ABSTRACT
Two parallel phrases appear in the Oaxaca and Valencian investigations: “in the time of the Muslims” and “in the time of their gentility.” The former had a long history, but its meanings were radically changed in the sixteenth century; the latter, in contrast, was a new development. This chapter begins by charting these two histories and explaining what they reveal about theories of temporal and social disjunction on both sides of the Atlantic. But these visions of ruptural change were controversial. They were debated (by Old Christians, Muslims, and Native American traditionalists alike) by drawing on alternative models of genealogical continuity. At the same time, Muslims and Native Americans also possessed their own theories of ruptural, apocalyptic change: models that looked not to a lost past but instead to a transformed future.
