Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

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Again, the equation of the Christian warrior and
pilgrim reflected, and owed a debt to, the man on
ribat. The Muslim scholar, mystic, or any other
person with spiritual ambitions acquired the
authority to fight for God. Once the ribat ended
and his obligation was done, the special moment
he occupied, no matter how holy the cause,
ceased to grant spiritual advantages. In like fashion,
as the council’s proviso explained, the warrior
who tried to liberate his brethren in Spain
or Jerusalem, and thus must wear markings to
validate his mission, could slay his enemies,
and presumably repent for his sins, only while
he honored his commitment. Once the warrior
finished his task or abandoned his calling to
attack another target, the quest, like a pilgrimage
that had run its course, was complete.
By the fifteenth century, Christians had taken
ribat and made it their own. As Kroeber hypothesized,
Christians assimilated, and then transformed,
their rivals’ ideas. Employing Muslim
precedents, whose shape and contours now sat
obscured, Christians presented their efforts to liberate
Spain as a santa empresa (holy undertaking)
or una santa romería (holy pilgrimage). 58 War, like
a pilgrimage, retained a finite quality. Once Christians
had completed their task, whether it was
the attempt to liberate Spain or Jerusalem, they
had fulfilled their obligation. There is no need to
stretch the point and wonder if we see a Christian
variation of the House of War superseded by the
House of Islam, though the thought is intriguing.
It is enough to say that Christians valued
the process that combined war and pilgrimages.
Each venture involved a journey whereby the
participants proved their devotion by asking for
forgiveness and performing certain duties, which
included, if need be, the chance to go to battle.
California History • volume 90 number 1 2012
denoueMent
We have come full circle. The ties between Muslim
Spain and provincial California, especially
concerning the making of war, confirm the
endurance of certain habits. 59 Spanish Christians
who followed Muslim ways, and their descendants
elsewhere who perpetuated these patterns,
bear out Kroeber’s ideas about culture. The sum
of habits and routines that regulate and organize
human existence, culture is far from an inert,
stolid mass of behaviors that individuals cannot
control. Rather, as Kroeber noted, culture may
be best described as a collection of practices that
individuals can choose, refine, or reject when
circumstances merit. The selection of traits that
constitute culture may involve ways to defeat enemies.
Even when choosing habits from rivals, the
members of any culture do so with the intent of
ensuring their survival and prosperity. The habits
that promise success, although they may emanate
from a rival, strengthen and grow more rooted
over time when they bring benefit. Accordingly,
because the Muslim approach to war seemed
superior, Christians of Spain picked through the
practices of both jihad and ribat. They selected
what they needed, altered the choices to their liking,
and employed them when necessary.
At its most basic, the Muslim legacy of mystics
and scholars going to war set the example that
Christians followed throughout the Spanishspeaking
world. In many instances, and in cases
that seemed removed from the establishment of
military societies that accepted clergy, priests and
monks in Spain served alongside, or replaced,
knights and soldiers. As early as the tenth century
in the Kingdom of León in northern Spain,
monks and military men who had become
“Arabicized” secured responsible positions in
the church hierarchy and civil government. 60 By
the twelfth century, Cistercian monks occupied
an abandoned castle in the southernmost portions
of the province of Castilla and assumed
the role of soldiers. 61 Centuries later, in 1568,