Convivencia and Conversion in Gonzalo de Berceos El judezno
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Gonzalo de Berceo's Milagros de Nuestra Seora, which includes the miracle tale of "El judezno", represents the first collection in Castilian of the miracle tales of the Virgin. The topics of convivencia and conversion in Berceo's "El judezno" appear represented as themes of both opposition and unity. Rather than elucidating a converso voice per se, the synthetic dynamic of the miracle presents a thirteenth-century Christian vision of the symbolic significance of the converso. This vision derives from the conversos' action. Berceo, by creating the impression of separate worlds between Christians and Jews as the scene for the Jewish child's conversion to Christianity, has rendered a subjectively accurate representation of thirteenth-century convivencia. The cathartic unity of Christians and Jews appears like a fantasy of validation that works on two levels, law and theology.
