The accepted other:
Tolerance towards the Jews in Middle Ages
Carlos
Barros
University
of Santiago of Compostela
The Latin term tolerantia,
which was used in the Middle Ages[1] in its ethimological
sense of suffering and patience, will later take on, specifically from the
Enlightenment onwards, a second, more positive meaning referred to the
otherness, where tolerance connotes
accepting the other.
It is our intention, by taking medieval Galicia as an example, to
study Christian tolerance towards the Jewish minority, more as a conscious
practice of the Christian society than as an intellectual conception. Thus, we
will attempt to rebalance the traditional approach by researchers, which -not
without motives- has so far been excessively focused on the anti-Semitic
constant. By questioning history from the perspective of current problems[2], by learning today from
the experiences of the past, in our case, from the irregular medieval historical
process which led , after a century-long coexistence , to the expulsion of Jews
from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1496.
In psychological terms , tolerance, the conceptual tool for our anlysis,
could be defined as an attitude and a
behaviour based on flexivility an self-control in response to external stimuli
which contradict our own beliefs and opinions. A predisposition - and the
subsequent behaviour - to peaceful coexistence with those who are different or
hold diverging opinons as regards religion, race, nationality, social status or
ideology. The tolerant self implies
acceptance and respect towards the other . We are , therefore, speaking
of an identity, whose foundations are to be found in the otherness. A tolerant attitude does not, therefore,
entail the renounce to ones own convictions. It maintains the discrepancy with
opposing beliefs , and implies persuading the other through dialogue and not
through violence . The resort to violence to impose any given belief or
ideology, by getting rid of those who do not share it, establishes the moment
of hememony of intolerance, that is to say , the predisposition to exclude the
other, often physically through banishment, torture and death.
A postponed issue
The relative exceptionality - sometimes a prolonged one - of tolerance
as a collective attitude has its
explanation in the fact that it often advocates an egalitarian treatment amidst
unequal social groups as regards their number or political influence[3], in the context of a
very polarised society. Eventually, the logic of power and exclusion tends to
impose,pushing into the background, as a consequence, tolerance as a
historiographical theme to the benefit of a violent and triumphalist
anti-Semitism . The final solution of
forcing the conversion and/ or the expulsion of medieval Jews, first in Europe
and much later in the Iberian Peninsule, has- in many cases - made many
historians consign into oblivion the periods of peaceful coexistence - which
indeed were never free from a conflictive dimension- but which, strictly
speaking, occupy most of Spanish Middle Ages.
Jewish-Muslim-Christian coexistence,and the attitudes underlying it,
have therefore been considered secondary issues in recent Spanish
historiography[4]. This cannot be even
justified on the necessity to reconstruct from a professional and democratic
ideological stance a history of Spain which had just undergone an ideological
manipulation by Francoism because the latter did not vindicate the
three-culture Spain but rather the contrary, as it is well known . It is for
this reason that the First International
Conference "Encuentro de tres culturas", held in Toledo in 1982, acquires for
some authors relevance as a legitimate search for medieval historical
predecents of "the coexistence of different cultures" in the context of the
fledgling Spanish democracy[5].The Renaissance and
Humanist image of a barbarian Middle Ages obscured the fact that it was at the
time of both the protestant Reform and the Catholic Contrareform in Europe when
religious intolerance was taken to its ultimate consequences. The religious
wars in the second half of the sixteenth century are a good paradigm of it.
Popular pogroms in Late Middle Ages Castile were a childs play
in comparison to the persecutory violence of the Inquisition throughout the
Modern Age against anyone who believed - and especially practiced- in a way
other than that of the State religion.
The undervaluing of the tolerant part of reality derives from the
characteristic conception of
anti-Semitism as a social
mentality of long duration which bursts in some given social, political and
mental environments, periodically reaching increasingly more extreme levels .
It is not surprising , therefore, that ever since the Jewish genocide and that
of other minorities during the Second World War the pesimistic image of
tolerance and coexistence have been stressed as historical and
historiographical byproducts.
Historians, nonetheless,should
transcend the hindrance posed by the length of time to analyse the Jewish issue on a middle and a
close perspective, being oblivious to the romantic idealisation of a medieval
context free from conflicts. Rather, historians should always seek to reproduce
history in full, that is to say, a dialectic history, by looking at
complementary, and even antagonical views -in the case under discussion- of the
exclusion and/or acceptance of the other.
The scientific aim of objectivity must therefore seek to complete and
confront - something which is not always feasible- the majoritary, Christian
point of view, based on Christian sources and the minoritary, Jewish point of
view based on Hebrew sources. A previous and necessary step for this necessary
assessment of Jewish specificity is the understanding of the changing
Jewish-Christian relationship as a mobile, complex system of tolerance and
intolerance, even of intellectual controversy for and against Judaism[6].
Double tendency
The recovery of tolerance as a research topic may not be possible or may
prove fruitless unless we leave behind the old historiograpic controversy -
intensified around the Fifth Centenary- that took place forty years ago between
Américo Castro and Claudio Sánchez Albornoz. The former posited that Spain was
the consequence of the blend of three cultures, namely the Christian, the
Jewish and the Muslim[7], while the latter
denied it by branding as supposed such medieval coexistence of Christian,
Jews and Muslims [8]. Needless to say ,
there is documental evidence to support both stances. Tolerance and
anti-Semitism are, in actual fact,
compatible and complementary attitudes and behaviours. They justify and need
each other. They do not exist in isolation. Strickly speaking, then, the controversity is proven false from the moment we define tolerance as
coexisting with the other[9]: " without
suspending our views on our beliefs and behaviours, but renouncing to use them
as justification for persecution"[10]. In fact, in Medieval
laws , the Partidas in
particular, we find protective rules as well as discriminative rules coexisting
together establishing a feedback relationship, which defines a unique framework
of tolerance among Chistians, Moors and Jews . It is for this reason that we
are going to find in each class or group both hostility and respect towards the
Jewish communities, in variable proportions according to the social background,
the moment and the place.
Underlying the tolerant coexistence there is a dichotomy of interests,
beliefs and images at work, in which
mutual relationships go from acceptance to exclusion, depending on the
situation, the social group and / or the places . In other words, we find in
the tolerant attitude traces of anti-Semitism , obviously in a moderate form;
its opposite would not be intolerance but
philo-Judaism, a phenomenon althogether marginal in Medieval Spain[11], and which, in any
case, springs to the surface only in periods of persecution, when those who were
tolerant in the past are forced to
choose between the hostigating and the protecting sides, between those opposed
to and those in favour of Jews ( or converts for that ).
The value of tolerance could be defined as a theoretical balance point
between the anti-Semitism of some and
the anti-Christianism of the others...
If forces were on a level , but that is not the case, and consequently
the tolerance/ intolerance alternative becomes , more than anything, a
prerogative of dominating Christian society rather than an option of the Hebrew
minority.
A double, contradictory and inseparable tendency is found across Middle Ages Europe: the
accepted other versus the excluded other ( the bridge between both is the
invented other). The subjetivism of the historian, who has the
privilege of knowing the final outcome ( the expulsion in 1492) must not lead
us to deny or ignore the prolonged coexistence
which made that , for the people of the time, the coexistence between
Christians, Jews (and Moors), was the
alternative they were more acquainted with and desired the most ; the most
stable and feasible among both communities . What today seems like a precarious
balance bound to result in persecution and banishment, might not have been
interpreted by contemporaries up to 1492 as a reality of coexistance which was
episodically broken by outbursts of violence and intolerance?
This double medieval tendency, a mixture of friendship and detachment ,
of permissiveness and discrimanation, whose surprising and prolonged stability
is accounted for by the fragmentation of power and the weakness of the State in
feudal times, is materially generated by a daily and economic life to a great extent shared ,
especially in medieval cities. Its
intellectual correspondence is to be found in a religious relativism,
more widespread than it is usually believed, which divided the truth of God
amidst the three "book -based
religions".
The tolerance towards Jews and Moors was markedly religious ( but also
legal, socio-economic and mental ). Its relativist content is mirrored in
eurdite and courtesan culture in a number of ways, for instance, when it comes
to establishing the different forms of swearing for Christians, Jews and Moors
, each according to their beliefs and in their religious buildings (Christian
church, synagogue or mosque )[12]. This religious
diversity , admitted by the laws, has a
correspondence in a popular and oral vision. Such vision was expressed in in
late fifteenth century Castile by converts and
cristianos viejos ( priests included ) in the following way: "
it was believed that each was salved in their law "; "three laws hath
God made and I could not say which is
the truest "; "fellow man,God made three laws. And it is unknown to
man which is the truest"; "the good Jew would salve and so would the
good Moor in their law"; "none of them knowst which is that God loves
the most"[13]. Obviously enough , the
"everything-is-equally-true mentality" of common people surpasses the tolerant
intentions of the elite culture, which does not renounce to conversion in the
future. Thus writes the jurist, on behalf of
Alfonso XI (1348): "and it is our will that Jews remain in our
domain ; and the Holy Church thus orders because although they have not
converted to our faith nor obtain salvation according to the profecies, being
able to honestly procure a living and sustenance in our domain, we consider
fair that they may own and purchase properties "[14]. This sort of earthly
purgatory - official version of what we call here double tendency- in which
written culture confined the Jews, is in deep contrast with the oral culture
which ensured the same heaven to the observant Jew.
The very Jew minority was interested in a certain degree of separation -
if not the enjoyment of certain legal privileges - in relation to the Christian
majority, and above all, it longed for self-rule, which would enable them to
maintain and practice their religion and abide by their law. It favoured,
therefore, a certain segregation materialized in the existence of the
Jewry (with its synagogue, its burial
ground and sometimes its walls), location and physical identification of the
other- also present in the obligation, usually flouted- of wearing an emblem or
distinctive garments - which in general focalised a tolerant attitude and also,
in given instances, the brutality of a majority.
Were
not the Jews , on the other hand, a necessary part of Medieval Western society?
It would be a serious antimaterialist mistake if we considered that
anti-Semitism had its only source in the
economic basis of feudal society[15]. The production conditions were shared by both
Christians and Jews. The importance of the economic and professional function
of Jews where Christians could not
collaborate efficiently ( loans, tax collection, administration, medicine),
especially on the urban, finantial and courtesan scene reinforced their
economic integration in a social system which, at the same time, structurally
segregated them by definition, because Christians could not assimilate Jews in
the main productive feudal relationship, neither as vassals nor as lords[16]. Jews, consequently,
were organised according to a unique
statute as a private possession of the King , servi
regis: "Jews belong to the King; although they have the power
of wealthy men"[17]. Kings, in some
occasions, delegated this exceptional power over the Jews on lay and
eccesiastic lords, who, like the king, received them in their lands, leving
taxes on them and benefiting from their knowledge [18].We shall mention below
one of such cases in the territory of Ourense in Galicia.
The invented other
Jacques Le Goff pointed out the ambivalent character of medieval
Christianity between the closed religion of the Old Testament and the open
religion of the New Testament, although the latter had a particularist and
hostile tendence towards the other religions: "Your God is unique.Thou
shalt not take the name of thy God in vain"[19]. This ambiguity leads
Christians to both hate and admire Jews - and other segragated minorities,
cutting off- at the same time- any dialogue with them through persecutions and
carnages throughout the Middle Ages[20]. A double sense which
concerns- in different degrees- all classes and groups in medieval society,
depending on time and space coordenates.
The paradoxical basis of the attitude of the Christian society towards
medieval Jews makes the anthropological
notion of otherness[21] a key tool for the
understanding of a relationship which, not doubt, is more contradictory for us
than it was for medieval people, and
one which, if we are to properly comprehend, the classical criteria for
approaching the quantitative ( majority/ minority) or the spatitial ( central/marginal)
problem prove insufficient. We must go
deeper into the psychosocial relationship with the other, regardless of their
number[22], since it is one of
markedly quantitative nature . This notion of otherness is expressed through an
affective, imaginary and unconscious mentality, which explains the mentioned
paradoxical behaviour[23] - along with the
economic contradictions on which it is based . Likewise, this mentality also
accounts for the known function of the Jew as scapegoat in moments of serious
social, political and /or mental crisis.
The violence which characterizes the passing from the near, accepted,
tolerated other to the far, excluded and persecuted other is inseparable
from -thus giving rise to an unconsious
projection in search for an scapegoat - what Marxism appropriately calls false conscience, the aprehension of reality as something
invented , imaginary . With the notion of otherness, social imagination enters
the picture , especially when we go from peaceful acceptance to refusal, in
search of the extermination of the other . Then, the accepted other is
radically transformed into the invented other ; the diverse becomes the opposed
; the difference turns into the opposite: the difference becomes alienation
and, strickly speaking, otherness turns into
alienidad[24]. It is then the time of
false accusations, of the antisemitic stereotype, of the deformed image of the
Jew as an enemy ,a long-lasting latent image, which as we mentioned above, is
brought to the foregound or pushed into the background depending on the mental
circumstances . The mental change from the acceptance to the fiction of the
other acts as a bridge , paves the way and sets the environment for the great
outburst of sublimating violence against
the bouc émissaire, ultimate
representation of the invented other.
Tolerant Galicia
It has been a general norm of the authors [25] who have studied the
Jews in Medieval Galicia to stress the predominance of tolerance over exclusion
and the remarkable non-existence of Late Middle Ages pogroms listings [26]. Amador de los Ríos
says of the medieval kingdom of Galicia:
"where seldom were Jews victims of the peoples anger "[27]. This is so to the
extent that if research on the Jews were exclusively centred on antisemitic
mentality and practice , it could be said that Hebrew Galicia would hardly
exist. Galicia is, therefore, since the peoples anti-Semitism did not went beyond the threshold of violence
during the Middle Ages, the adequate scenario to study the weight of tolerance on
Jew-Christian relations, without this meaning, of course, that the particular
situation of Galicia may be simply
extrapolated to the other kingdoms of Castile and Leon.
Not only Galicia stood aside from the violent antisemitic wave, the
carnages of 1391 in Castile and Catalonia did not extend to Leon, Portugal or
Navarre[28] either. From a
typological point of view, in the Late Middle Ages, the movements against lords
arise more intensily on the northern
territories of the Crown of Castile, especially in Galicia, whereas the
movements against the Jews are stronger in the South, notably in Andalusia,
where pogroms have their origin in 1391[29]. These regional
differences in the domain of the kingdoms of Castile and Leon as regards
"the level of anti-Semitic manifestations"[30], are also perceived as
regards the level of tolerance towards the Jews.[31]. The legislator is
aware of it. For that reason in the Ordenamiento de Alcalá de 1348, when
purchases by Jews are limited so as to prevent an uncontroled increase in their
properties, greater permissiveness is
shown north of the Douro, Duero allende, in other words, in the
kingdoms of Galicia, Asturias, Leon and the Basque provinces, than South of that river , Duero aquende: "In the north of the
Douro the limit is set in the amount of
thirty thousand mr. for everyone owning
a house there ; and south of the Douro in the remaining counties up to the
amount of twenty thousand each as it has been established"[32].
The greater the tolerance, the more sincere the conversions (i.e. less
forced). It is a shared belief among
fifteenth century narrative sources that northern converts (Old Castile) were
more sincere than southern converts (New
Castile and even more so in Andalusia), more notorious before cristianos viejos . That is the reason why
the Inquisition concentrated its efforts during Late Middle Ages on the
sourthern area[33]. This environment of
growing coexistence as we move north has
to do with the fewer number of Medieval Jewish settlements[34], and underscores the
representativity of Galician tolerance.
Given the evidence of the spectacularly of triumphant anti-Semitism in Castile, its tolerant counterpoint goes
unnoticed , despite its temporal continuity .It even comes back to life in the
places most affected by the 1391 carnage -,hence the value of studying less
tense scenarios such as the Galiacian one in throwing light onto the mentioned
tendency.
Of the Medieval Jewries we have fewer documental traces[35] than in the case of
Castilian ones [36],which were also more
important and conflictive. We know , however, more of the Jews in Medieval Galicia than of those in the
remaining north of the peninsule[37], data being more
abundant from the fifteenth century onwards[38]. In the years previous to the expulsion,
between 1474 y 1491, we know from the royal taxes paid by Jewries
( services and contributions for the war in Granada) in which Galician cities
there were significative Jewish communities ( although the list of places where
there is documental evidence of the presence of Jewish is more comprehensive):
Allariz, Bayona, Betanzos, A Coruña, Monforte, Ourense, Pontedeume, Ribadavia y
Ribadeo[39]. The amount of maravedíes contributed place Galician Jews
living in those towns[40] below the level of the Castilian Jews, which confirms their
relatively reduced number [41]. The attitude of the
Christian majority towards the Jewish minority, is, anyway, a subjective issue.
In other words, it is a qualitative rather than a quantitavity issue[42]. The Jews numerical inferiority favoured on
the one hand, integration and tolerance , as the hegemonic Christian society
felt less threatened , but this should not be
reason enough for anti-Semitism not
to act in a exteme way , exaggerating the number of the enemies of the faith [43]. José María Monsalvo
has already pointed out the role of social psychology[44] in accounting for the
fact that the 1391 carnages did not spread to the Castilian north despite the
size of its Jewries, for instance, to
Burgos (120-150 families) - the second most important Jewry after Toledo[45]. An outburst of popular
wrath against Jews does not actually require a great number of opponents, but
rather factors working as catalysts: an adequate mental universe - the
invention of the other - materialized in false accussations , spread by
overexcited preachers -and latent social tensions whose only letout is to
agitate a well-known medieval stereotype[46], whose origin and
ramifications take us well back into the
distant past.
Tolerance as otherness : Allariz
On May 20th 1289 the local
council of Allariz reach a paradigmatic [47] agreement before the
royal Chief Justice of the village
"and the priests there ", with Isaac Ismael, "Senior Jew of the
Jews with abode in this village", in order to regulate the peaceful
coexistence of Chistrians and Jews: a true pact of otherness . The first
remarkable point is the mediating role of the royal power[48] as well as that of the
Church, together with the equitable and egalitarian nature of the agreement.
The tolerance that is established is mutual; particular care is put in not
making Christian superiority explicit . As regards religions, an agreement is
made to separate Christian and Jewish public celebrations, thus preventing the
ones from attending the celebrations of the others so as to avoid anyone
showing anti-Semitic or anti-Christian opinions.
It is thus established that
"During the prayers and celebrations that the said Jews held on the
outskirts of the village at the foot of our Castelo[49], there should be no
Christian, dweller of the aforementioned village, whose intention be to scorn or disrupt their prayers". Jewish processions took place, significatively
enough, outside the city, thus revealing the original Jewish marginality. A typical form of
anti-Semitism was to cause disruption by
resorting to legal accions in their religious ceremonies, with the apparent
collusion of the local council. A renounce to such accion was established by
mutual agreement .
Most surely these anti-Semitic
actions had prompted retaliatory measures and /or vicerversa.
Jews, on the other hand, were obliged to respect Christian processions:
"and when we take our God and His mother, Holy Mary, out in the streets no
Jew should attend , and Christians will be alert in the streets where we shall
take our God unless there is any mockery, disruption, heinous act or riot as it
is often the case". This disrespectful behaviour was, in fact, habitual
among Jews by way of retaliation for the discrimination they suffered : they
made fun of their God ( Jesus Christ) and His mother, Holy Mary. But it is the
Christian wording of our God which we would like to stress upon as it amounts to recognising the plurality of
beliefs, thus moving away from the official nomopolism and proselitistism and
allowing us to glimpse a clear glimmering of religious relativism, which we
have already mentioned and which, in this particular case, demonstrates the
sincerity of the offer of an egalitarian treatment on the part of the
mayoritary religion.
Tolerance and segregation- this time voluntary, accepted- in the urban
scene is the agreed form to articulate the mutual acceptance of the other . Not
only in processions must they be separated, but also in the quarters. "And
no Christian shall dwell on the Jewish quarter", reads the agreement, thus
informing us of the pre-existence of a Jewry in the village[50]; the motivation to live
together and in a non-discrimitatory way derives from the very agreement itself
: "nor there shall be any riot ". From the other party it is
established: "That the aforesaid Senior Jew nor his people purchase,
barter or dwell on any house outside the
Jewry or any other street in the
village where Chistians dwell". It
is therefore agreed that Alarican Jews
cannot open their shops or live outside the Jewry. But by way of compensation
they are entitled to take their victuals and goods across the village:
"and Jews may use the gates of the village to carry to the Jewry whatever
victuals they consider necessary"[51].
In other words, yes, there is segregation . But Jews are not denied the
use of the walled town when they consider it commercially necessary. Thus they
mutally facilitate their daily and economic life by yielding in both civil and
religious issues.
Likewise, it is agreed that the Xudeu
Maior, Isaac Ismael, who happens to be an important proprietor of
real estate outside the Jewry, both in and outside the town walls, should leave
" the house in the borough as security to Xoan de Amoeiro "for the
damages that his Jews may cause"[52]. This compensation for
damages points to a respect for the judicial automony of the Jewry- the Senior
Jew pledges his assets as security , on the understanting that the necessary
legal measures will be taken among themselves
- as a civil basis for accepting the other. Furthermore, the council
obtains another commitment from Isaac Ismael - one to which, we infer , he had
been resisting - which has to do with the tolerance of Jews towards the religion of the Christians ( the latter
yield on the basis of their political power and the former on the basis of
their economic power) "and donate to Sancha Eanez, abbess of the Nunnery
of Saint Clare- under construction- the
perpetual ownership on a price agreed by both parties of the orchard he owns on
the outskirts of the village , so that
the ladies of the nunnery , founded by Queen Lady Violante, may extend
their orchard and build up their graveyard". And thus the nuns of the
Order of Saint Clare will have their graveyard thanks to the Jews living in
Allariz, not far from the Jewry and beyond the walls of the town. The fact that
both the Jewry and the Nunnery of Saint Clare were outside the town walls
demonstrates that it did no longer function as a diviving line between both
communities.
This notarial document is drawn up and endorsed in a joint assembly of
"men" of the council "and Jews" , which gives credit to tolerance as the
articulation of the otherness by the end of the thirteenth century . This
agreement which will be honoured for centuries : Late Middle Ages references
after the 1289 agreement do not contradict it. Rather the contrary seems to be
the case.
On May 5th 1366, shortly before
the civil war, the champion of the cause of King Pedro I in Galicia,
Fernando de Castro, judge and Royal Representative, who is also in charge of
the Royal Fortress in Allariz, proclaims an amnisty for the neighbours of the
village,intended to pardon all
unresolved cases and suspend every judiciary action of the royal Chief Justice: "that any action of
justice that the King took against them, and whoever of them for whatever
reason, for whatever wrongdoing they may have done, or for whatever they may
have failed to do , to everyone both Christians and Jews..., all of them are
pronounced free"[53].This implies the
acknowledgement by the lords and the Crown of the persistence by mid-fourteenth century of two
well-differentiated communities , equally treated as regards civil liability.
Almost two hundred years after the founding agreement , on June 15th
1487, it is the parish priest of the Christian church of Saint Stephen who
provides Jews with an extension of the graveyard of the field of La Mina, at
the foot of the wall, next to the Jewry, ceding on lease a neighbouring estate to
all "the Jews of the Jewry, neighbours and inhabitants of the village of
Allariz... as you have had your burials in the other estate"[54]. The basically
religious nature of mutual tolerance of Christians and Jews underscores the
importance of this reference to illustrate the tacit vigency of the agreement
by the end of the thirteenth century. A witness of this very special scenario
is Juan Alfonso Carpintero, an important
leader of the Irmandiña Revolt in
Allariz, for which several years before (1467) a common front of
Christians,Jews and Moors had been organised against the lords of the kingdom
and their fortresses.
The great stability of the tolerant attitudes among Jews and Christians
in Allariz does not obviously mean that there have not been tensions and
confrontation practices, like the ones which resulted in the 1289 agreement .
What is characteristic of Allariz, however, is its acceptable inter-ethnic
relationships , which will lead Mosé Péres, a royal tax collector, to seek
refuge there in 1488 to protect himself from the discrimatory confinement then
imposed in the capital of Ourense .
Tolerance as integration: Ourense
Ourense, by the end of the Middle Ages, appears as a much more agitated
urban society than Allariz. Notarial documents from the local council and the chapter show a background of revolts and
partisan struggle in the fifteenth century which could not but have an
influence in the coexistence with the Jewry, otherwise deeply integrated in the
city. The Jews from Ourense appear in
documents as a distinguished but accepted category. They are treated as
"neighbours " -and as such- protected by the council [55] . As usual, they work
in trades of great economic significance (collectors of royal and lord taxes, dealers, silversmiths[56]); and enjoy, apart from
the preceptive religious freedom [57], a finantial autonomy which verges on
self-government : in 1433, the Jewish silversmith Salomón files a complaint to
the city Mayor because the custom had not been respected according to which
when the time came to collect the city taxes , Jews would choose one of
them "Under the oath of their law
to collect among them the said payments", thus obtaining from the council
the endorsement of their traditional autonomy: "ruled that from now on
such payment was not made unless on the presence of the said Jew so that they
shared the mentioned mrs among
them."[58].
The council, nothetheless, although it accepted the Jewry, did not
accept anti-Christian attitudes .
In 1441, the mayor had Jewish silversmith Mosé Marcos arrested, "on the
grounds that he affirmed that the former had spoken mocking and infamious words
against God and Holy Mary when he said that Holy Mary had delivered
thrice", and the council procurator demands from the council that justice
falls on him[59]. If torelance implies
that the majority accepts the religion of the minority and marks itself off from
anti-Semitic groups, all the more reason not to accept disrespectful behaviour
on the part of Jews towards the religion of Christians. The irrevence of the
Jews, in any case, reveals that - like in the case of late thirteenth century
Allariz- both ethnias saw themselves on a level, also when it came to
wrongdoing. On this basis it was build the policy of tolerance and integration.
In Ourense, unlike Allariz, it does not seem so urgent to organise
coexistence by separating both communities: mutual tolerance is organised in a
much more natural way, perhaps with not such a clear awareness of otherness.
Both Christians and Jews lived much more mixed, without this implying a
renounce by the latter to claim their rights whenever deemed necessary. Such integration accounts for the fact that
in time rifts tend to happen horizontally.
As to the radicalisation of collective attitudes , consequence and cause
of the increase in social conflictivity around mid-fifteenth century[60], how does it particularly
affect to the good vecinity among Christians and Jews? First, nobiliar
intolerance arises : the assult of the synagogue in 1442. Secondly, the
fraternization within the 1467 popular brotherhood of citizens. Not
surprisingly, the previous good relationships between the Jewish community and
the council lead the city to side with the synagogue and Jews to side with the
citizens.
Nobiliar anti-Semitism
The economic potential of Jews - of some Jews rather - made them into a
target of nobiliar plundering; no doubt, an antisemitic environment- not always
explicit in the sources- would potentially favour the aggressors impunity.
On this respect, there are two
precedents in the province of Ourense. In the eleventh century, between the lands of Allariz and Celanova and those of the
capital, there had his domains a nobleman, Menendo González. He protected certain " Hebrew" traders in rags, who were
attacked and robbed by another nobleman, Arias Oduáriz, who in retaliation is
made a prisoner by Menendo. The latter
eventually obtains the restitutition of what had been robbed after a number of
legal disputes which last several years and imply the transfer of the domain of
several villages from aggreding Arias to nobleman Menendo for whom the Jews worked
when they were attacked [61].
In the fourteenth century, when the troops of the Duke of Lancaster take
Ribadavia (1386) chronicler Froissart, an eyewitness of the event, tells the
following: "Ainsi fut la ville de Ribadave gaignée à force, et eurent
ceulx qui y entrèrent, grant butin d'or de d'argent ès maisons des Juifs par
espécial"[62]. Again , the reference
to the ethnic -religious origin of the victims is linked to wealth as the
objective of nobiliar plundering. In other words, anti-Semitism, like in the
preceding case , is with all assurance the contributory cause of the
aggression.
We get thus to the 1442 assault of the Jewish synagogue in Ourense by
men on the service of Lord Pedro Díaz de
Cadórniga. Apart from the theft of some money (50 old mrs.), affront stands as the primary objective : the
destruction of the synagogue and the theft of the tress were affronts with a
religious significance .Obviously enough, the council sides with the Jews,
honouring the tradition of tolerance , reporting on Lord Cadórniga on April 15th 1442, who pledges to "punish his men"
for the affronts caused "to the Jews of the said city and the synogogue
which was destroyed"[63].
These grievances inflicted on the Jews thus come top in one of those
anti-lord memorials frequently written by Ourense inhabitants in the Late
Middle Ages. The fact that emphasis is made on Jews as victims goes out to
demonstrate the century-long policy of
integration as well as the egalitarianism of the anti-lord denouncement[64]. This policy occassionally gives rise to a division of
opinions among the most influential neighbours, in which Jews also
participated. The latter hesitated when it came to confronting the powerful,
even when it was something so close to their hearts as the attack to a
synagogue.
On June 26th 1442, before several
canons and the men of Pedro Díaz de Cadórniga, four Jews from Ourense
declare before the notary of the cathedral chapter in order to exonerate the
said lord from the theft "in their house of praying" so as to free him from
excomunion, which was the situation in which he found himself for having
destroyed the synagogue, together with some of his men, "despite there
being no lawsuit on the part of the said
Jews". In other words, apart from the above mentioned lawsuit by the city
council , there was another of religious nature which resulted in the
excomunion of the guilty party and of Pedro Díaz himself . This was done
against the advice of the faction of the Cadórnigas, to which undoubtly
belonged the canons, relatives, and -in some way- the Jews who appear in this
notarial document dated on June 26th.
Despite it, the exonerating Jews declare that "Exception were made of anyone who had the trees that were taken away
from the said house of prayer so that they were not aquitted until the trees
were brought back to them"[65]. It was their
intention, therefore, to exonarate the head of the nobiliar group but without
going beyond the mental threshold implied in the seriousness of the religious
crime of the misappropiation of the trees belonging to the Jews, which had not
been restituted . The religious dimension of the affront was above any
partisanism. It was something umpardonable in fifteenth century Ourense, even
for the friends of the lord .
When it came to coexisting with the Jews, the Cathedral Church of
Ourense goes much further in 1442 than the Allariz church ,when it cedes lands
in 1487 for the Jewish cementery. It adopts a philo-Jewish attitude precisely
on religious matters . It punishes a religious attack against a synagogue as if
it had been directed against a Christian church . It goes even further than the city council, who
exonerates Pedro Díaz on April 15th , whereas the Church excomulgates him
through the Bishops ecclesiastical judge- provisor with the likely support of
the majority of the chapter. The loss of
value of excomunion as eclesiastic censure since it was applied to any crime
affecting ecclesiastic issues, does not diminish the importance of this defence
of the Jews in the form of a canonical sentence.
The serious civil conflict between the Cadórnigas and the Church of
Ourense[66], provides ecclesiastic
support to Jewish victims but it does not throw light onto the concrete use of
excumunion, which entails the exclusion from Christian church, to punish a
crime committed against members of other religion. In fact, it is as if the
maxim that "each is salved in his own law" came into effect.
To summarize, the closer Galicia came to an anti-Semitic mutiny in the
Middle Ages, the attack against the synagogue of Ourense in 1442, has more of a
thuggish act by a lord than any other thing.
In this case, it is not perceived as the search for a letout for popular discontent which makes Jews into scapegoats
of Late Middle Ages social conflictivity. The people represented by the city
council are clearly with the Jews , and will be even more clearly as social
tensions grow sharper and we draw nearer to the 1467 revolution.
From tolerance to fraternity
In 1457 a unique event occurs during the wedding of a hidalgo from Orense called Alvaro Suares: the reconciliation , on behest
of their Christian hosts , of two rival, Jewish families ( two women were in prison for a row). The
notarial document reads:"being there the bride and those honest ladies
from the city and fidalgos and
squires, they reconciled them and
made all the Jews friends anew with those in prison , on which they embraced
and forgave, on the request of those noblemen and ladies "[67]. The reconciliatory act
takes place under the protection of the council : "before Vasco Gomes, alderman of the said city ,
where they were kept imprisoned and by way of compensation a fine of six
hundred mrs,which shall be spent on good
and honorable causes"[68]. The alderman accepts
and legally ratifies the resolution of the newly-weds and of the rest of
Christian noblemen, liberating from the local gaol the two women with a feud,
who, on the following day, appear accompanied by their husbands before a Jewish
tribunal to solve their differences [69], thus the judicical
autonomy of the Jewry being recovered .
These small Christian noblemen, who mediate between these Jews, make a
fair use of their authority and do not take advantage of the situation to impose
the superiority of the majoritary religion. Jewish integration in the society
of Ourense was not uniforming , as we very well know . It implied a respect for
their religion and their autonomy . As regards civil rights, they treat Jews as
if they were Christians without forcing them to be Christian . It is more than
merely accepting the other . It is to fraternise, thus doing away with the
herarchic notion that "a non-Christian is not a true man. Hence, only a
Christian may enjoy all human rights "[70].
The Christian-Jewish wedding went against both the Christian and Jewish
law (although the greater transgression was that corresponding to the existing
legal rules, namely the Christian ones ).The Partidas
explicitly prohibited joint wedding receptions: "that no Christian may
invite no Jew nor accept any invitation from them for eating or drinking"[71]. The laws of Valladolid from 1412 ban Jews from participating in Christian
celebrations[72]. The confessor
of Henry IV, Alonso de Espina, prescribes in 1460 in his Fortalitium Fidei: "may not eat
together nor invite each other"[73]. Jewish laws and customs, on the other hand,
did not permit that their differences were settled before Christian judges[74], to say nothing of
simple citizens (although they are hidalgos).
Weddings, feasts and popular receptions in the Middle Ages had an egalitarian
end . They implied such a reversal of values that it is easy to understand the
disregard for norms and discriminatory intentions as the ones cited.
Father Mariana justifies in early seventeenth century the establishment
of the Holy Inquistion in "On the
great liberty of the past years and because Moors and Christians were mixed up
on every kind of conversation and deal "[75]. In Galicia, by
mid-fifteenth century , they were even more mixed : united in weddings and
revolts. On April 25th 1467, a canon
from Ourense tells, when he was about to take part in the Irmandiño assault to Castelo Ramiro -rebelious accion which
according to his testimony "he was forced to do"-: "those of
theHoly Brotherhood had publicy announced that both lay and clergics, Jews and
Christians, went and brought down
castelo Ramiro"[76]. The egalitarian and
fair sense of the revolt abstracted ethnic and religious differences as well as
of religious herarchy. We have already
mentioned elsewhere the autonomous character of some popular notions on
religion which arise with the Irmandiña
mentality of revolt[77]. On the other hand,
given the background of the Jewish -Christian relationships , it should not
surprise too much the unity of action in 1467.
Does this mean that with the anti-lord revolt anti-Semitic attitutes
disappear ? Ten days before the oral testimony of the cautious canon, a local
brotherhood gives the Farm of Reza back
to the monastery of San Miguel de
Bóveda, which had previously been substracted to the monks by Diego Pérez Sarmiento, Count of Santa Marta,
through his steward and tax collector Abrahán de León, a well-known Jew from
Ourense. The peasants working in the
farm de Reza testify against the
Sarmientos steward in the above mentioned act of Irmandiña restitution, identifying him as a Jewish thief on
reproducing a sentence, " I
deceived Lady Abbess with a fishtail ...!"[78], by which the mentioned
Abrahán de León boasted of having deceitfully gained the property of the farm
of Reza for his Lord Sarmiento. This slight anti-Semitic manifestation comes to
the surface stirred by anti-lord attitudes, which tend to locate Galician Jews
on the popular group. The cited remark is nothing more than a marginal remark
during the Insurrection in the spring of 1467, dominated by the egalitarian
urban and rural revolt of "lay and clerics , Jews and Moors "
consequence of many years of integration and friendly relationships. Those who
have been defended as victims by the popular side are now fairly called upon as rebels against the old common enemy, materialized in
Ourense in the fortress of Castelo
Ramiro, which not by chance, in 1446, four years after the assault of the
synagogue was in the hands of the very
Pedro Díaz de Cadórniga himself[79].
To summarise, Late Middle Ages social conflictivity in Galicia does not
transform tolerance into persecution. On the contrary, it grows and
metamorphoses into fraternity. By mid-fifteenth century, otherness turns into
identity. In a way, it is as if the other were me. There is a revesal of values
which, despite its temporary nature, proves very significative. The Galician
people of the time, according to the known documents and facts , rather than
seggregating , discriminating against and hostigating Jews in search of
scapegoats as a way of sublimating and letting out tensions , make them into
wedding guests and brothers in their
fight against lords in search for justice.
The value of these moments of fraternity between Christians and Jews
will be better understood if we compare them with the carnages which, at the
same time, occur in Castile and Leon. We
are speaking about the armed confrontation , in July 1467, between converts and
cristianos viejos in Toledo, and
the killings of Jews in 1468 in Sepúlveda and in 1469 in Tolosa[80]. During the fifties and sixties in the fifteenth
century, while in the Kingdom of Galicia the sociopolitical preconditions are
shaped for a great revolt against the Lords in the the fortresses, in Castile
and Leon anti-Semitic tensions are sharpened and the environment is set for the
1492 expulsion decree[81].
The political dependency of Galicia in the newly strengthened Castilian
monarquy will force Galician cities to implement the new and definitive
anti-Semitic policy. The integration of Galicia in the centralised State of the
Catholic Monarchs and the House of
Austrias, results in the loss of certain medieval freedoms , namely, the
tradition of liberal and friendly relationships between Jews and Christians .
Having said this, it should be stressed that good relations did not imply
wiping away anti-Semitic currents in Medieval Galicia ( which, in modern times
,are going to find a much more favourable institutional context ). There is no
tolerance without an antisemictic counterpoint.
The problem is to know which is hegemonic in each place and time.
The modernity of the anti-Semitic stereotype in Galicia
The formation in the collective mentalities of the anti-Semitic imagery can not be separated from the
spread of a number of false accusations, suspiciously universal. That the
anti-Semitic sterotype remains constant despite the diversity of situations[82], reveals its induced nature,
and the collusion of interested institutions.
Which data illustrate this invention of the other in Galicia ? By the
end of the eighteenth century , Manuel Risco includes a fact taken from the
already mentioned anti-Semitic work by
Alonso de Espina Fortalitium Fidei
(1460) attributed to the Bishop of Lugo, García Martínez de Bahamonde
(1452-1456). The latter, while baptizing a Jew, " told of how he had witnessed
a henious act performed by Jews in the City of Saona in the Republic of Genoa,
where they murdered with utmost cruelty a Christian child, whose blood they
ate, mixed with some fruits"[83]. This ritual murder of
a Christian child did not occur in Galicia but in Italy. The cult communicators are prelates and Christian writers: Bishop
García Martínez, the clergy Espina, the
Agustinian Risco. From the eighteenth
century is also the fabrication that Jews in Monforte whipped "In their infamous Synagogue" the
image of Jesus Christ "which is in
the Sacristy and the Cell of the Guardian Fathers". The image miracously
shouted alerting Franscicans, who took it away and reported the event to the
Inquisition, who" apprehended and punished the Jews "[84]. This anachronism of
placing a synagogue in Monforte de Lemos at the time of the Inquisition, is
avoided in Ribadavia by the originators of a similar cult tradition ( which
later became an oral tratition) : an image of Christ would be whipped by Jewish converts who would
gather on Saturdays at the house of Coenga, until the Inquisition intervened
and prosecuted the desecrators; hence the popular saying: "Jews from
Ribadavia would go to whip the image of
Christ to Coenga"[85]. In fact, the
Inquisition itself spread these fantastic accusations of sacrilage against
false converts, whose greater crime was to clandestinely maintain the practice
of the religion of their elders.
Despite the universal rituals of murdering children and abusing
crucified Christ, there was, of course, in Old Regime Galicia news about the
profanation of consecrated hosts .
Ourense Bishop de la Cueva writes in 1726, that in 1672 there was a
theft in the Church of the Jesuits in Ourense, with the disappearance of the
consecrated hosts, the finger being pointed at the descendants of Jews , whose synagogue
-according to Onega- had been placed in the same place where the Jesuits were
now. The great religious acts in amendment for the desecration provide evidence
of the climate of Inquisitorial mentality of the time[86], which is the opposite
to the climate of tolerance found in medieval Ourence .Little wonder that all
references of the anti-Semitic sterotype are modern, of cultivated and
ecclesiastic origin and are linked, in
one way or another and, with varying degrees of success and spread, to the inquisitorial
mentality implanted by the institutions of the new State .
Seclusion and expulsion
The décalage in the
fifteenth century of Galicia with respect to the rest of the Crown makes that
the tolerance and even the brotherhood there prevailing is -in Castile and
Leon- a value subordinated to trimphant anti-Semitism , especially after the
1391 carnages. Thus, the radical
measures adopted by the Catholic Monarchs are going to clash in the kingdom of Galicia with the absence of a popular
anti-Semitic tradition on which to take root; an anti-Semitism which the Galician Church had not incited
either, busy as it was in surviving the vicissitudes of a fifteenth century in
which usurpations, wars and revolts were rife. Despite it, the old as well as
the new institutions were obliged to comply with the discriminatory rules
issued in the Court, which grew harder
and more expeditive, against Jews and converts . Galicia, therefore, will be
forced to follow suit, albeit unenthusiastically and above all slowly.
The Courts of Toledo in 1480 give town councils a period of two years to
confine Jews to isolated, walled quarters to prevent their pernicious influence
on Christians and converts[87]. It is an old
segregationist endeavour. We saw in Allariz how it was applied on mutual
agreement ; now what is underscored is the racist and coercive nature of the
ruling and the determination of its instigators. In fact, the failure of the
seclusion measures will leave explusion as the only solution. By the following year, the city council of
Madrid goes as far as paying for the wall for the isolation of the new quarter,
on the face of the poverty of the Jewish neighbours[88]. In the same year,1481,
two thousand Jews are burnt to death in the territory of Seville by Dominican
Inquisitors , who thus inaugurate the genocide practice that the Holy Office
will attempt to spread in the Modern Ages across Spain[89].
Let us see what the city council of Ourense does before the renewed
anti-Semitic demands of the State. To
begin with, the medieval maxim of
"obeying but not enforcing"
is still valid. Thus, in July 3rd 1484, at the synagogue, before the
presence as witnessses of two canons, the city council formally calls upon Jews
to " comply with the Law of Toledo" ordering that within three days "be
moved to where they would be assigned a place"[90]. It is a mere ruse,
they did not even bother to assign a placement for the ghetto. But three years
later, on May 22nd 1487[91], with new aldermen, they resume the issue more seriously
saying that "Your Royal Highness orders that all Jews be separated in all
their kingdoms", specifying the place where the Jewry would be located
"at the Rúa Nova of the aforesaid city, by the gates of the city",
and most strongly criticising the previous city councils for not having
enforced the Law of Toledo: " they complain and have complained that the
aldermen and judges of the past, not having enforced the said seclusion in
virtue of the said law , as of law, they
were deserving punishment". Subsequently,
they assign the houses in the Rúa Nova where refractary Jews must live and be
identifiable (tax collectors, traders and silversmiths) no later than the
coming Monday. Tax collector Mosé Péres, one of the "secluded" faces
up to this proposed break with a century-long tradition of integration and
tolerance to claim that he appealed to
the Queen and King arguing that "there were unfairly treated". But with the change in the councils
mentality and policy, there was no turning back and the new judges confirm their resolution on January
28th 1488, again calling upon each and every one of the Jews living outside the Jewry to move under the threat of punishment in
accordance with the 1480 law[92]. As Mosé Péres is not
present, the warrant is given to a servant and on November 6th 1488, the
rebellious Jew is warned again, along
with Yudá Perés ,at his house out of the Jewry.
On the following day, the two well-off Jews answer to the council with
cunning and haughtiness.
They declare that in actual fact they no longer were neighbours of
Ourense -"nor do we desire to be
"they add- but of Allariz (Mosé
Péres) and of Villafranca de Valcáçar
(Yudá Péres). But as they hold the position of Royal tax collectors of the
sales taxes in the province of Ourense they must stay a few days in the
capital, being the alderman obliged - and thus the defendants becoming
prosecutors - " to provide us with lodgings in the said city ... which be safe to keep there the taxes of your
Royal Highness", protesting the unsuitability of the houses in the Jewry
where they intended to allocate them : "they are unhabited and in a place
which is not safe"; the disclaimer goes on to morally discredit the prosecuting alderman :
"the aforesaid warrant was unduly made", " you threatened us and
the Jews who have rented those
properties", "protest any
grievance . . . . because you are biased against us"; and ends with the
announcement by the aggraviated Jews that they are going to lodge an appeal
before the Governor of Galicia[93].
The choice of Allariz by Mosé Péres as a place of peaceful life
confirms that there, as we have already noted, tolerance continues to be the
rule for coexistence up until the last moment , depite state demands. Up until
the previous year , 1487, the Jews extended , with the help of the parish
priest of Saint Stephen, their cementery
of the field of La Mina, thus demonstrating a certain dynamism in the Jewry of
Allariz, whereas in 1500, thirteen years later, authorities are forced to
remove that cementery [94] as the Jewish community
of Allariz extinguished for exogenous reasons : the expulsion decree of
1492.
But let us go back to Ourense, where after a decade of resistence, the
spatial, social and mental separation of
the two communities proves a reality. For some Ourense inhabitants the Irmandiña friendship turns into
anti-Semitic hatred. A formerly, almost
unknown anti-Semitic feeling grows at
the doors of modernity, which sought
popular roots in Galicia, as it did in
Castile and Leon, and which was mainly addressed against the
wealthiest Jews - as it is the case
of Mosé y Yudá Péres-, who perhaps for
that reason are less willing to lose their social status as a consequence of
socio-religious segregation[95].
In February 1489, we find that the Jews from Ourense are the protagonist
of two royal documents[96] which present
segregation as a consolidated fact and point to new problems. The inhabitants
of the Jewry demand from the Catholic Monarchs
the protection the council had provided for a long time as neighbours of
the city. The Catholic Monarchs grant them on February 21st a letter of reassurance " as they claim to fear and
be wary of certain gentlemen and persons who out of hatred and spite show
enmity towards them". Despite the attack against the gentlemen, by then
always useful to gain support at the court , especially in the case of Galicia,
we know that it was not so much the
gentlemen as the citizens of the council who were the new enemies of the Jews
of Ourense . This is shown in a second royal letter sent by the Catholic
Monarchs on February 27th to Governor López de Haro, in which he was ordered to
support the Jews in Rúa Nova so that the Council did not changed the location
of the ghetto for the worst and so they could keep the shops where they traded
in the square of the city, to the point of sentencing the aldermen-judges who
in 1488 had forced them to pay fines for the amount of 3.000 mrs. for resisting the change to Rúa
Nova. At the same time, the royals censored Christians who still lived in the
Jewry and had refused to leave their houses to the Jews ... In other words,
once the Christian-Jewish sympathy in Ourense had been broken , there only
remained the Royal authority to protect them
and when in the critical year of 1492, the monarchy turns against the
Jews, it means the end for them .
The decree of expulsion of Jews -
not the converted into Christianism - from the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon
is dated on March 31th 1492. The
deadline for their departure expired on July 1st 1492.
As they were forcibly made to leave their Sefarad, they could not
take "Gold nor silver nor minted
coin, nor the other things the law prohibited, except goods"[97]. This prohibition, frequently flouted by
wealthy Jews, leaves us with a document that proves that the decree of
expulsion also worked in the kingdom of Galicia.
In May 13th 1493, the Catholic Monarchs order an investigation after the
denounce by Marcos Alonso, neighbour of
A Coruña, against the persons who favoured and benifited from the flight of
another citizen of A Coruña, Jewish silversmith Isaque, who had smuggled two
million and half in "gold and silver coins and pearls and other valuable
things", after making underhand payments to A Coruña tax sales officials
for their collaboration and silence , as well as to the skipper of the vessel,
merchant Juan de San Juan, who took him to the lands of Africa[98]. The same document
makes apparent that collusion with the the expelled was widespread in Galicia,
and it includes - following Marcos Alonsos lost report - the
A coruña Royal Judge himself among the friends of the Jews "together
with other vessel skippers who took other Jews from the said Villafranca and
from Ferrol and Ponte d'Eume de Lisbona"[99], which shows A Coruña
harbour up as the usual route for the clandestine exodus of both Galician and
non-Galician Jews after March 1492.
In the same way that the tolerant tradition facilitates the escape of
wealthy Jewish in Galicia without that implying the loss of their assets, the
hypothesis that for the same motives - namely, the weakness of the anti-Semitic
movement - most of them remained in Galicia, converted into Christianism and
reintagrated in the civil society of the time, seems quite plausible[100]. The medieval tolerance
towards the Jews will be easily reproduced as modern tolerance towards convert
Jews who often continued practicising and teaching their religion to their
children . Little wonder that the greater number of cases tried by the
Inquisition in Galicia between 1565 and 1683 corresponds to Judaizers[101].
Resistence to the Holy
Inquisition
The medieval Inquisition is born in the thirteenth century at the behest
of Gregory IX to fight heresies; it
spreads across the whole of Europe,including
the Crown of Aragon. In the rest of the Iberian Peninsule, the
Inquisition is rather a modern phenomenon.
Inquisition officials begin to act in a number of cities of Castile from
1478 under the rule of the Catholic
Monarchs (bull of Sixtus IV), the new
institution later spreading towards the periphery, not without resistence . As
to the kingdom of Galicia, we can consider the the Holy Inquistion consolidated
around 1574[102], almost a century after
of its foundation in Castile. A late
indicator of the fact that medieval tolerant Galicia and a medieval Castile
were out of step as regards anti-Semitism , the latter with a much more marked
tencency towards antisemtimism.
The imposition of the inquistion clashed in Galicia with the medieval
tradition of torerance as far as beliefs and ethnias are concerned . We are,
therefore, before a conflict of mentalities and , likewise, a conflict of a
foreign jurisdictional power with local powers: for all these reasons Galician
resistance to the Holy Office is global, sustained and, at first, quite
effective. Apart from a sustained and blurred popular resistence[103], the Inquisition ,
which came from Castile comes up against a host of problems with councils ,
royal officials and the Church[104]. In fact, the tribunal
does not openly tackle the issue of Judaizers in Galicia until Portuguese
inmigrants- already in the seventeenth century - force it to intervene[105]. For the last third of the sixteenth century
persecution is centred on Luterans[106], in such a way that the
tolerance of the cristianos viejos
in Galicia towards old-time Jews, now Judaizers and converts, is maintained
almost a century after the decree of expulsion or forced conversion. This retarded and laborious implantation of
the inquistotial mentality - understood as the "pedagogy of fright"[107]- in Galicia, together
with a prolonged medieval customs of acceptance of the other, gives historical
credibility to a traditional characteristic of Galician mentality pointed out
by several authors : tolerance.
The Galician peculiarity
When investigating the causes of this particular attitude of the
hegemonic society in Galicia towards the Jewish minority , the quantivative
argument comes top. The number of Galician Jews was small. This is true,
although by the fifteenth century the situation changes in some cities ; on the
other hand, the affluency of the best known Jews compensates for their numberic
inferiority when it comes to establishing power relations between both
communities. The studied cases of Allariz and Ourense support this statement.
But the important issue is that the legal weakness of Jewish communities
favours the tolerance of the Christian majority
but it does not, however, account for the low incidence of anti-Semitism
in Galicia: anti-Semitism is to a
great extent irrational and its manifestation is not closely related with a
high number of Jews.
Given that the concern for religious homogenisation has its origin in the State emerging in Castile and Aragon
during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age, the kingdom of
Galicia was in the periphery of this new ultimately unifying power. This
political marginality may undoubtedly have facilitated the survival of a
medieval tradition based on the
acceptance of the other . The weakness of the monarquy and of its
administrative and ideological machinery in the kingdom of Galicia hamper the
change from the accepted other to the excluded other, the homologation of
Galicia with the rest. The resistance to
change of the collective mentalities favours in this case the maintainance of
medieval tolerance as a norm of behaviour .
Anti-Semitism was a habitual
letout for the social tensions in the Late Middle Ages, although not the one
which posed the greatest problems to the established system. If during the Late
Middle Ages , the Jew is not the scapegoat par excellence, it is because there
are other scapegoats which most clearly arouse the revolt , which have a deeper
influence in the popular mind, for instance, the fortresses of the lords. The
intensity of the social confrontation between vassals and lords in fifteenth
century Galicia does not, therefore, require the invention of imaginary
enemies.
[1] Tolerare
is to endure, to bear, to withstand, to sustain, "Universal Vocabulario" de Alfonso de
Palencia. Registro de voces españolas internas (1490), John M. Hill
ed., Madrid, 1957, p. 185; this same sense is expressed when people claim not
to bear intolerable damages, C.
BARROS, Mentalidad justiciera de los
irmandiños, siglo XV, Madrid, 1990, pp. 96, 113-116.
t The rebirth of racism, of anti-Semitism ,
and of nationalism,as well as the spread of religious fundamentalism bring to
the foreground the issue of tolerance / intolerance towards those who are
different as regards their religion , race or nationality. For a historical
analysis of the recovered notion of tolerance as opposed to the increase of the
phenomenon of intolerance,as ideology and
practice of the non-acceptance of diversity see L'intolleranza: uguali e diversi nella storia,
Bolonia, 1986, p. 9 (Proceedings of the International Conference that took
place in Bolognia between December 12-14 1985 in collaboration with Amnisty
International); that same year there was a similar colloquium in París: La tolérance, 13e Colloque International
de Recherches sur les civilisations de l'Occident moderne (1985), París, 1986.
[3] However Joseph Pérez
justifies medieval tolerance in Spain - the tolerance of the élites and the
anti-Semitism of the people - as he puts it - on the objective impossibility
for Christian power to convert or terminate the Jews minority until the
completion of the Reconquest in 1492, interpreting as a consequence the
idealised image of three-culture, Medieval Spain as the modern consequence of
Morisco and Sephardic nostalgy, "Chrétiens, juifs et musulmans en Espagne,
le mythe de la tolérance religieuse (VIIIe-XVe siècle)", L'Histoire, nº 137, 1990.
[4] An example: out of
the 436 bibliographic references listed by Enrique Cantera Montenegro in 1986
("Los judíos en la Edad Media hispana", Cuadernos de Investigación Medieval, nº 5) only one makes an
explicit referecence to the issue under discussion : Fernando DIAZ ESTEBAN, Aspectos de la convivencia jurídica desde el punto de
vista judío en la España medieval, II Congreso Internacional
"Encuentros de las Tres Culturas", Toledo, 1985, pp. 105-116.
[5] Mikel EPALZA,
"Pluralisme et tolérance, un modèle tolédan?", Tolède XIIe-XIIIe. Musulmans, chrétiens et juifs: le
savoir et la tolérance, pp. 242-243.
[8] Claudio SANCHEZ ALBORNOZ, España,
un enigma histórico (1957), 2 vols., Barcelona, 1985 (10ª ed.);El drama de la formación de España y los españoles,
Barcelona, 1977, pp. 55-62.
[9] We are not convinced by
the notion that medieval tolerance is based on hypocresy given that Christians
accepted other religions on the belief that theirs was superior and the rest
should not exist , while today we have a higher understading of religious
tolerance (Mikel de Eepalza, "Pluralisme et tolérance, un modèle
tolédan?", pp. 247, 149, 250); the truth is that each religion , today
like yesterday, considers itself the true one , without that making peaceful
coexistence any harder. As pertains the present , despite the laicism of States
and Western civil societies, intolerance is widespread . We have nothing to
envy the Middle Ages on this respect.
[10] Fernando SAVATER,
"La tolerancia, institución pública y virtud privada", Claves, nº 5, 1990, p. 30.
[11] José María MONSALVO ANTON, Teoría
y evolución de un conflicto social. El antisemitismo en la Corona de Castilla
en la Baja Edad Media, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1985, pp. 114-117.
[13] José María MONSALVO ANTON, "Herejía conversa y contestación
religiosa a fines de la edad Media. Las denuncias a la Inquisición en el
Obispado de Osma", Studia Historica,
II, 1984, pp. 125-126, 131.
[15] It was a Marxist,
Russian Theoritisian , Ber Borojov- who met an early death in 1917- that set
the foundations for a Marxist conception of the Jewish problem , and the
national issue at large , by bringing together the explanation of communitary
facts, the notion of production conditions and the notion of production , Nacionalismo y lucha de clases, México,
1979; we have dealt with this issue in depth in "A base material e
histórica da nación en Marx e Engels", Dende
Galicia: Marx. Homenaxe a Marx no 1º centenario
da súa morte; Carlos BARROS, J. VILAS NOGUEIRA edits., A Coruña, 1985, pp.
139-207.
[18] Yitzhak BAER, Historia de los
judíos en la España cristiana, I, Madrid, 1981, pp. 68, 71-72; on
European Jews as royal serfs, see R.I. MOORE, La
formación de una sociedad represora. Poder y disidencia en la Europa
Occidental, 950-1250, Barcelona, 1989, pp. 52-56.
[21] Anthropology can be
defined as the science of the other, Marc AUGE, "Qui est l'autre? Un itinéraire
anthropologique", L'Homme,
nº 103, 1987, pp. 7-26; see as well Eloy BENITO RUANO, De la alteridad en la historia, Madrid,
1988; T. TODOROV, Nous et les autres,
Paris, 1989.
[22] Numeric inferiority was
usually compensated for by their greater political and economic influence.
[23]T The paradox is not
such when we move outside that rational side of the mental that plays such an
important role in medieval mentalities.
[24] Y. A. DAUGE, Le barbare. Recherches sur la concepcion romaine de
la barbarie et de la civilisation, Bruselas, 1982. p. 32.
[25] Benito F. ALONSO,
"Los judíos en Orense (siglos XV al XVII)", Boletín de la Comisión de Monumentos de Orense,
II, 1904, pp. 166, 182; Leopoldo MERUENDANO, Los
judíos de Ribadavia (1915), Lugo, 1981, pp. 6-7, 13-15, 24-25;
Carlos DEAÑO, "Judíos", Gran
Enciclopédea Gallega, XVIII, 1974, pp. 120-123; José Ramón ONEGA, Los judíos en el Reino de Galicia, Madrid,
1981, pp. 199, 247, 272, 280, 291, 326, 361, 365, 407, 417, 443, 543; Anselmo
LOPEZ CARREIRA, "Os xudeus de Ourense no século XV", Boletín Auriense, XIII, 1983, pp. 164-165,
168.
[26] Except for the assault
to Orense s synagogue in 1442, an event which will be dealt with below,by the
noble band of the Cadórnigas, and which could hardly be described as an popular
antisemitic riot.
[27] It only mentions the
aggression and looting of Jews in Ribadavia in 1386 by foreign troops under the
command of the Duke of Lancaster, remarking that the hatred agisnt the Hebrew race had taken root not only among the Spaniards
, José AMADOR DE LOS RIOS, Historia
de los judíos de España y Portugal, II, Madrid, 1984, pp. 329-330
n3; III, Madrid, 1984, p. 647.
[28] Yitzhak BAER, Historia de los judíos en la España cristiana,
II, Madrid, 1981, pp. 386, 395, 402, 439; David ROMANO, "Los judíos de la
corona de Aragón en la Edad Media", España.
Al-Andalus. Sefarad: Síntesis y nuevas perspectivas, p. 156.
[29] Julio VALDEON, Los conflictos
sociales en el reino de Castilla en los siglos XIV y XV, Madrid,
1975, p. 50.
[30] José María MONSALVO ANTON, Teoría
y evolución de un conflicto social. El antisemitismo en la Corona de Castilla
en la Baja Edad Media, Madrid, 1985, p. 7.
[31] The complemetarity and
the imposssibility to separate out the antisemitic and tolerant attitudes
transform this mental and social system with a double tendency is a sort of
communicating vessels.
[33] Julio CARO BAROJA, Los judíos
en la España moderna y contemporánea, I, Madrid, 1986, pp. 145, 158.
[34] Julio CARO BAROJA, Los judíos
en la España moderna y contemporánea, I, Madrid, 1986, pp. 45, 50,
58, 60-61; Yitzhak BAER, Historia de los
judíos en la España cristiana, I, Madrid, 1981, pp. 153, 155, 159.
[35] The fundamental problem
is the loss of medieval archives in Galician urban councils. In cases- like
that of Ourense- where council document have been better kept , data
abound.
[36] As regards the Crown of
Castile fewer documents have been kept than in the case of the Crown of Aragon,
David ROMANO, "Los judíos de la corona de Aragón en la Edad Media", España. Al-Andalus.
Sefarad: Síntesis y nuevas perspectivas. p. 154.
[38] During the fifteenth
century, there was an increase in the number of Jews in the Crown of Castile,
especially in small villages, Yitzhak BAER, Historia
de los judíos en la España cristiana, II, Madrid, 1981, pp. 504-505;
on the other hand , massive conversions in the places where carnages occured in
1391, highlight the religious and political importance of Northern and
Northwest Jewish communities .
[39] Luis SUAREZ
FERNANDEZ, Documentos acerca de la expulsión
de los judíos, Valladolid, 1964, pp. 66, 68, 69, 79.
[40] In the 1474 list
Gallician Jews do not appear as Jewry of but
as Jews whose abode is, which
seems to confirm a smaller size, Luis SUAREZ FERNANDEZ, Documentos acerca de la expulsión de los judíos,
p. 79.
[41] The amount of 1,500
Jews that according to Froissart lived in Ribadavia by late fourteenth century
is to be sure an exaggeration, LETTENHOVE, Kervyn, edit., Oeuvres de Froissart. Chroniques,
(1386-1389), XII, Bruselas, 1871, p. 86.
[42] Not
even the biggest Jewish communities in Spain -which no doubt - were much bigger
than those in the rest of Europe were beyond 200-400 families. Hebrew culture
flourished even in the smallest villages , something to be noticed in order to
understand the social and religious life of those days , Yitzhak BAER, Historia de los judíos en la España cristiana,
I, Madrid, 1981, p. 158.
[43] In accordance with the 1432
statutes, wherever there were over ten Jewish households there must be a
synagogue, Yitzhak BAER, Historia de los
judíos en la España cristiana, II, Madrid, 1981, p. 517.
[44] José María MONSALVO
ANTON, Teoría y evolución de un conflicto
social. El antisemitismo en la Corona de Castilla en la Baja Edad Media,
Madrid, 1985, p. 262.
[46] The universallity of
the stereotype unifies the anti-Semitic image in the terrritories of Castile
and beyond into medieval Western, José María MONSALVO ANTON, Teoría y evolución de un conflicto social. El
antisemitismo en la Corona de Castilla en la Baja Edad Media, Madrid, 1985, p.
114.
[47] Document from the archive of the local council of Allariz
published by José AMADOR DE LOS RIOS, Historia
de los judíos de España y Portugal (1875), II, Madrid, 1984, pp.
553-554; also reproduced in Alfredo CID RUMBAO,Historia
de Allariz, Orense, 1984, pp. 64-65.
[48] The village of Allariz
had a close relationship witht the royal family in the thirteenth century. The
infants lived there and Queen Violante founded there the Nunnery of Santa
Clara, Alfredo CID RUMBAO, Historia de
Allariz, Orense, 1984.
[49] Between the castle and
Arnoia River, therefore, outside the walls of the villiage, there is still a
street parallel to socastelo s
treet popularly known as sinagoga,
Alfredo CID RUMBAO, Historia de Allariz,
Orense, 1984. p. 266.
[50] According to local
historiograohy, the first news about the Jewry in Allariz is from early
thirteenth century, see Alfredo CID RUMBAO, "Alariz", Gran Enciclopedia Gallega, I, 1974, p.
195; this could account for the lack of references to Jews in the twelfth
century l Fuero de Allariz .
[51] Most surely the Jewry
was at the NW, between the wall and the river. There were only two ways of
gaining access to it: either skirting the wall or going through the Porta da vila and cross it ; see attached
map on Alfredo CID RUMBAO, Historia de
Allariz, Orense, 1984.
[52] The transcription published
by Alfredo Cid Rumbao (Historia de Allariz,
Orense, 1984, p. 64) throws light onto this issue of the agreement according to
Amador de los Ríos version, which, in general, we are following in our
analysis .
[53] Publica Benito F.
ALONSO, El pontificado gallego,
Ourense, 1897, p. 307 (my italics ); también Alfredo CID RUMBAO, Historia de Allariz, Orense, 1984, p. 89.
[54] Alfredo CID RUMBAO, Historia de Allariz, Orense, 1984, p. 122;
the church of Saint Stephen was precisely , within the walled area, up by the
Jewry .
[55] Anselmo LOPEZ
CARREIRA, "Os xudeus de Ourense no século XV", Boletín Auriense, XIII, 1983, pp. 164-165.
[57] The synagogue at Rúa
Nova was incorporated into the urban scenery and surrounded by houses inhabited
by Christians ; references to it are found in the years 1427, 1441, 1442 y
1474, ídem, pp. 161-162; apart
from being a place for praying , it was the place chosen to administer justice
on issues related to the Jewish community (1457 y 1484), Xesús FERRO COUSELO, A vida e a fala dos devanceiros, II, Vigo,
1967, pp. 232-233.
[59] X. FERRO COUSELO, op. cit., pp. 228-229; the council
procurators suspicion , a figure which in Ourense stems from a tradition of
defense of the commons, is mainly of social nature. No doubt neighbours feared
or might fear that the mayor , turned a blind eye on the issue given the social
status of the blasfemous Jew.
[60] Its height is the
1455 insurrection, Carlos BARROS, Mentalidad
justiciera de los irmandiños, siglo XV, Madrid, 1990, pp. 32, 45.
[61] The documents, dated in 1044 and 1047, were published by Fidel
Fita en Boletín de la Real Academia de la
Historia, tomo XXII, 1893, pp. 171-180.
[62] Kervyn de LETTENHOVE, ed.,
Oeuvres de Froissart. Chroniques,
tomo XII (1386-1389), Brussels, 1981, p. 86.
[64] Similarly in another
memorial dating from 1442, Affronts which are
made to the city council by Pedro Dias and his men, the council
includes among the victims two cases involving Jews :Item his squire Alvaro Gandio killed our neighbour Alonso, a Jew , (...) Item Gomes de
Paazos attempted to kill our neighbour Nuño Patiño, a Jew , Benito
F. ALONSO, Los judíos en Orense,
Ourense, 1904, p. 17.
[66] The provisor and the
chapter were in litigation with García Díaz de Cadórniga in 1440 and 1441, as
it is made public in Boletín de la Comisión
de Monumentos de Orense, VI, pp. 230, 269-270; Ruy Díaz de Cadórniga
is executed in 1450 for affronts to the bishops of Ourense, and Pedro Díaz de
Cadórnigadies dies in 1459 being in gaol - and again excomulgated- in the gaol
of the Cathedra Church , ídem,
pp. 162, 231-232, 272.
[67] Likewise, it has a
certain significance , within the nobiliar framework, the relationship
established in the text between the low nobility condition of the mediators and
the pursued aim of friendliness.
[73] José AMADOR DE LOS RIOS, Historia
de los judíos de España y Portugal, III, Madrid, 1984, p. 399.
[80] José AMADOR DE LOS RIOS, Historia
de los judíos de España y Portugal, III, Madrid, 1984, pp. 147-152,
648; A. MACKAY, "Popular movements and progroms in fifteenth-century
Castile", Past and Present,
nº 55, 1972, pp. 34-35.
[81] José María MONSALVO ANTON, Teoría
y evolución de un conflicto social. El antisemitismo en la Corona de Castilla
en la Baja Edad Media, Madrid, 1985, pp. 297 ss.
[84] Jacobo de CASTRO, Arbol
cronológico de la Santa Provincia de Santiago, I, Salamanca, 1722,
p. 215.
[87] Luis SUAREZ, Judíos españoles
en la Edad Media, Madrid, 1980, pp. 263-264; José AMADOR DE LOS
RIOS, op. cit., III, p. 287; Cortes de los antiguos reinos de León y Castilla,
IV, Madrid, 1861-2, pp. 149-151.
[89] Julio CARO BAROJA, Los judíos
en la España moderna y contemporánea, I, Madrid, 1986, pp. 153-154.
[92] As they
were rebels and did not obey and refused to comply [with the rulings of
the city council ] ,as of law , and for that
reason, they had been charged and given the aforesaid sentences, which were
included in the aforementioned law of Toledo , everyone being witness to the
fact , loc. cit., p.
237; we will see later that the city countil did actually enforce the
sentences.
[95] refractary Jews will
soon realise that the best avenue to maintain their social position was to
convert to Christianism , although there were no such antecendents throughout
the fifteenth century . Previously, Jews had not needed to change their
religion to gain the respect and the steem of dominant Christian society .
[96] Luis SUAREZ
FERNANDEZ, Documentos acerca de la expulsión
de los judíos, Valladolid, 1964, pp. 320-322.
[97] Alfonso GARCIA GALLO, Manual
de historia del derecho español. II. Antología de fuentes del antiguo
derecho, Madrid, 1982, pp. 767-769.
[98] Luis SUAREZ FERNANDEZ, Documentos
acerca de la expulsión de los judíos, Valladolid, 1964, pp. 513-514.
[100] Benito F. ALONSO, "Los judíos en Orense (siglos XV al
XVII)", Boletín de la Comisión de
Monumentos de Orense, II, 1904, pp. 23-29.
[101] Carmelo LISON TOLOSANA, Brujería,
estructura social y simbolismo en Galicia, Madrid, 1983, 2º ed., p.
11 n 3.