ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that when the Christian poets, illuminators, and editors of the Cantigas represented Jews or Muslims within their pages, they were not only or even necessarily describing the practices of living Jews or Muslims. It seeks to legitimate the arts – music, poetry, painting, politics – in which they were engaged, and to defend the forms of representation characteristic of the Cantigas themselves as a medium of communication between the human and the divine. There are two options represented in this morality tale: a Christian court, in which power is mediated through virtuous Christian ministers with eternal salvation the goal; and a Satanic one with Jewish ministers, thirsting for earthly power and condemned to damnation. Over and over the Cantigas proposes the contrast, in order to present Alfonso as a representative of God rather than Satan.
