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Conversion Anxieties in the Crown of Aragón in the Later Middle Ages

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09503110.2010.522387

1473-348X

Jarbel Rodríguez,

Historical Studies of Medieval Iberia

Abstract The conversion of Christians to Islam caused significant anxiety in the Crown of Aragón in the later middle ages. Some of this fear was caused by genuine concern over the eternal salvation of the convert, but there were other reasons as well. This article looks at three distinct causes that served to foster and maintain this fear of conversion. First, Christian authorities sometimes purposefully used the spectre of Christians converting to Islam to galvanise support for some of their political, diplomatic, and military initiatives. Secondly, apostates posed a significant spiritual danger to those Christians who lived as minorities in Muslim regions. Finally, converts presented a danger to the Crown of Aragón from a practical and military point of view. Keywords: ApostasyConversion – from Christianity to IslamAragón – churchIslam – Christian convertsCaptivity Notes 2 Andrés Giménez-Soler, “La corona de Aragón y Granada”, Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona 3–4 (1905–1907): 352; Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, Els sarrains de la Corona Catalano-Aragónesa en el segle XIV: segregació i discriminació (Barcelona: Consell Superior d’Investigacions Cientifiques, 1987), pp. 78–79. The years between 1311 and 1316 also saw some heightened Dominican activity against those Jews and Muslims in the Crown of Aragón who aided in the apostasy of Christians. See Robin Vose, Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragón (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 180–189. 3 Ramon Llull, Blanquerna, ed. E.A. Peers (London: Dedalus, 1987), 85: 1. 4 Francisco Roca-Traver, “Un siglo de vida mudejar en la Valencia medieval: 1238–1338”, Estudios de edad media de la Corona de Aragón, 5 (1952): 125–126. 5 Charles E. Dufourcq, L’Espagne Catalane et le Maghrib aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1966), p. 582. 6 Robert I. Burns, “Renegades, adventurers, and sharp businessmen: The thirteenth century Spaniard in the cause of Islam”, The Catholic Historical Review, 58 (1972): 345. 7 Nicolau Eimeric, El manual de los inquisidores, ed. and trans. Luis Sala Molins and Francesco Martin (Barcelona: Muchnik, 1983), p. 85. 8 For a brief introduction to this issue in Castile, see José Enrique López de Coca Castañer, “Institutions on the Castilian Granadan Frontier, 1369–1482” in Medieval Frontier Societies, ed. Robert Bartlett and Angus MacKay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 135–136. 9 Alfonso X, Las Siete Partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, ed. Robert I. Burns (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 7: 25: 4. 10 See, for example, Ferrer i Mallol, Els sarrains, doc. 28 (11 August 1322); Juan Torres Fontes, “La Frontera de Granada en el siglo XV y sus repercusiones en Murcia y Orihuela: Los Cautivos” in Homenaje a Don José María Lacarra de Miguel en su jubilación del profesorado : estudios medievales, vols I–V (Zaragoza: Anubar, 1977), IV: 191–211, doc. 3 (6 October 1406). 11 Ferrer i Mallol, Els sarraïns, 80. 12 Burns, “Renegades, adventurers, and sharp businessmen”, 347. For the specific renegade that Burns is discussing see Roca-Traver, “Un siglo de vida mudejar,” doc. 27 (April 1321). 13 See Norman Housley, “Pope Clement V and the Crusades of 1309–10”, Journal of Medieval History, 8 (1982): 29–43. 14 “sepius in invasionibus et aliis quas in Yspaniam fecerunt homines et mulieres infinitos ceperunt et captos secum dexerunt compellentes tam mares quam feminas relinquere legem nostram et suam sectam recipere et mulieres pro concubinis habere et filios ex eisdem procreare”, in Giménez Soler, “La Corona de Aragón y Granada”, 353 and n.1. 15 Giménez Soler, “La Corona de Aragón y Granada”, 341. 16 Although the capture of Gibraltar was significant, particularly in giving the Christians control over the straits, the Crusade, which combined the might of Aragón and Castile, had set out to completely conquer Granada and the two Christian sovereigns had already agreed to its partition. Cf. Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, La Frontera amb l’Islam en el segle XIV: Cristians i Sarraïns al país Valencià (Barcelona: Consell Superior d’Investigacions Científiques, 1988), pp. 99–101. 17 Ángel Canellas, “Aragón y la empresa del estrecho en el siglo XIV: Nuevos documentos del Archivo Municipal de Zaragoza”, Estudios de la edad media de la Corona de Aragón, 2 (1946), doc. 9 (1340). 18 For captives and conversion see Jarbel Rodriguez, Captives and their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragón (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2007), chapter 3. 19 For more on the living conditions of captives see Rodriguez, Captives and their Saviors, chapter 2. 20 Regina Sáinz de la Maza Lasoli, “Los Mercedarios en la Corona de Aragón durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIV”, Miscellània de Textos Medievals, 4 (1988), doc. 42 (18 May 1395). 21 Sáinz de la Maza Lasoli, “Los Mercedarios”, 236. 22 Roser Salicrú i Lluch, “Cartes de captius Cristians a les presons de Tunis del regnat de Ferran d’Antequera”, Miscellània de Textos Medievals, 7 (1994), doc. 4 (19 April 1414). 23 Salicrú i Lluch, “Cartes de captius Cristians”, 558. 24 British authorities in the seventeenth century used a similar tactic in their Charity Briefs when they tried to raise money to ransom their captives in Barbary. The Charity Brief “set out in highly colored language why North African captives were such particular objects of Christian and national concern … since victims of Barbary were held in bondage under the Crescent, their hopes of salvation were seen as being at risk as well as their mortal bodies”, Linda Colley, Captives: The Story of Britain's Pursuit of Empire and how its Soldiers and Civilians were Held Captive by the Dream of Global Supremacy, 1600–1850 (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), pp. 77–78. 25 Marina Mitja, “L’Orde de la Merce en crisi en el regnat de Joan I”, Cuadernos de Archeologia e Historia de la Ciudad, 9 (1966) doc. III (3 February 1384). 26 Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Cancillería (hereafter ACA, C), reg. 2204: 53v–54r (8 October 1406). 27 Burns, “Renegades, adventurers and sharp businessmen”, 342–343. The concern over the faith of mercenaries had occupied Christian authorities since at the least the late twelfth century. For a brief overview see Simon Barton, “Traitors to the faith? Christian mercenaries in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, c. 1100–1300”, in Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence – Studies in Honour of Angus MacKay, ed. Roger Collins and Anthony Goodman (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), pp. 36–37. 28 Llull, Blanquerna, 85: 1. 29 Obras de S. Pedro Pascual, mártir, Obispo de Jaén y religioso de la Merced en su lengua original. Con la traducción latina y algunas anotaciones, volumes I–III, ed. Pedro Armengol Valenzuela (Rome: Imprenta Salustiana, 1907), volume III, Part IV, 2. 30 Dufourcq, L’Espagne Catalane et le Maghrib, 71, 514–515. 31 Bartolome Bennassar, “Frontières Religieuses entre Islam et Chrétienté: L’Experience vecue par les renégats”, in Les Frontières Religieuses en Europe de XVe au XVIIe siècle, ed. Alain Ducellier, Janine Garrisson, Robert Sauzet (Paris: J. Vrin, 1992), pp. 71–72. 32 Joseph Delaville le Roulx, Cartulaire General de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers de Saint Jean de Jerusalem, volumes I–IV (Paris: E. Leroux, 1894–1906), doc. 1374 (18 January 1212). 33 Mark Meyerson, “Slavery and solidarity: Mudejars and foreign Muslim captives in the Kingdom of Valencia”, Medieval Encounters, 2 (1996): 308. Also Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 255–259 and Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), chapter 2. See also Debra Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth Century Valencia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 135, esp. n. 52. 34 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 38. For the religious life of captives see Rodriguez, Captives and their Saviors, chapter 3. 35 As Muslim rulers began to increasingly value the monetary returns of ransoms paid for captives over conversions, they gave even more access to Christian priests to come and visit captives and other religious minorities and perform religious services, the object being to keep the Christians from converting, since renegades lacked economic value as Christian authorities were not usually interested in ransoming them. By the sixteenth century, Muslim rulers allowed churches inside the slave pens where captives were kept and gave them access to regular religious services. See Ellen G. Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), chapter 4. 36 Raymond Llull had readily recognised how vulnerable captives were to conversion pressures. He advocated the compulsory education of Muslim captives in Christian doctrine and their subsequent return to their homelands where they could then spread their newly found Christian faith. See Mark D. Johnston, “Ramon Llull and the compulsory evangelization of Jews and Muslims”, in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages: Studies in Honor of Robert I. Burns S.J. – Volume I, ed. Larry J. Simon (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), p. 20. 37 I have presented here a simplified model of Rogers's more complex one. For the full details see Everett Rogers, The Diffusion of Innovations, 4th edn (New York: Free Press, 1995), 261–266. 38 “If one individual adopted a new technique [in this case, the ‘new technique’ is conversion to Islam], he might have five contacts with other potential adopters of whom perhaps three would see the superiority of the new technique and adopt it themselves. Then these three would each ‘infect’ with the new idea three out of five of their potential adopter contacts and so on”. See Richard Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 29. 39 The breaking of established boundaries between the three confessional groups in Iberia and the increased fluidity of interaction that this created was always cause for concern for religious authorities as it could undoubtedly lead to new or further conversions. See David Nirenberg, “Conversion, sex, and segregation: Jews and Christians in medieval Spain”, American Historical Review, 107 (2002): 1065–1093; Jonathan Ray, “Beyond tolerance and persecution: Reassessing our approach to medieval ‘Convivencia’”, Jewish Social Studies – New Series, 11 (2005): 1–18. 40 Ellen G. Friedman, “The exercise of religion by Spanish captives in North Africa”, Sixteenth Century Journal, 6 (1995: 25–26. 41 The Mercedarians seem to have been well-acquainted with the importance that support networks played in keeping Christian minorities from converting. As early as 1222, they had received permission from Granada to install one of their friars in the Muslim kingdom under the title of “chaplain of the Christian merchants”. See Friedman, Spanish Captives in North, 77; also Friedman, “The exercise of religion by Spanish captives”, 23. 42 Pedro Bellot, Anales de Orihuela, ed. Juan Torres Fontes (Alicante: Academia Alfonso X el Sabio, 1954), pp. 216–217. 43 See, for example, the case of the three Christian renegades jailed because it was feared that they were spies for Granada, Jose Hinojosa Montalvo, Textos para la historia de Alicante. Historia Medieval (Alicante: Instituto de Cultura Juan Gil-Albert, 1990), p. 412. 44 Friedman, Spanish Captives in North Africa, 73; Miguel Angel de Bunes Ibarra, La imagen de los musulmanes y del norte de África en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII: Los caracteres de una hostilidad (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1989), pp. 191–192. 45 Andrés Bernáldez, Historia de los Reyes Católicos Don Fernando y Doña Isabel, volumes I–II (Seville: J.M. Geofrin, 1870), I: 151–152. 46 Andreu Ivars Cardona, Dos creuades Valenciano-Mallorquines a les còstes de Berbería, 1397–1399 (Valencia: Olmos y Lojan, 1921), xli. For a more recent study, see Andrés Díaz Borrás, Los orígenes de la piratería islámica en Valencia: La ofensiva musulmana trecentista y la reacción cristiana (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1993), pp. 142–194. 47 Torres Fontes, “La frontera de Granada”, 195–196. 48 Bellot, Annales de Orihuela, 301. 49 Torres Fontes, “La frontera de Granada”, doc. 3 (6 October 1406). 50 “The group is likened to the human body; the orifices are to be carefully guarded to prevent unlawful intrusions”, in Mary Douglas, Natural Symbol: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), p. viii. See also Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966; repr. 1995), pp. 115–116, 122–124. 51 For a similar archetypal figure working on the boundaries of Christianity and Islam and the dangers she posed, see David Nirenberg's reading of the prostitute in medieval Aragón, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 127–165. 52 See the story of the three Christian renegades who ransacked the palace of the Sultan of Granada before escaping to Alicante. The Sultan complained to James II of Aragón, who tactfully avoided returning the renegades on the grounds that as Christians they would be tried under Christian law, Maria Teresa Ferrer i Mallol, “La Redempció de captius a la corona Catalano-Aragónesa (Segle XIV)”, Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 15 (1985): 243. 53 Bunes Ibarra, La Imagen de los Musulmanes, 195. 54 Agustín Rubio Vela, Epistolari de la Valencia medieval, volumes I–II (Valencia: Institut de Filologia Valenciana, 1985 and 1998), doc. I: 114 (17 August 1401). 55 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1950), Part I; chapters 39–41. 56 See Mikel de Epalza, Fray Anselm de Turmeda y su polémica islamo-cristíana, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Hiperión, 1994); also Roger Boase, “Autobiography of a Muslim convert Anselm Turmeda (c. 1353–c. 1430)”, Al Masaq, 9 (1996): 45–98.