Vidal’s cantigas to a Jewess: Intercultural Love Relationships in Medieval Iberia

Abstract

From the second half of the twentieth century onwards, contacts between the three Iberian cultures – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian – have been addressed from the point of view of what has come to be known as ‘convivencia’ [coexistence] (Castro 1948; Sánchez Albornoz 1956). At the same time, studies devoted to the Arabic, Hebrew, and Christian literatures of the same period have incorporated similar considerations (Bossong 2010; Paden 2005). On this basis, the present article examines the inclusion of the compositions of the troubadour known as Vidal in the Galician-Portuguese songbooks. On the one hand, some of their formal and thematic aspects can be seen as proof of the poet’s effort to assimilate the Galician-Portuguese lyric repertoire, thus ensuring a place for him in the poetic compilation; on the other, the fact that in the rubric he is referred to as a “Jew” and his lady as a “Jewess” implies that assimilation was not perceived as absolute, as certain areas, such as religion and love/ sexual/ marriage relations, regarding which they both were identified as members of a religious and social minority still remained off-limits.