Islamic Traces in the Cancionero de Baena

I s l a m I c t r a c e s I n t h e

c a n c I o n e r o d e b a e n a

Gregory S. Hutcheson Universit y of LoUisviLLe

LA CorÓniCA 41.1 fALL 2012 149-80

the Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena (ca. 1430) is remarkable as a record not only of the broad spectrum of poetic production in the early trastamaran period, but also of the complex sociocultural realities that would bend to the breaking point by the second half of the fifteenth century. Among these realities is the continued presence of Jews and Muslims in the cultural, commercial, and even political spheres, this despite mounting efforts to restrict their access and agency. of these two minority communities, it is the Jews who boast far greater visibility in the pages of the Cancionero de Baena, and so attract far greater attention in subsequent scholarship on trastamaran courtly culture.1 And yet the few cases of Muslim intervention are no less intriguing. one notable example is Maestro Mahomat el Xartosse de Guadalajara, identified by the rubric as a physician in the household of the Grand Admiral Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. Although we know little else

1 see David nirenberg for a comprehensive critical review of scholarship on the question of Jews and Jewishness in the Cancionero de Baena.

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about Maestro Mahomat, Baena saw fit to include him among the “grandes sabios letrados d’este reigno” who respond to a poetic challenge to debate the thorny issue of free will versus predestination.2 notable as well is Garçi ferrández de Gerena, a dependent of the court of Juan i whose conversion to islam sent shock waves through the poetic community. Branded by his contemporaries as “renegado” and “traidor”, Garçi ferrández’s backstory elicits even today far greater interest than his poetic works, this despite the uneasy fit of these works within the broader cancionero corpus3. My purpose here is to rescue Garçi ferrández’s poetry from critical disinterest, read it through the experience of his conversion to islam, and make the case for situating both poet and works at the interstice between courtly poetic culture and a spanish-speaking Muslim community that had by the fourteenth century already begun to define its literary voice.

Among the earliest of the poets represented in the Cancionero de Baena, Garçi ferrández belongs, together with Alfonso Álvarez de villasandino, to the generation of spanish courtly poets who had cut their teeth in Galician-Portuguese before settling on Castilian as the default language for lyric production. His collected works, in the main courtly and devotional compositions, would likely have gone unnoticed had it not been for the rubrics composed to introduce them. Based in great part on hearsay and a speculative reading of the works themselves, these rubrics weave together a biographical narrative that begins with the poet’s marriage to a Moorish juglara:

Aquí se comiença las cantigas e dezires que fizo e ordenó en su tiempo Garçi ferrández de Jerena, el qual por sus pecados e grand desaventura enamoróse de una juglara que avía sido mora. Pensando que ella tenía mucho tesoro e otrosí porque era muger vistosa, pedióla por muger al rey e diógela, pero

2 eight individuals, among whom Pero López de Ayala and francisco imperial, join in the debate (poems 517 to 525 in the Cancionero de Baena). Among the few scholars to take notice of Maestro Mahomat is Gerard Wiegers, who cites the Muslim physician as the sole extant example of a Mudéjar writing for a Christian public prior to 1456 (61).3 one notable exception is Manuel Cadaval Gil, who supports the contemporary cause for Andalusian cultural autonomy by branding Garçi ferrández as “el poeta lírico andaluz más antiguo”. Despite his study’s bald regionalism, it remains useful as a primer to Garçi ferrández’s poetry and an overview of scholarship up to 2000.

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después falló que non tenía nada. (439)4

in subsequent rubrics Garçi ferrández contrives a ruse to escape from Christian territories and settle with his wife and children in Muslim Granada, where he not only converts to islam, but begins a sexual dalliance with his sister-in-law. thirteen years later he would return to Castilla with his children in tow and once again embrace Christianity, this according to rubrics found elsewhere in the Cancionero.5 the sum tale is one of apostasy, border-crossing, and perversion that earns for Garçi ferrández a ready place as “mahometizante” (and all that the term implies for a conservative readership) in Menéndez y Pelayo’s Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (653-54).

interestingly, this narrative stands in almost absolute disconnect with the poems themselves. of the dozen pieces authored by Garçi ferrández, five (nos. 555-558, 565) develop the stock courtly themes of love and loss of favor, while a sixth (566) assumes the voice of the moralist to take on the vanities of this world. of the remaining pieces—all devotional—one (559) is a penitential plea addressed to “Jhesu salvador” and one (560) a stock loor of the virgin Mary. the final four (561-564) are variations on the theme of the believer’s relationship to God, whether as loyal servant (561) or repentant sinner (562, 563, 564).

All told, we find little in the works themselves to support the allegations of opportunistic marriages, heretical scheming, and adulterous lust contrived by the rubrics. And yet only as of the last 15 years has scholarship begun to give critical consideration to this disconnect. nancy Marino was among the first to foreground the “extra-poetic” nature of the rubrics and expose their

4 this rubric serves as a general introduction to Garçi ferrández’s collected works, numbered 555-566 in Brian Dutton and Joaquín González Cuenca’s 1993 edition of the Cancionero de Baena. With few exceptions, each of the poems collected under this general introduction bears its own rubric. Henceforth i will identify individual poems (and their corresponding rubric) by the number they have been assigned in the Dutton/González Cuenca edition, inserting page numbers only where necessary.5 no. 279, authored by fernán Manuel de Lando, was motivated, according to the rubric, by Garçi ferrández’s flip-flopping: “por quanto era christiano e se fue a tornar moro a Granada, e después que moro se passó a tierra de christianos con sus fijos e se tornó christiano”.


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purposeful manipulation of Garçi ferrández’s collected works. By inserting these works into a “lurid story”, Marino argues, Baena means to heighten our contempt for their apostate author (317-18). for Joaquim ventura, this heightened contempt for the apostate may very well have served the purpose of deflecting attention away from the far more troubling charge of sodomy, a charge which, had it stuck, would have rendered the poet’s verse unfit for general consumption.6 Carmen Parrilla, for her part, makes a convincing case for reading the rubrics to the Garçi ferrández corpus as later insertions that break with the general tenor of the rubrics in the Cancionero de Baena, conforming instead to the muckraking purpose of the vidas y razós tradition (134). she follows Alberto Blecua’s lead in speculating not only a later date of insertion of the entire Garçi ferrández corpus, but also a different hand than Baena’s in the composition of the rubrics. While collectively these studies call into question our all too ingenuous reading of the rubrics (the norm during almost two centuries of cancionero criticism), they have the unfortunate side effect of normalizing Garçi ferrández’s poetry to the point of critical disinterest. And so the question remains: just where is the heterodoxy in this mahometizante? or more fairly, does the Muslim Garçi ferrández have a voice?

asmāʾ allāh al-ḥusnā (The most beautiful names of God)in something of a coda to her study of the rubrics, Parrilla very rightly isolates Garçi ferrández’s religious lyric for special consideration, underscoring its “singularidad” within Christian devotional trends of the period. she makes specific note of its departure from those modes of franciscan spirituality that had already begun spreading like wildfire in the mid-fourteenth century through works such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi. While the Meditationes preaches a Christ-centered contemplative practice, in Garçi

6 Among the charges villasandino launches in his poetic attack against the apostate Garçi ferrández is the adoption, through conversion, of unnatural practices: “ganaste más barvas que trager solías, / ganaste maridos que acá non avías, / ganaste privança del demo mayor” [emphasis added] (no. 107, vv. 14-16). ignoring Dutton/González Cuenca’s suggestion that we read maridas for maridos, ventura concludes: “se comprende, pues, que Juan Alfonso de Baena fabulase las rúbricas de forma que el ‘pecado nefando’ resultase disimulado de forma que pudiese incluir sus poemas sin mayor problema” (296).


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ferrández “el tono contemplativo, cuando lo hay, se centra en el poderío de Dios como creador y mantenedor del mundo” (138). Parrilla notes as well the intimate nature of Garçi ferrández’s penitential lyric, its focus on the yo penitente rather than the “culpa colectiva que sería la manifestación poética de una visión moral de la sociedad cristiana” (139). But she stops short of suggesting that these pieces are anything but idiosyncratic, the poetic output of “una forma de devoción personal”.

And yet either of these features of Garçi ferrández’s religious lyric—whether its God-centeredness or its penitential intimacy—strongly suggests the need to look beyond Christian devotional poetry and practice for analogues. 7 it is already striking that in three of his four penitential pieces (nos. 562, 563, and 564), Garçi ferrández thoroughly sidelines Christ and the virgin Mary, addressing himself solely to God.8 Moreover, he invokes God through multiple names and attributes, deploying nearly a dozen in 562 alone: mi dios, mi Señor, mi fortaleza, judgador, mi valedor, abogado, mi amparança, mi defendimiento, alto señor temeroso, joez de toda claridad, poderoso, piadoso. this same impulse, already evident in the opening stanzas of 564, is funneled into a virtual explosion of epithets by the poem’s final appeal for mercy:

7 Beginning with “Preaching to the Converted” (2008), Cynthia robinson has been applying pressure to the tendency in art history (also evident in Parrilla’s reading of Garçi ferrández’s religious poetry) to measure medieval Castilian devotional practice against extra-peninsular phenomena such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi—a text which, as robinson points out, did not enter into broad circulation in Castilla until isabel la Católica ordered a translation from the Latin in the final decades of the fifteenth century (“Preaching to the Converted” 124). in both her 2008 study and her forthcoming imag(in)ing Passions: Christ, the Virgin, images and devotion in a Multi-Confessional Castile, robinson advocates for far greater acknowledgment of iberian particularities in our study of Castilian devotional practice, not only the multiconfessional constitution of Castilian society through the fifteenth century, but also the specific needs of converts for whom the core teachings of Christianity would not necessarily have been an easy sell. the reality of conversion—whether to or from Christianity—as a dynamic space of transconfessional negotiation does much to explain Garçi ferrández’s exceptionalism, or so i will argue here.8 of the four penitential pieces, 559 is the exception in that it specifically invokes “Jhesu salvador” and rehearses Christ’s role as redeemer. the fossilized Galician-Portuguese of the piece suggests an earlier date of composition, likely prior to the poet’s conversion to islam. the remaining three penitential pieces are thoroughly Castilian.


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. . . ¡oh valiente abastado,señor de las fortalezas,partidor de las riquezas,noble rey glorificado!Dios muy fuerte grandeado,líbrame de la tormentael día de tal afrenta

que seré por vos judgado. (vv. 49-56)

such rhetorical strategies in Garçi ferrández have evoked for most readers the Book of Psalms.9 And yet in Psalms the invocation of God through multiple attributes is a momentary ejaculation that quickly gives way to other purposes.10 in Garçi ferrández the impulse is sustained throughout the poem and finds a more immediate parallel in the Muslim devotional exercise of recitation of the asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā, the beautiful names of God. in its most generic form, God’s names number some 99, the majority attested in the Qurʾan and pointing to specific divine qualities of God. Most privileged are the two qualities institutionalized in the basmala (the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate) and the name of God itself (Allāh); additional names serve to describe in multiple dimensions God’s omniscience, omnipotence, gentleness, righteousness, and kindness (Armajani). the full panoply of asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā is given its most authoritative treatment by the jurist and theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī in the late twelfth century in his Maqṣad al-Asnā. Here al-Ghazālī cites a hadith attributed to Abū Huraira, a companion of the Prophet, confirming that whoever enumerates the names

9 says Parrilla, “Hay referencias aisladas influidas por el salterio en los motivos de las maravillas de la creación divina, de la situación de soledad y desamparo como pecador, de la petición de socorro ante la perfidia de los enemigos, y, por supuesto, en la utilización de algunas fórmulas de respeto a la divinidad” (138).10 for example, the opening verses of Psalm 18, which set the stage for a protracted discourse on God’s role as defender of his people: “i love you, o Lord, my strength. / the Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom i take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (nrSV, Ps. 18.1-2). Although the content of Psalms likely circulated in the Castilian language as of the early fourteenth century with production of the so-called Biblia Alfonsina (incorporated into Part 3 of the General estoria), it would not stir up significant interest among spanish poets until the renaissance. for a comprehensive study of the Book of Psalms in spanish poetry through the renaissance, see Laurie Kaplis-Hohwald.


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of God will enter Paradise.11

Al-Ghazālī’s treatment of the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā assured not only its institutionalization as devotional practice, but also its wide dissemination throughout the islamic world. in the thirteenth century ramon Llull, likely inspired by the works of Andalusi-born sufi mystic ibn ʿArabi, composed els cent noms de deu, his own Christian riff on the theme.12 Dating to the fourteenth century is the work of another Andalusi, the sufi scholar ibn ʿAbbād al-rundī, whose litany based on the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā has been preserved in at least two aljamiado manuscripts.13 While these manuscripts and others containing additional aljamiado treatments of the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā14 have generally been dated to the sixteenth century, the evident interest among Moriscos suggests that the practice was deeply rooted in the culture of romance-speaking Muslims. in fact, we can almost certainly trace it back to the early fourteenth century, the date of composition of the Poema de Yuçuf, whose opening stanza echoes the technique of the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā:

Loamiento ad Allah, el alto y es y verdadero,onrrado y complido, señor dereiturero,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

franco y poderoso, ordenador y çertero. (fuente Cornejo 20)

As a convert to islam, Garçi ferrández would have encountered the asmāʾ al-

11 “the messenger of God—may the blessings of God and peace be upon him—said that God has ninety-nine names, one hundred minus one. He is the odd and loves the odd number. the one who enumerates them enters Paradise” (stade 10).12 Llull makes explicit his familiarity with the asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā in his introduction: “Los sarrayns dien que en l’Alcorá son noranta nou noms de deus, é qui sabria lo centé sabria totes coses, perque eu fas aquest libre de Cent noms de deus, los quals scé” (201). Although manuscript copies of els cent noms de deu were circulating by the early fourteenth century, i have found no evidence that the work made inroads in Castilla, whether in devotional literature or in courtly lyric.13 Xavier Casassas Canals includes this spanish version in his Los Siete Alhaicales y otras plegarias aljamiadas de mudéjares y moriscos (80-91).14 treatment of the “nombres fermosos” appears in real Academia de la Historia (Madrid), Ms t19, a religious miscellany edited by nuria Martínez de Castilla Muñoz in her 2004 dissertation, as well as in escuela de estudios Árabes (Madrid) Ms J.XXX, titled Alquiteb del rogar por agua. for an edition of Ms J.XXX’s “Ataçbīḥ en alabanza al annabī Muḥammad”—more rightly, in praise of God—, see fuente Cornejo (319-22). for a comprehensive listing of aljamiado manuscripts treating of the theme, see Casassas Canals (76-80).


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ḥusnā most immediately through the practice of deriving male names from the splicing of ʿabd ‘servant’ to one of God’s attributes, as in ʿAbdurraḥmān ‘servant of the Most Merciful’ or ʿAbdulqādir ‘servant of the All-Powerful’. in fact, he himself almost certainly assumed such a name.15 He appears also to have been drawn to romance turns of the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā, or so a survey of his penitential pieces strongly suggests. We find in these works a significant number of names for God that correspond immediately to the aljamiado al-rundī: criador, gobernador, judgador/juje, loado, noble, perdonador, piadoso, poderoso, rey, santo. other correspondences are approximate, although no less telling: alto señor temoroso/el altísimo, fazedor/formador, señor de las fortalezas/el de la gran fuerza, glorificado/glorioso, dios muy fuerte grandeado/el grandísimo, quien nos envía los mantenimientos/el mantenedor. even those attributes less conventionally employed within the Christian devotional context find direct parallels within the Muslim, for example, firme rey sin mudamiento (in al-rundī, “¡oh, firme! Pon mi adín16 firme y mi certenidad fuerte honrado”); or abogado (“¡ye, Adbogado! Hazme a mí a tu abogación a mí abogado, y a guardar tus deleitajes cunpliente” [Casassas Canals 88]).

Despite the strong correlation between Garçi ferrández’s invocations of God and the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā, it might certainly be argued that the great bulk of names he employs have equal currency in the Christian West. Latin hymnody, beginning with the fourth century bishop Hilarius, drew broadly on the Book of Psalms as it developed a bank of names for God, all topical throughout the Middle Ages and broadly disseminated in works such as the Te deum or the rex Coeli. significant, however, is that rarely in this tradition is God showcased as the exclusive object of praise; he appears, rather, in broader developments of the triune God or in his manifestation as the second person of the trinity.17 Moreover, the godhead seems to attract

15 Cf. the case of the fifteenth-century franciscan friar Anselm turmeda, who took the name ʿAbdullāh (ʿabd + Allāh) on his own conversion to islam.16 Adín ‘religion, faith’, from the Arabic ad-dīn.17 notes Patrick Diehl: “God, who is so all-encompassing that description fails and leaves a sense of brilliant vacancy, who as the maker of history is without history, figures only as a word on which words converge” (59). see both Diehl and Peter Dronke (32-85) for general


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poetic interest strictly within the ecclesiastical context, rarely if ever in courtly or popular traditions where themes such as the virgin birth, the passion and resurrection of Christ, or the lives of the saints hold far greater sway. indeed, by the thirteenth century the virgin has thoroughly trumped God in vernacular lyric, nowhere more conspicuously than in the iberian context with the advent of Alfonso el sabio’s Cantigas de Santa María, of which 40 are loores strictly speaking.18

neither does a survey of the full Cancionero de Baena corpus reveal particular interest in the godhead as subject for lyrical treatment. of those pieces tagged as loores by the rubric, most are secular in purpose, although drawing heavily on the formulaic language of religious panegyric (for example, “alto rey poderoso”, “señor alto, generoso”, “rey virtud, rey vençedor”). of the religious loores, all are addressed to the virgin Mary with the sole exception of two pieces by Garçi ferrández: “A vos, grand perdonador” (559), addressed, as we have seen, to “Jhesu salvador”, and “Quien faze mover los vientos” (564), composed “en loores de las virtudes e poderíos de Dios”.19 Aside from these two pieces, there appear stray bursts of praise for God that demonstrate immediate parallels with Garçi ferrández, but always within the context of a poem whose purpose is something other than praise of God.20

What remains exceptional in Garçi ferrández and sets 562, 563 and 564 decidedly apart from Christian devotional lyric is not only the single-minded

histories of the rise of european religious lyric.18 the composition of Marian loores seems obligatory among fourteenth-century Castilian poets: the Arcipreste de Hita indulges in the genre in Libro de buen amor (“omillo me, reína”, st. 1046-1048), as do a number of the Cancionero de Baena poets, including Garçi ferrández in no. 560 (“vyrgen, flor de espina”).19 God is privileged in the rubric to two additional pieces: Pero vélez de Guevara’s “señor, sé e creo que tú me formaste” (no. 321) and Gonzalo Martínez de Medina’s “¡oh incomparable la tu Deidad!” (no. 336), both composed “por manera de contemplaçión con Dios”. the first, however, is fully penitential, the second an enigmatic contemptus mundi addressed to God. neither engages in praise of God to any degree beyond that required by convention.20 for example, ruy Páez de ribera’s “Una noche yo yaziendo” (nos. 295-296), composed in part as a speculum principum stipulating that the king be mindful of “[el] muy alto poderoso / fuerte Dios engrandado” (vv. 75-76).


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focus on God as source of mercy, but also the accumulation of attributes and epithets for God in a single piece, both features that begin to approach dhikr Allāh ‘recollection of God’, a Muslim (and particularly sufi) devotional exercise that features the rhythmic repetition of sacred words and phrases, including the names of God (“Dhikr”). More pertinent to our purpose, within the Andalusī context there existed by the fourteenth century a fully developed tradition of lyric composed on the theme of God’s attributes and drawing in great part from the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā. such pieces were composed most often in conjunction with Mawlid, or commemoration of the birthday of the Prophet, an annual feastday that had been institutionalized by the fatimids in the eleventh century and in some sectors came to rival id al-fitr and id al-Adha in the Muslim religious calendar. Wrangling among legal scholars over the legitimacy of Mawlid (condemned as a bidca, or heretical innovation, by some) did not prevent its spread throughout the islamic world: to the Maghreb by the thirteenth century, to the kingdom of Granada shortly after. featured in official celebrations of Mawlid throughout the fourteenth century was composition of poetry in praise of God and the Prophet, the most notable examples of which we preserve in Granadan poet ibn al-Khaṭīb’s account of the festivities held in the Alhambra in 1362.21

We might already speculate that Garçi ferrández was exposed to these Mawlid-purposed poems, or mawlidiyyāt, in the context of Mawlid celebrations he would have attended during his thirteen-year stay in Granada. But romance-speaking Muslims also participated fully in the tradition, producing mawlidiyyāt that would remain in currency among Morisco communities through the sixteenth century. representative of the genre is the following “Poema en alabanza ada Al.lah”, included by toribio fuente Cornejo in his Poesía religiosa aljamiado-morisca:

el senblante sin / tremeçimiento,alto, orde/nador sin pensamiento,par/petu‘o, sin fin, muy acabado, /rey durable, sobre toda cosa [poderoso.

21 see emilio García Gómez for an edition and historical contextualization of ibn al-Khaṭīb’s account. for a global study of the Mawlid from its origins in fatimid egypt to the present day, see Marion Holmes Katz.


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no ay lengua que] // senblançe tu grandeza,ben/dito eres i alabado en tu alteza, /no lo toma cans[a]çio nin sueño / ni dormir,Él-es ell-aunado sin / naçer, ni sin morir.

señor sin /mudança ni volvimiento.Él-es / el grande, no ay semejança / ni acostamiento.Él-es / el grande, señor de la nobleza, /[el rico abastado sin] // mengua ni falleçimiento.

sin / cue[r]po ni figura ni despo/nimiento,cunplido [en su] / [en su] en todo su ordenami/ento.Por su merçed ale’gre nuesos coraçones /

i oiga nuesas petiçione/s. (285-86)

While two of Garçi ferrández’s penitential works (nos. 562 and 564) already approach the purpose, tone and language of this “poema en alabanza”, they do so within the context of an appeal for mercy on the Day of Judgment. We find an even closer match in 563, characterized by the rubric as a meditation “en Dios e en sus grandes poderíos”, a penitential plea mediated entirely through the naming of God:

¡oh valiente abastado,noble rey glorificado,tú serás mi amparança!

eres mi defendedore mi perdurable vida;mi coraçon no te olbida,llamando: “¡señor, señor!”Pues eres el Acabadosea de ti perdonado,ca en ti tengo fiança.

tú eres el piadoso,sin medida es el tu nombre;por salvar a todo ombre,alto señor poderoso,


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eres del mundo loado,ca sin fin es tu reynadoe la tu dulçe esperança.

tus merçedes çien millasfazes de que prendo espanto.¿Quién podría dezir tantode tus grandes maravillas?tú eres, señor, llamadoel Pudiente e alabado,visión de toda folgança.

non puede mi pensamiento,señor, pensar tu alteza;atán grande es tu grandeza,firme rey sin mudamiento.Pues eres el ensalçado,¡oh santo rey coronado!

aya de ti perdonança.

the parallels with the aljamiado text are striking, whether the lexicon (abastado, acabado, alabado, alto/alteza, grandeza, poderoso); the conceptual understanding of God as eternal (“sin fin es tu reynado”/“rey durable”) and unmoving (“firme rey sin mudamiento”/“sin mudança ni volvimiento”); deployment of the trope of ineffability (“¿Quién podría dezir tanto de tus grandes maravillas?”/“no ay lengua que senblançe tu grandeza”); or the general structure of the poem—four stanzas (if we except the opening salvo in Garçi ferrández), the final of which contains a definitive appeal to God’s mercy. striking as well is Garçi ferrández’s purposefulness in the act of naming—“tú eres el piadoso, / sin medida es el tu nombre” (vv. 11-12); “tú eres, señor, llamado / el Pudiente e alabado” (vv. 22-23)—, perhaps the most significant point of intersection with Muslim devotional poetry informed by the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā.22

lā ilāha illā allāh (There is no god but God)All told, we might best explain the odd fit of Garçi ferrández’s penitential

22 to these instances we might add “y es llamado el Criador” in 564 (v. 16).


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works within the Christian religious lyric tradition by admitting the possibility that they are not Christian at all, but rather the poetic output of a convert to islam who already possessed some fluency in the beliefs and devotional practices of his new faith community. it is certainly true that God’s omnipotence, immutability and merciful nature, referenced time and again by Garçi ferrández, are professed in equal measure by both Christianity and islam. not so the undivided nature of God, the core tenet of islam that perpetually sets itself against Christian belief in a triune God. the Qurʾan emphatically defines God both by what God is and what God is not and makes explicit time and again the impossibility of division. sura 4, for example, reads:

o people of the Book, do not be fanatical in your faith, and say nothing but the truth about God. the Messiah, who is the son of Mary, was only an apostle of God, and a command of His which He sent to Mary, as a mercy from Him. so believe in God and His apostles, and do not call Him “trinity”. Abstain from this for your own good; for God is only one God, and far from His glory is it to beget a son. (171)23

Wherever the umma rubs up against Christianity, the simple profession of faith in the absolute oneness of God rehearses once again its polemical thrust. one example of many from the Maghrebi context is the Almohad ʿaqīda, or compendium of Muslim belief, likely composed by ibn rushd while in service to the Almohad ruler yūsuf and inflected by Aristotelian rationalism. Chapter 9 reads:

And the Creator, Praise to Him, is not joined to anything or separated from anything. if He were characterized by being joined or separated, then He would necessarily be created. And the Creator being created is impossible, through the impossibility of overturning truths. And it is known by this that He is one God and there is not a second to Him in His power, in the words of the Highest, “Do not take two Gods Because He is one God so fear Me”. (remie Constable 250)

As spiritual leader of the minority Muslim community in fifteenth-century segovia, ʿisā b. Jābir (known variously in scholarship as içe Gebir, ice de

23 see also sura 5.72-73, sura 17.111.


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Gebir, yça Gidelli, or yça de segovia) takes even more direct aim at Christian belief in article one of his 13 articles of Muslim belief:

De los quales el primero y mas principal es creer en el coraçon y deçir con la lengua y afirma con la boluntad que Allah el alto, es uno, solo, criador y gobernador de todo; que no ay otro señor sino él, que crió el mundo de nada; que no ay semejança á él, nin enxendró ni fué enxendrado, ni fúe hixo, ni obo hixo, ní ay á él conparaçion ninguna, al qual criador adoramos y serbimos sus muçlimes. (Gayangos 254)

Although composed in 1462 as a preliminary effort at a spanish-language compendium of islamic belief, ʿisā’s Suma de los principales mandamientos y devedamientos de la ley y çunna likely represents the sort of religious formation Garçi ferrández would have undergone at the moment of his conversion half a century earlier. 24 not surprising, then, is the presence in Garçi ferrández of several of the key attributes of God listed here (alto, criador, gobernador). More telling, perhaps, is his repeated insistence on God’s uniqueness, referenced twice over in 562 (“non he abogado / sinon a vos”, vv. 6-7; “non ay otro poderoso”, v. 28) and given a thoroughly original poetic gloss in the final two stanzas of 561 (“Quien por Dios se empobreçe”):

. . . non falleçe ningund día,qu’es firme sin mudamiento;quien le da egualamiento¡ay amigos! faz’ follía,qu’el señor de la grandíanunca ovo par nin avrá,e quien lo contradiráensandeçe.

ensandeçe e es muy locoquien de tal locura enfinge,mal se viste, mal se çinge,e muere de poco en poco;

24 ʿisā’s explicit purpose is instruction of those “moros de Castilla” who “con grande subjeccion y apremio grande y muchos tributos, fatigas y trabajos han descaeçido de sus riquezas y an perdido las escuelas del arabigo” (248). see Wiegers for a comprehensive study, Harvey (74-97) for contextualization of ʿisā’s Suma (or Breviario sunnī) within the Mudéjar legal tradition.


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yo, amigos, non lo trocopor otro santo nin santa,pues que todo’l mundo espanta

su grandeçe. (vv. 13-28)

Belief in God’s uniqueness is expressed here in multiple variants that suggest the zealousness of the convert: “quien le da egualamiento / ¡ay amigos! faz’ follía” (vv. 15-16); “qu’el señor de la grandía / nunca ovo par nin avrá” (vv. 17-18); “yo, amigos, non lo troco / por otro santo nin santa” (vv. 25-26). Moreover, Garçi ferrández’s “nunca ovo nin avrá par” corresponds not only to ʿisā’s “no ay semejança á él” or “ní ay á él conparaçion ninguna”, but also, more generally, to la sharīka lahu ‘with him there is no partner’, a pious ejaculation drawn from the Qurʾan25 and inserted frequently into the shahāda, as in this aljamiado version: “i no ay / señor sino Al.lah sólo, no ay aparçero / a él, i Muḥammad salā ʿalayhi wa çal.lam, / es su siervo i su mensajero” [emphasis added] (fuente Cornejo 322). 26 implicit here is the suppression of Christ as codivinity, certainly one of the most emphatic points of reindoctrination where Christian-to-Muslim conversion is concerned.

the suppression of Christ is perhaps most keenly felt, however, in two of Garçi ferrández’s three penitential pieces (562 and 564), both of which situates the repentant sinner in the endtimes as humankind faces final judgment (“el día de la escureza”, “aquel día tenebroso”). final judgment is, of course, a thoroughly conventional theme in the iberian Christian context by the time Garçi ferrández writes. it had already entered the visual arts as of the tenth century with the production of the illuminated Beatus manuscripts, copied and recopied in subsequent centuries and widely disseminated in monastic libraries throughout the peninsula. it had its more public face in the monumental sculptural programs of the romanesque (most notably the Pórtico de la Gloria at santiago de Compostela) and in

25 Cf. sura 17.111, “All praise be to God who has neither begotten a son nor has a partner in His kingdom” (wa lam yakun lahu sharīkun fī l-mulki).26 i have steven Kruger to thank for pointing out interesting parallels in Hebrew texts. the Hebrew devotional poem “Adon olam”, perhaps authored by solomon ibn Gabirol and still sung routinely in sabbath services worldwide, reads in part: “And He is one, and there’s no other, / to compare or join Him” (scheib).


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murals filling apsidal vaults, whether in new construction or in converted space, as in the Church of Cristo de la Luz in toledo. Late medieval religious art sustained the monumental program (in tympana at León and toledo), while bringing believers into more intimate knowledge of the experience of judgment through altarpieces and reredos that served the purposes of private devotion. Unmistakable throughout is the absolute protagonism of Christ, an implacable Christus iudex presiding over a scene populated by every sort of saint and sinner and at times an attendant virgin Mary.27

Literature only somewhat belatedly follows suit. in the early thirteenth century the theme of final judgment, already broadly developed in Latin exegetical texts, finds its first spanish vernacular expression in Gonzalo de Berceo’s Los signos del Juicio Final. Here Berceo renders in cuaderna vía the full gamut of eschatological themes, including the traditional fifteen signs of the Apocalypse and the trumpet blast announcing final judgment. in a pastiche no doubt inspired by romanesque tympana, Christ presides over judgment with his mother in close attendance:

el postremero dia, como diz el profeta,el ángel pregonero sonará la corneta;oír lo han los muertos quisque en su causeta,correrán al Judicio quisque con su maleta.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . seran puestos los justos a la diestra partida,los malos a siniestro, pueblo grand sin medida,el rey será en medio con su az revestida,

cerca d’Él la Gloriosa de caridat complida. (st. 22, 25)28

Contemporary with Berceo is the anonymous Libro de Miseria d’omne, an

27 see Paulino rodríguez Barral for a survey of representations of final judgment in late-medieval Aragón. i have found no similar survey for Castilla, although themes and artistic motifs employed in the Castilian context are certainly analogous.28 similarly, in Loores de nuestra Señora:

Allí vernemos todos en complida edat,allí verná tu fijo con la su magestat,allí verná la cruz e la humanidat,allí s’partirá siempre mentira de verdat. (st. 170)


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adaptation of Pope innocent iii’s late-twelfth century de Miseria Condicionis Humane that strikes many of the same chords as Berceo, although in a much abbreviated version, while again underscoring Christ’s protagonism:

en el día del juïcio, quando él verná juzgar. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .verná en nuves del cielo, tod el mundo lo verá;

el ángel tandrá la trompa, el pueblo se llegará. . . . (st. 461-462)

Pero López de Ayala picks up on the theme once again in his late-fourteenth century rimado de Palacio (st. 144-151), giving evidence of the centrality of final judgment within a broader Christian catechism in which both he and Garçi ferrández, as near contemporaries, would have been schooled.

Given the compulsory protagonism of Christ in final judgment as Christians imagined it, what sends up red flags in Garçi ferrández’s case is the absolute lack of Christian specificity in 562 and 564. While “mi Dios e mi señor”, “muy alto Criador” and “noble rey glorificado” allow for Christological readings, none requires such a reading, and in fact all correspond readily to the names of God already in evidence in the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā tradition. in both pieces final judgment is reduced to two core elements—the act of judgment and the sinner’s reliance on God’s mercy—elements that correspond readily, of course, to Berceo, the Libro de miseria d’omne, or López de Ayala. We might in fact argue that the lack of Christian specificity in Garçi ferrández has less to do with his grounding in islam than it does with his purpose to evoke final judgment rather than narrate the details. even so, what he chooses to omit is telling. While for both Berceo and López de Ayala the ticket to salvation is obedience to God and holy mother Church, Garçi ferrández channels his obedience to God alone:

ca nunca desamparastesel que a vos siempre obedeçe;en infierno non peresçe

quien fizo lo que mandastes. (562, vv. 13-16)

Moreover, he rejects the possibility of outside advocates, leaving God with sole province over both advocacy on the sinner’s behalf and final judgment:

pues que non he abogado


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sinon a vos, el muy loadoe muy alto Criador. (562, vv. 6-8)

¿qué valdrá el abogadoa ningund omne cuitado,salvo la su piadad? . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ninguno non fallaráque allí pueda acorrella,salvo el que ha poder sobre ella:

como quisier’ jusgará. (564, vv. 30-32, 45-48)

Just as for the Muslim who, in reciting the asmāʾ al-ḥusnā, appeals to God as both judge and advocate, Garçi ferrández recognizes here no paradox, but rather underscores the sole protagonism of God in judgment, advocacy, and the exercise of mercy.

this evident apostasy by omission, while thoroughly compromising Christian readings of 562 and 564, allows for their ready accommodation within an islamic eschatological tradition already given shape by the Qurʾan and developed most authoritatively by al-Ghazālī in his The remembrance of death and the Afterlife, the final section of The revival of religious Sciences (ca. 1100). in al-Ghazālī, final judgment begins with the same trumpet blast we see in Christian eschatology, details the trials to which humanity will be subjected (including the crossing of the traverse, “sharper than a sword and thinner than a hair”, over the gulf of Hell), expounds on the delights of heaven and the torments of hell, and ends with the wide compass of God’s mercy. Although al-Ghazālī admits to the possibility of intercession by the prophets on behalf of the umma, authority resides solely with God: “none possesses the right of intercession save he who is permitted this by the All-Merciful and whose speech is pleasing to him” (183).

three centuries later and on the western edge of the islamic world, spanish-speaking Muslims would rehearse these same themes in aljamiado texts intended to bolster orthodox belief just as contact with the greater umma was being stretched thin. At play, surely, in aljamiado treatment of the endtimes is an apocalyptism fed by the increasingly tenuous position


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of Muslim communities residing in the Christian kingdoms. We should not forget, however, that the Day of Judgment—yawm ad-dīn—is core to Quranic teaching and so, together with the shahāda, a conventional feature of virtually every formulation of the ʿaqīda. of the thirteen articles of faith ʿisā of segovia puts forth in his Suma, the first two profess the shahāda, while the remaining eleven gloss those beliefs surrounding death, final judgment, and the afterlife. small wonder, then, that the theme of final judgment should emerge twice over in Garçi ferrández’s religious lyric or that he would reserve protagonism for God alone.

muḥammad rasūlu allāh (Muhammad is the Prophet of God)in fairness, while 562 and 564 show no evidence of Christian specificity in their treatment of final judgment, neither do they show evidence of Muslim specificity, whether the trials to which humankind will be subjected (e.g., the traverse) or the potential role of Muhammad as advocate.29 And yet collectively Garçi ferrández’s penitential works (562, 563, and 564) could scarcely serve the purposes of Christian catechesis given their failure to mention, even obliquely, those tenets of Christianity that would be obligatory in any treatment of the redemptive contract, whether the triune nature of God, the redemption of humankind through the shedding of Christ’s blood, or the essential role of the Church in salvation.30 Garçi ferrández’s purpose is nonetheless decidedly catechetical; in 564 he attributes to God the creation not only of the universe, but also of the commandments to which humankind is bound:

29 Cf. ʿisā of segovia, who suggests in article seven of his thirteen articles of faith that the Prophet (annabi) will be present at final judgment. He details the Prophet’s precise role in article eight: “el otabo articulo y prinçipales razones dél es creer y tener por fé que rrogará nuestro honrado profeta Mohammad, ç. a. M. y será oyda su rrogaria” (Gayangos 257). ʿisā draws here on a tradition already firmly established by al-Ghazālī in The remembrance of death and the Afterlife.30 All enumerated very deliberately in contemporary Pero López de Ayala’s opening salvo to his rimado de Palacio: on the triune nature of God, see st. 1-2; on the redemption of humankind through the shedding of Christ’s blood, st. 8 and 15; on the essential role of Church, st. 4.


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Él fizo los elementos,los ángeles e los corose sacó de sus tesoros

la Ley de los Mandamientos. (vv. 5-8)

it is perhaps not coincidental that the “Ley de los Mandamientos” Garçi ferrández evokes here corresponds so readily to the title of ʿisā of segovia’s catechism—the Suma de los principales mandamientos—nor that the creedal points he inserts into his penitential works likewise correspond to the first article of ʿisā’s thirteen articles of faith (“Allah el alto, es uno, solo . . . ; que no ay otro señor sino él”) and to subsequent articles on the Day of Judgment (3-13). We might even speculate that he composed his penitential works as a poetic gloss on the ʿaqīda that would have been his obligatory reading during his conversion to islam.

if so, what of the second half of the shahāda, rendered generally in aljamiado versions as “Muhamad es siervo y mensajero de Allah”. says ʿisā in article 2 of his Suma:

el articulo segundo y principales rrazones dél es creer y tener por fé que Allah en fin de todos sus profetas inbió aquel escelente y bienaventurado y escoxido profeta Mohammat (¡haga Allah salutaçion sobre él y salbe!) con la santa y dibina ley del alcoran creado de la dibina graçia, y con ella rebocó todas las otras leyes y adreçó con ella á las xentes de las dudas y herrores en que bibian y los guió al bien perdurable. . . . (Gayangos 254-55)

very much in line with islamic orthodoxy, key here is Muhammad’s place as the culmination of legitimate prophecy (“Allah en fin de todos sus profetas inbió aquel escelente y bienaventurado y escoxido profeta Mohammat”) and the mandate to set right a prophetic message distorted by previous people of the Book (“con ella rebocó todas las otras leyes y adreçó con ella á las xentes de las dudas y herrores en que bibian”).

obviously, it is scarcely conceivable that a sincere and explicit expression of belief in Muhammad’s prophetic legitimacy would find its way into the Cancionero de Baena, where denigration of islam is routine and makes the final cut in both of the poetic attacks launched against Garçi ferrández.31

31 says villasandino: “tu renegaste por ben adorar / o falso propheta, linage de Agar, / que


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And yet in Garçi ferrández’s penitential works, curious turns of phrase begin to suggest traces of just such a belief. number 562 already alludes somewhat cryptically to the completed or perfected state of truth:

Alto señor temeroso,joez de toda claridad,concluida la verdad,

non ay otro poderoso. (vv. 27-28)

tellingly, this “verdad concluida” is made explicit in the final line: “non ay otro poderoso”, a variation on the theme of God’s unicity.

What may here be an oblique reference to Muhammad’s mensajería is given a more protracted gloss in what is unquestionably the most enigmatic stanza of Garçi ferrández’s collected works. the whole of 564 (“Quien faze mover los vientos”) opens with two stanzas in praise of God as creator, then transitions in stanza 3 to the excellences of an unnamed mensajero:

Él embía mensajerocomo fuego espantable,e por [él] dizen durable:Gloria in excelsis deo!Cumple todo buen desseoe toda buena esperança:ha de ser, sin más dudança,

de todos el heredero. (vv. 13-24)

Curiously, critical commentary to date has left this passage thoroughly unmarked, leaving readers to assume its ready fit within Christian orthodoxy.32 Certainly the claim of Christian specificity can be made based on the deployment of tropes such as Gloria in excelsis deo or the characterization of God’s emissary as the fulfillment of a longing—standard fare in Messianic discourse. But we are left with an equal number of perplexing questions,

dizen Mafomad, vil embaidor” (107, vv. 10-12). ferrán Manuel de Lando, for his part, subjects Garçi ferrández to a poetic inquisition: “¿a qué fin fuestes dexar / la Ley santa perfeta, / por vevir en tal vil seta. . . . ?” (279, vv. 13-15).32 the Dutton/González Cuenca edition in fact imposes this reading when it transcribes the “él” of verse 15 as “Él”, leaving little doubt that a divinized Christ is intended. i have corrected here.


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not the least of which is the term mensajero. Messengers in the Biblical context are occasionally angelic, more often than not human. Highest in the hierarchy of these human messengers are the prophets, not infrequently called “messengers of God”, whose purpose it is to purvey God’s word to his people. Christ of course also purveys God’s word, but orthodox belief would scarcely reduce him to the role of purveyor of the word, since he himself is the Word, as the gospel of John makes amply clear, both preexisting creation and fulfilling prophecy.33 it is not coincidental that the term “messenger” is seldom if ever applied to Christ, whether in the new testament or in patristic literature. to do so would in fact negate Christ’s salvific purpose and verge on the heretical.

equally problematic is the notion of Christ as heredero. Christ is exceptionally called “heir” in the new testament, as in Hebrews 1.1-2: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds” [emphasis added]. But the weight of the term as deployed in the old and new testaments corresponds to believers who, as heirs to the covenant, inherit the kingdom or inherit salvation.34 even in Hebrews 1.1-2, Christ does not merely inherit “all things”, but he brings them full circle to the moment of creation, a formulation that underscores his consubstantiality with God rather than his subordination. in Garçi ferrández we find none of this nuance, so essential to Christian orthodoxy. Moreover, the plural of the formulation he employs—“de todos el heredero”—implies inheritance of a legacy of prophetic tradition (“de todos [los mensajeros] el heredero”), not inheritance of the broad sweep of creation (“de todo el heredero”, as in Hebrews), and so distances the stanza even further from Christian orthodoxy.

All told, a Christological reading of the stanza is difficult to sustain unless

33 “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us . . .” (John 1.1-3, 14).34 one example of dozens is Galatians 3.29: “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise”.


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we make allowances for sloppy theology. not so an islamic reading, already strongly suggested by the opening words “Él embía mensajero”, made all the more plausible precisely by the messenger’s designation as heir to prophetic tradition. islam had by its second century begun to lay sweeping claim to pre-islamic revelation, converting Adam and Muhammad into “two ends of the universal chain of prophets” and Muhammad into “their most notable heir” (rubin 80). Although ʿisā of segovia never deploys the term heredero in his Suma (nor does it seem to enter into common usage in the broader aljamiado corpus), connection of Muhammad to the chain of prophets is a commonplace in islamic spanish lyric, most notably in poems associated with Mawlid. exemplary is the piece fuente Cornejo titles “Almadḥa ii”. Here the Prophet is bestowed at birth with “dones que non an par” (st. 63b), each a virtue associated with one of the long line of Judeo-Christians prophets beginning with Adam:

De los annabíes35 la buena ventura,del pare edam la su fegura,de içmāʿīl su lengua pura,

estos son los dones de Muḥammad. . . . (st. 56)

eighteen additional prophets (including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus) are invoked by name, while Muhammad embodies the sum total of their virtues: “todo perteneçe a Muḥammad” (st. 62d). He represents, moreover, fulfillment of the prophets’ collective desire:

Millares vinti cuatro i çientode alnnabíes todo-son en cuentodeseosos con gran movimiento

para la vesitaçyōn de Muḥammad. (st. 65-66)

When read from within the Mawlid tradition, the otherwise disjointed references in stanza 3 of “Quien faze mover los vientos” assume a readily coherent meaning that all but confirms the identity of the unnamed mensajero. As in “Almadḥa ii” and dozens of other aljamiado pieces, it is Muhammad who is sent by God as “mensajero”, who fulfills “todo buen desseo”, and who emerges as beneficiary of all his predecessors, “de todos el

35 Annabíes ‘prophets’, from the Arabic an-nabī.


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heredero”. A survey of the broader Mawlid corpus reveals additional points of confluence. Light emerges invariably as a motif in accounts of the birth of the Prophet, most notably in the Kitāb al-anwār, authored by the egyptian Abū l-Ḥasan al Bakrī in the thirteenth century and widely circulated in its aljamiado version (Libro de las luces) in post-1492 spain.36 in at least one mawlidiyya of north African provenance this light is stoked into a flame: “A grito lo anunciaron los genios, que lanzaron también fulgurantes llamaradas de fuego” (fuente Cornejo 54), words that correspond readily to Garçi ferrández’s characterization of his mensajero as “fuego espantable”. Composed by the poet Abū l-Qasīm al-Barjī in 1360 for a Mawlid celebration hosted by the Merinid sultan Abū sālim ibrāhīm, this piece surely reflects a more general association of the Prophet with fire, an extreme turn of the nūr muḥammad ‘light of Muhammad’ that was already a conventional motif in islamic manuscript illumination.37

What remains discordant with an islamic interpretation of “Quien faze mover los vientos” is the thoroughly Catholic “e por [él] dizen durable: / Gloria in excelsis deo!”. the Latin derives, of course, from the hymn of praise featured in the opening rites of Mass, itself a gloss of the words sung by the heavenly hosts at Christ’s birth. As told in Luke’s chapter 2:

in that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the

36 significantly, the Kitāb al-anwār traces the light of prophecy (hence the anwar ‘lights’ of the title) from its first manifestation in Adam to its full fruition in Muhammad. Although extant aljamiado versions date to the sixteenth century at the earliest, there can be little doubt that the matter of the Kitāb al-anwār was known in some form (including oral) among spanish-speaking Muslims at the time of Garçi ferrández’s conversion. María Luisa Lugo Acevedo covers the diffusion of the Kitāb al-anwār in al-Andalus and its subsequent translation into aljamiado in the introduction to her critical edition of the Libro de las luces (34-51).37 says Christiane Gruber: “Luminous paintings adopt the metaphysical language of the golden aureole to convey the Prophet’s sacred, primordial, and creative light, called the ‘light of Muhammad’ (nūr Muḥammad). . . . Artists interested in conveying the Prophet’s preexistent luminescence purposefully stressed this more avataristic element by including golden blazes and halos in their paintings” (Gruber 230). Although the earliest extant paintings employing the full-blown “prophetic blaze” date to the mid-fifteenth century (248), the concept likely would not have been unfamiliar to earlier generations of illuminators. the question remains: to what degree would these images, produced in the main by turkish and Persian illuminators, have been known in the islamic West?


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glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. . . . And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (8-9, 13-14)

Despite the Gloria’s institutionalization in liturgy by the early sixth century, Berceo makes clear in his del sacrificio de la Misa that it never quite shook its association with the birth of Christ:

La Gloria in excelsis que el preste levantaluego en el comienzo, quando la missa canta,el imno representa e la gloria tanta

qual la ovieron ellos por la navidat sancta. (st. 38)

Moreover, the words “Gloria in excelsis” or “Gloria in excelsis Deo” remain fixtures in visual representations of the annunciation to the shepherds, for example, in the so-called “retablo Ayala”, commissioned by Leonor de Guzmán, wife of Pero López de Ayala, at the Convento de san Juan de Quejana in Álava in 1396.38

Paradoxically, it is precisely this association with the birth of Christ that invites the ready incorporation of “Gloria in excelsis Deo” into Mawlid-purposed lyric. not to be outdone by the Christian birth narrative, the Mawlid tradition developed as of its earliest stages an equally impressive repertoire of miracles to accompany the birth of Muhammad, including the active participation of angels as heralds of the event.39 this popular belief is replicated in mawlidiyyāt, as in, for example, Abū l-Qasīm al-Barjī’s above-cited qasīda: “vinieron a anunciárnoslo, como los astros a la aurora, los nobles Mensajeros de Dios” (fuente Cornejo 54). the aljamiado “Las loores son ađa Al.lah, el-alto, verđađero” (fuente Cornejo 217-25) is inflected even more explicitly by the Christian birth narrative in that it gives voice, just as Luke’s account does, to a hymn of praise in which not only angels but all of

38 see Marisa Melero-Moneo for a full-length study of this altarpiece and its corresponding altar front, both of which feature an annunciation to the shepherds and the words “Gloria in excelsis (Deo)”.39 García Gómez describes in general terms what he calls islam’s “viejo complejo de inferioridad respecto a Jesús, de quien el evangelio refiere milagros, mientras el Corán no los cuenta de Mahoma, quien por otra parte jamás se los atribuyó” (41-42).


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creation take part:

i las aves revolando, i los monte/s relunbrando,i los çielos bien abiertos, almalakes40/ đeballaban,i los peçes đe la mar, en las ondas donđe estaban,i los alimares brutos, en los bosques đonde estaban.

todos están alređeđor, que no se pueden / contar, diziendo: «sea ensalçado el que lo quiso enviar...». (st. 10-11)41

fuente Cornejo places composition of “Las loores son ađa Al.lah, el-alto, verđađero” squarely in the fourteenth century (17-22), meaning that by the time of Garçi ferrández’s conversion Muslim and Christian birth narratives already had a history of coexistence in spanish-language versions. We might even speculate slippage between the two at the popular level, particularly given the strong evidence of Muslim participation in celebrations of Christmas throughout the late medieval period.42 As a Christian, Garçi ferrández would have had full understanding of “Gloria in excelsis Deo” within its liturgical context and, like Berceo, associated it most immediately with the birth of Christ. But through his formation as a Muslim and introduction to the devotional practices of his new coreligionists, he would likely have noted the parallel structure of the Muslim birth narrative, its similar purpose as vehicle for praise of God, and the feasibility of inserting tropes that were neither antithetical to islamic orthodoxy nor entirely foreign to the spanish-speaking Muslim community. “Gloria in excelsis Deo” emerges, in fact, as a perfectly appropriate ejaculation of praise within spanish-language mawlidiyyāt, likely even a spontaneous ejaculation for the Christian convert to islam. it is also, ironically, a return to the originary text

40 Almalakes ‘angels’, from the Arabic al-malā’ika.41 so too does the Libro de las luces afford the angels a significant role: “i la noŷe que nasiyó Muḥammad, ṣala allāhu ʿaleyhi wal salam [bendígale dios y déle salvación] še obriyeron [sic. abrieron] laš puwertaš de loš siyeloš, i tendiyeron loš almalakeš [ángeles] todaš šuš alaš en loš ayreš i e enferm[o]šewó [se hizo hermosa] l-alŷŷana [paraíso] de la bendisiyón” (Lugo Acevedo 320). 42 the strongest evidence comes, of course, from efforts on the part of islamic jurists to curtail the practice. see fernando de la Granja for a critical study of primary sources, Alejandro García sanjuán for an update on the question.


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of “sea ensalçado el que lo quiso enviar” and similar efforts to give a Muslim voice to angelic hymns of praise.43

it would be tempting to read Garçi ferrández’s “Gloria in excelsis Deo” as an interconfessional ejaculation equally meaningful to both communities, or indeed the whole of “Quien faze mover los vientos” as an exercise in reconciliation between Christian and Muslim systems of belief. And yet the particulars of the piece—its idiosyncratic understanding of the role of mensajero, the suppression of Christ in the final apocalyptic passages, and the deployment of asmāʾ al-ḥusnā throughout—already make the case for situating the piece decidedly within islamic systems of belief and devotional practice. Moreover, its seemingly disparate thematic elements—praise of God (stanzas 1 and 2), emergence of the mensajero (stanza 3), and final judgment and penitence (stanzas 4-8)—fall immediately into place when read against exemplary mawlidiyyāt such as “Las loores son ađa Al.lah, el-alto, verđađero”. Here too, the poem opens with praise to God (stanzas, 1-2), narrates the birth and prophetic mission of Muhammad (stanzas 3-31), and anticipates the trials of final judgment, concluding with an appeal for God’s mercy (stanzas 32-40).

ISLAM IN THE cancIonero de baenaof Garçi ferrández’s collected works, “Quien faze mover los vientos” is the most notably dissident with the themes and structures of spanish cancionero lyric. And yet it falls into ready step with the mawlidiyyāt that were already circulating among spanish-speaking Muslims by the time of Garçi ferrández’s conversion to islam in the late-fourteenth century.

43 vincent Barletta has noted a similar phenomenon, although of later vintage, in the aljamiado Libro de las luces. Here ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib remarks to his daughter-in-law Amina, mother of the Prophet, “De buwena ventura erex sobre todax lax mujerex”—words likely derived from the Marian catchphrase “Blessed are you among women”, which was itself derived from elizabeth’s salutation to the pregnant Mary in Luke’s Gospel account (1.42) and broadly circulated throughout medieval Christian europe in the Ave Maria. Barletta suggests the possibility that ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s words are not original to the Kitāb al-anwār, but rather a sixteenth-century insertion and, if so, an example of the “complex ideological and discursive hybridity that gave shape to textualized notions of the Prophet Muhammad for Castilian and Aragonese Moriscos” (82).


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Collectively, his penitential pieces (562, 563, and 564) plus 561 (in essence a rhapsody on the absolute oneness of God) might be termed his Muslim works, reflecting as they do each of the creedal points that would have been the core of his formation: God is one; Muhammad is his messenger, and ours is to obey God’s commands and rely on his great mercy on the Day of Judgment. significantly, each of these points had already made its way into spanish-language lyric, whether mawlidiyyāt or lyric composed with an explicitly dogmatic purpose,44 meaning that on entering islam the poet Garçi ferrández found both a pre-existing poetic language through which to mediate his conversion and a receptive audience for his artistry.

What baffles is that Garçi ferrández’s Muslim works would find such ready accommodation within a Christian cultural context so sensitized to heterodoxies by anti-semitic preaching, orchestrated disputations, and vigorous poetic debate touching on matters of doctrine. invariably it is Garçi ferrández who finds condemnation in the Cancionero de Baena, never his religious poetry, which is gathered under the generic rubric of loores or contemplación de dios. even the dogmatically dicey “Quien faze mover los vientos” earns a pass, this up against the poet’s alleged hypocrisy:

este dezir fizo e ordenó el dicho Garçi ferrández de Gerena estando en su hermita, en loores de las virtudes e poderíos de Dios; mas, poniendo en obra su feo e desaventurado pensamiento, tomó su muger, diziendo que iva en romería a Jerusalem, e metióse en una nao e, llegando a Málaga, quedóse ende con su muger. (564)

similarly, in 563: “esa cantiga fizo el dicho Garçi ferrández estando en su hermita çerca de Jerena con su muger, contemplando en Dios e en sus grandes poderíos, pero so espeçia d’esto otra maldad tenía en su coraçón”. As for 561, which gestures, as we have seen, toward the core point of disputation between Christians and Muslims, it remains thoroughly unmarked: “esta cantiga dizo el dicho Garçi ferrández despediéndose del mundo, e púsose beato en una hermita cabo Jerena”.

Problematic here is the false dichotomy put forth by the rubric—and

44 for instance, “La alḫuṭba de Pascua de ramaḍān”, a versified sermon composed for the purpose of recitation during ramadan (fuente Cornejo 293-309).


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sustained by scholarship—between the expression of religious devotion and the practice of islam. that is, no matter Garçi ferrández’s allegiance, whether Christian or Muslim, his religious poetry is read by default in a Christian mode to the utter exclusion of islam. the single mention of Christ in 559 leads Carmen Parrilla, in line with a history of criticism, to generalize that as a rule Garçi ferrández combines exaltation of God with “el conocimiento de un Dios redentor y salvador en la persona de Cristo” [emphasis added] (138). And yet nowhere else in his penitential lyric does Garçi ferrández make explicit mention of Christ. far more plausible, as we have seen, is that his exaltation of God and his preoccupation with mercy and final judgment were motivated by the particulars of his formation in islam. even as the rubrics (and scholarship) conspire to Christianize his collected devotional works, the works themselves resist this reading, tugging us subtly—and at times none too subtly—toward the Muslim exercise of dhikr Allāh, mindfulness of God.

oddly, despite the rubrics’ privileging of Christianity through explicit condemnation of the Muslim Garçi ferrández, the modes of devotion referenced by those same rubrics show little sign of Christian specificity. Garçi ferrández composes, we are told, “en loores de Dios”, “contemplando en Dios e en sus grandes poderíos”, “en loores de las virtudes y poderíos de Dios”—all modes of devotion familiar to Christians, and yet approximating the meaning and purpose of dhikr Allāh. A century and a half earlier, ramon Llull had drawn on the asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā to compose els cent noms de deu precisely because he recognized in it a point of confluence with Christianity. While condemning belief in the Qurʾan as the word of God, Llull salvaged from islam a dynamic mode of devotion he hoped would reinvigorate Christian devotional practice. We might read the Cancionero de Baena’s accommodation of Garçi ferrández’s Muslim works—or indeed, many of spain’s late-medieval encounters with islam—in a similar vein, as the at times contradictory negotiation of meaning between two faith communities that still rubbed elbows in intimate ways even as spain set a course for uncompromising orthodoxy.

With sincerest thanks to members of the University of Louisville’s Medieval and renaissance


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Workshop, before whom i delivered a preliminary version of this study and whose extra-Peninsular perspectives proved immensely useful. i owe additional thanks to research assistant Cynthia Martínez for her adept management of source materials.

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Islamic Traces in the Cancionero de Baena

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