Description: The studies included in this selection - the opening two being published for the first time - are concerned with various aspects of the history of Christian Spain between the 6th century and the 14th. A recurrent theme is that of the invention of the past: of the manner in which, for reasons which have seemed good to them, at different times and places, from Toledo in the 1240s to Cambridge in the 1920s, men have sought to appropriate and recolonise that past. Three more technical articles on the subject of 13th-century papal diplomatic in a Spanish setting illustrate the related activity of the invention of the future as reflected in the activity of the agents or proctors and others whose services were retained in order to ensure that it was their employer's particular view of the present that prevailed.
Review Quotes: 'This collection...serves as a useful introduction to the Castilian Church of the High Middle Ages as well as to some major historiographical problems in contemporary Spanish medieval studies. For these reasons it can be highly recommended.' The Catholic Historical Review