Friday, February 4, 2011, 8:00 to 10:15 pm

The Place of Toledo in Spanish History
Teofilo Ruiz (Professor of History, UCLA) provides a broad view of the history of Toledo from its Roman foundation to the aftermath of the conquest of the city by the Christian armies of Alfonso VI in 1085. Emphasis is on the Visigothic presence in the city, the role of Toledo as the capital of the Visigothic empire, as primate Church in early modern Spain, as well as on the great Church councils held in the city. In many ways, the edicts of these councils eerily foreshadowed later harsh legislation against Muslims and Jews in the mid-thirteenth century. Focusing on discreet aspects of Toledo's history and on its unique location in the center of the peninsula, Professor Ruiz also explores the contradictions inherent in Alfonso VI's definition of himself as the emperor of the three religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) and the parallel development: the growing antagonisms between different religious groups in the city and the realm.

Performance
Soprano Susan Rode-Morris, percussionist Peter Maund, viola-da-gambist David Morris, and vielle/violinist Shira Kammen present a program indicative of the astonishing diversity of the music of late Medieval and Renaissance Toledo and Spain. From the Spanish secular storytelling villancicos to Sephardic love songs and laments, to the Moorish muwashah, this concert explores the rich and unusual meeting of cultures which culminated in a fascinating world. Introduced by Clifford (Kip) Cranna (Director of Musical Administration, SF Opera)

Saturday, February 5, 2011, 10:00 am to noon and 1:30 to 4:00 pm

From Difference to Deviance in Early Modern Toledo
Mary Elizabeth Perry (Research Associate, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies).
The Purity of Blood Statute passed by the city government of Toledo in 1449 signaled a major change from past toleration of difference to official condemnation of difference as deviance. Originally aimed at judeo-conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity), this law reflected a larger concern about growing challenges to a ruling elite. Historical records, literature, art, and architecture of Toledo expose deep anxieties about not only judeo-conversos, but also moriscos (Muslims who had to convert to Christianity in the early 16th century), the poor, the infirm, and prostitutes. 

Toledo's Visual Interlace
Deborah Loft (Art History Professor, College of Marin). Toledo offers a rich opportunity to explore artistic interchange across lines of political power. Works of art ranging from medieval mosques, synagogues, and churches to the paintings of El Greco—himself a product of several cultures—reflect the city's complex cultural relationships. The "Cristo de la Luz" mosque and the "Santa Maria la Blanca" and "Il Tránsito" synagogues are considered in the broader context of the Iberian Peninsula and as contributions to European art down to modern times. Toledo is also viewed through the paintings and projects of El Greco, for whom the city provided the patronage for his distinctive later work.

Lunch Break

Performance
Orphenica Lyra: Orpheus’ Lyre in Spain
Virtuoso guitarist Richard Savino (Professor of Music, CSU Sacramento) captures the spontaneity of Spanish period music on the guitar and vuihuela, el rey de los renacimiento intrumentos español (the king of Spanish renaissance instruments). Shaped in a manner more closely resembling that of a modern guitar, yet tuned in the manner of a lute, the vihuela was the defining musical instrument of late 15th and 16th century Spain.

The Limits and Pitfalls of "Convivencia"
Teofilo Ruiz (Professor of History, UCLA). This lecture, a summation of our study of the great city of Toledo, examines critically the historiographical debate about convivencia, the supposedly peaceful interaction of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in medieval Toledo and Spain. By tracing the historical roots for this concept and its development over time, Professor Ruiz seeks to provide a new assessment of what the term meant for those different religions co-existing in medieval Toledo and Iberia, and what the presence or absence of real convivencia tells us about medieval Spain and about our own conflicted experiences of toleration and intolerance in the modern world. While most Toledan and medieval Castilian art shows a high degree of what Jerrilynn Dodds has defined as hybridity, Professor Ruiz examines, though a brief look at some specific cultural markers, how that hybridity worked at the level of everyday life.

Related Events

Humanities West Toledo Book Discussion
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by Maria Rosa Menocal
January 19, 2011
5:30 – 6:30 pm.  
Co-Sponsored by the Humanities Member-Led Forum
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Board Room.
595 Market Street
Free 

The Book in Medieval Toledo
January 27, 2011
5:30 pm Reception, 6:00 pm
Mechanics’ Institute
57 Post Street
Free to Humanities West donors and Mechanics’ Institute members. Public: $12.
RSVP: milibrary.org

Kerrin Meis, Independent Art Historian
When Alfonso VI conquered Muslim Toledo in 1085, he found vast libraries of books: philosophic, scientific and medical treatises from Ancient Greece as well as important works by Avicenna, Averroes and Maimonides. They were all in Arabic.   Soon a group of scholars: Jews, Muslims and Christians engaged in the complicated process of translating them into Latin. We shall examine illustrations in these translations as well as the Qur'ans, Bibles, Haggadot , Psalters and Commentaries on the Bible being commissioned at the time. Alfonso X (El Sabio) continued to promote translations, made Castilian the official language and added his Book of Games and the profusely illustrated and often provocative Cantigas de Santa Maria to the literature.  

Fireside Chat with George Hammond
February 1, 2011, 7 pm.
Orinda Library, Orinda
Free



Toledo Through the Centuries
February 2, 2011
5:30 pm Reception, 6:00 pm Lecture
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco
595 Market Street

Peter O’Malley Pierson (Lee & Seymour Graff Professor of History Emeritus, Santa Clara University) Co-Sponsored by the Humanities Member-Led Forum

Set on a hill defined by a horseshoe loop in the River Tagus, Toledo’s history goes back at least to the Bronze Age. Celtic tribes fortified it. The Romans captured it in 193 BC. The Visigoths made it their capital. Toledo survived the fragmentation of Moorish Spain as the center of a minor Muslim kingdom. The Kings of Castile took it back. Charles V made it the Imperial City of his Holy Roman Empire, but his son Philip II moved to Madrid. Professor Peter O’Malley Pierson will illuminate this fascinating history and the art of El Greco it eventually inspired.

$12 for Commonwealth Club members, $20 for non-members
Tickets available here.

Toledo Salon
Imperial Power and Financial Excess During the Reign of
Charles V (1500-1557)
Dryden G. Liddle

February 10, 2011, 5:30 – 6:30 pm.
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco
595 Market Street
Free

This special Humanities Salon presentation focuses on the connection between the dynastic policies of Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) and the development of credit to finance these policies. Charles’s imperial policies led to the accumulation of enormous debt and the development of finance capitalism through taxation of the towns of Castile, which secured loans extended principally by German and Genoese bankers. Some of the financial techniques find an echo in our present circumstances (e.g. loans anticipating future revenues, restructuring of debt principal and exchange of maturities). A liquidity crisis was followed by a solvency crisis and both Spain and France defaulted on their ‘sovereign’ debt in the late 1550s.

Dryden G. Liddle is a recently qualified PhD in history (Open University, UK),with an MA in Economics from Cambridge University, followed by a long career in diplomacy (the UK FO) and banking. His PhD thesis was on Charles V’s financial secretary, 1520-1547, covering issues on the finance of the Habsburg wars and the emergence of the fiscal state, largely by taxing the Castilian towns and not through the silver inflow from the Americas as is often thought. The thesis also covers the diplomatic and personal correspondence of artists, popes, ambassadors, and of course Charles V on issues raised by Luther, the Turk, Algerian piracy, and the wars against France in Italy. With the resulting imperial overstretch there is a clear parable with today, including the role of complex financial instruments, liquidity and subsequent solvency issues.



Humanities West Toledo Book Discussion
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture (Council on Foreign Relations Book Series) by Jerrilynn Dodds
March 2, 2011
5:30 – 6:30 pm.  
Co-Sponsored by the Humanities Member-Led Forum
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, Board Room.
595 Market Street
Free