Once again, the Castle of San Servando will rediscover the spirit of late medieval castles, when the fiercest, most hurtful and at the same time gentlest arrows were launched not so much at the surrounding enemy (that too) but from the court benches themselves. , between couples in love. Then (incomparable in fifteenth-century Toledo) the castles were bastions of culture, transitional spaces between schools and monastic offices, the future halls of the palace and literary cafes. A space that was also festive and playful, where the poetic sessions, in their forms of jousts of inventions, mixed the rhythm of poetry, the conceptual ingenuity of philosophy and the aesthetic game of the costume ball. With its prizes and awards. And all this well embellished with galas, music and dancing.
There is the famous verse of the ubi sunt de Jorge Manrique, Consort of Toledo and with luck, which I am proud to recover more and more for the city of Toledo, with anchorage in the Palace of Fuensalida, where he must have had a matrimonial and educational home for his children Luis and Luisa, in the magnificent castle of Guadamur, built by his father-in-law, recreation and refuge, and in the rooms related to that great cultural and literary patron that was Archbishop Carrillo de Acuña, to whose circle he belonged.
Or this fragment of the great Rodrigo Cotato whom in this edition of Magical Toledo we do justice, Luis Devora and I, as the great author who was of this brilliant monument that we call La Celestina (know that the one who speaks here is Love):
“I the couplets and the songs,/ I the sweet music;/ I demonstrate the one who knows/ the subtle inventions:/ I make my flames fly,/ for better and for worse,/ I make the ladies serve,/ I perfume the beds,/ sweets and gifts./ I dance in beautiful sounds,/ I dance and sing,/ and it is the frauds/ that I send to the heart.”
Who said that in the Middle Ages everything was about the smell of stables, the trampling of horses, rust and bloody swords? There was also and there was glamour, dialogue (those poetic debates to which the Recueil de Chansons Générales devotes a section), celebration and a whole pre-renaissance, at least in the peninsular courts of Spain.
An atmosphere, a spirit, which for the third consecutive year The “Toledo Magical City” congress will recover and project itself into this troubled 21st century.
A tight and varied program, harmoniously mixing science and humanities, youth and seniority, will be presented throughout the weekend, in front of a participatory and impatient audience that will fill the San Servando meeting room. An audience from Toledo but also from the four cardinal points. An international audience too. Because Toledo was and continues to be the symbolic, religious and cultural epicenter of Spain but also a bridge between oriental knowledge and the classical substratum, between the south and the north, between tradition and avant-garde.
From 4 p.m. on Friday 27, with presentation of Lourdes LuchoroPresentations will be given on topics such as: The Black Virgins of Toledo, Toledo and Kabbalah, The History of Spirits (with tasting of two cocktails included), Tarot and the Golden Age, The Sword of Saint Paul, Hidden Codes in Art, Alfonso Toledo Rodrigo Cotawhich I have already spoken about.
The consecrated names go hand in hand with researchers on philosophical, anthropological, historical and literary themes: Ignacio Carmona, Jesús Callejo, Engel de la Cruz, Mercedes Pullman, Daniel Gómez, Gonzalo Rodríguez, Santy Checa, Francisco Rodríguez, Sol Blanco, Aldo Linares. In the magnificent setting of the San Servando garden, with Toledo in front, a Visigoth village will be recreated by Signus Temporis. And two paintings commissioned by the Congress will be presented in a rigorous premiere: “La calle Mística”, by Ramon Cordobaon a concept defined by Javier Devoraa brilliant “statistical anomaly”, the only known street where the creation of first-rate works of art is concentrated. Saint Teresa, Juan de la Cruz or El Greco, with La Celestina Rodrigo Cota; and “Solomon’s Table,” by Luis Javier Gaya, advised by Kabbalah expert Iñaqui Carmonaon a symbol of power that fuses the three great monotheistic cultures, incorporating all the hermetic charge of this Jewish mystical instrument, transported to the West by the Romans, to Toledo by the Goths and sought after by Muslims. In addition to the congress, on Sunday morning the “La Oca de Toledo” route will take place, based on the book of Luis Devora which anchors this popular game in the geography, street art and history of Toledo.
Image on Solomon’s table
The well-known and renowned physicist and popularizer of science and humanities Jose Edelstein will propose the closing conference, which will focus on Einstein, Toledo and the culture of peace. A motto and a theme in full accordance with the spirit and objectives of the congress: to recover for Toledo the world reference as an emblematic place of dialogue and intercultural encounter, today more necessary and urgent than ever, by proposing a space of convergence for the different subjects and fields of science, literature and thought, in the manner of the legendary School of Translators.
With the traditional round table, hosted by Miguel Blancoand a live broadcast of ‘Espacio en Blanco’, his radio show on RNE and Radio Extérieur, this third edition of the Toledo, magical city. Until next September.
