Medieval Mediterranean history

The 13th-15th century Mediterranean offers a compelling case study for how vassal-lord relationships functioned across religious communities—Christian, Muslim, and Jewish subjects often navigated overlapping feudal hierarchies that required pragmatic coexistence rather than conflict.

This Madrid conference directly addresses a historiographical gap: most vassal-lord scholarship focuses on Northern Europe, leaving the religiously diverse Western Mediterranean underexamined as a laboratory for understanding medieval political structures beyond the traditional feudal model.

Papers submitted could examine specific administrative documents, tax records, and legal codes from this period that show how vassal obligations were negotiated and enforced when Christians, Muslims, and Jews held simultaneous claims to lordship or vassalage in shared territories.