights and citizens, dismounted from their horses and placed a poled gold cloth over the king. And since the king arrived in the city, he found the streets covered with gold and silk cloths as well as the walls; and in the houses of such knights they put many scented items and many incenses the best that there could be. And that day in which the king entered the city he found there don Abrahen son of Ozmin, and because he drank wine he was said Abrahen the drunk, and with him came a group of Moorish knights serving to the king, and they went to welcome him outside the city.6 “E antes que el rrey entrase en la çibdad, los mejores omes de la çibdad, ricos omes, caualleros e çibdadanos, descendieron de las bestias e tomaron un paño de oro muy noble e truxeron lo en varas ençima del rrey. E desuqe el rrey llego a la çibdad, fallo las calles por do yva todas cubiertas de paños de oro y de seda, e las paredes eso mesmo; e en cada vna de las casas destos caualleros pusieron muchas cosas que olían e muchos sahumerios los mejores que se podieron aver. Y en este dia quel rrey entro en esta çibdad fallo ay a don Abrahen fijo de Ozmin, e porque bebia vino dezianle Abrahen el beodo; e venían con el pieça de caualleros moros a seruiçio del rrey; e salieronlo a rresçebir fuera de la çibdad.” My own translation to English.
As Teófilo Ruiz points out, we can find in Alfonso XI’s triumphal entry into Seville in 1327 almost all of the main elements of the future Spanish entries.7Vid. note 1. Carrasco, 2014. In the Late Middle Ages, in cities with a Muslim past the commemoration of the date of the Christian conquest was as important as the Corpus Christi one. With comparative aspects to the Crown of Aragon: Massip Bonet, 2003. From that moment on, their performance increased both in number and complexity, seeking through ostentation and inventiveness to interact with the audience and amaze them with different devices. In all of them, the kings’ itinerary from the town gates got more accurately regulated and the existing hierarchies among the participants became more pronounced, making the complexity of the performance more evident. There is, despite the homogenization that processional performances and royal adventus present from the 14th century, a specific feature that distinguishes the royal entrance of 1327 from others. As noted above, Alfonso XI’s entry into Seville in 1327 implied a disruption in the memory of the transformation of an Islamic city into a Christian one after the conquest of 1248. The mosque turned into a cathedral, key reference, as we will see, to the kings’ entries into the conquered cities of al-Andalus nearly a century earlier lost its relevance in the political framework of the kingdom of Castile during the first half of the 14th century. The processional topography no longer needed to highlight the key references of the conquest and conversion that legitimized acts of war by the Christian kings. The Christian appropriation of the congregational mosque of Seville, turned into the cathedral and its former minaret into the Giralda, were no longer the essential elements of the story. The oblivion of Seville’s Islamic past during Alfonso XI’s royal entry was in line with the invisibility of the religious buildings that petrified the memory of that past. In return, the decorated houses of Sevillian lay nobility had now taken a more prominent role.8 As Brubaker and Wickham (2021) note (on Byzantium), the extensive practice of decorating streets was an act that brought the urban community directly into the project of creating, not just observing, processional space.
Despite their inconspicuousness in the royal chronicle, some of those Sevillian nobiliary houses had probably been erected on ancient Islamic buildings, of which testimonies contemporary of Alfonso XI’s entry into Seville are known. Of the hundreds of neighbourhood mosques featured on post-conquest Christian documentation, only twenty were re-consecrated as parish churches, while the rest of them were turned into stores and houses (casa mezquita is a designation found in some episcopal records). In 1327, the same year as the solemn entry of the king into the town, the documentation records Alfonso XI’s request to the Cathedral of Seville to respect the commercial agreement reached with Yhuda Abenxabat, Jewish almojarife of the king, on the so-called Mezquita de la Judería-a property he was interested to turn into houses, shops and other establishments.9 Ecker, 1997. “Sepades que don Yhuda Abenxabat, mio almoxariffe, me dixo que a vos e el cabildo quisierdes fazer cambio con el de una mezquita que diz que auedes en la Juderia de la dicha çibdat […] Tengo por bien que fagades este cambio con el dicho don Yhuda dando uso el alffondiga por la mezquita sobredicha.” Document 3, pp. 201-202. In a city where the persistence of the Andalusian past in the urban fabric was logged in the ecclesiastical records, the absence of that material in the contemporary account of the royal adventus would necessarily imply a clear political intention.
The adventus of Alfonso XI, which set a precedent for later royal entries, had cut off from the memory of the Christian conquests of Islamic cities-based on the accounts of both material and symbolic appropriations of the buildings representing the power of the defeated-from the last decades of the 11th Century. The analysis of this process and the multi-levelled set of meanings conveyed by royal entries and processions will be exposed in the following pages.
ROYAL CEREMONIES, ECCLESIASTICAL IDENTITY AND CONFLICT IN THE 11TH CENTURY
⌅Written sources of the kingdoms of Castile-Leon describing processions and royal entries previous to the Sevillian event in the age of Alfonso XI are not commonly found. Neither the beginning of the reigns nor the coronations-for which no traditions or rituals were established and which probably happened on very few occasions-,10 Such as at the beginning of the reign of Sancho IV (1284-1295) “É luego fuese para Toledo, é fizose coronar á él é a la reina doña María, su mujer; e coronáronlo cuatro obispos...” (“And then he went to Toledo, and had himself and Queen María crowned, and four bishops crowned him ...”) Crónica del Rey Don Sancho, el Bravo, I: 69. Vid. also, Pérez Monzón, 2010. nor the death and burial of kings-for which no fixed and identifiable place like a royal pantheon existed until later times-implied ceremonies linked to urban itineraries. The absence of such ceremonies makes it difficult to recognize the topography of power through remarkable buildings and the hierarchies among their ecclesiastical and secular participants, as well as their role in the performance. This absence prevented the kings of Castile and Leon from being seen publicly and visiting some iconic processional spots which, as we know from other Christian kingdoms of the central Middle Ages, provided the right atmosphere for the most solemn rituals in a medieval monarch’s life.11 Brubaker and Wickham, 2021: If the major written sources concerning Byzantine processions are to be believed, there were, on average, a minimum of two processions a week in Constantinople, many of which involved the patriarch and often also the emperor. In the twelfth century, there were some three dozen documented processions in Rome every year, marking the main steps of the ritual cycle. This processional system was papal in character, but it did not exclude the populus of the city. Lay Romans did not participate in every procession, but they were part of many of the most important, and they were in the audience for the others. The power of the pope was affirmed with impressive regularity, but so was the cohesion of the Roman people. Wickham, (2013) does not analyze the ceremonies linked to the few royal proclamations in Castile-Leon in these centuries. The narrative sources include, among others, that of Alfonso VII in 1111 (Historia Compostellana), Fernando III in Castile in 1217, and in Leon in 1230 (Historia de Rebus Hispaniae, Chronica latina regum Castellae).
The translatio from Seville to Leon in 1063 during the reign of Fernando I (1029-1065) of the relics of Saint Isidoro, archbishop of Seville in Visigothic times, allows us to reconstruct some of the itinerary of the solemn entry into the city of Leon of the relics of the saint brought from al-Andalus and of his burial in the church of Juan Bautista. From then onwards, this church became that of San Isidoro, after the saint whose relics it housed, and was later the burial place of Fernando I and other members of his family.12 The sources indicate that the bishops of Leon and Astorga were sent by Fernando I to Seville in 1063, following his wife’s pleas, queen Sancha, to retrieve the relics of Saint Justa, even though they returned to Leon with those of Saint Isidoro. Falque, 2019. The so-called Historia translationis sancti Isidori, probably written between 1170 and 1235 provides the most extensive account of the transfer of San Isidoro’s relics. This Historia translationis will become the main source used by Lucas de Tuy for his narration of the traslatio Isidori included in the Chronicon Mundi. The same account is also found in the so-called Chronica Najerense, written in the 1170 decade. Estévez Sola (ed.), Historia Translationis sancti Isidori; Estévez Sola (ed.), Chronica Naierensis.
There are two foci on this account. In the first place, the Islamic city of Seville. This account does not mention the topography of the Islamic town in which Fernando I’s representatives arrived, nor does it mention a single of its main buildings, despite the fact the Fernando of Leon’s representatives met, in several occasions, with the king of the Sevillian taifa and senior officials of his government. The only highlight of Seville is the discovery, after Saint Isidoro himself appeared to the Christian legates and pointed it out to them, of the church where his remains were buried:
Following, when after the revelation from Heaven the prelates arrived at the church where the holy body rested and began to look for his tomb, they found atop bare earth the traces of the sceptre with which the holy confessor had signalled the location of the monument.13 “[…] siquidem almi pontifices ad ecclesiam, in qua sanctum corpus quiescebat, celesti reuelacione dum peruenirent et eius sepulcrum quererent, uestigia uirge cum qua sanctus confessor trina percussione locum monumento monstrauerat in ipso terre solo inuentasunt.” Estévez Sola (ed.), Historia translationis sancti Isidori, pp. 154-155. My own translation to English.
The church that it referred to, its location or the circumstances in which a church could have remained intact in an Islamic environment, are questions unrelated to the intention of the account. The materiality of the Islamic Seville is invisible to the Christian legates. On this occasion - and contrary to what will happen when Alfonso XI solemnly tours the same city 250 years later - it must have been extremely difficult for Fernando I’s representatives to obviate the presence of Islamic architecture and the hundreds of mosques that already existed and constituted the city’s landscape. Such a view must have both interested and surprised them.
Secondly, Leon as sedes regiae. According to the account of the Historia translationis sancti IsidoriHistoria Translationis Sancti Isidori (1997) Estévez Solá, J. A. (ed.), in Chronica Hispana Saeculi XIII. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Medievalis LXXIII. Turnhout: Brepols., those sent to Seville were welcomed, upon their return, by the king and his sons outside of Leon, by the Duero River, and accompanied by a large crowd of clergy and laity, men and women. After meeting queen Sancha and her daughters and the clergy with their holy vestments on the banks of the River Torío, they headed to the city where they entered “ad portam ciuitatis que de Arcu dicitur” (through the city gate called the Arch Gate) and from there they moved towards the church of San Juan Bautista, only after having carried the remains of bishop Alvito, who died in Seville, to the cathedral for their burial.14 Estévez Sola (ed.), Historia translationis sancti Isidori, pp. 157-159. On the Arch Gate, see Morillo and Durán Cabello, 2017. This was a matter of ecclesiastic nature-the solemn arrival of the relics of the most distinguished representative of the Visigothic church-but it was also a powerful legitimizing argument for the Leonese monarchs, whose remains were destined to be buried beside those of the saint. The broad participation of the Leonese people and the mention of the uprising, echoed by the Historia translationis sancti IsidoriHistoria Translationis Sancti Isidori (1997) Estévez Solá, J. A. (ed.), in Chronica Hispana Saeculi XIII. Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Medievalis LXXIII. Turnhout: Brepols., among supporters and detractors of the archbishop Alvito’s burial next to Saint Isidoro, indicate the multi-levelled set of meanings and negotiations conveyed by processions. The choice of the church of San Juan Bautista as the final stop of the procession instead of the cathedral, suggests, on the other hand, that the construction of the royal identity implied the appropriation of an ecclesiastical space through the hierarchization of the landmarks of an urban itinerary.
This is one of the very few mentions of a processional itinerary before the accounts of the conquest of the al-Andalus cities by the Christian kings after that of Toledo in the spring of 1085.15 A similar account, in this case a transfer of relics among Christian kingdoms, comes from the Historia Compostellana, written between 1107 and 1149 to the greater glory of archbishop Gelmírez of Santiago de Compostela. It narrates the archbishop’s solemn entry in Braga and the traslatio of Saints Fructuoso, Silvestre, and Cucufate in 1102 from Portugal to Santiago. Falque (ed.), Historia Compostellana, I, 15. The Christian conquest of Toledo by King Alfonso VI (1065-1109)-son of Fernando I-set a new precedent for how Christian rulers after taking control of an al-Andalus city, either through conquest or agreement, had to take possession of it symbolically. It also serves as a precedent for how to turn it into a Christian city by transforming its most important buildings, the mosques, into churches that represented not only the change of worship but also key elements of territorial control and organisation. Written sources, particularly chronicles from the ecclesiastical environment close to the royal court, which began to be more abundant from the 12th century, echoed the challenge that the entry of the Christians into Toledo had meant for the transformation of the urban landscape, not only Islamic but also of Mozarabic Christians who had remained in the city under Muslim occupation.
One of the most important Latin chronicles of the central Middle Ages, and a primary source for Alfonso X’s Estoria de España is the Historia de Rebus Hispaniae. Written by the archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada between the 1230s and 1243 it provides a detailed account of the events after the conquest of Toledo by Alfonso VI in 1085. An unknown number of Muslims remained in the city, keeping their houses and assets in exchange for paying the Christians the taxes that they used to pay to the Muslim kings. The Christian king had previously agreed, in 1081, that the congregational mosque of Toledo would be in the hands of the inhabitants of the city forever.16 Fernández Valverde (ed.), Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, VI/XXII, pp. 204-205: “Cepit itaque Toletum era MCXXlII multis pactionibus interpositis, uidelicet, ut Sarraceni haberent plene et integre domos et possessiones et omnia que habebant et regi remaneret presidium ciuitatis cum uiridario ultra pontem; reditus autem qui antiquo iure dabantur regibus, ei persoluerent Agareni, et etiam quod maior mezquita eis in perpetuum remaneret.” This clause was not met when king Alfonso’s troops entered the city. The cathedral was then endowed with lands, shops, houses and other riches.17Ibidem, VI/XXIII, p. 205: “[…] et rex in continenti dotauit ecclesiam liberaliter et honeste […] et in ciuitate omnes stationes quas uulgariter tendas uocamus, necnon domos, molendina, furnos, uiridaria, uineas et ortos, pro quibus hodie eius memoriam et exequias ueneratur ecclesia Toletana, et multa alia priuilegia dedit inmunitatis.” Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s chronicle partially includes the content of the founding document of the cathedral of Toledo, dated December 1086. In this document, Alfonso VI gifted the cathedral with the religious endowment (waqf) that had once belonged to the mosque. Against the king’s seemingly tolerant policy towards the Muslims and Mozarabs of Toledo, the soon-to-be first archbishop, Cluniac Bernardo of Sedirac, advised by the French queen Constanza, broke into the congregational mosque at night, cleaned it from “the filth of the law of Muhammad,” set up the altar of Christ and placed, in the tallest tower, the bells to call to prayer.18Ibidem, VI/XXIV, p. 206: “Cumque rex ad partes Legionis iuisset, ipse electus, regina Constancia adhortante, de nocte ascitis militibus christianis maiorem mezquitam ingressus est Toletanam, et eliminata spurcicia Machometi erexit altaria fidei christiane et in maiore turri campanas ad conuocationem fidelium collocauit. Quod cum ad regis noticiam peruenisset, indignatus animo et dolore accensus, eo quod Sarracenis pactum firmauerat de mezquita, a Sancto Facundo tribus diebus uenit Toletum proponens Bernardum electum et reginam Constanciam incendio concremare.” The cathedral was consecrated later, in December of 1086. Oddly enough the archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, always so willing to refer to the Visigothic past of Toledo as urbs regia in his chronicle, did not attempt to legitimize the conversion of the mosque using that argument. In this sense, the need to disassociate the new Christian reality from the old and continued Mozarabic tradition seemed to prevail. Thus, it could be explained that the relics necessary for the consecration of the cathedral altars came from Rome and the royal treasury and not from the Mozarabic churches of Toledo, as well as the total absence of references to the former Mozarabic archiepiscopal see in the account.19 It is unlikely that the substitution was pacific. When the archbishop Bernardo decided to join the First Crusade in 1095, the clerics from Toledo expelled his agents (primatis domesticos) and chose a new archbishop. The uprising was unsuccessful. Francisco Hernández suggests that it is possible that the rebels (clericos indígenas) attempted to retake the old cathedral, by then empty, because shortly after the archbishop Bernardo donated the building-“the new church named Santa María de Alficén, which never lost the Christian worship, even under the yoke of the perfidious during pagan times”-to a group of French monks from Marseille who would turn it into a hostelry. Hernández, “La cathédrale, instrument d’assimilation.”
Nevertheless, the appropriation of the mosque, was a new and unprecedented act in the Kingdom of Castile-Leon. It had taken place at night, contrary to the king’s desire and resulting in a conflict between him, the queen Constanza and the archbishop Bernardo-whom the king threatened to send to the stake-due to the breach of the pact with the Muslims of Toledo. According to the Historia de Rebus Hispaniae account, Toledan Muslims, fearing revenge from the queen and archbishop’s supporters, appeased the king’s anger releasing him from his oath. Thus, following the chronicle, he was able to take the mosque without breaking his word and, as he entered the city, he brought order back no need for violence.20Ibidem, VI/XXIV, p. 207: “Hiis auditis regis ira in gaudium comutatur, eo quod mezquitam habere poterat sine fidei lesione, et ingressus urbem regiam omnia pacifice pertractauit.” As stated before, the reason behind a hitherto unknown strategy has been explained by some authors as an opportunity for the archbishop Bernardo to create an institution independent of the powerful Mozarab clergy, which strongly resisted giving up their rite and taking in the Roman one.21 Hernández (1991) raises several interesting points. Firstly, he points out that Alfonso VI had already visited the Mozarabic mosque during his stay in Toledo a decade earlier while under the protection of the Muslim ruler. Secondly, he highlights that there are no references in the sources relating to the period between May 1085, the date of the entry of the Christian armies, and December 1086, the date of the appointment of Bernardo as archbishop of Toledo and the consecration of the mosque as a cathedral church. For that reason, it is difficult to understand the process of urban transformation and elimination of the hierarchical structure of the Mozarabic clergy, whose power is shown by the fact that worship had been maintained in at least seven churches during Islamic times, including the Mozarabic cathedral, pushed into second place after the conversion of the congregational mosque into the new cathedral. The Chronica Najerense, and later De Rebus Hispaniae, narrate the famous tournament between a Toledan and Castilian knights, champions of the Mozarabic and Roman/French rituals respectively, and the subsequent ordeal to determine which of the missals, whether that of the Mozarabic or the Roman officium was spared the fire. In the end, the king imposed the Roman ritual despite having lost to the Mozarabic one on both tests because, according to the chronicler: “Quo uolunt reges uadunt leges”: laws go where kings want. Estévez Sola (ed.), Chronica Naierensis, III/18; Fernández Valverde (ed.), Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, VI/XXV, p. 208. In this context, the role of buildings in the legitimation of new social structures and the transformation of the perception of a city, is highlighted in a hitherto unknown way.
Alfonso VI’s entry into Toledo set a new precedent put into practice by his successors during the Christian conquests of al-Andalus cities, which took place until the mid-13th century. In the case of the conquest of Toledo, there is no explicit reference to processions or royal ceremonies although presumably there was some kind of ritual other than the cleansing of the mosque and the conversion into a cathedral. However, the narrative sources we just analysed suggest that such ritual was initiated by the archbishop precisely in opposition to the king and the powerful Mozarabic community that survived the Islamic ruling. Consequently, at least at first, the royal initiative was not responsible for the model that would be established when the kings and the clergy entered into the conquered cities from that moment.
As Tom Nickson points out, although there was no standard formal process for converting spaces, the purgation of the “filth of Muhammad,” a phrasing borrowed from the account of the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem in Maccabees 4, referred to by the archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada describing the process of purification of the congregational mosque of Toledo, probably refers to the destruction of the minbar and the removal of mosque lamps.22 Vid. Nickson, 2015, in particular p. 37. “Eliminata spurcicia Mahometi” is common in Crusader chronicles or in the anti-Islamic writings of the 12th century churchmen like Bernard of Clairvaux. It also appears in the documentation of Alfonso I of Aragon regarding the diocese of Tarazona and in the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris regarding Alfonso VII’s destruction of Coria’s mosque. Harris, “Mosque to Church Conversions in the Spanish Reconquest” p. 162. The setting up of the altar probably implied a reorientation of the building toward the east. The installation of bells in the minaret also belongs to a much wider discourse from across the medieval Mediterranean that opposed church towers and bells with minarets and the call to prayer.23Ibidem, p. 37. Vid. also Bloom, 1992. In the following years, the mosque/cathedral of Toledo was most likely embellished with objects, paintings, reliquaries and lamps, some of them have been preserved, although decontextualized, or only cited in late inventories.
In 1226, during the archbishopric of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, the construction of the gothic cathedral of Toledo began. 24 In January 1222, Pope Honorius III transferred to Toledo cathedral the fabric tithes from all churches in the diocese for the next five years. The opening of the bull repeats the content of a previous letter sent by the archbishop Rodrigo informing that the church’s fabric, by the progress of time and because of its age, was threatening ruin. He also informed of the scarceness of building stone and wood. Nickson, 2015, p. 60. In an endowment of 10 July 1238, the archbishop Rodrigo recognized that the building that had served as Toledo’s cathedral for 150 years had once been a mosque and had kept its shape.25 “Cum Toletana ecclesia que olim nobilis et famosa multius temporibus fuerit sub sarracenorum tirannide captiuata et ab ea captiuitate, cum diuine placuit magestati, per laborem et industriam Bernaldi protopresulis respirare cepisset, idem presul paucissimos canonicos et seruitores instituit, prout pauperitatis possibilitas tolerabat, successoresque eius secundum facultatum crementa numerum aucmentarunt, ut, facultate crescent, cresceret numerus seruitorum. Nostris itaque temporibus, crescent diocese et prouincia et ambitu ecclesie a forma mezquite in forma ecclesie nostris laboribus et expensis mutato, uisum fuit nobis Roderico Toletane sedis archiepiscopo Hyspaniarum primati…” In his De Rebus Hispaniae he immortalizes the moment when the first stone is laid on for the work which still had the shape of a mosque:
And then the king and the archbishop laid the first stone of the foundations of the church of Toledo, which still maintained the shape of a mosque from the times of the Arabs, its building rising for days through formidable work among the great admiration of the men.26 Fernández Valverde (ed.), Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, IX/XIII, p. 294. On other mosques converted into churches in Toledo in 12th Century, see: Calvo Capilla, 1999.
From the conquest of Toledo until the beginning of the Gothic work, some of the most emblematic altars of the cathedral were built. Among them, we find for instance the one dedicated to Thomas of Canterbury in 1179 by the queen Leonor of England, Alfonso VIII’s wife. All those altars would be found in a building whose structure bears a greater resemblance to an Islamic heritage than what the chronicles’ descriptions of the Christian purification would allow us to guess. Despite its shift from the previous building, some characteristic elements of Islamic architecture were used in the construction of the new cathedral: maintaining such Islamic features has been interpreted as a direct allusion to the Great Mosque of Córdoba-which was purified and turned into the cathedral after the triumphal entry of Fernando III into the capital of the caliphate in 1236, an event that was recorded in the Historia de Rebus Hispaniae by the archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. It was under his mandate that the construction of the cathedral of Toledo began.
CREATING MEANINGS. ROYAL ENTRIES IN CONQUERED TOWNS IN THE 12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES.
⌅The procedure for converting the congregational mosque of Toledo into the Christian cathedral did not follow any precedented practice in Castile-Leon. From then on, throughout the 12th century and especially during the first decades of the 13th, the procedure was standardized, with growing numbers of records mentioning the actions of the kings and prelates in the cities of al-Andalus once the Christian armies had subdued them. The Chronica Adefonsi ImperatorisChronica Adefonsi Imperatoris (1990) Maya Sánchez, A. (ed.), inChronica hispana saeculi XII, Pars I, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevaelis, LXXI. Turnhout: Brepols.-written within the royal circle of Alfonso VII (1126-1157)-recounts the entry of the son of the conqueror of Toledo into the city of Coria in 1142, the purification of its mosque “ab immunditia barbarice gentis et a contaminatione Mahometis” and its conversion into the cathedral, as it had formerly been a Visigoth episcopal see. However, not all mosques were preserved and turned into churches. The chronicle also alludes to the previous destruction of the mosques and Islamic religious properties in the razzias carried out by Alfonso VII in the countryside of Seville, Córdoba and Carmona. These were probably rural mosques and therefore of little interest to the Christians.27 Maya Sánchez (ed.), Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris, II-66, p. 225: “Postquam aurem reddita est ciuitas imperarori, mundata est ab immunditia barbarice gentis et a contaminatione Mahometis et, destructa omni spurcitia paganorum ciuitatis ilIius et templi sui, dedicauerunr ecclesiam in honore sancte Marie semper uirginis et omnium sanctorum et ordinauerunr ibi episcopum uirum religiosum nomine Nauarronem, sicuti antiquitus fuerat sedis episcopalis tempore Ildefonsi archiepiscopi et Recaredi regis, quando tota illa terra Christianorum erat a Mediterraneo usque ad mare Occeanum.” On the destruction of mosques and other Islamic religious property, Ibidem, I-36, p. 167. The Libros del Repartimiento ((Book of Apportionment) of the 13th century elucidate the fate of the so-called “mezquitas de moros” in the urban and rural environment, most of which were destroyed. In Aragon, the king Pedro I converted the mosque of Barbastro in 1101 - “ad pristinum statum suam sanctam ecclesiam reintegravit”-, and he gave it a year later to the French abbey of Sainte Foy de Conques. Sénac and Laliena, 2018, p. 61.
References to the public ceremonies of the conversion of mosques into churches are limited and exceptional in the 12th century. The subsequent advancement of the Christian conquest of al-Andalus changed the scenario, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Although the adventus ceremonies in the central decades of the 13th century lacked the regularity necessary for conveying daily hegemonic authority, the transformation of the congregational mosques in the conquered cities had become customary by then, thus providing a unique opportunity for victorious monarchs to display their power through the appropriation of urban spaces. The king’s central role in the ecclesiastical rituals of purification and the subsequent control over the fate of the most representative buildings allow these processions to be considered as spatial and ritual phenomena.
Almost a century before Alfonso XI’s royal entry in Seville in 1327, by the end of June 1236, the armies of King Fernando III of Castile conquered the city of Córdoba, the main city of Al-Andalus, where the artistic and cultural heritage of the Caliphal power still remained. The conquest was the intermediate step in the great expansion that followed the victory of King Alphonse VIII of Castile (1158-1214) at Las Navas in 1212 and that culminated in the Muslims surrendering to Fernando III in Seville in November 1248 after a long and costly siege.28 Rodríguez, 1994; 2016. In 1213, Alfonso VIII conquered the Castle of Alcaraz, and according to the Historia de Rebus Hispaniae, he was received in procession in the church of San Ignacio, which had been a mosque, by the archbishop of Toledo (author of the chronicle) and the clergy. A solemn office was then celebrated. 29 Fernández Valverde (ed.), Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, VIII/XIIII, p. 277. In the 13th Century, the act of appropriating mosques in conquered cities was a different operation than what has been seen in previous times, as Fernando III’s terms of surrender very often entailed the expulsion of the population from its city. This happened after the conquest of Capilla and Baeza (1226), Andújar (1232), Úbeda (1234), Córdoba (1236), Murcia (1243), Jaén (1246), Carmona (1247) and Seville (1248). Jaime I of Aragon (1213-1276) converted after their conquests of the congregational mosques of Mallorca (1229), Valencia (1238), and Murcia again (1266). In 1274 Jaime I urged the church of Huesca to replace its converted mosque, said by Pedro I to be the best in Spain, with a new cathedral, as he desired an “ecclesiarum more christiano constructarum.”30 Harris, 1997, p. 172: Reconquest Christians professed admiration for particular mosques and seemed eager to retain the converted structures until they could no longer function adequately. Discomfiture over using an Islamic structure as a church was relatively rare. Ibidem, p. 166: The earliest extant example of Christian commentary on a mosque’s appearance comes from Pedro I of Aragon whose 1097 conversion document for the central mosque of Huesca states that the mosque which is being converted is the most excellent of all mosques in Spain.
The Christian conquest of Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248, both strongholds of the legitimacy of the past and the present of Al-Andalus, represented a crucial moment in the construction of the image of the royal achievements, and one that would be firmly anchored in a new narrative of the Reconquista that endured into modern historiography. The conquest of Córdoba was a unique event and one of undeniable symbolic value. The memory of the entry of the hosts of Fernando III was maintained in the dating of documents issued by the royal chancery for two years, between July 1236 and July 1238: the clause “in the second year after I besieged the very famous city of Córdoba, and it was restored to Christian worship through my efforts with the great help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” can be found at the end of a document dated September 1237 and issued by the royal chancery in Burgos.31 …secundo uidilicet anno quod ego rex Ferrandus obsedi Cordubam, famosissimam ciuitatem, et cooperante immo penitus faciente gratia Spiritus Sancti per laborem meum reddita est cultui christiano. Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, vol. 3.doc. 609, pp.136-137
The value of the conquest of Córdoba, both real and symbolic, was partly a consequence of the extraordinary historiographical activity that developed precisely at that moment in the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, and this was also a fundamental factor in the remarkable propagation of this event throughout the Christian world. The so-called Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, attributed to Juan of Soria, bishop of Osma and Fernando III’s royal chancellor gives meticulous accounts of the military campaign, of the entry of the king and his armies, and of the conversion of the mosque-built in the 9th century and subsequently expanded until the time of Almanzor-into a cathedral, forming a powerful image of the Christian victory. According to the chronicle by the chancellor of Castile, the eyewitness to the events, the citizens of Córdoba pleaded for a surrendering agreement; otherwise threatening with destroying the valuable assets of the city such as the mosque and the bridge, with hiding the gold and silver reserves, with burning the Syrian cloths (panos sericos) and with killing themselves. When Fernando III accepted the surrender of Córdoba, its Muslim inhabitants left the city and handed its keys to the King of Castile, who ordered that
the emblem of the cross should precede the flag, and that it was to be placed on the highest tower of the mosque (…). That evening the chancellor, namely the bishop of Osma, along with Master Lope, entered the mosque and began preparing everything that was necessary for turning the mosque into a church: once it was cleared of the Muslim heresy or superstition, they sanctified the place by sprinkling it with holy water and salt and so what it had previously been a diabolic demon, it was now the church of Jesus Christ; named after his glorious mother. On the following Monday, the king with his barons and with all the people, entered the city and approached the church, where he was greeted with honour with a solemn procession by the bishop of Osma, and by the bishops of Cuenca and Baeza, and by all of the religious men who were present and by the clergy in general. Having the mass been solemnly celebrated by the bishop of Osma, and having the blessings been given to the people, the king entered the most noble palace that the kings of the Moors had made for themselves, of which so much and such great things were said by those who had seen it, that those who had not deemed them unbelievable.32Sicque uexillum regis eterni, comitatum uexillo regis Ferrandi, cum primo apparuit in predicta turre, confusionem et planctum intulit ineffabilem Sarracenis, et a contrario ista uidere gaudium ineffabile Christianis (…) Circa uesperas cancellarius, scilicet Osomensis episcopo, magister Lupus cum eo, cui uexillum Crucis in turrem predictam primo intromisi, intrauerunt in mezquitam et preparantes, que neccesaria erant ad hoc, ut ecclesia fieret de mezquita, expulsa Mahometi superstitione uel spurcicia, sanctificauerunt locum per asperisonem atque cum salibus benedicte, et quod prius erat cubile diabolic facta ecclesia Iesu Christi, uocata nomine Genitricis ipsius gloriose. Segunda feria, que dies proxima sequebatur, dominus rex cum baronibus suis et cum uniuerso populo introiuit in ciuitatem et, accedens ad ecclesiam, receptus est honorifice cujm proccessione solempni ab episcopo Osomense predicto et ab Conchense et Baecensi episcopis et a uiris religiosis, qui tunc aderant, et a clerecis uniuersis. Missa igitur solempniter celebrata per Osomensem episcopum et benedictione super populum data, dominus rex intrauit in palacium nobilissimum quod reges Maurorum sibi preparauerant, de quo tot et tanta dicitur ab his qui uiderunt, quod a non uidentibus incredibilia iudicantur. Charlo Brea (ed.), Chronica latina regum Castellae, pp. 116-117. My own translation to English.
The Umayyad mosque and the palace were the exclusive urban references in Fernando III’s adventus account. Curiously, only the magnificence of the palace received the admiration of the chancellor. He then proceeded to point out one of the problems that the conquered territories would face in the following decades, that is, the difficulty in establishing new inhabitants in cities such as Córdoba. This excursus adds new topographic and architectonic references (the wall, the towers, the streets) to the already listed ones of the mosque, the bridge and the palaces
the city walls are standing, the sublime height of the walls is decorated with lofty towers, the houses shine with golden panelling, the city squares arranged in order are open to those present, but with such glory of the city, few are those who want to remain there.33 Charlo Brea (ed.), Chronica latina regum Castellae, pp. 117-118. My own translation to English.
The archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’s Historia de Rebus Hispaniae, adds some interesting facts to the chancellor’s account in addition to explaining that he, as archbishop of Toledo, was meant to perform the purification ritual but was unable to for being in Rome at the time (thus the role of the chancellor Juan of Soria at the solemn ceremony): Firstly, he provides major details about the mosque of Córdoba; about its size (“that overtook in luxury and size all of the mosques of the Arabs”), about the placing of an altar honouring the Virgin and about the return to Santiago of the bells that Almanzor had stolen from the cathedral more than two hundred years earlier; bells that were found hanging in the mosque as if they were lamps.34 Fernández Valverde (ed.), Roderici Ximenii de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, IX/XVII, pp. 299-300. The bells tolling in Santiago after being returned, the substitution of the muezzin call from the high tower of the mosque by the Christians’ joys and cries while the bishops powerfully sang Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominus confitemur, confers the archbishop’s account of the royal adventus into the conquered Umayyad capital city, not only the image of the conversion of buildings of worship, mosques into churches, but also of the transformation of the soundscape.35 Alibhai, 2008. Vid. also Constable, 2010. The archbishop of Toledo adds that the bells brought from Córdoba chimed in Santiago, fostering the devotion of the pilgrims. The contrast between the sound of the bells of Córdoba turned into mosque lamps by Almanzor and returned to Compostela after the conquest and the substitution of the muezzin call from the high tower of the mosque by the Christians’ joys and cries, is also an essential element of that discourse. The endowment of the cathedral of Córdoba, just like in Toledo, took place two years after the conquest, in 1238.
The Estoria de España, one of the fundamental texts composed in the so-called historiographical workshop of Alfonso X the Wise, translates to vernacular the account by the archbishop Jiménez de Rada of the entry of Fernando III into Córdoba, also introducing some small changes:
Juan, bishop of Osma, with the aforementioned other bishops, the filth of Muhammad already thrown out, circled around the whole of the mosque, sprinkling holy water on it just as it should be done; and other additional things that the law of the Holy Church orders, they restored it in this manner, and ‘restoring it’ means something like ‘converting it to the service of God’.36 The Estoria de España is an extraordinarily complex work, whose elaboration went from the reign of Alfonso X until his great grandson’s, Alfonso XI. Menéndez Pidal (ed.), Primera Crónica General de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV, chapter 1047, p. 734: “Aquel obispo don Johan, en boz del arçobispo de Toledo, fecho aquel alinpiamiento antes con los otros obispos, torno aquella mezquita de Cordoua en iglesia, et alço y altar a onrra de la bienauenturada Uirgen Maria.” The placement of an image of the Virgin as part of the conversion of the mosque frequently appears on the writings linked to Alfonso X.
“As it should be done” and “the law of the Holy Church orders” point to the existence of a regulated and established practice, local as well as canonical. The ritual of the consecration of new churches will be described in the Primera Partida of Alfonso X, some decades after the conquest of Córdoba, copying the regulations dating to the popes Gregory VII (1073-1085) and Urban II (1088-1099).37 Las Siete Partidas del Rey don Alfonso el Sabio. Primera Partida, Title 10, Law 14. It consists of seven elements: First, hanging of three crosses on each of the four interior walls of the church, higher than where they could be reached by hand; second, removal of all the corpses and skeletons of the dead (presumably buried in the floor or walls) who were excommunicated or from another faith; third, raising up of twelve candles and placing them in holders on the crosses; fourth, mixing ashes, salt, water and wine and spreading it around the church to clean it, accompanied by the prayers of the bishop; fifth, writing the Greek and Latin alphabets on the floor with the tip of the bishop’s crosier in the form of a cross; sixth, anointing the crosses with chrism and holy oil; and seventh, perfuming the church with incense.38 Ecker, 2003, p. 118; Bueno, 2007. Elements like the inscription of the alphabet on the floor were not included in the Hispanic ritual previous to the ecclesiastical reform and the introduction of the Roman ritual. The account of Juan de Soria sprinkling of holy water and salt around the congregational mosque of Córdoba corresponded in fact with element four of the ritual. Curiously, the potent symbol of the minbar of the Umayyad mosque of Córdoba (or what remained of it) was not removed from the cathedral until the 16th century. The mihrab was transformed in the 13th century into the Sacrarium.
Continuing the model already established in Cordoba and with the precedent of Toledo, Fernando III entered Jaén in 1246, getting to an agreement with the Muslim population that came after eight months of siege. “He entered with a great procession composed of the entire clergy” describes the Estoria de España, the only chronicle which, written in vernacular language, narrates the conquests during the reign of Fernando III that took place after the one of Córdoba. Following the entry into Jaén, the king got to the congregational mosque, which he named Santa Maria (as all of the other Andalusian mosques turned into the cathedrals), consecrated the altar where the bishop of Córdoba celebrated mass, established the bishopric and endowed the church.39 Menéndez Pidal (ed.), Primera Crónica General de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV, chapter 1071, pp. 746-747: “[…] entro y con grant procession que fezieron toda la clerezia. Et fue luego derechamiente para la mezquita mayor, que fizo poner luego nombre Sancta Maria.” The procession is not of great interest to the author of the chronicle. However, he does highlight the central role of the king of Castile in it and pushing the clergy into the background, as opposed to what had occurred in Córdoba a few years earlier. The fact that the account of the conquest and entry into Jaén may come from historiographical sources different than the ones referring to the taking of Córdoba may be an important element of this change in the narrative of the performance.
The Historia de Rebus Hispaniae written by the archbishop of Toledo was one of the main sources -with the Chronicon MundiLucas Tudensis. Chronicon Mundi (2003) Falque Rey, E. (ed.), in Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Medievalis. LXXIV. Turnhout: Brepols. of Lucas de Tuy- used by the compilers of the Estoria de España. With the taking of Córdoba also concludes the Chronica latina regum Castellae, whose author was an eyewitness to the conquest of the Umayyad capital. Since there were no surviving direct accounts of such significant events as the conquests of Jaén, Seville and the valley of the Guadalquivir, a new text was added to the Estoria de España around the 1320s, which comprises the account in extenso of the reign of Fernando III until he died in 1252. The conquest of Seville was given particular importance, thus establishing the master narrative which would not be omitted from the chronicles written until modern times.40 Rodríguez, 2016.
According to the Estoria de España, Fernando III laid siege to the walled city of Seville for sixteen months. Cut off by Fernando III’s troops from the Aljarafe and the Guadalquivir River, the city surrendered on November 1248, on the day of the Translatio of Saint Isidoro to Leon, a key date for the legitimization of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon as was seen above. No documents of the pacts of the surrender of Seville have survived, although we know for certain that the Muslim inhabitants were thrown out. The king entered the city on the 23rd of November of 1248, after the capitulation
he was received with a grand procession of bishops and of the whole clergy and of other people, with many joys and very loudly (…); and this way the blessed king don Fernando entered the church of Santa Maria. And this procession with the whole clergy was accompanied that day by don Gutierre, an ecclesiastic noble who was elected from Toledo; and chants and mass for that noble king don Fernando, and for all of the Christian people that were there.41“o fue reçebido con muy grant proçesion de obispos et de toda la clerezia et de todas las otras gentes, con muy grandes alegrías e con muy grandes bozes (…); et entro asi de esta guisa ese bienauenturado rey don Fernando dentro en la iglesia de Sancta Maria. Et esa proçesion fezo ese dia con toda la clerezia don Gutierre, vn noble perlado que era eleyto de Toledo; et canto y misa a ese noble rey don Fernando et a todo el pueblo de los cristianos que eran hy.” Menéndez Pidal (ed.), Primera Crónica General de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV, chapter 1126, p. 767.
The most outstanding Islamic architectonic elements in the city were then described: In the first place, the Gold Tower (Torre del Oro), a flanking tower by the river from the Almohad age: “The Gold Tower, founded by the sea; a very subtle and marvellous work and who knows how much must it have cost to the king who commanded it?”42Ibidem, chapter 1128, p. 768: “Si quier la Torre del Oro, de commo esta fundada en la mar e tan igualmente conpuesta et fecha a obra tan sotil e tan marauillosa, et de quanto ella costo al rey que la mando fazer ¿qual podrie ser aquel que podría saber nin asmar quanto será?.”
Secondly, the Giralda, the Almohad minaret on the mosque of Seville, is described in unprecedented detail in the Christian chronicles until then:
The tower of Santa Maria, so noble and with such height and beauty: Sixty braças wide on the ceiling and four braças tall; so wide and with such mastery was made and so balanced the staircase that goes up to the tower that kings and queens and nobles who want to climb it on a horse, can even reach the top.43Ibidem, chapter 1128, p. 768: “de la torre de Sancta Maria todas las sus noblezas, et de quan grant la beltad et el alteza et la su grant nobleza es: sesenta braças a en el techo de la sua anchura, et quatro tanto en alto; tan ancha et tan llana et de tan grant maestria fue fecha et tan conpasada la escalera por o a la torre suben, que los reyes et las reynas et los altos omnes que allí quieren sobir de bestias, suben quando quieren fasta en ssomo.”
Lastly, the church/cathedral of Seville and its endowment by the king Fernando III:
He then proceeded to honour the episcopal see, devoting it to Santa Maria mother of God, which for long it had been empty and was orphan of a pastor and cannons were established in order to honour Santa Maria, whose name was given to the church; and then he endowed it.44Ibidem, chapter 1129, p. 769: “Començo luego lo primero a rrefrescar la onrra et a loor de Dios et de Sancta Maria su madre, la siella episcopal, que antiguo tiempo auie que estaua yerma et bazia et era huérfana de so digneral pastor; et fue y ordenada calongia mucho onrrada a onrra de Sancta Maria, cuyo nonbre esa iglesia noble et sancta lieua; et heredola luego (…).”
Neither the word mezquita nor any reference to Seville’s Islamic past appears in this account. The episcopal see is called Santa María, a name received after the conversion, hiding the fact that it was a congregational mosque before. The Giralda and the Torre del Oro are praised by the author for their majesty, beauty, height and the skill of their craftsmen, introducing for the first time the idea of economic value and the costs of construction faced by the rulers who built them. The Islamic past to which those buildings belonged is nonetheless omitted. Moreover, there is another aspect worthy of mention: While the Christians marvelled at the Almohad towers of Seville, making visually relevant the minaret/Giralda and the Torre del Oro, there are no descriptions from this period of the mosque/cathedral and its structure as a whole. By the first decades of the 14th century, around the time the Estoria de España was being written, the triumphant rhetoric characteristic of the purification and conversion of the mosques was giving place to some kind of Mirabilia, a tour around the most emblematic buildings in Seville regardless of their Islamic heritage.
The composition of the account of the conquest of Seville in the Estoria de España a few decades after the events took place explains, in a way, the-probably intentional-unacknowledged Islamic origin of the most emblematic buildings of the city, which are described with admiration and which constitute key elements in the discourse of legitimation of Christian power: the cathedral, the bell tower, the defensive tower by the river. The urban transformation, the shift from an Islamic city to a Christian one, is relegated to a second place. The process of transformation, however, was reflected in the documents from the royal chancery shortly after the conquest. In March 1252, four years after the Christian conquest the king Fernando III, in a document authenticated by his son and heir Alfonso X after his death, endowed the church of Seville with all the mosques that were in Seville-quantas fueron en tiempos de moros-apart from three mosques that were in the Jewish quarter, which were then synagogues of the Jews.45 As Ecker (2004) points, the process of surveying, selection and conversion of these neighborhood mosques-as opposed to the conversion of congregational mosques-had little to do with a public ceremony. One of these mosques named Mezquita de la Judería-as we have seen above-was still the subject of dispute in 1327, as stated on the ecclesiastical records. This was on the same year as Alfonso XI’s entry into Seville after the turbulent years of his minority. On this occasion, however, the majestic buildings from the Estoria de España had given place to other less emblematic ones-the ornated houses of the nobility-whose owners constituted a fundamental pillar in the establishment of the royal power.
CONCLUSIONS
⌅Two essential aspects can be pointed out from the examples analysed on this article. First, the accounts in the chronicles related to the conquest of Andalusian cities, despite their conciseness, shed some light on the organization of the king’s and the ecclesiastics’ entries into those cities. In fact, these were two different ceremonies and a dialectics between ecclesiastical and civil communities. The bishops entered the city and would immediately carry out the purification of the congregational mosque (or Friday mosque) besides other rituals concerning the transformation of the religious urban landscape. On the other hand, the king, who had remained outside during the religious conversion of the buildings, would entry the city on the following day accompanied by the nobility and the people, where he was received by the bishop. The latter would direct the king in procession towards the new and purified cathedral, performing once again a fully ecclesiastical ritual. In a way, what all these accounts written as the Christian expansion through Al-Andalus took place show, is that the initial entry into the cities was the only event dominated by the church; set between the military conquest and the subsequent division of wealth and land expropriated from the ejected Muslims. Such wealth belonged exclusively to the king, as the sole owner of the conquered territories.
The second one is that the evocative power of the Islamic architecture in the royal entries into al-Andalus cities conquered by the Christians between the 11thand 13thcenturies, was not a frequent feature throughout the accounts of the narrative sources. Its presence was conditioned by a series of factors related to the spatial control of the city and how to display it, and the strategies of legitimation by the different political actors. Chronicles from the 12th and 13th Centuries highlight the mosques and turn them into a key element in the construction of a royal Christian topography. On the other hand, their invisibility both in the Crónica de Alfonso XI and in the account in the Estoria de España of the entry of Fernando III into Seville, leads us to believe that by the time both texts were written-late decades of the 13th and beginning of the 14th Century-, the emphasis on certain buildings during the processional tours was a strategy for describing the political scene of the time rather than for reflecting former achievements on the urban landscape.