History and the Historians of Medieval Spain.

THE theme of this notable book is the manipulation of Spain's medieval history by Spanish historians, then or later. Early on Peter Linehan draws attention to 'the cumulative effect of the series of distorting lenses interposed between past and present in every age from Isidore's to ours'. His aim is the liberating one of identifying and examining these lenses, and thus of bringing nearer the opportunity of seeing the Spanish past undistorted. In the course of his ample investigations, impeccably researched, cogently and often wittily presented, he succeeds in this aim and offers us a great deal more besides. This is a weighty and distinguished contribution not merely to Spanish medieval studies but to the history of historiography at large. Because of its amplitude, and because also of a certain discursiveness in treatment, it is not an easy book to summarize. At its heart is the matter of the Spanish national identity. Indeed, as the author tells us in his preface, the book grew out of his stimulating paper on 'Religion and National Identity in Medieval Spain and Portugal' which first appeared in Studies in Church History (1982) and was reprinted in his first volume of collected essays, Spanish …