Hello. In the Crown of Aragon 639 years ago,
it was January 23rd, 1387. My name is Jonathan
Seyfried. I'm a PhD candidate in history at the
University of New Mexico. And this is the Historian's
Notebook, a podcast about how history gets made.
Season one is titled Molt Cara Companyona. We're
looking at a document from each day of the first
year of the reign of King Joan I of Aragon and
Queen Violant de Bar. Let's begin today's
document. Today's document is a great one to
follow up on what we were discussing yesterday
about interfaith relationships, interfaith encounters,
interfaith conflicts in the late Middle Ages
generally and specifically in the Crown of Aragon
in the late 14th century. There were other polities
in the Middle Ages that parceled out the different
religious minority communities and taxed them
differently. I think that this was a practice
when Muslims ruled in Iberia and Christian communities
were being taxed differently. There was in fact
a tradition called the Jizya, which was the special
tax that would be paid by other monotheistic
Abrahamic faith groups under Muslim rule. the
Christians and the Jews in Muslim -led polities
in the Middle Ages were identified by a special
title that distinguished them from other groups
that were non -Muslims. That term is the Dhimmis.
The dhimmis were the Jews and the Christians, and
they were treated with a special higher status
than say non -Abrahamic faith groups that were
present in Muslim governed polities. So these
traditions of having different governance and
jurisdiction and taxation for the faith groups
There, this is a long tradition, and so it's
been going on for centuries by the time we get
to the moment that we're focusing in on here
in 1387. So here in this document, we have Joan
making a declaration of receipt of a fine. He
imposed a fine on the Muslims of the city of
Fraga. Fraga is about halfway between Barcelona
and Saragossa. It's not a very large city. So
I'm not quite sure about the number of Muslims
in this town of Fraga. I mean, I'm guessing it
can't really be more than like 500. Maybe? Just
kind of a random guess there. Certainly not in
the thousands. Unless I'm really missing something
about the population of Fraga, then I'm gonna
have to go back and correct that impression.
The title of this document is Remissio Sarracenorum
Villa Fraga, a remission of the Muslims. So the
term Saracen is pejorative and in our time it's
very insulting. In the time that we're studying
it was a term used as just a matter of course
to refer to a group of Muslims. So This document
is about the Muslims of Fraga and some kind of
note about what has been received from them.
What has been received from them is a fine of
1 ,000 florins. That is a lot of money. That
is 11 ,000 solides. Okay, just think about some
of the chunks of change that we've been talking
about on the podcast. So we had the baker and
the minstrels who were paid for something like
a couple months of work and they were being paid
in sort of like the 200, 300 solidis. And now
we've got a fine for a thousand florins, 11 ,000
solidis. that's a huge amount of money. What
is it that Joan had fined these Muslims for?
Turns out, and I found out about this document
from Benjamin Gampel in his book on the anti
-Jewish riots of 1391, And Gampel had read about
it from an earlier article by Jaume Riera i Sans,
whose work we've already looked at in the podcast
a whole bunch. So what had happened is that there
was some violent conflict between the Muslims
and Jews in Fraga. So Christians were not identified
as being involved in the violence here. And what
had gone on was that there was a procession to
honor the passing of Pere the Ceremonious. So
Pere the King had died and the townsfolk had
organized a procession in order to commemorate
the death of Per. So this took place had to have
been something around January 6th, 7th, 8th.
And in the course of that procession, violence
broke out and it was determined by the authorities
who investigated that the Muslims had started
the violence against the Jews. And because of,
apparently, the severity but also the insult
of violence breaking out around a procession
that was supposed to honor the monarchy, the
fine of a thousand Florins was imposed on the
Muslim community. And they pay it up. And they
paid up pretty promptly because this document
is dated the 23rd of January. So, you know, just
about two weeks they came up with the money and
sent it in. So there's a lot of questions that
are going to be coming up. First of all, what
is a procession? And For that, I can recommend
a really, really great book by Abigail Agresta.
And it's all about the city of Valencia and how
Valencia responded to certain crises, whether
it was a drought or a plague. And one of the
things that they would do is organize a procession.
They would also take action that in our time
we would call more pragmatic, like trying to
institute regulations and infrastructural projects
in order to shore up whatever problems they were
having. But another thing that they would do
was they would appeal to the divine to intercede
and help to alleviate whatever suffering was
being brought about by well nature in the minds
of the people who were doing this so they they
saw especially with something like plague that
this was coming from nature and so they could
appeal to God to end it and one of the ways they
made this appeal was to organize a religious
procession a walk around town, gathering together,
walking around, probably saying prayers as they
were walking. And processions were something
that happened quite a lot, and it's really hard
for us to imagine this in our time. But you can
also think about certain forms of protest where
people gather they're assembling in a large group
in order to collectively add some kind of emphasis
to a message. And so in that sense, I think we
can relate to this. But processions were something
that happened a whole lot. And so it wasn't surprising
when I saw that there was a procession in order
to commemorate the passing of the king in order
to do some kind of demonstration of loyalty,
fidelity, honor toward the monarchy as a signal
of the overall relationship between the faith
communities in Fraga and the monarchy, in the
different relationships that existed between
each faith group and the monarchy. They could
all come together and do this commemoration,
which was, in the judgment of those officials
who investigated, ruined by who? The Muslims.
The Muslims were at fault in this case. And so
That's the scenario here. And I think it's still
a little bit difficult to figure out, well, like,
how do you go from making a procession to an
outbreak of violence? What Gampel says is that
the Muslims were found to be resentful of the
fact that they were put behind the Jews in the
procession. So someone had decided that this
faith group would be in front of the other faith
group in the actual procession. And so that's
how the ill will started. And then, goodness,
it's very difficult for me to imagine how you
get from being angry about your order in the
procession to some kind of outbreak of violence.
But it somehow happened and the conflict led
to probably a lot of injuries. I don't see...
any indication here that anybody was killed,
but it's possible. Certainly the amount of money
indicates that there was a lot of damage and
maybe some killing that happened. I don't...
I will say that I have not read every single
word in this because it's a long Latin document,
but I haven't identified whether anybody was
killed. But what I have found is 10... lines
from the bottom on the middle page of this Folio
52 V. There's the term criminalis et crimina.
So there were identified criminal acts that took
place. And that is what's justifying the fine.
The very steep fine. So we have here a illustrative
example of interfaith tension, but also interfaith
coexistence, that there was an expectation that
all of the faith groups would gather and participate
in these kinds of civic events, procession, to
honor the king who has died. One other piece
of this document that I want to point out is
something that doesn't really have much to do
with interfaith encounter in the Middle Ages,
and rather to do with conventions of the chancery.
I just want to point out that at the end of this
document, the scribe, who seems to be someone
named Berenguer de Busquetis, he has chosen to
spell out all of the numbers in the date and
the year. And I just found that to be super interesting,
because usually you see that the numbers of the
year are rendered in Roman numerals. That's happening
in almost every other document. You do occasionally
see certain pieces of the date spelled out, and
there's no consistency. Some scribes seem to
enjoy spelling out the number of the day. Other
scribes seem to enjoy spelling out part of the
number of the day. So it'll be a mixture of the
Roman numeral and then a spelled out. And so
we just see this lack of consistency and just
enjoying how the scribes just have their own
quirks. So I wanted to point that out that at
the end of this we've got the numbers of the
day spelled out and each part of the number of
the year. spelled out. So there you have it,
another little quirk of the Chancery Scribes.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Historian's
Notebook, season one, Molt Cara Companyona. If
you are leaving with more questions than you
arrived with, I have done my job. Remember, the
motto of the Historian's Notebook is dissatisfaction
guaranteed. Visit the website to see an image
of today's document and additional show notes.
And listen again tomorrow to hear about the next
day in the first year of the reign of King Joan
I of Aragon and Queen Violant de Bar. In the
meantime, take care.