Castilian Military Orders & Frontier Society

Crusader principalities and the Templar, Hospitaller, Teutonic and Livonian orders.

1 chapter

711 - 1085

Islamic rule reshaped the region's geography and language permanently. Arabic toponymy embedded itself in the landscape: al-Manxa (

1492 - 1614

The year 1492 saw both the expulsion of the Jews and the fall of Granada, ending Muslim political power in Iberia. In Toledo, the Sinagoga del Tránsito—built by Samuel ha-Leví in 1357—was confiscated and converted; today it houses the Museo Sefardí, preserving the material memory of a community that shaped the city for centuries. The Morisco expulsion (1609–1614) hit La Mancha unevenly: in Villarubia de los Ojos, approximately 250 Moriscos resisted three expulsion orders, with many returning and Felipe IV eventually ratifying their privileges—proving that integration could challenge even state-driven removal. This era also produced the earliest documented syncretic festivals. La Endiablada (documented from 1500) encodes a ritual structure where diablos with cencerros must "ask permission" to begin—Christian institutional control layered over potentially older ritual forms. The Caballada de Atienza commemorates the 1162 liberation of child-king Alfonso VIII by arrieros, whose cofradía still conducts auctions in wheat measures (celemines de trigo) rather than money, preserving an agrarian economic logic from the medieval frontier.

476 - 711

The Visigothic kingdom made Toledo its capital and liturgical center, developing the Hispanic rite (later called Mozarabic)—a distinct Christian tradition with its own calendar, Ember days, and Lenten structure that would survive both Islamic rule and Roman-rite pressure. King Leovigildo founded Recópolis in 578 AD as a new royal city on the Tagus; the palace complex at Los Hitos reveals aristocratic power projected along the Toledo-Córdoba road. King Liuva II's Christianization of Caesarobriga (~601 AD) redirected the Ceres cult toward the Virgen del Prado. Step into the Iglesia de San Román—now the Museo de los Concilios—and you see Visigothic frescoes, caliphal arches, and Mudéjar elements layered in a single building. This palimpsest is the region's cultural DNA: each era writing over, but not erasing, the one before. The Visigothic liturgical calendar's different feast dates would subtly shape local festival timing for centuries, even after the rite was officially suppressed in most of Spain.

1614 - 1700

After the Morisco expulsion completed in 1614, Castilla-La Mancha entered a Baroque festival culture shaped by Counter-Reformation spectacle. The Corpus Christi procession became the primary stage for communal identity: in Camuñas, the Pecados y Danzantes evolved as a ritual drama where masked "Sins" attack the Custodia before repenting, followed by the Danzantes' choreographed dance. A "Judío Mayor" figure presides—officially an Auto Sacramental allegory, but anthropologist Molinié reads it as crypto-Jewish code. The meaning remains contested; what is certain is that the ritual structure encodes a dialogue between suppression and survival. The Corral de Comedias in Almagro—the only surviving 17th-century theater structure in Spain—hosted the plays that fed this Baroque imagination. The auto sacramental, performed outdoors during Corpus Christi, became the dominant dramatic genre for public religious performance. Stand in the Corral's courtyard and you occupy the exact space where Golden Age audiences experienced the theatrical machinery that shaped festival culture until the Bourbon prohibition of 1765.