The Mercenary Mediterranean_ Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon - Hussein Fancy

medievalism and secularism 143

to manipulate credulous masses. In medieval mercenaries, Arabists like

Giménez Soler saw men ahead of their times, secular and practical ratio-

nalists, individuals struggling to break free from religious bondage.

Catholics and conservatives met this skepticism of religion with strong

resistance.^10 In his La España del Cid ( 1929 ), Ramón Menéndez Pidal, a

Romance philologist, presented a very different image of the quintessen-

tial medieval soldier- for- hire, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, more widely known

as El Cid, who spent part of his career in the service of the Muslim ruler

of Valencia.^11 Challenging earlier studies that had portrayed El Cid as a

faithless brigand, Menéndez Pidal recast him as a national and religious

hero, as a champion of what he saw as an epic struggle between Christen-

dom and Islam.^12 Menéndez Pidal did not deny the existence of pacific

interactions between Muslims and Christians. Indeed, he first coined the

term convivencia, by which he meant an unqualified “living together,” to

describe El Cid’s temporary service for the Muslim ruler. In this history,

El Cid emerged as a loyal, noble, and democratic figure, not a religious

fanatic. But for Menéndez Pidal, Islamic Spain’s tolerance of Christians,

so admired by liberals, was also a sign of its fundamental weakness, of its

dilution by rationalism.^13 Thus, despite his alliance with Muslims, Menén-

dez Pidal’s El Cid remained a true believer who eventually rejected con-

vivencia in order to become a passionate defender of the Castilian nation.

In his approach to this history, Menéndez Pidal mirrored other Ro-

mantic conservatives, who rejected what they saw as the shallow, cold,

and foreign ideas of Spanish liberals.^14 In the midst of crisis, conserva-

tives called for the revival of Spain’s unique religious and national spirit.

Adapting emerging theories of race, biology, and psychology, these tradi-

tionalists argued that religion was necessary for the health and function

of society. These arguments shared the nostalgia that characterized pos-

tidealistic social thought from Herder’s national soul, Fourier’s theory of

passionate attraction, Smith’s invisible hand, and Freud’s sublimation to

Weber’s concept of disenchantment.^15 Religious passions served as a salve

for a modern sense of anomie.^16 In medieval mercenaries, these conserva-

tives saw traitors to the faith.

This academic sparring was not insular and otiose but rather repre-

sented the political fault lines of early twentieth- century Spain. Willingly

or unwillingly, both liberal and conservative scholars found themselves

pulled into the ideological positions of the Spanish Civil War. Indeed,

General Francisco Franco’s regime enthusiastically drew upon Menéndez

Pidal’s own work to cast its leader as a new El Cid, a new Catholic hero.^17