What is it about?
How would you have made sense of the conquest of Granada if you were a third or fourth generation converso (Christian of Jewish origin), whose family had been decimated by the Inquisition? And how would you interpret the extinction of Islamic political power in the peninsula if you had been an interpreter, a negotiator, a cross-border mediator and a friend of the emir himself? What hopes would you have for the future? What fears of how things might turn out? This was Hernando de Baeza, whose account gives us an insight into another way in which the obliteration of the Muslim kingdom of Granada might have been conceived, had it not been swamped by the weight of the Catholic Monarchs’ nation-building propaganda and their resort to medieval notions of the divine mission of Castile in recovering land supposedly snatched from their Gothic ancestors nearly eight centuries previously.
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Photo by Petr Slováček on Unsplash
Why is it important?
It's important in reminding us that the 'Reconquista' narrative of the foundation of modern Spain which became embedded in later historiography did not develop straightforwardly after the conquest of Granada. There were other options on the table which told a more inclusive tale of the transition from multi-faith Iberia to Christian Spain.
Perspectives
The article developed out of my PhD thesis which researched the life and work of Hernando de Baeza, revealing his converso origins, his relationship to the powerful Fernández de Córdoba family, and later career in Italy. This was published in 2022 as 'Reconciliation and Resistance in Early Modern Spain. Hernando de Baeza and the Catholic Monarchs.'
Teresa Tinsley
University of Exeter
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reframing ‘Reconquista’. Hernando de Baeza’s Take on the Conquest of Granada, October 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004683754_008.
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