Between the late twelfth century and the mid fourteenth, Castile saw a
reordering of mental, spiritual, and physical space. Fresh ideas about
sin and intercession coincided with new ways of representing the self
and emerging perceptions of property as tangible. This radical shift in
values or mentalités was most evident among certain social groups,
including mercantile elites, affluent farmers, lower nobility, clerics,
and literary figures--"middling sorts" whose outlooks and values were
fast becoming normative.
Drawing on such primary documents as wills, legal codes, land
transactions, litigation records, chronicles, and literary works,
Teofilo Ruiz documents the transformation in how medieval Castilians
thought about property and family at a time when economic innovations
and an emerging mercantile sensibility were eroding the traditional
relation between the two. He also identifies changes in how Castilians
conceived of and acted on salvation and in the ways they related to
their local communities and an emerging nation-state.
Ruiz interprets this reordering of mental and physical landscapes as
part of what Le Goff has described as a transition "from heaven to
earth," from spiritual and religious beliefs to the quasi-secular
pursuits of merchants and scholars. Examining how specific groups of
Castilians began to itemize the physical world, Ruiz sketches their new
ideas about salvation, property, and themselves--and places this
transformation within the broader history of cultural and social change
in the West.
